Minnesota’s First State Geologist
Stephen Miller assumed the office of Governor of Minnesota in January of 1864 and by early March appointed August H. Hanchett as Minnesota’s first State Geologist. Hanchett was an early emigrant to Minnesota who served as Hasting’s first mayor. While he left little record of his expectations or concerns about his appointment as State Geologist, it is notable that Hanchett declined any salary and served without pay. He would be Minnesota’s only State Geologist to do so.
Augustus H. Hanchett
Dr. Augustus H. Hanchett was born in New York on July 26, 1817, to Elizabeth and David Hanchett. His birthplace was probably in the Buffalo, New York region, as Hanchett taught school one winter in Collins and married his wife, Augusta, in Springville, two small towns thirty miles south of the Buffalo port. The Augustus-Augusta marriage took place on April 4, 1844. Augusta was the daughter of Eliza and Harvey Hall Hubbard. If her gravestone date is accurate, Augusta was born on New Year’s Day, 1820. Her father was a physician who may have served as a surgeon in a New York militia after the War of 1812 as one source lists his name among officers released from duty prior to 1858. The reason this might be relevant deals with the question of how Augustus H. Hanchett became a physician. There were few medical schools at the time and most doctors learned their trade through apprenticeships with practicing physicians. Augustus probably gained his medical training by working with his father-in-law. At the time, the Hubbards lived in Springville, New York with their three daughters and two sons.
During his brief reign as a Collins schoolteacher (1844-1845), Hanchett was secretary for the local Teaching Association. To his credit, he opposed the Association’s resolution to condemn recent rules that prohibited teachers from using corporal punishment in their classrooms. Unfortunately, Hanchett was in the minority and the resolution passed.
In 1883, Erasmus Briggs wrote a ‘History of the Original Town of Concord Being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardina in Eire County, New York.’ In his section on the history of Collins, Briggs only listed the names of most of the town’s early schoolteachers but elaborated a bit more on Hanchett’s brief reign as schoolteacher.
Augustus Hanchett, then studying to be a physician, taught the school one Winter. Hanchett was afterwards admitted to practice, married a wife in Springville, and moved west. He was a man of superior natural abilities, coupled with other characteristics, that greatly neutralized them, and prevented him from reaching an eminence in his profession, to which his friends believed he was fully entitled.
Briggs did not elucidate what Hanchett’s less-desirable characteristics were, but their recollection obviously survived over four decades in the community’s collective memory before being recorded in Briggs’ town history. It would not be the only time disparaging, but nebulous, comments haunted Hanchett’s endeavors.
Hanchett moved to Racine, Wisconsin in 1847, but he and Augusta did not go alone. The entire Hubbard family moved as well except for the younger son, William, who remained to farm in New York. In the 1850 U.S. Census, Augustus and Augusta were living in Racine with their four-year-old daughter Ella. Although census estimates of real estate value were self-reported and notoriously unreliable, Augustus’ claim of having eleven hundred dollars in real estate suggests his practice was thriving. Close by, Harvey and Eliza Hubbard lived with their two unmarried daughters, Marietta and Jane, respectively aged 25 and 20 years. Hubbard’s four-hundred dollar estimate of his real estate value was noticeably less, or probably more accurate, than Hanchett’s. Not recorded by the census was the loss of Hubbard’s son and Augusta’s brother, Alexander, a few years prior. Alexander T. Hubbard, a doctor like his father and brother-in-law, died of congestion of the brain on the 14th of November 1847 in Racine at the age of twenty-six, shortly after the family moved there.
After a few years in Wisconsin, both families relocated again, becoming some of the earliest settlers of Hastings, Minnesota. Augustus H. Hanchett served as Hasting’s first mayor. In the 1857 Minnesota Territory Census, the same year Hastings was founded, Augustus, Augusta, and Ella were living with the Hubbards and two younger male boarders. Hubbard was a physician, but Hanchett proudly listed his profession as mayor, having been elected in the May elections a few months prior.
Although his mayorship was only a one-year appointment, the families prospered in Hastings. Three years later, in the 1860 U.S. Census of Hastings’ third ward, the two families still lived together but no longer needed boarders and claimed combined assets of $7,500, with Hubbard owning their house. This prosperity undoubtedly played a role in Hanchett being considered for the position of State Geologist four years later. Hanchett’s interest in geology was not a spur-of-the-moment development. Earlier in 1855, he had been a director of the Continental Mining Company and in 1860, the Garden City Mining Company - although neither endeavor was successful.
