1,700 miles
March 9 – Bena
is named for the pheasant mentioned in the popular 1855 poem, The Song of
Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The pheasant can be found in the fifth long section, called Hiawatha's
Fasting:
On the first
day of his fasting
Through the
leafy woods he wandered;
Saw the deer
start from the thicket,
Saw the
rabbit in his burrow,
Heard the
pheasant, Bena, drumming,
Heard the
squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Rattling in
his hoard of acorns,
Saw the
pigeon, the Omeme,
Building
nests among the pine-trees,
And in
flocks the wild-goose, Wawa,
Flying to
the fen-lands northward,
Whirring,
wailing far above him.
The Song of
Hiawatha, with its long slow drum-like rhythm, was meant to be a way to honor
and memorialize the native peoples of North America and their disappearing way
of life.
 |
| POW logging camp workers near Bena |
At the site
of the same 1930s work camp that the Civilian Conservation Corps had used to improve
the Minnesota forestland (see Cass Lake blogpost), during World War II a logging
camp operated using the labor of German prisoners of war on the Leech Lake Reservation.
Minnesota agreed to take 50,000 of them, receiving the first ones in August of
1942. The POWs were discouraged from
attempting to escape by the guards' constant tales of "the surrounding
wilderness, inhabited by timber wolves, bears, and dangerous Indians." One
night, two men tried to escape across the lake, planning to walk to New Orleans
and go home. In reality, the two
escapees didn't make it very far. With
a crude raft and meager supplies, they eluded authorities for several days,
surviving freezing weather and tangled terrain, but when a search party came
within 15 feet of their forest hiding place, they decided to surrender. They
had traveled just 30 miles. This story
has been told in David Treuer’s new novel, Prudence. I’ve just now reserved a copy at my library!
As of the
census of 2010, there were 116 people residing in Bena. The racial makeup was 70.00% Native American and
5.45% from two or more races, 24.55% White.
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