St. Columba Mission

St. Columba Mission was an Ojibwe community on Gull Lake in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States, about 11 miles (18 km) north of Fort Ripley.[1] It centered on the first Native American Christian church in the United States west of the Mississippi River, founded in 1852 by the Episcopal missionary James Lloyd Breck and Enmegahbowh, who served as deacon.[2] The squared log church was consecrated in 1853 by Bishop Jackson Kemper.[3]

In November 1859, Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple visited the mission.[4] He wrote that with an interpreter they "held a sweet service in the log church of St. Columba on the banks of the loveliest of Minnesota lakes" and dedicated a cemetery.[5]

The village that grew up around the mission included a school and a store. All of it was burned to the ground in the Dakota War of 1862, after which the mission moved to the White Earth Indian Reservation.[6][7]

No visible trace of the settlement remains at the Gull Lake site, but it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places[8] and a historic marker was placed nearby on Minnesota State Highway 371.[9][10]

References
  1. Upham, Warren (2001). "Crow Wing County". Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. Minnesota Historical Society Press. p. 162. ISBN 0873513967.
  2. Tanner, George C. (1905). "The Mission of St. Columba at Gull Lake". History of Fort Ripley, 1849 to 1859, based on the diary of Rev. Solon W. Manney, D.D., chaplain of this post from 1851 to 1859. Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. Minnesota Historical Society. pp. 188–190.
  3. Holcombe, Theodore Isaac (1903). An Apostle of the Wilderness: James Lloyd Breck, D.D., His Missions and His Schools. T. Whittaker. pp. 97–99. THE MARRIAGE OF DR. BRECK: On All Saints' Day, 1852, the corner-stone of the church of St. Columba, at Gull Lake, was laid...
  4. Whipple, Henry Benjamin (1899). "Chapter III". Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate: Being Reminiscences and Recollections of the Right Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Minnesota. New York: The Macmillan Company. On November 23, 1859, I visited the Indian mission of St. Columba, Gull Lake.
  5. Whipple, Henry Benjamin (1890). "My Life Among the Indians". North American Review. 150 (401): 434. JSTOR 25101965. Three weeks after I reached my diocese I visited the Indian mission at Gull Lake.
  6. Neslund, Robert (June 2002). "St. Columba's Mission, co-founded by Enmegahbowh, celebrates its sesquicentennial" (PDF). Soundings. 24 (3): 14.
  7. Whipple, Henry Benjamin (November 8, 1959). "The diocese of Minnesota carries on the work that Bishop Whipple began one hundred years ago and which won him the name of Apostle to the Indians". The Living Church. 139 (24th Sunday after Trinity): 15. On June 14, 1868, St. Columba, which had been organized on the shore of Gull Lake (and was the first mission west of the Mississippi) moved to White Earth.
  8. Nord, Mary Ann (2003). The National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota. Minnesota Historical Society. ISBN 0-87351-448-3.
  9. Minnesota Historical Records Survey Project (1940). Guide to historic markers erected by the State Highway Department cooperating with the Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society. p. 31.
  10. "Chief Hole-In-The-Day". Reproduced from the Centennial Edition of the Brainerd Daily Dispatch (1871-1971). Brainerd, Minnesota. 1971. Retrieved 2017-01-25 – via brainerdhistory.com. The site of old St. Columba mission of Gull Lake, where Hole-In-The-Day often visited, is well marked.
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