Hanchett’s patron for the survey appointment was Minnesota state senator Edmund Rice, younger brother of Minnesota Senator and University of Minnesota Regent Henry Mower Rice. Hanchett and Rice undoubtedly knew one another through their activities in the Democratic party (Hanchett was the president of the Democracy of Dakota County) and their railroad interests. Rice was president of the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad, while Hanchett was an officer of the proposed Lake Superior Railroad. Thomas Clark, who would later work with Hanchett on the survey, was also an officer of the Lake Superior Railroad.
A Troubled Start
Governor Stephen Miller announced Hanchett’s appointment twice, which reflects the Hanchett survey’s troubled start. Hanchett’s appointment was originally made on March 5th, 1864, and announced in the March 11th edition of Saint Paul’s Weekly Pioneer and Democrat. However, a second announcement occurred months later, on July 12th, when Hanchett officially entered service. Between the two dates, letters passed back and forth across the continent.
Although Brigg’s history of Collins did not identify Hanchett’s less stellar characteristics, one of them may have been procrastination. On March 26, 1864, Hanchett wrote to Governor Miller from the Astor House, New York, thanking him for the appointment but noting that his duties and present engagements prevented him from taking up his survey duties until the middle of April. However, he hastened to assure Governor Miller that the delay would not matter as snow and ice would not leave the northern escarpment of the North Shore mountains until the middle of May.
However, the end of May saw another Hanchett letter from Biddle House in Detroit, Michigan, promising to arrive at Saint Paul by June 5th. Admittedly, in the intervening time Hanchett had halved his distance from Minnesota but then on June 15th, Hanchett wrote from Cincinnati’s Burnet House that he had just arrived in that city and would not be able to leave until the following week. Governor Miller’s responses to Hanchett were not preserved among the governor’s papers at the Minnesota History Center but at least one had a clear impact. On July 1st, 1864, Hanchett sent a brief telegram from Detroit, ‘Letter Recd I leave tonight for the Capital to Enter upon duty’ and Hanchett finally arrived in Saint Paul to receive his official instructions on July 12 which he formally acknowledged the following day.
Hanchett's July 1 telegram to Gov. Miller
Hanchett’s next letter to the Governor came from Superior City, Wisconsin on July 27th, requesting the Governor forward a barometer needed by the expedition and announcing Hanchett had secured the services of Thomas Clark as an assistant. Four days later, Hanchett wrote to say the expedition would depart the following day (Aug. 1st) and extended an invitation to the governor to join them in the field should he visit any time before September 11th. On September 11 though, the expedition would leave the North Shore to travel to Lake Vermilion to verify the reports of rich iron ore along its shores. Sadly, Hanchett reported the barometer did not arrive in time to accompany the expedition.
The iron ore deposits at Lake Vermilion had been the expedition’s main goal but Hanchett delayed their investigation in favor of exploring the North Shore. Regardless of whether the delay was due to the vastly greater logistical difficulty of the Vermilion trip, poor planning, or inclement weather, it would prove costly. An August 7th letter to the Governor from Beaver Bay reported delays due to weather and illness and the lack of a barometer but did note that Hanchett had secured numerous specimens for the State Cabinet (museum).
Hanchett returned from the North Shore earlier than anticipated, arriving in Duluth on September 1st. Besides exploring the North Shore, Hanchett and Clark had also ventured inland along the Omimi Sibi River (Pigeon River). In his September 5th letter to Governor Miller, Hanchett reported acquiring numerous samples for the State Geological Cabinet and informed Miller they would leave the next day with a reduced force to finally achieve their original goal of confirming iron ore deposits at Lake Vermilion and Rainy Lake. Hanchett expected to be back in Duluth by October 15 before returning to Saint Paul.
However, Saint Paul’s Weekly Pioneer reproduced a letter from an unidentified Lake Superior resident that described the hurdle Hanchett faced.
News from Lake Superior
To the Editor of the Pioneer: Lake Superior, Oct. 1.
The people of Lake Superior are gratified that the State of Minnesota are taking an interest in her Lake districts.
Mr. Curtice has arrived and entered the field to survey the Vermillion Lake Iron region. The locality of the specimens of native iron brought out, will be defined and the land prepared for market.
