(woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; and by the members of Prairie Public.

Welcome to "Prairie Mosaic," a patchwork of stories about the art, culture, and history in our region.

Hi, I'm Matt Olien And I'm Barb Gravel.

On this edition of "Prairie Mosaic," well watch the second segment of "Black Histories of the Northern Plains," listen to poetry, and meet a country western musician from Valley City, North Dakota.

♪ You don't have to go that far and you will find ♪ In this Artifact Spotlight Chris Schuelke of the Otter Tail County Historical Society teaches us about The Cutlerites, a group of religious pilgrims who formed the first permanent settlement in Otter Tail county known as Clitherall.

Hi, this is Chris Schuelke with the Otter Tail County Historical Society in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and this is our Artifact Spotlight.

So the first permanent settlement in Otter Tail County was a religious settlement, religious pilgrims, a group known as Cutlerites.

They formed the first permanent settlement known as Clitherall.

The Cutlerites was a Mormon spinoff group.

Their leader was a man named Alpheus Cutler.

Alpheus Cutler quickly rose in the church hierarchy, and after the death of Joseph Smith, he became one of the leaders.

When the group was living in Southwestern Iowa, a community know as Manti, they decided to split with the larger Mormon group led by Brigham Young.

So this group that stayed with Alpheus Cutler became known as Cutlerites.

Now, when they were in Iowa, they were actually quite prosperous, but Cutler had a vision, a dream that they should move to the new state of Minnesota and seek out land between two lakes.

Well, there are thousands of lakes in Minnesota, in fact, there are over 1000 lakes in Otter Tail County alone.

So a scouting party left Iowa, eventually made their way to Otter Tail County and to a spot between West Battle Lake and Clitherall lake, and that's where the Cutlerites set up their community of Clitherall.

It was actually based on 4 homesteads.

One of the leaders of the Cutlerite church was a man named Chancey Whiting.

This is a portrait of Chancey Whiting and his wife Adetha.

Whiting became the president of the Cutlerite church, and in his later years he wrote scores of letters and also was a correspondent for the Fergus Falls Daily Journal.

So much of what we know about the community and the church came from the writings of Chancey Whiting.

They farmed, they hunted, and they had their own wagon shop and tin shop and furniture shop.

Now the chairs that we have here were made by Almond Whiting.

The Whitings were an important family in the Clitherall community.

Almond Whiting made these simple, sturdy chairs.

They don't have a lot of adornment.

There's a little painting on one of the chairs, typically of the Cutlerites, there's no major adornment.

They entertained themselves with music.

For instance, Louis Whiting had this fiddle that was used and also by actually several generations later.

It's important that we learn about the Cutlerites because they actually preceded the main settlement to Otter Tail County which took place after the Civil War.

People took advantage of the Homestead Act, you had your Scandinavian immigrants, Northern European immigrants, but the Cutlerites were here before that.

They actually left Iowa when the Civil War was still taking place.

So they preceded that great westward movement and were very much a religious community.

They came to Otter Tail County basically to get away from civilization so they could practice their religion and their community amongst themselves and were very important actually in the early development of the county.

When Otter Tail County was formed in 1868, the first meeting was held at the home of Marcus Shaw who was a Cutlerite, so Otter Tail County was formed in a Cutlerite home, and several of the early county commissioners were Cutlerites including Chancey Whiting.

These are artifacts again, that represent a time and a period that no longer exists.

And if we don't know about this, then we lose part of our history.

So one of the reasons, the main reason that we keep these pieces is that we keep a part of our heritage alive for people of future generations to learn about.

Episode two of "Black Histories of the Northern Plains" chronicles the Bonga family who became fur trading entrepreneurs, and a slave named York who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their Corps of Discovery expedition to the Pacific Ocean.

(Matt Olien) The first African Americans in the northern plains were a family named Bonga and a man named York.

Though the prairies they ventured through were ostensibly free lands, they were brought to the frontier by fur traders and explorers as enslaved men and women.

Here in the disputed waters and lands between Indigenous America and European empires, they navigated the uncharted borders of slavery and freedom.

