The Last Godless Man

This story continues a tale told over five decades, and brings it to the end of the road. The time, 1888, the place the State of Minnesota, joined to the union nigh thirty years. The word comes from Dakota language mní sóta, blue water. It was wild land with cold clime, made up for by an abundance of natural resources. In the west lie expansive, prairie grassland, to the north a great lake, and in the southeast deciduous forests as far as the eye could see. The state was divided by the course of the Mississippi. That word comes from a French pronunciation of the Ojibwe Misi-ziibi meaning Great River. The land had plenty of game for hunters and trappers. In addition, throughout the state, were hundreds of bodies of fresh water teeming with life; could about throw a rock and hit a fish. Thus was Minnesota highly inviting, first to native peoples, then to European trappers and traders, then to settlers, speculators, and government alike. A stranger came to those parts, a man who once was great but now was wretched. A pony express rider as a boy, a decorated soldier in the Civil War, and then a lawman in Kansas. He was a loving husband and father. Damn if he didn't lose it all. Nowadays, this man lives alone and lonely, a danger to himself and others. It was the darkest time in the life of a once great man, Thomas Jefferson Powell.