Margaret Bonga Fahlstrom (c. 1797 – February 6, 1880) was a mixed-race woman of African and Ojibwe descent who came from a fur trading family in the Great Lakes region. In 1823, she married Jacob Fahlstrom, the first Swedish settler in Minnesota, and lived with him on a small farm at Coldwater Spring near Fort Snelling. Margaret was one of the few free Black women living in the area around the time that enslaved women such as Harriet Robinson Scott were struggling to find a path to freedom. In 1838, the Fahlstroms became the first converts to the Methodist faith in Minnesota, and moved to a farm in Washington County in 1840. Jacob became well known as the Methodist lay preacher "Father Jacob". His success as a traveling Christian missionary was often attributed to his fluency in the Ojibwe language, as well as his marriage. Margaret and her daughters were also known for their involvement in early church meetings in Minnesota, and their hospitality toward Methodist circuit riders.
In his 1888 book Fifty Years in the Northwest, historian W.H.C. Folsom described Margaret as "a woman of fine mind...very few of any age or race can be found her equal." During 35 years of marriage, the Fahlstroms had nine children. They eventually settled in Afton, Minnesota, where Margaret is buried next to her husband.
Family heritage and early life According to census records, Marguerite Bonga was born around 1797 in the area near Lake Superior.1850 United States Census – Stillwater Precinct, Washington County, Minnesota Territory (September 3, 1850) Her parents were Pierre Bonga, a Black fur trader, and his Ojibwe wife, Ojibwayquay. Her father Pierre had been baptized as Catholic in Montreal. Raised in a multicultural environment, the Bonga children spoke French, Ojibwe and English.
Bonga family background Her paternal grandparents, Jean and Marie-Jeanne Bonga, were well known tavern keepers on Mackinac Island in present-day Michigan. They spoke French and had arrived in Michilimackinac as enslaved African West Indians in the early 1780s together with their young children. From 1782 to 1787, they were slaves of Captain Daniel Robertson, a British Army officer who served as commandant of Fort Mackinac. In 1787, Robertson freed Jean, Marie-Jeanne and their four children before returning to Montreal.
The circumstances surrounding the Bonga family's arrival in Mackinac are somewhat unclear. In 1781, the Bongas had been captured as prisoners during the American Revolutionary War in the Illinois Country. Some have suggested that they were then taken to Mackinac Island by Indian traders, who sold them on to Captain Robertson as slaves. Others have speculated that Robertson brought them to the fort himself.
Entry into fur trade Pierre Bonga, Marguerite's father, built a successful career in the fur trade. He started as a personal servant and middleman, but eventually worked hjs way up to voyageur and interpreter for the North West Company, and later the South West Company, a subsidiary of the American Fur Company.
As a young man, Pierre worked for fur trader John Sayer in the Fond du Lac area south and west of Lake Superior, as early as 1795. From 1802–1806, he worked with Alexander Henry the Younger in the Red River and Pembina River regions.
Ojibwe mother
Pierre most likely met his wife while working with John Sayer at Fond du Lac. Her name, recorded as Ojibwayquay or Ogibwayquay, translates simply as "Ojibwe woman." They were first married à la façon du pays rather than in a church, which was common practice among fur traders and their Native American wives. She was from one of the Lake Superior Chippewa bands, such as the Fond du Lac band of Ojibwe, or the Leech Lake band historically known as the Pillagers. One source says that she had many relatives in the historical Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe.
Marguerite was born at Fond du Lac (Duluth) in 1797. One source suggests her Ojibwe name was Kahjiji. In 1802, Ojibwayquay accompanied Pierre to the North West company post near Pembina, where she gave birth to Marguerite's sister. It is unclear whether their other children traveled with them or were left with relatives in Fond du Lac during the expedition.
Siblings Marguerite's most famous siblings were George Bonga and Stephen Bonga, who both had careers in the fur trade. Her brother Stephen and their eldest brother Jean-Baptiste had been sent to work as servants for North West Company partners from a young age. She most likely had two sisters who were born between George and Stephen. Multiple sources also mention their youngest sibling Jack, born around 1815, who came of age in the fur trade as it was starting to decline.
As they were growing up, the family maintained ties with their Bonga relatives, who had moved to Montreal following the death of Jean Bonga in 1795. Stephen (Étienne), George and her sister Blanche were baptized in the Catholic Church in Montreal in 1810 and 1811. George attended school in Montreal.
In July 1820, Henry Schoolcraft visited Fond du Lac as part of an expedition headed by Territorial Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan. They encountered Pierre Bonga and his family, whom Schoolcraft described as follows:Three miles above the mouth of the St. Louis River, there is a village of Chippeway Indians, of fourteen lodges, and containing a population of about sixty souls. Among these we noticed a negro who has long been in the service of the fur company, and who married a squaw, by whom he has four children. It is worthy of remark, that the children are as black as the father, and have the curled hair and glossy skin of the native African.
Marriage to Jacob Fahlstrom Margaret Bonga married Jacob Fahlstrom in 1823 at Fond du Lac. He is often referred to as "the first Swede in Minnesota." After working in the fur trade for over a decade, he spoke English, French, Ojibwe, Iroquois and Dakota, in addition to his native Swedish. Jacob was called Ozaawindib or "Yellow Head" by the Ojibwe because of his blond hair.