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis from the Pacific Ocean, September 23, 1806, they returned as national heroes.

The journey of exploration they'd begun more than two years prior, and one of the crowning achievements of the young United States of America, had finally come to an end.

That evening, Lewis wrote in a letter to President Thomas Jefferson, "It is with pleasure that I announce to you the safe arrival of myself and party."

However, this triumphant return would have been bittersweet for at least one member of the party: the man known as York who was once enslaved by William Clark.

York had made significant sacrifices for the journey.

He'd been forced to leave his wife in Kentucky and suffered serious injuries along the way, including frostbite from a bison hunt near Fort Mandan.

York had also made important contributions with the expedition's success with the minor privileges he enjoyed: he carried firearms and provided a sizeable portion of the party's food; he even voted with the party to determine the location of the winter camp; and he served as an effective diplomat with Indigenous people who had never seen a black man before.

To York, the assurance of civilization in St. Louis, Missouri, marked a return to the slavery he'd been accustomed to before the expedition, as William Clark had made no indication of freeing him and wouldn't do so for at least another 5 to 10 years.

I'm Troy Jackson II with Prairie Public.

Our narrator is Matt Olien.

And this is "Black Histories of the Northern Plains."

[guitar, banjo, & fiddle play a folk tune] (Matt Olien) Black history in the United States begins in Africa with the institution of slavery.

Between the 16th and 19th century more than 12 million African men, women, and children were captured and taken to ports in the Gulf of Guinea, where they were loaded onto European ships and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.

The 11 million people who survived the journey were forced into a lifetime of labor, working primarily in the agricultural production of sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco for European and then American markets.

Most were sent to plantations in South America and the Caribbean; roughly half a million were taken to North America.

As chattel slaves, these people and their descendants were deprived of their humanity and basic rights, and treated as property that could be bought, sold, traded, and inherited.

Jean and Marie Bonga were two of these descendants, and likely the first in their families to gain freedom in the New World.

The Bongas were French-African, born into slavery in the middle of the 18th century, and most likely taken from the French colony of Martinique through Montreal to the Straits of Mackinac.

By 1782 they were enslaved on the Great Lakes by Captain Daniel Robertson, the British-Canadian commander of Fort Mackinac.

In 1787, the Bongas were freed.

They opened a tavern on Mackinac Island, where they married and raised 4 children, and got themselves into the Great Lakes fur trade.

Sometime after Jean died in 1795, Marie and her 3 youngest children returned to Montreal.

Their oldest son, Pierre, moved west, further into the fur trade he had come to know.

He appears in the records of North West Company traders between 1795 and 1806 as a servant, interpreter, and fur trader.

He later worked for the American Fur Company.

In 1800 he traveled to the Red River Valley with one of the traders.

Journal records mention Pierre riding a corralled bison and delivering a sound beating to a competing fur trader who threatened to kill him.

Pierre also found family and community, marrying into the Pillager Band of the Chippewa and raising several children.

In Pembina on March 12, 1800, his wife Ojibweke gave birth to their daughter Blanche.

Local fur trader Alexander Henry recorded the occasion as "the first new fruit in this Fort, and a very black one."

She's believed to be the first African American born in North Dakota.

Her younger brother George, delivered the following year, is believed to be the first African American born in Minnesota.

Pierre appears to have lived comfortably with Ojibweke and their family until his death near Fond-du-Lac in present-day Wisconsin around 1830.

Their children found wealth and prominence too.

Sons George and Stephen worked as traders, guides, and voyageurs with the American Fur Company.

Fluent in English, French, and native languages, they also worked as interpreters during treaty negotiations between the U.S. government and Ojibwe leaders.

Their signatures can be found on the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters, the 1847 Treaty with the Pillager Band of the Chippewa, and the 1867 Treaty with the Chippewas of the Mississippi.

By the end of the 19th century, a sizable number of Bonga descendants, perhaps more than 100, lived in Minnesota around Leech Lake.

While York occupies a far more prominent position in American history than the Bongas, his life after the Corps of Discovery is a mystery, if not a tragedy.

