Native Forces

Frank Peters was a man of means, a self-made Chicago attorney. Befriended by the Alexian Brothers, an Augustinian Order, when he was a boy, Frank never forgot. Upon his death he left plans in motion to establish a palatial home for his beloved wife, Jeannie, ahem..Mrs. Frank Peters (as documented in 1939 records and newspapers) and their invalid daughter, Jane, with the caveat that after habitation by his immediate family the property be a donation to the Alexian Brothers, who made use of this property as a Novitiate from the early 1950s until the late 1960s according to Mr. Peters wishes.


Jeannie occupied the home from it's completion in 1939 through 1948, though Jane passed away before the home could be occupied.


The first of many unfulfilled hopes surrounding this place.

The "monastery" rests atop a knoll alongside the Red River, overlooking a rapid named Monastery Falls for the behemoth, remote structure riverside. It was indeed a Novitiate, a training ground for novices, while in Alexian hands. The buildings doubled in capacity through additions by the Alexian Order, who took over the property in 1948 and hosted it's first class of novices in the early 1950s. Whom needed dormitories and classrooms and dayrooms and rec rooms.

Their are pictures of the building in it's expanded glory through the links at the end of this article.





The lands, however, were claimed by the Menominee Indians as tribal and through treaties and agreements with the government over the years. The Menominee wanted to see a tribal hospital established within the facility upon the Alexian's departure, though actions indicating the property would be sold at market were agitating many holding such hopes.


This agitation boiled over into an armed takeover of the property in 1975 by a more assertive, dissident faction from the tribe, demanding the property be deeded to the tribe. This band, 'The Menominee Warrior Society' and the tribe had been victim of, yet persevered through the failed "Termination" movement. Now this dissident faction took it upon themselves to acquire the abandoned property in hopes of conversion to a tribe hospital.

Photo © Al Bergstein, 1975, Used with permission, albergstein.com, http://www.albergstein.com/page7/page7.html

The Menominee had been adjudged one of the most viable tribes, for adoption of the US civil norms of the mid-1900s, to be included in this experimental movement. A gross miscalculation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that left the county of Menominee markedly the poorest in the state. With a less than stellar record of fulfilling obligations from historical treaties with native tribes, the federal government harbored little faith or support amongst the people of the Menominee nation. Exercising any control over this dissident faction by tribal elders would prove difficult without substantive leverage.

The Lil Ruiner watches the road from the footsteps of history

Al Bergstein recounts photographing Marlon Brando before this fireplace, and mentions the room behind it where one was visible to the armed locals surrounding the novitate; " It was  a place where you kept your head down and walked at a crouch. "

 They then further exacerbated the plight of the cash strapped Menominee Restoration Committee with the eventual ascent to the demands of the self-annointed Menominee Warrior Society and granted deed to the Novitiate and the surrounding acreage to the tribe.

Time, elements, and vandals leave the only traces of change inside

Though studies by state and federal agencies had already estimated a steep price tag to convert this building into either an educational or medical institution as the Warrior Society had seemed intent in its demand, the tribe now held the tab for accruing property taxes on a substantial piece of northern Wisconsin.

Unable to sustain the upkeep, let alone pursue upgrade whilst in the midst of this "Restoration" effort thrust upon them, an ugly side of our history we continue to mis-handle and re-frame today, and continues to plague reservation communities across the nation, the building fell into disrepair and is not on tribal lands today.

The Novitiate has been left to the elements, and the inevitable spray-painting vandals. Minimally disturbed, thanks in large part to it's remote location, the remaining skeleton is built to withstand the elements of time, even as it's decorative artifacts decay under the duress of long winters, harsh swings in temperature along with significant humidity and precipitation with heavy melt and run-off cycles, as well as indifference from the system that made many promises to the people who were the rightful heirs to the land where this structure, that could have been so much more useful, now stands.

 

Add caption

Photo linked from Alexian Brothers online Archive for comparison

An incredible look inside the 1975 Menominee Takeover is available at Photojournalist Al Bergstein's Site

And reading from the historical Christian mission to Natives perspective is recounted here

Along with a video by a former novice who left the order but returned to find that he'd missed some interesting history, so made a documentary on the siege;