No further information is available about their wedding in 1823. Methodist missionary Alfred Brunson, who later became acquainted with the Falstroms in 1838, wrote in his memoirs that Jacob, "as all traders, deemed it necessary to form a connection with the Indians to sell their trade and protection by taking a 'wife of the daughters of the land.'" Brunson further noted that Jacob's intentions in marrying Margaret seemed to have been "in good faith – not as some traders, only for the time being."
Fahlstrom's background Born in Stockholm around 1794, Jacob was said to have left Sweden on a ship with his uncle, and possibly shipwrecked off the British Isles. In 1811, he signed a five-year contract with the Hudson's Bay Company and traveled from Stornoway, Scotland to Canada as a cabin boy. After completing his apprenticeship at York Factory in Manitoba in 1816, he briefly joined their rivals at North West Company, before leaving them in Sault Ste. Marie to work for the American Fur Company. He reportedly worked with the American Fur Company for seven years, and was employed by the company's Fond du Lac Outfit in Duluth as a boatman from 1819 to 1822. Around this time, Jacob started traveling with his brigade through Minnesota country to trade with native people around Leech Lake and Red Lake. He was seen at the mouth of the Minnesota River when the U.S. Army arrived in 1819 to build Fort Snelling.
Children Records suggest that their first child John was born around 1823 at Sandy Lake and that their second child Nancy was born soon after at Lake Superior. Another child, Sarah (Sally), was born at Gull Lake. They also had a daughter named Jane.
Over time they would have nine children two of whom died as young children. Census records indicate that Cecilia, James and George were born at Lake Superior in 1835, 1837 and 1844, respectively. At least one historian has questioned whether this was actually the case, given the long and difficult journey Margaret would have had to make from the Fort Snelling area, where they were based in 1835 and 1837, or from Lakeland, where the Fahlstroms lived in 1844.
Life at Coldwater Spring
In the 1830s, the growing Fahlstrom family lived on a small farm near Coldwater Spring, less than two miles from Fort Snelling, where a cluster of cabins had been built in the 1820s.
Jacob had started working for the U.S. government around 1825, after the fort was built. Two years later, he was sent to Prairie du Chien for one year, then returned to Fort Snelling for two more years. He was then sent to Galena for a year, after which he returned once again to Fort Snelling. He worked as a "striker" for the blacksmiths at St. Peter's Indian Agency, supplied wood, and served as a mail carrier. A map of Camp Coldwater drawn in 1837 marks "Jacob's" residence next to one of the blacksmiths' shops.
Native families at Camp Coldwater Living at Camp Coldwater, Margaret was one of several Native women of either Dakota or Ojibwe ancestry; most of the other Native women were also part-European. Some, like Margaret, were married to blacksmiths and laborers working for the Indian agency. Others were wives of current and former employees of fur traders such as Benjamin F. Baker, who ran the trading post at Coldwater Spring, or Henry Hastings Sibley, regional manager for American Fur Company based across the river in Mendota. Some women who lived on the site were refugees from the Red River Colony, also known as the Selkirk settlement, in Canada.
VanderVelde suggests that although Margaret Bonga Fahlstrom and Madeliene Campbell, the part-Dakota daughter of agency interpreter Scott Campbell, were free, they would have had a much "poorer" standard of living compared to Harriet Robinson living as a servant in the Taliaferro household. She writes, "The Campbells and the Fahlstroms survived without a stove, candles, an ice house, or more important, regular supplies of goods from the St. Louis markets." In July 1834, Agent Taliaferro himself wrote that he felt sorry for Jacob Fahlstrom as a poor man with a large family to support, after one of his oxen had been killed by a Dakota man.
Agency relations with the Ojibwe
Margaret's brothers often visited her at Camp Coldwater, although they mainly continued to trade with the Ojibwe tribes further north. Her brother Stephen was often hired by Agent Taliaferro as an Ojibwe interpreter, and is thought to have lived with the Fahlstroms for some time. In June 1837, interpreter Stephen Bonga was a signatory to the Treaty of St. Peters, also known as the "White Pine Treaty," which had been negotiated between Governor Henry Dodge of Wisconsin Territory and several bands of Ojibwe (Chippewa), and significantly influenced by American Fur Company traders. One of the stipulations was that "mixed-blood" relatives of the Ojibwe, including those who had signed on behalf of the United States, would collectively receive $100,000.
Intertribal tensions On August 2, 1838, Benjamin Baker's stone trading house at Coldwater Spring was the site of a deadly skirmish between the Dakota and the Ojibwe. A party of Dakota attempted to kill Ojibwe Chief Hole-in-the-Day (the elder) in retaliation for an Ojibwe attack at Lac qui Parle a few months prior, in which seven Dakota had been killed while they were sleeping. The casualties at Coldwater included one Odawa man who was killed, one Dakota man who was killed, and one Ojibwe man who was wounded.In Minnesota in Three Centuries, Volume Two (1908), Return Ira Holcombe stated that the casualties included one Chippewa and two Sioux who had been shot. (p. 265) Hole-in-the-Day and his men were given temporary protection within the walls of Fort Snelling, angering the Dakota.