Living in St. Louis after their return, York's relationship with Clark soured.

It became clear he wouldn't be granted freedom.

In response he was beaten and jailed, If Clark's letters serve as any indication, York was regularly threatened to be sold down the Mississippi River to a more violent slaveholder.

Legend claims that York eventually found his way to Wyoming and lived among the Crow or lived out his later years in the taverns of St. Louis.

Most historians believe York was eventually granted freedom and worked in freight hauling goods.

In 1832 Clark admitted that he freed York, but claimed that York had attempted to return to his old master before dying of cholera.

Given the self-serving embellishment of William Clark's story, some historians believe York never got his freedom at all.

I'm Troy Jackson II for Prairie Public.

Thanks for watching.

Gabrielle Johnson was the 2023 North Dakota State Poetry Out Loud Champion.

Her love of poetry is apparent in the poems that she chose and in her passionate performance.

"I want to be doused in cheese "& fried.

"I want to wander the aisles, "My heart's supermarket Stocked high as cholesterol."

"Poetry Out Loud" is poetry out loud-- in a competition!

It starts off as schoolwide competition, then you go to state, and if you win you get to go to nationals.

Poems are selected from the Poetry Out Loud website.

You select 3 poems, you have 2 that you recite, then if you make it to the top 5 you then can recite your 3rd poem.

"Ode to the Midwest is by Kevin Young.

It's basically talking about the Midwest and poking fun at little Midwestern things like scraping your driveway clean and trying to do things on your own and cheese.

There's a shift towards the end where the author kind of talks about how kind of lonely the Midwest is for the author themselves.

I picked that one because well, like the poems, the Midwest is like great and all the fun silly little things that make it niche.

There is just still that little bit of like isolation for when the Midwest isn't really built for people like me.

"Ode to the Midwest" by Kevin Young.

"The country I come from is called the Midwest."

Bob Dylan "I want to be doused in cheese "& fried.

"I want to wander the aisles, my heart's supermarket "Stocked high as cholesterol.

"I want to die wearing a sweatsuit-- "I want to live forever in a Christmas sweater, " A teddy bear nursing off the front.

"I want to write a check in the express lane.

"I want to scrape my driveway clean, "Early, myself, before anyone's awake-- "That'll put 'em to shame-- "I want to see what the sun sees "Before it tells the snow to go.

"I want to be the only black person I know.

"I want to "Throw out my back & not complain about it.

"I wanta drive two blocks.

"Why walk-- "I want love, n stuff-- "I want to cut my sutures myself.

"I want to jog down to the river & make it my bed-- "I want to walk its muddy banks & make me a withdrawal.

"I tried jumping in, "Found it frozen-- "I'll go home, I guess, to my rooms Where the moon changes & shines like television."

"Songs for the People" is by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

When I pick a poem I want it to speak for me, I want to speak the poem to other people and have it speak to them.

And I really liked it because it kind of talks about different types of people and how sometimes the world isn't built for us, and the world is crazy.

But you know what?

Here is a song, a poem that just kind of brings back I remember, it's okay, be optimistic; we shall get through it.

"Songs for the People" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

"Let me sing the songs for the people, "Songs for the old and young; "Songs to stir like a battle-cry "Wherever they are sung.

"Not for the clashing of sabers, For carnage nor for strife; "But songs to thrill the hearts of men "With more abundant life.

"Let me make the songs for the weary, "Amid life's fever and fret, "Till hearts shall relax their tension, "And careworn brows forget.

"Let me sing for little children, "Before their footsteps stray, "Sweet anthems of love and duty, "To float o'er life's highway.

"I would sing for the poor and aged, "When shadows dim their sight; "Of the bright and restful mansions, "Where there shall be no night.

"Our world, so worn and weary, "Needs music, pure and strong, "To hush the jangle and discords "Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

"Music to soothe all its sorrow, "Till war and crime shall cease; "And the hearts of men "Grown tender Girdle the world with peace."

Greg Hager of Valley City, North Dakota is a well-known songwriter and musician, especially in the world of western music.

He presents a heartfelt message in every original tune and tours the country representing North Dakota.

