Hi Doug,,Merry Christmas and thanks for the challenges.
I first read the diarys of Lewis and Clark on the net and when I read
that "our ship had become stranded on a mountain top" I put my map up
on the wall and drew a circle around Inspiration Peak. For the next 3
months I forgot about the Mandans and instead looked at sattelite
photos and arial photos and maps. Before I started plotting the
dotts,,I found the beach of the northeast side of the island. It is 5
miles wide and 15 or so miles long. Unfourchanetly it is the farm land
my greatgrandfather Simon Ericksons homesteaded. It is poor farm
land.It is layers of beach sand at places almost 20 feet deep with no
top soil. There is a long sandy penninsula running to the east. It is
the high ground that the first settlers to this area built the
ottertail trail along.
This sandy morraine runs from in south east ottertail county to the
north west and the Fergus Falls area. As you travel west the rocks,
stones and boulders appear more and more.The western sides of the
hills of the Leif Mountains are covered with rocks. I started to see
how a storm out of the north west would have deposited all this sand
to the south east. Along the eastern end of this morraine is a small
lake 10 feet deep that was a bay on this island where the waters broke
thru the morraine and carved the Spruce Creek valley and start of the
mississippi. That solved a big question in my mind that had occured
years earlier. Where had all the water come from and why was I finding
large deposits of beach sand 20 or so feet above the present lake level.
Marion dahm told me to look for a mooring stone along the north west
shore of the lake. I looked for weeks and found none. I did find a
20foot diameter 3foot deep depression,,,,,very oodd but I scratched
the surface and hiked on. Laters on the way out of the woods I passed
by this depression again. As I stood there looking down I found a hole
and small dirt pile where a badger had dug a hole about 3 feet deep
and the size of a softball. Here on top this dirt pile was a few
pieces of charcoal.... I had not dug deep enough earlier...I started
digging again and 2 feet below the surface I went thru the roof of an
earthlodge. It is burnt out and has fallen in. It is old but not
ancient.(no tin cans)I covered up the small area I disturbed and have
shown it to no one. It was fall and I went home to california.

I then took a new approach to the Mandans and started ordering
books. It they were viking,,,wow...So first came Catlins North
American Indians and then Russells... Page 42,,That sure looks like an
earthlodge that the vikings also built.
When I got to Tracy Potters SHEHEKE,he states that according to
prevailing archeological theory, the Mandans migrated from southwest
minnesota...Pipestone...Here a big white guy dressed like a viking
changes their lives. If a ship with Paul Kuntson was stranded in this
lake then he would have sailed in from the west....The pieces of this
big puzzle are starting to fit together. Will you help solve?

As time permits,,,when i find my glasses too,,,I will go back and
reread sheheke and try to find where the one sixth was stated as the
portion of the Mandans that were not like the other red men and women.
I do remember that figure clearly.
The KRS is a dot on the map. It is on the south western edge of the
glacial ridge that runs here too.I am not trying to solve the KRS
mystery or Mandans either. Just all pieces of a puzzle that I dont
have a very clear picture of. But in more ancient times ,,,waters ten
thousand years ago, Lake Aggissi started going down and then about a
thousand years ago these peaks in west central minnesota would have
seamed like islands,,mountain tops in a mostly blue sea.
A few years ago then i found a viking harpon tip 2 miles from the
lake. Then a mooring stone 4 or 5 miles up creek from this lake...
Then out of the blue,, one day at a yardsale,,,a guy comes up and says
there is a ship in that swamp. There are a thousand lakes in ottertail
county and now he has just picked this same lake. ???There are no
homes on or near this lake and it is understurbed and very virgin. I
loaded marvin up and had him point the way. Yep,,the same lake...and
it was in the south end. After a year i was able to trace the story
back 5 generations to Lilly Looker. When the lake had dried up during
the drought a hunderd years ago, the kids could no longer swim in the
lake,,,they found a ship remains... her Story ends. I found then that
her father was the earliest settler and lived near the lake..
Last July a retired banker from littleton colorado finds my father
and tells him this. When he was a kid, his dad and neighbor took him
along deer hunting and this neighbor Leonard, had found the ship too
and even had a piece of it. In the 30,s. So I finially have gotten a
few neighbors to talk. Its hard to get them old scandinavians to talk
about something so goofy. Leonard knew ,,but in a time when the KRS
was being challenged and Olaf Oman was called a forger and these
mooring stones are something else again,,, and all the artifacts found
in cenral minnesota were brought here from the old country by early
settlers.!@$%^&*XZ3
So that is the short story again,,a rehearsal for a speech someday.
I will work on those details for you.. I am re-examining everything to
see how it might fit this big puzzle. In scandinavia they have found
many viking ships,,once they knew where to look. The archeological
experts who write the books,,need that ship before they will ever
acknowledge that a bunch of viking barbarians discovered America and
here is Vinland..I got the grapes to prove it...lol.
thanks and I hope you can help.
This last fall saddly my friend Marion Dahm who has found a hundred
mooring stones in central minnesota and has spent his adult life
looking for those vikings,,, has died. The photo is of his last
mooring stone,,,and my first.
Again happy hunting in the new year everyone!

Steve