Dr. Hanchett, the State Geologist, now on the Lake, will visit the formation and report its strength, length and breadth.
Mr. Johnson, the Engineer of the Mississippi and Lake Superior Railroad, has commenced to locate the line from Duluth.
Though it may be better later than never, yet these parties have been sent out too late to effect all the objects in view this season. The streams are swollen, and the low lands are too wet to make much progress this fall, and an early snow may drive them off before they have fairly commenced work.
October had generally been a favorable field-work month. Mr. Curtice has fifty miles to pack his supplies to the commencement of his work. Mr. Johnson has no insurmountable difficulties to overcome, but a gradient of 400 feet to surmount in less than six miles, beset by gorges and spurs, presents a problem that taxes the judgement of experience, and which ought not to be solved in one short month, involving as it does the most expensive section of the whole line. Dr. Hanchett’s mission, so far as iron is involved, cannot be completed if Mr. Curtice fails to complete his. Thus any failure in good weather will prove disastrous to all three of the much needed researches, and only the most favorable October will enable the projectors to realize any benefits from these too late expeditions.
But October’s weather proved unfavorable with high rivers and inundated lowlands delaying field work, and below average temperatures throughout the month. This combination proved lethal for the Hanchett survey’s anticipated goals. By his procrastination, Hanchett had gone from worrying lingering snow and ice along the North Shore might delay his expedition’s start to the reality that its expected return now hastened its end. Four days after the report from Lake Superior was sent, the Hanchett survey ended, without even attempting the journey to Lake Vermilion.
Hanchett’s September 5th letter was his last report from the field. His final letter to the governor as Minnesota State Geologist, written on October 18th, came from his home in Hastings. In it, Hanchett informed Governor Miller that the expedition had ended on October 5th without achieving their goal of reaching Lake Vermilion. Despite newspaper reports of swollen stream and flooded lowlands, Hanchett claimed that low water levels, along with a lack of suitable voyageurs capable of canoe travel, and above all, the lateness of the season, that forced the survey to abandon their attempt to reach Lake Vermilion. Instead, survey members spent their last few field days focusing on the slates at the head of Lake Superior. While those slates had some economic value as roofing shingles, it fell far short of the Vermilion iron ore’s potential worth.
In 1865, Hanchett published a brief eight-page report of his 1864 survey, largely repeating or confirming what earlier surveys had already alluded to. Hanchett apparently completed two geological sections along the North Shore, but they were not included in his published report. Hanchett stated that the expedition had explored islands along the North Shore but because of the delayed arrival of the survey’s barometer, they could not make precise altitude measurements. Hanchett confirmed the well-known presence of copper in the region and attempted to describe its occurrence. He noted some iron ore beds of poor-quality northwest of Burlington and praised the quality of the slate deposits along the North Shore, which were a potentially economic source of roofing materials. However, his primary original charge had been to assess the reputedly rich iron deposits at Lake Vermilion, but Hanchett never reached the area. Hanchett concluded his report with brief but favorable comments on the region’s timber and soil and noted he had gathered some samples as the nucleus of a state cabinet [museum].
On January 5, 1865, the Hanchett-Clark survey report was laid before the House of Representatives and ordered to be printed. The previous day, in his closing address to the State Senate and House of Representatives, Governor Miller praised Hanchett’s efforts and painted a glowing vision of Minnesota’s potential wealth. It was the first and last time that the Hanchett survey met with acclaim.
Hanchett Survey Legacy
In Winchell’s first survey bulletin published in 1889, ‘The History of Geological Surveys in Minnesota,’ he only briefly mentioned the Hanchett-Clark survey.
The Legislature of 1864, however, by joint resolution, authorized the governor to appoint and direct a state geologist. The appointee was Dr. Aug. H. Hanchett, and he associated with himself Mr. Thomas Clark, who had been one of the "commissioners" of the resolution of 1860. These gentlemen each made one report for 1864, that of Mr. Clark containing some valuable information concerning the physical features of the northern part of the state, but adding little or nothing to the actual geology. For a report of progress, on the first year's work, limited in time and means, the pamphlet containing these two papers may be considered a creditable production; and had the survey been continued as planned by Mr. Clark it might have become useful and successful. But it became apparent that Dr. Hanchett was not intelligently and wholly devoted to the work, and on the passage of a more general act by the Legislature of 1865, the governor conferred the position of state geologist upon Mr. Henry H. Eames.