Hi there, my name is Greg Hager, I come from Valley City, North Dakota.

When I was 7 years old I learned to play guitar, and I wrote my very first song.

I knew at the age of 7 that I wanted to use music to make connections with people and to try to make a difference in their lives.

The style of music that I feel lets me best connect with that is a western style of country and country gospel.

[finger-picking in a melodic country folk style] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The mysteries of nature ♪ ♪ Cannot be explained by man ♪ ♪ The same thing goes for love ♪ ♪ Oh they've tried but no one can ♪ ♪ Just take a look around you ♪ ♪ And see the way that things are here ♪ ♪ And notice how the skyline ♪ ♪ Always seems so far from here ♪ ♪ And this in the northern land ♪ ♪ Oh oh the sights are grand ♪ ♪ Come take me by the hand ♪ ♪ And we will walk together ♪ ♪ For when you are here with me ♪ ♪ More than the land is free ♪ ♪ And I hope you now can see ♪ ♪ The way that life can be ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The babbling of a small brook ♪ ♪ And the swaying of the trees ♪ ♪ The meadows with their flowers ♪ ♪ And the whispers of the breeze ♪ ♪ All paint a perfect picture ♪ ♪ On the canvas of the ground ♪ ♪ A finer place on earth for love to grow ♪ ♪ Can nevermore be found ♪ ♪ And this in the northern land ♪ ♪ Oh the sights are grand ♪ ♪ Come take me by the hand ♪ ♪ And we will walk together ♪ ♪ For when you are here with me ♪ ♪ More than the land is free ♪ ♪ And I hope you now can see ♪ ♪ The way that life can be ♪ ♪ It's in the northern land ♪ ♪ Oh oh the sights are grand ♪ ♪ Come take me by the hand ♪ ♪ And we will walk together ♪ ♪ For when you are here with me ♪ ♪ More than the land is free ♪ ♪ And I hope you now can see ♪ ♪ The way that life can be ♪ ♪ ♪ [finger-picking in bright rhythm] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It's not just the state of Texas ♪ ♪ Though it could be ♪ ♪ Out in Oklahoma ♪ ♪ That you will see ♪ ♪ In Utah or Dakota where they tend the land ♪ ♪ Wyoming and Montana or the desert sand ♪ ♪ From Arkansas to Michigan you'll find ♪ ♪ What makes you a cowboy is the state of mind ♪ ♪ State of mind ♪ ♪ You don't have to go that far ♪ ♪ And you will find ♪ ♪ No matter where you are ♪ ♪ It's more than just the place you hang your hat ♪ ♪ My friend it's really so much more than that ♪ ♪ It's the state of mind ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I've seen it in Nebraska but not only there ♪ ♪ Iowa and Illinois have got their share ♪ ♪ In fact across this land of ours from sea to sea ♪ ♪ From Florida to Washington there will be ♪ ♪ Through Canada and New Mexico you'll find ♪ ♪ What makes you a cowboy ♪ ♪ Is the state of mind ♪ ♪ State of mind ♪ ♪ You don't have to go that far ♪ ♪ And you will find ♪ ♪ No matter where you are ♪ ♪ It's more than just the place you hang your hat ♪ ♪ My friend it's really so much more than that ♪ ♪ It's the state of mind ♪ ♪ State of mind ♪ ♪ You don't have to go that far ♪ ♪ And you will find ♪ ♪ No matter where you are ♪ ♪ It's more than just the place you hang your hat ♪ ♪ My friend it's really so much more than that ♪ ♪ It's the state of mind ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It's the state of mind ♪ ♪ ♪ If you know of an artist, a topic or an organization in our region that you think would make for an interesting segment, please contact us at... (Matt) You can watch this and other episodes of "Prairie Mosaic" on Prairie Public's YouTube channel, and follow Prairie Public on social media as well.

I'm Matt Olien.

And I'm Barb Gravel.

Thank you for joining us for another edition of "Prairie Mosaic."

[guitar, bass, & drums play in bright country rhythm] (woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; and by the members of Prairie Public.