Heroine on the Hill

We took a hike up East Avenue to one of my favorite spots in Red Wing:  Oakwood Cemetery.  I have posted photos here before (http://nancyberlin.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-so-spooky.html) and remarked on the beauty of the oaks there.  Today, I discovered the grave of Frances Densmore.

I can remember the very day my interest in botany was planted.  I was walking in the woods with my  Grandmother Agnes, she would poke her cane at plants and tell me their names and how they were used by her German ancestors or local Indian people.   To learn more I read Frances Densmore's book "How Indians Used Wild Plants for Food, Medicine and Crafts."  There weren't many female field biologists in Minnesota even when I was in college, so women like Frances and Olga Lakela were my heros.

The Minnesota Historical Society has the following to say about Frances Densmore: (http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/124frances_densmore.html)

"Frances Densmore was born in 1867 in Red Wing, Minnesota. She studied piano, organ, and harmony at Oberlin Conservatory. Densmore became interested in the music of the Omaha tribe after reading a book about the ethnomusicology of the tribe, and soon pursued the study of Native music herself. In 1905 she visited the Ojibwe bands in Grand Marais and Grand Portage where she started to transcribe the music. Although Densmore began her work in Minnesota, observing and recording the cultures of the Dakota and Ojibwe, she traveled across North America preserving the customs and traditions of many Native American tribes. She was a prolific author, writing over twenty books and 100 articles, and recorded over 2,000 wax cylinders of Native music. Her records preserved a vast amount of Native American music and culture during a period when white settlers were moving into Native lands and encouraging the tribes to adopt Western customs."


Back to Oakwood.  A simple stone marks a great woman.