Similarly, in G. B. Morey’s 2011 ‘Centennial History of the Minnesota Geological Survey’, the account of the Hanchett Survey is equally meager but more directly disparaging.
The legislature of 1864 authorized Governor Stephen Miller to appoint and direct a State Geologist. A.H. Hanchett was appointed, and he associated himself with T. Clark, one of the “commissioners” of the resolution of 1860. Each made separate reports in 1864. Clark’s report contained useful information about the geography and climate of northern Minnesota and was published. On the other hand, Hanchett’s unprofessional report resulted in his termination as state geologist.
One Minnesota historian writing about the 1866 Lake Vermilion gold rush even claimed Hanchett had never gone into the field, leaving the survey entirely in Clark’s hands, which was unkind as well as untrue. Hanchett was in the field for the thirty-six-day-long survey, although the survey ended early before ever making it to Lake Vermilion.
Hanchett left Minnesota years before Winchell’s arrival, so Winchell’s comments would not have been based on personal knowledge. Although it is uncertain whether Winchell meant his comments to be as condemning as they have since been interpreted, nearly every subsequent history of the surveys included the phrase that Hanchett was not “intelligently and wholly devoted to the work.”
If those words were intended as a reproach, they may have been a bit unfair. While Hanchett certainly achieved far less than Winchell did in Winchell’s first field season (from September 1 to November 12 of 1872), Winchell was a trained geologist with years of field experience. Winchell also had the luxury of directing his own efforts and wisely confined his first few seasons’ explorations to areas easily reached by train. Hanchett, in contrast, was sent to a challenging field area that Winchell did not attempt to explore until his sixth field season - by which time he had built a staunch support network of staff and local contacts. Hanchett’s lack of experience and support, coupled with his being ordered to explore such a challenging field area, made it unlikely he could succeed, especially given his late season start. And while Thomas Clark requested and received payment for his time on the survey, Hanchett served without pay, the first and last State Geologist to do so.
Rather than a reproach, Winchell’s comments may have simply meant Hanchett had no interest in continuing as State Geologist. Hanchett never accepted payment for his services and may have simply viewed the appointment as one last contribution to a state he was already planning to leave. In the Michigan tax rolls for 1863, August H. Hanchett is listed as owing $6.67 in tax for land in Hancock County, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with an addendum noting the tax was uncollectable but scheduled for March 13, 1866. A second note acknowledged the tax was paid in July 1866.
In the 1865 Minnesota State Census, the families’ listing starts with the Hubbards and Augustus and Ella Hanchett followed. Augusta’s sister Marieta was also living in the house with her husband, George W. Cox. While Augustus’ name is mentioned at the end, it is almost an afterthought. Harvey Hubbard died the following year on May 10 and was buried in St. Lukes Cemetery in Hastings. His loss may have severed the Hanchett’s tie to Minnesota as their delinquent Michigan tax was paid within two months of Harvey’s death.
By the time of the 1870 U.S. Census, Augustus and Augusta were living in Spring Arbor, in south central Michigan. Ella was not living with them but had accompanied them to Michigan and married George A. Wilcox of Hillsdale, Michigan on July 4, 1868.
Augustus Hanchett died on August 28, 1875, in Hanover, Michigan of heart disease. Augusta lived sixteen and a half years longer. Both were buried in Spring Arbor Cemetery.
Minnesota’s First Assistant State Geologist
Hanchett did not take on the duties of State Geologist unaided. Undoubtedly aware of his own lack of training, he sought the aid of someone more knowledgeable about geology – which was not a simple task at the time. Although Minnesota’s recognized population in 1860 was 172,000, the college-educated pool was small. And with the nation embroiled in the Civil War, many young men were enlisted. Moreover, geology was a recent science with few formally trained practitioners. Hanchett’s own appointment, as a physician to be state geologist reflected just how few available Minnesota residents had any Earth science background. Since Charles Anderson had already left the state, Hanchett turned to Anderson’s co-commissioner of the 1860 call for a geological survey, Thomas Clark II.
