The remarkable life of Ed Rogers, Ojibwe and Cass County leader

Growing up, Greg Larson knew little about his grandfather Ed Rogers' vast accomplishments. How could he?

"He hardly ever talked," Larson, 72, recalled from his law office in Park Rapids. "He was very quiet and didn't promote himself."

But as a Bemidji State student in the late 1960s, Larson often drove with his grandfather, then in his 90s, and the stories began to flow. When a bronze bust of Rogers was placed on the lawn of the Cass County Courthouse in Walker in 1997, the accompanying research verified Rogers' remarkable life.

His mother gave him the Ojibwe name Ay-ne-way-we-dung, which Larson says translates loosely to "Echo in the Woods."

Rogers moved to Minneapolis at 7, speaking only Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa) and living with a logging family his father knew. At 18, Rogers was sent to the Carlisle Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania — a strict academy where Native Americans were stripped of their culture, forced to use only English and convert to Christianity.

More than a decade before Jim Thorpe became famous at Carlisle, Rogers became a football star there for legendary coach Pop Warner. He later coached at Carlisle and St. Thomas College in St. Paul.

Rogers joined the Gophers football team as an end while earning a law degree at the University of Minnesota in the early 1900s. He served as captain and kicked the tying point of a legendary 6-6 tie against Michigan in 1903.

When 30,000 fans stormed the field after Rogers' extra point, referees declared the tie despite a couple minutes left on the clock. That left the 1903 Gophers 11-0-1, and when their equipment manager snatched a little brown jug from the Michigan sideline in the mayhem, a rivalry trophy was born.

"Edward Rogers proved himself a splendid captain and magnificent leader," Gophers coach Doc Williams said in 1903.

That leadership quality carried on after football — in both Rogers' white and Ojibwe worlds. After marrying Maryanna (Mayme) Bultrowicz in 1905, Rogers moved his fledgling law practice to Walker. Five years later, he was elected Cass County attorney — a post he held for about 46 years. Early on, he was also a deputy coroner, health board member and census enumerator on the Leech Lake reservation.

Seldom one to brag, Rogers did toot his horn a bit in a 1910 letter to the Carlisle superintendent — now part of a digital file of the boarding school's records. He detailed his role in the community "to show in a slight way how an Indian may hold the confidence of the people amongst whom he lives," he wrote from Walker. "There are no Indians living in this town."

A year after white voters elected him in 1912, Rogers was voted as the chief of a council of 10 Ojibwe tribes.

"They wanted a strong man, one who could meet the whites without fear or favor and hold his own," according to newspaper clippings in his Carlisle file that credited Rogers for quelling a number of intertribal disputes.

"And so Edward Rogers, once football star, became chief of the O-jib-was," one news story said. "The whoops of approval he received upon mounting the platform to accept his office were as satisfying to him as the yells from a thousand bleacher throats" against Michigan.

As his national profile grew, a Minnesota congressman in 1929 recommended Rogers become the Hoover administration's commissioner of Indian Affairs. He served as vice president of the National Council of Indian Affairs in 1942 and, two years later, was photographed in Denver with dozens of tribal letters as a charter member of the National Congress of American Indians.

Still working as Cass County attorney at 86, Rogers was named attorney of the year in 1962 by a national group of district attorneys.

"I don't like the term prosecutor," he said at the time. "Instead of getting into law suits, I liked to get things settled up right here in the office."

Roger died at 95 in Wayzata and is buried beside his wife at St. Mary's Cemetery in Minneapolis. They raised five children.

In 1915, just a few years after being simultaneously elected as an Ojibwe leader and Cass County attorney, Rogers bought a small peninsula on the south end of Leech Lake. He was just turning 40. Rogers Point, as it's known, remains in descendants' hands — many of whom will gather again for the July 4th weekend.

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.