As a service to North American Juntunens, Margaret Smith has agreed to act as the distribution agent for the first volume of the Juntunen Sukukirja covering 1500-1800. The price of the book in the United States will be $90 if purchased in advance. This price covers the book (which is hardbound), shipping from Finland to the US, exchange rate costs, customs charges. The Michigan state sales and US postage is additional. The Juntunen Society anticipates that the book will be released this fall. Information on ordering the Sukukirja can be obtained by clicking here. We anticipate that the books will become collectors items.

Our North American ancestors benefited from earlier events that allowed immigration into Minnesota and other states. Now a hundred years later, we can see more clearly the circumstances that permitted settlement of Minnesota and neighboring lands. The period of Minnesota's development as a territory was a rough and contentious time. By 1837, would-be settlers waited eagerly for the Federal government to make a treaty with Native Americans called ''Sioux'' so farmers could move into Minnesota lands between Wisconsin and the Mississippi River.

Settlers hoping to profit from development of the "Sulands'' had already pushed beyond Michigan across southern Wisconsin lands to Minnesota Territory. Developers buoyed by a strong sense of perceived destiny raised a noisy clamor in Congress for the removal of the Sioux from their ancient homeland. In 1838, the first ''removal treaty'' was ratified by Congress.

Military enforcement of treaties was then possible because the groundwork had been done earlier, beginning in 1805. Zebulon Pike, under orders from President Thomas Jefferson, had purchased land from the Sioux for Ft. Snelling, an imposing stone fortress built by 1827, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. After the Prairie du Chien meeting attended by Henry Schoolcraft in 1832, several of the old Sioux chiefs were taken East with the intent of impressing them with the strength of the Federal Government. Eventually the chiefs were taken on a grand tour of Washington, DC. At the time, their fur-trade livelihood had already begun a drastic decline; and the government succeeded in convincing them to become farmers in places far removed from settlers.

By 1852, Congress had ratified a round of Sioux treaties; and by 1853 the Sioux were moving to reservations set aside on their former lands. At the same time, there were complex issues among settlers over land division between Minnesota and Wisconsin. In northern Minnesota Territory, other Native Americans, the Chippewa, owned all the land between Lake Superior and the Red River north of the Mississippi. Like the Sioux, they too were desperate to gain income in the face of their declining fur trade. By 1854, the Chippewa also became reluctant government dependents by ceding most of their Minnesota lands to the government. In 1858, when statehood was granted to Minnesota, four fifths of land within the new state came from land ceded by the Sioux and Chippewa.

A severe drought in 1862 caused tremendous suffering with crop failures and starvation among Native Americans and new settlers. Native Americans quite naturally considered their plight to be the result of losing their homelands, and resentments smoldered as hardships increased. New settlers hardly noticed or understood the problems of Native Americans. Settlers were preoccupied with their own great difficulties of pioneering life and loss of family members drafted to fight against the Confederacy. Soon resentments among the Sioux chiefs became plans of revenge just when settlers and the Union Army were diverted by the Civil War.

The Sioux, severely compromised through loss of their sacred, ancestral lands, justified war against new settlers partly because meager payments from the Federal Government for their lands were being collected with great difficulty. Battles between the Sioux and Minnesota Volunteers, who manned forts along the Mississippi, began in 1862. In a local incident near the Yellow Medicine Agency in west central Minnesota, a party of starving Sioux warriors killed five settlers after a perceived insult toward the Sioux. As a result, Sioux soon ambushed forty relief soldiers sent from Ft. Ridgely to the east. More ambushes of troops occurred until a final battle was fought at Wood Lake, Minnesota on September 23, 1862. Henry Sibley, chief lobbyist of an old-traders' group of settlers and Minnesota's first governor, led 1400 raw military recruits to defeat the Sioux. Of 2000 Sioux participating in the battle, 425 were tried for war crimes. In farce trials, 321 Sioux were sentenced to death, but President Lincoln commuted all but 38 jail terms. The Sioux who escaped fled to the Dakotas and Canada. When the incident ended, fear of returning Sioux was so intense among settlers that more forts were built in Minnesota.

After the Sioux War, Native American survivors in Minnesota were dispersed to reservations. In tragic, forced moves, Native Americans were viewed as savages, and large numbers died. The actual casualties of the Sioux war were 71 Sioux, 413 settlers, and 77 soldiers. The Sioux War earned a place among US Indian Wars as one of the bloodiest in American History. In the decades after the tremendous losses of these wars and the Civil War, a growing tide of pioneering Americans and European immigrants turned Minnesota into a breadbasket, lumber, and then iron mining capital of the nation. Two hundred years earlier in the 1600's and halfway around the world in Scandinavia, another indigenous people, the Sami (Lapps), had also lost their native lands, a fate that invites comparison to that of our Native Americans.

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New Submissions to North American Juntunen Project

Our sincere thanks to Frank Juntunen and Eunice Juntunen Larsen who have recently completed months of hard work collecting their family's genealogy on behalf of the Project.

In June, Frank Juntunen of Everson, Washington submitted to the project the genealogy of his paternal grandfather, Juho (John) Juntunen that links to the genealogy of another project submitter, Diane Pinion. Frank's grandfather, Juho Juntunen was born June 4, 1880 in Suomussalmi, Finland. His wife was Vilma Kustaava Anttonen, born April 3, 1884 in Suomussalmi.

About 1903 Juho and Vilma were married in Finland, and by 1909 they immigrated to Freda in Houghton County, Michigan. Their son Adolph Juntunen, born in Freda, married Jessie Poush of Marion, Iowa in Detroit, Michigan. Frank Juntunen is their son. Frank's wife Veronica Wachuka was the granddaughter of Russian immigrants who emigrated to New York. Frank's mother Jessie Poush was the daughter of a Lucas County, Iowa farming family.

We are grateful for many fine family photographs submitted by Frank and a 1943 photograph of the Freda, Michigan grade school.

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In July, Eunice Juntunen Larsen of Sunnyvale, CA submitted a collection of her paternal Juntunen genealogy to the Project. Her grandfather, Peter Juntunen was born Aug. 27, 1854 in Puolanka, Finland to Lars Henrik Juntunen born Dec. 8, 1806 and Anna Juntunen born Oct. 31, 1809 in Suomussalmi, Finland. Lars’ father was also named Lars Henrik Juntunen. He was born in Suomussalmi on February 16, 1774 and his wife, Margareta Kinnunen was born December 18, 1779 in Suomussalmi.

In 1879, Peter Juntunen married Greta Stiina Moilanen, born February 29, 1856 in Puolanka. By the 1880's they immigrated to Calumet, Michigan. By 1885 they had established a farm in Bryant, South Dakota where they had 11 children. Their son Vaino married Techla Sotka of Bryant. Eunice Juntunen Larsen is one of their 5 children.

By coincidence, Peter Juntunen's son, H. P. married Mathilda Bykonen, daughter of Aapeli and Anna Kaisa Bykonen (Pyykkönen) who had also emigrated from Suomussalmi to South Dakota. Anna Kaisa is the sister of Juho Carls Pyykkönen, Margaret Smith’s great-grandfather. Additional thanks to Joan and Arnold Martin, descendents of Anna Kaisa and Aapeli Bykonen for making the Project coordinators aware of the Peter Juntunen family.

Descendants of Peter Juntunen and Greta Stiina Moilanen are numerous and many live in various parts of South Dakota. Others live or have lived in California, Arizona, Utah, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington, Wyoming, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia.

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