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How a farmer on the fringe got caught in hermit hysteria

By January 1905, Olaus Berg, a Vesta Township farmer owning a home and farmland with a granary containing 1,500 bushels per the 1900 census, was declared insane and committed to the North Dakota State Hospital in Jamestown.
After the Butler case in nearby Niagara, North Dakota, fear stirred by the dangerous recluse dubbed the Great Plains Butcher and rumors of buried treasure intensified suspicion of Olaus Berg's odd behavior.
Investigators later uncovered six skeletons beneath Berg's old house and noted Berg's $750 in paper money at initial custody, a modern equivalent noted as more than $275,000 t.
The Butler case, which made national headlines, revealed more than $7,600 in cash, checks and gold and victims believed to be farmhands and house servants, fueling ongoing local obsession.
Looking back, historians and commentators questioning Berg's sanity debate if Olaus Berg, dubbed 'a peculiar hermit' by a December 1904 newspaper headline, was truly mentally ill or simply independent.

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