By Máirtín Ó Catháin

It was a story of Connemara emigrants that re-awakened history in its many versions in far-off St Paul in Minnesota. There were different histories and different clans to be reckoned with. A simple plaque stirred the memories in different ways. Connemara people were being commemorated … but the Native Americans saw a different picture.

The ‘Connemara Patch’ is on the edge of the reservations held by the Dakota and Lakota Native American tribes.

It all came to light at a seminar in Carna recently on the theme of ‘Ar ch’aon taobh den Atlantach’ – On both sides of the Atlantic.

The plaque goes back a few years; the story goes back almost a century and a half.

Long ago in the 1880s, there was a terrible famine in Connemara, almost as bad as the disastrous Great Famine of the 1840s. Various benevolent groups moved into help. The Catholic Church was involved and so was James Hack Tuke, a Quaker philanthropist.

Tuke took what he believed to be a realistic look at Connemara. He reached a fearsome conclusion: It was no place to live if you could get out. In order to get people out, Tuke put a fund in place to assist families to leave. In some cases, the fund took care of all the expenses.

Tuke held what might now be described as ‘clinics’ in different places in Connemara. At one such ‘clinic’, where Mac’s Bar is now in Carna, people fought each other to get to the head of the queue, such was the desperation to get out. The police were called to quell the trouble.

A link was set up to Minnesota in the United States and thousands from West Galway, and from West Mayo, went on the Atlantic voyage, to what they hoped would be a better world.

Many initially in the countryside, but the nature of the farming there, and the fearsome winter weather of Minnesota was foreign to them. Most later moved into the city of St Paul.

The Connemara people were so plentiful there in the late 19th Century, and into the first half of the 20th Century, that the area where they lived in St Paul was called ‘The Connemara Patch’. It was situated between East 7th Street and East 3rd Street. It is now partly a highway and a nature park.

It has been described by a writer in Minnesota as follows: “The Connemara Patch was a quaint and lively community where the Irish language was widely spoken. Many inhabitants worked for the railroad, served as domestics in local hotels and made lace”.

The story of the Connemara Patch was highlighted again at an event in the Emigrants and Diaspora Centre in Carna in recent years, and from that grew a plan to commemorate those who lived and died in that part of St Paul.

It was decided to erect a memorial plaque in what was once the Connemara Patch in St Paul, and to simultaneously erect a similar plaque in the Emigrants Centre in Carna a few years ago. A live video event was set up. Tributes were paid to the people and descendants of the Connemara Patch, and they were remembered in music and prayers.

All went well – but not quite.

Dr Davis Gardiner, Head of the Celtic Studies Department in the St Thomas University in St Paul was in Carna last week at the Seminar ‘Ar ch’aon taobh den Atlantach’ – On both sides of the Atlantic. He was there in St Paul at the plaque unveiling event. He had another story.

On hearing about the plaque and the memorial on the Connemara Patch – as it once was – the Dakota clan of Native Americans laid down a marker on the fringes of the ceremony: this was their territory. There was uncertainty as to whether the plaque ceremony could go ahead. Luck was with the descendants and friends of the ‘Connemara Patch’ that they were accompanied by a priest who has a direct ancestral line to the Native Americans; he went and talked to them.

He spoke their own language also, which had its own difficulties because the various tribes of the Dakota, Lakota and the nearby Ojibway have thirteen dialects.

In any event, the message was eventually delivered, and understandings were established. The trans-Atlantic link could go ahead, at the Connemara Patch and the Emigrants Centre in Carna. Those who fled terrible times in the past could be remembered in serenity and the simple plaque could be erected in their memory.

The natives of Connemara and the Native Americans were again at peace.

Pictured: An information sign at the site of the Connemara Patch in St Paul.