Jacob Fahlström

Jacob Fahlström (c.1794–1859), also known as Father Jacob, was the very first Swede to settle in Minnesota. He was known as Ozaawindib or "Yellow Head" to the Ojibwe, and to other white settlers as the "Swede Indian." After working in the fur trade for the Hudson's Bay Company in Manitoba, he joined the American Fur Company at Fond du Lac (in present-day Duluth) as a boatman. In 1823, he married Margaret Bonga, the part-Ojibwe daughter of Pierre Bonga, a French African interpreter in the fur trade. Around 1825, he started working for the U.S. government as a woodsman, mail carrier, and blacksmith's striker at the St. Peter's Indian Agency next to Fort Snelling.

In 1838, Fahlström became the first Methodist convert in Minnesota. In 1840, he became a lay preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church and was considered one of their most successful missionaries to Native Americans in the region. Fluent in Ojibwe and English, he also spoke French, Dakota and Iroquois, in addition to his native Swedish. His parish extended from the Rum River to Lake Superior. Stories of his adventures in the wilderness and his encounters with Indians made him a legendary figure in Minnesota history. During the last decade of his life, he also preached to newly immigrated Swedes who became part of a growing community near his family farm in Afton, Minnesota where he was buried in 1859.

In June 1948, Prince Bertil of Sweden unveiled a plaque in his honor on Kellogg Boulevard in Saint Paul.

Biography

Jacob Fahlstrom was born in Stockholm around 1794 into a well-to-do family. As a boy, he was known for his beautiful singing voice. He also had a wandering foot which took him down to the docks where he set sail as cabin boy on a vessel captained by his uncle.

Young Jacob survived a shipwreck on the English coast. He then made his way to London where he joined up with Lord Selkirk's expedition to Hudson Bay in 1807. One day, while out hunting in the New World, he got lost and wandered for eight days until he was taken in by an Ojibwe woman. He learned the Ojibwe language and wore Indian attire. He became known to the Ojibwe as Ozaawindib or "Yellow Head" because of his blond hair, and became known to the white settlers as the "Swede Indian" for his Indian dress. Jacob Fahlstrom has also been honored by having his portrait hung in the Swedish Art Institute of Minneapolis. It is not a work of art, however, but rather dark and forbidding with a half-circle fringe of whiskers, revealing nothing of the character of the man which was kindly, sincere and devoted. In Augustus Easton's History of the St. Croix Valley (1909), he is described as follows: Jacob Fahlstrom was a sort of preacher, and he could pray pretty well, and could be depended on upon to do so, providing a good meal was in sight. Many a good meal he got at Carli's (Tamarack House at Stillwater) in return for his old-fashioned prayers. The missionaries at Kaposia and Red Rock considered "Father Jacob" as he had now came to be called, such a valuable brand snatched from the burning that his conversion seemed like compensation for their unproductive labors among the Sioux. Elder Brunson is said to have stated that this event alone justified the existence of the Kaposia mission. Here was one who understood the red men far better than they, one who could be depended upon to carry the Gospel on all his adventurous journeys among the Indians and likewise the white settlements in what is now Washington County.