Thomas Clark II
Thomas Clark originally came to Minnesota as a surveyor and civil engineer. He was the founder of Beaver Bay and served two years as a state senator before moving to Superior, Wisconsin. Clark played pivotal roles in both promoting the idea of a geological survey with Charles Lewis Anderson, and as the only paid member of the first State Geological Survey. Clark received $5 a day for the thirty-two days he spent on the survey. Clark wrote most of the Hanchett Survey report of 1865 and hoped to also become part of the second State Geological Survey although those dreams were dashed by politics and business interests.
Despite usually going by Thomas Clark II, Clark’s death certificate records his parents as Phebe and Benson (rather than Thomas) Clark. Clark was born on January 6, 1814, in LeRoy, New York. He married Caroline Davis Border, ten years his junior, who was born in England. At the time of the 1850 U.S. Census, the Clarks and three children were living in the first ward of Toledo, Ohio where Thomas worked as a civil engineer. The oldest child, Augusta, was born in 1845 with eight more children following, the youngest two being born after the Clarks moved to Superior, Wisconsin in 1854.
In Superior, Clark led an engineering corps that surveyed routes for a proposed Minnesota and Superior railroad. Although that railroad was never completed, Clark’s work provided him with an intimate knowledge of the region’s terrain, forests, and natural resources. As soon as Clark arrived in Superior though, his attention focused on Lake Superior’s North Shore, which was Ojibwe land at the time. Clark became a pre-emptor, someone who planned to hold land by right of first claim by occupying it before the land was legally open for settlement – in other words, by seizing Ojibwe land. In a 1917 interview with the Duluth Rip Saw, Robert B. McLean recalled going out with a party of engineers led by Clark in 1854. Sometime around the 18th of September, Clark sent McLean and another of the party, John Parry, over to the North Shore to seek out copper veins so a consortium of Saint Paul businessmen could claim them. McLean and Parry were accosted by an Ojibwe group who warned them the land was still theirs, but McLean and Parry lied, saying they were only fishing, and then snuck ashore at night to find the copper veins.
Later, as rumors swirled that the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe was about to be signed, Clark led a midnight six-man excursion to the North Shore. The men began construction on a cabin to stake their claim before returning to Superior. A few days later, Clark took three men to attempt to claim Grand Marais. However, harsh weather thwarted Clark’s group, delaying their arrival and allowing a group of Frenchmen from Detroit to claim possession of Grand Marais. The Clark party turned back and landed at Beaver Bay. Having determined the Beaver River’s flow was sufficient for a sawmill, Clark and McLean went upstream to find good timber. Although Clark continued to search for other lands, most were already held. Consequently, he sent McLean and two others back to build three cabins at Beaver Bay to hold possession for himself, W.H. Newton, also of Superior, and Jessie Ramsey of Saint Paul. This consortium of land speculators later convinced five German brothers from Ohio, the Wielands, to buy their rights to Beaver Bay in 1857. However, the economic collapse generated by the Panic of 1857 led to a near desertion of the North Shore and Beaver Bay became the only permanent settlement between Duluth and Grand Portage. In the 1860 U.S. Census of Beaver Bay, of thirty-one houses listed on the same page as the Clark family, twenty-two were unoccupied. Some of the Wieland brothers would subsequently assist Minnesota’s second Geological Survey.
In the fall elections of 1858, Thomas Clark was elected state senator of this depopulated region for the 1858 and 1859 sessions. On March 10, 1860, the legislature appointed Clark and Charles Lewis Anderson as co-commissioners to draft a geologic report of the state and a plan for a State Geological Survey. That resolution was passed under a suspension of House rules. At the time, Clark had relocated to Superior, Wisconsin but he drew on his years as a surveyor to provide many of the details for their report completed later that year.
In the 1865 Hanchett survey report, as with his earlier work on the 1860 plan for a survey, Clark focused on the physiographic features of the state, its weather, botany, and soils, more than its bedrock. Although he briefly addressed the latter, Clark’s years as a surveyor showed in his wealth of detail on river elevations, temperature ranges, and descriptions of vegetation cover. In his 1860 report, those topics had consumed six pages of Clark’s ten-page report. His brief pragmatic assessment of the region’s bedrock favored economic factors over scientific description or interpretation and from a modern perspective, Clark’s work would fall more in the field of physical geography than geology.
