Sister Laura Hesch, OSB, visited Ojibwe in many of their activities, such as making maple syrup at the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe).
In 1944, a small center for Sister Laura Hesch's mission work was built at Mille Lacs Indian Reservation (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe). She called it Little Flower Inn.
In 1930, Bishop Peter Bartholme of the Diocese of St. Cloud asked Sister Laura Hesch, OSB, to set up a mission to serve the Ojibwe on the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe). Holy Cross Convent in Onamia served as her home base from which she set out 11 miles several times a week to be with the Ojibwe.
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). The Ojibwe accepted their missionaries, "blackrobes," as they called them. Sister Philomene Ketten, always in the midst of action, is standing among the women near the center tree in this photograph. [SBMA]
St. Mary's Mission, Red Lake Indian Reservation (Red Lake Nation). The Benedictine monks and sisters were preceded in the Red Lake mission by Fathers Francis Xavier Pierz and Lawrence Lautischar. These two missionaries had founded the mission in the 1850s and Father Lautischar remained there as its first pastor. After his untimely death in a snowstorm, Father Lawrence was succeeded by Father Ignatius Tomazin, the Yugoslav missionary who was removed from White Earth for antagonizing government agents at that reservation in1878. In 1883, his zeal for the rights of the American Indians once again brought the soldiers from Fort Snelling to the reservation to remove him. For the next five years, the Red Lake mission was without a priest. In 1888, when the Drexel sisters* paid a visit to the reservation and heard the Ojibwe's plea for priests and sisters, Katherine begged the abbot of St. John's Abbey to take over the mission. She offered to pay the traveling expenses and to rent temporary buildings for them. The following year in November 1889, two priests, Fathers Simon Lampe and Thomas Borgerding from St. John's Abbey and Sisters Amalia Eich and Evangelista McNulty from St. Benedict's Convent made the arduous trip to Red Lake; the last lap from White Earth to Red Lake was by lumber wagons. St. Mary's Mission in Red Lake began in some empty buildings on the reservation. The sisters converted an abandoned Hudson Bay Company's warehouse into a school. In spite of its poor condition, the school opened with an enrollment of 25 day pupils. Years later when Sister Amalia was asked how they kept warm in that drafty house, she replied that they didn't keep warm; they froze. The next spring they took in 27 boarding pupils in addition to the day students. St. Benedict's sent two more sisters and a candidate to help. The candidate, Jane Horn, who later became Sister Marciana, was a former pupil of the sisters at White Earth. She was a helpful bridge for building understanding between the missionaries and the Ojibwe at Red Lake. (*Katherine Drexel and her two sisters, daughters of a wealthy banker in Philadelphia, engaged in charity for the American Indian and African American missions.) [SBMA McDonald, pp. 246-249 Sister Owen Lindblad, OSB, FULL OF FAIR HOPE: A History of St. Mary's Mission, Red Lake, (Park Press Quality Printing, Inc., Waite Park, MN, 1997), pp. 15-17, 34-39]
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). The newly-built school was completed in 1892. The school day at St. Benedict's School in White Earth was similar to that of any other American school with hours from 9:00 until 4:00 in teaching the basic learning skills. This daily rigid pattern was not a part of the American Indian culture and tested the endurance of both the students and teachers, but music and singing and manual work offered relief. [SBMA, McDonald, p. 241]
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). Students pose with their handiwork in the work room of the newly-built school at St. Benedict's Mission. Domestic arts were considered important. So before and after school hours, the girls were taught to card wool and spin yarn with which they knitted their own stockings. They were taught plain and fancy sewing and took turns in assisting the sisters in the kitchen, laundry and dairy. Under Sister Philomena Ketten's supervision, the boys worked in the garden and helped on the farm with picking potatoes and raking hay. [SBMA, McDonald, p. 241]
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). One of the boarding school dormitories in the upper floors of the newly-built St. Benedict's Mission School. Unlike the crowded conditions of the early convent school at White Earth, the new school built in 1890 allowed ample space for sleeping quarters (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).