14 Comments

The stories you are unraveling are very significant, but as meaningful to me are the relationships you are building with people like Elaine and Roy Jones.

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And so many others who have reached out to me with helpful suggestions, corrections, connections, and new information. I am so deeply grateful!

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I really appreciate your articles as does my extended family. I have the picture you posted of my great grandmother Anna Namaypoke hanging in my home and my niece was named after her. Thank you for sharing your meticulous research!

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You're welcome. And I am glad to know your niece was named after your great-grandmother Anna Namaypoke. I am glad to learn more about this history about this special place on Lake of the Woods. It is beautiful here in October!

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I'm amazed by your discoveries and the way one thing leads to the next hidden step. You're writing a history of a people who lived near Warroad, but also giving lessons about well done and patient research and the essential human to human connections. Thank you for another fascinating piece to the puzzle.

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I'm amazed too by what I'm learning, but even more amazed by the ways in which these human connections are revealed. Thanks for reading!

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My late husband Donald Goodin was also Naymaypoke’s great grandson. Louie Goodin was his father and Grace Naymaypoke his grandmother. He also did enquiries regarding the land. During a time when we lived with Margaret Aas, we spent a good deal of time visiting with Tom and Ethel Lightning in their house by the river.

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Thank you Janet for noting Louie Goodin is another great-grandson of Naymaypoke. Louie Goodin's mother Grace Naymaypoke was a student in the first Warroad School for the first 3 years, I had found in the school records this summer from the Roseau County Museum. Louie Goodin, her son, was a student in the 1920s along with the Angus brothers and John Lightning. I would love to hear more stories about your visits with Tom and Ethel Lightning. And more about what your husband learned from his attempts to get answers regarding the land. I'm always curious to hear more about Maggie Aas and would love to know what it was like to have lived with her.

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WOW! Your careful research is really yielding rewards! The story has engaged the family and it looks like they're adding to it in real time. Congratulations!

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George, it is so rewarding that I am spending the week near Lake of the Woods to do more digging into primary documents. So rewarding!

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This is such an amazing story you are digging up, Jill! Thank you for your persistence, your curiosity, your ability to read copperplate handwriting on old documents, and your unflinching search for the story behind the myths we have created. I am so glad that you are connecting to Naymaypoke's descendants and others with an interest in understanding how the Red Earth Reservation people lost their land. This is a book in the making!

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It has kept me busy, Susan. Yesterday I felt the ground underneath my feet where my great-grandparents first homesteaded. A fall infusion of beauty in place.

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Serendipitous indeed! I find it truly fascinating that your writings have reached a relative of one of the persons you are researching! Love how that happens on many occasions.

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Kayci, connecting readers with our shared local history is why I write. And more and more relatives of Naymaypoke, Kakaygeesick, and Animikeese have subscribed, commented, connected on Facebook, messaged me, met with me, and called me, and thankfully corrected me when I get it wrong. Also other families whose names here have generations of history. A surprising number of these families are still area residents. It's exciting and encouraging to make these connections. We are all becoming kin as we are all in relation to one another.

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