A wooden foot.
It’s one of Allison Spies’ favorite objects in the archives of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis — a hand-hewn prosthetic of a pioneer priest.
That priest was Father Joseph Goiffon, one of the first priests to serve in what was then the newly-established Diocese of St. Paul. Like many of those priests, he was from France, born in a small town in 1824, and, said Spies, the archdiocese’s archives program manager, “by his own admission, he was not particularly bright, so it took a long time for him to complete his education.” After his ordination, the 30-something priest left France for Minnesota, and in 1857 spent a few months in Mendota and then was asked to assist in the Red River Valley, which was then part of the diocese, just south of the Canadian border.
“I think it’s easy for us to forget how different life was at that time,” said Spies, speaking to “Practicing Catholic” host Patrick Conley about the archdiocese’s earliest years, even before Minnesota was a state. “Most of the priests serving in the Minnesota Territory were born and educated in France, and were really pretty unprepared for the conditions of the Western frontier.”
Father Goiffon’s assignment in the villages of St. Joseph and Pembina, in what is now North Dakota, meant ministering to a blended community of French Canadian and Native American culture, where life centered around bison hunts and the fur trade, she said. “He loved his life there,” she said. “He was very attached to his parishioners and really flourished.”
To trade their fur and procure supplies, his parishioners made regular trips to St. Paul, a 500-some mile trek that took about two-and-a-half months roundtrip — a month there, two weeks of trading and a month back.
“There were no roads, just cart trails,” Spies said, “and even if you had a horse or an ox cart, those were for hauling your equipment — you were walking. So, it’s a 500-mile journey on foot, including regularly swimming across rivers and lakes and towing your animals and carts across those rivers and lakes. So, very difficult.”
In 1860, Father Goiffon had already made the trek a couple times, but the archdiocese’s vicar general summoned him after the end-of-the-summer buffalo hunt. He left at the end of August with two Canadian brothers. The trip to St. Paul went fine. The trip back didn’t.
When they left St. Paul, it was early October, and the weather was fair. They were traveling with a group from the then-Diocese of St. Boniface, centered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. But the group wanted to leave on Sunday, which “scandalized” the priest, Spies said, since at that time it was illegal in the United States to undertake labor on Sunday. Plus, he wanted to celebrate Mass. So, he and the two brothers sent the Manitoba party ahead, with plans to meet later. With that party they sent their tent, thinking they’d be able to catch up to the party faster without it.
After walking for three weeks, the priest and brothers hadn’t caught up with the St. Boniface group, and the brothers were concerned that they were going to keep their tent, so they sent Father Goiffon ahead of them on horseback to find the group and instruct them where to leave the tent. He caught up with them, just two days from their destination. But they were nearly out of food and exhausted from hauling the supplies they were bringing back with them. Even the horse was hungry, because prairie fire had burned away most of the grass, Spies said.
Anxious to get back to his parishioners, Father Goiffon set out alone in a light rain. He made plans to meet the group at a river crossing 10 miles ahead if the weather got worse. The rain got heavier, so when he arrived at the river, he waited, but no one showed up. He made a fire and curled up in his buffalo robe. While there, a young Englishman heading the opposite direction looking for his uncle passed by. Father Goiffon implored him to stay so he wouldn’t get lost, but the young man pressed on.
Father Goiffon spent the night alone. Overnight there was a blizzard and he woke up in eight inches of snow.
“There are so many interesting details” to the story, Spies said, “but the problem is he gets stuck in the snow. He attempts to travel a little further, but can’t. His horse is exhausted, and so he keeps having to stop and rest, and eventually his horse dies, (from) exposure and starvation. And Father Goiffon is just sleeping, waiting for someone to show up, and he realizes that his legs have frozen and he attempts to cut into his horse to create a kind of shelter for himself.”
The horse was frozen solid, so he couldn’t make a shelter, but he was able to eat some of its meat. He prayed fervently for his guardian angel to send help, promising to offer 68 Masses if he survived. After four days, he saw someone in the distance — the young Englishman and his uncle. They believed he was delusional and was going to die, and they gave him coffee and carried him to Pembina. As the priest’s legs began to thaw, the pain was excruciating, Spies said. In Pembina, he discovered his legs had begun to rot, and he was delivered via dog sled to the nearest doctor in Canada.
The doctor amputated his right leg below the knee, but planned to give him time to recover before amputating his left foot. But 10 days after the amputation, a vein burst and he began to bleed to death. So certain of his impending funeral, the servants at the cathedral rectory where he was staying started to boil fat to make candles for it.
And then the vat of fat boiled over and started the rectory on fire.
“So they drag Father Goiffon out of the fire,” Spies sad. “He’s screaming at them to save the records that they have in the cathedral. But in an hour the entire place is burned to the ground, and Father Goiffon is alive. They think perhaps the cold might have helped slow the bleeding. So, he survives. He goes through with the other foot amputation. And by Ash Wednesday, he’s saying Mass every Sunday, he carves his own wooden foot and leg. And nine months after he left, he finally returns to his parish, and he not only survived, but lived another 50 years to establish parishes all over the Twin Cities and died at the age of 86 of heart failure.”
It’s that wooden foot that’s now a prized possession of the archdiocese’s archives. His wooden leg is in the care of St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake.
Within the whole remarkable story, Spies said she finds something particularly curious: that Father Goiffon carved his own leg, when with the milling, logging and railroad industries — and within a few years, the Civil War — artificial limbs were readily available for purchase. Two companies made them in Minneapolis alone, she said.
“But he insisted on carving his own leg,” she said. “And there was in fact, a joke about this in the newspaper in his hometown in France, about how he was now officially an American because he was a ‘self-made man.’”
To learn more about Father Goiffon’s adventures, tune into “Practicing Catholic.” Others on the program are School Sister of Notre Dame Lynore Girmscheid, who promoted the annual Retirement Fund for Religious collection. Also featured is Father John Ubel, rector of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, who discusses the meaning of Advent and ideas for celebrating it well.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Father Leonard Andrie, pastor of St. Therese in Deephaven, who previews a series of talks he is giving: “A Walk Through the History of the Church;” and Bernadette Gockowski and Alison Duffy, who describe ‘Known by God’, a retreat for grieving mothers who have lost a baby by miscarriage or stillbirth.
Listen to all of the interviews after they have aired at
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