Clark himself recognized that distinction, as he titled his seventy-two-page section of the 1865 Hanchett report ‘The Physical Geography, Meteorology, and Botany of the Northeastern District of Ninnesota.’ And yes, ‘Minnesota’ was misspelled on the title page of Minnesota’s first ‘Report of the State Geologist.’
In March of 1864, the same year that Clark worked with Hanchett, The Weekly Pioneer and Democrat of Saint Paul quoted Clark, in his role as editor of the Lake Superior Gazette, welcoming the announcement of a coal discovery along Minnesota’s Cottonwood River. Clark was delighted with the discovery as he was convinced the Carboniferous coal beds of southern Iowa extended into Minnesota. Hence the report was not only welcome economic news for the state but appeared to validate Clark’s own geological beliefs.
However, that coal discovery, which proved to be false, would be the undoing of Clark’s hopes to become part of Minnesota’s second geological survey. Saint Paul businessmen and politicians associated with the newly formed Pioneer Coal Mining Company steered legislation authorizing the second survey towards their own candidate, Henry H. Eames, the ‘discoverer’ of the non-existent coal deposit. In 1866, the new governor, William R. Marshall, responding to Clark’s inquiry about the survey, said the decision was out of his hands as the legislation specifically confirmed Mr. Eames’ appointment as Minnesota’s second State Geologist. Marshall further speculated the legislation had been engineered by Eames or his supporters, realizing that Marshall would be unlikely to appoint Eames if the decision had been left to him. Disappointed, Clark remained in Superior.
Despite having begun his Upper Midwest life as an illegal pre-emptor, in his later years Clark became a lawyer and probate judge. He died at the age of sixty-four on December 20, 1878, from congestion of the lungs and was buried in Superior’s Nemadji Cemetery next to his sons, John Charles who died shortly before his twelfth birthday and Isaac, who died three years before his father, at age 24. His wife, Caroline, outlived Thomas by thirteen years, dying in August of 1891. At Clark’s death, Saint Paul’s Daily Globe reported “Judge Clark was a gentleman of rare refinement, a jurist of exceptional fairness, and personally in every way worthy of the respect of the community.” There is no record of how the judge was viewed by the Ojibwe communities he had once helped supplant.
Hanchett-Clark Survey Epilogue
Augustus Hanchett's appointment as State Geologist was announced on March 11, 1864, and the Hanchett and Clark survey report was laid before the legislature on Jan. 5, 1856, who immediately ordered that it should be published.
In retrospect, while Hanchett did not accomplish much, his efforts were probably maligned more than they deserved. There may have been something in Hanchett’s personality, the same unnamed ‘neutralizing’ characteristics his Collins neighbors remembered five decades later, that led to his efforts being so denigrated. Yet, some disparagement might have been calculated as in 1864, a cadre of powerful Saint Paul and Minneapolis businessmen were pushing their own candidate forward for the position of State Geologist, one whom they accurately believed would remember and reward his patrons.
In fact, their proposed successors had been shadowing Hanchett throughout his brief survey of the North Shore with the goal of undercutting Hanchett’s work. Winchell was probably unaware of this political intrigue and may have unknowingly bought into its propaganda when he wrote his summary of Hanchett’s efforts. The first state geological survey had ended with little accomplished, but this cartel of Saint Paul luminaries believed its lack of success was because it had been led by an untrained physician and a surveyor. Instead, they had two highly trained geologists in mind for the next attempt.
Their candidates were the two brothers responsible for the coal discovery Clark celebrated, brothers who were already heralded in Saint Paul newspapers as fact-based scientists with extensive experience in the coal beds of Great Britain where they grew up. Both were known geology professors, the younger claiming a Ph.D. from a prestigious German university. But from their backers’ perspective, most importantly these brothers had already proven their willingness to work closely with business interests to ensure that private parties could and would profit from Minnesota’s public survey of its mineral wealth.
Consequently, Minnesota’s second State and Assistant State Geologists would not be geologically untrained physicians nor surveyors but would instead be English gas fitters (plumbers) and amateur thespians, whose experience with rock outcrops only began four years earlier in western Virginia. They were novices parading as accomplished geologists; actors as adept at playing roles in their public lives as they had been on theater stages.
Yet, in a remarkable twist, both brothers would eventually become the roles they played. Before that occurred, however, others would pay the price for their initial incompetence; including the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, who would lose their homelands and burial grounds as the result of a false gold rush initiated by the brothers at Lake Vermilion.