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Antoine Barada was an American folk hero in the state of Nebraska. Contemporary accounts of his prodigious strength helped establish him as a legend in the mold of Paul Bunyan. Antoine Barada was born at St. Mary’s across the Missouri River from Omaha. He was the Métis son of Michel de Baradat and Te-gle-ha Haciendo (Laughing Buffalo), an Omaha Indian. Barada was always in demand for lifting beams in barn building or lifting wagons from the mud. His strength was convincingly demonstrated at St. Louis when as a young man he became the only person to ever lift a huge stone of 1,700 pounds. When he died in 1887 he was buried beside his wife in the Catholic cemetery just east of Barada, the village that bears his name. |
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