Pum, the Holstein ox that became famous in 2008 for pulling an oxcart along the historic 420-mile Pembina Trail, died over the weekend at his home farm near Gatzke, Minn.
His owner, Orlin Ostby, found the 2,600-pound animal critically injured Saturday morning, lying partially under a fence gate.
“I was grazing him all winter and he was doing pretty good,” Ostby said Monday. “A bull or something chased him and he got banged around. He got under the gate and couldn’t get up. He had been down there for some time, several hours.”
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Pum, 12, was one of a pair of oxen - Kin is the other - Ostby bought from a New Hampshire farm and trained for several years in preparation for Minnesota’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2008. Kin survives on the Ostby farm.
For Ostby, the sesquicentennial trip was a tribute to Delmar Hagen, a neighbor and friend who made a similar trip in 1958 for Minnesota’s centennial celebration. Ostby, who was 17 at the time, helped Hagen train a shorthorn breed ox to pull an oxcart for that trip.
Pembina Trail
Oxcart trails hold an important place in Minnesota’s history.
Between 1849 and 1901, the Pembina Trail was a key commercial corridor, as thousands of oxcarts traveled between Winnipeg and St. Paul, carrying bison hides and other furs to the East, returning with other goods necessary for survival on the frontier.
The oxcarts were guided by the Metis, a culture that descended from the Ojibwe and French and other European voyageurs.
Ostby’s commemorative trip began at St. Vincent, in extreme northwestern Minnesota.
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Dressed in clothing representative of the fur-trade era, the Ostbys - Orlin, his wife Mandy, and their children, Chris and Catherine, then 15 and 12 - were accompanied by Ostby’s cousin, Tom Thronsedt, Jamestown, N.D., and two family friends, Norwegian descendent Steven Reynolds and Jacqueline Helms, a Metis descendent, both of Wannaska, Minn.
They followed the traditional Pembina Trail as much as possible, traveling an average of eight miles a day, along U.S. Highway 59 from St. Vincent to Detroit Lakes, then U.S. Highway 10 southeastward to St. Paul.
Heavy traffic in the Twin Cities forced the group to trailer the oxen for the trip’s final miles.
Oxcart legacy
Pum was popular at the State Fair, allowing children to get close enough to pet, according to Ostby.
“We were in that fair parade every night,” he said. “Pum was smart and a lovable animal. He was the most lovable animal we’ve ever had. He loved kids.”
Pum made an impression on Ostby’s family, too.
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“This is hard on me, on all of us. It’s really hard on Christopher,” he said.
“My grandma always said, in Norwegian, ‘They can take them away from us, but they can’t take away the memories,’” he said. “We’ve got wonderful memories of Pum, and we’ve got pictures.”
Ostby, who is 74, said his son, Chris, now a 23-year-old Bemidji State University student, plans to follow through - along with a friend from that New Hampshire family - on a promise he made in 2008 to recreate the Pembina Trail journey for Minnesota’s 200th birthday in 2058.
“I won’t be around for it, but they’re serious,” he said. “I think our trip was important, especially for our rural heritage. And it will be important then, too.”
