Minnesota, the North Star State
by William Watts Folwell · English · Gutenberg #47725 · 589,895 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Minnesota, the North Star State
Author: William Watts Folwell
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American Commonwealths
MINNESOTA
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[Illustration: MINNESOTA
TO ACCOMPANY
W. W. FOLWELL’S
MINNESOTA in AMERICAN COMMONWEALTHS
Compiled by the author, 1908.]
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American Commonwealths
MINNESOTA
THE NORTH STAR STATE
BY
WILLIAM WATTS FOLWELL
[Illustration: L’ETOILE DU NORD]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
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COPYRIGHT 1908 BY WILLIAM WATTS FOLWELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1908_
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PREFACE
If this compend of Minnesota history shall be found a desirable
addition to those already before the public, it will be due to the good
fortune of the writer in reaching original sources of information not
accessible to his predecessors.
The most important of them are: the papers of Governor Alexander
Ramsey, in the possession of his daughter, Mrs. Marion R. Furness; the
letter-books and papers of General H. H. Sibley, preserved in the
library of the Minnesota Historical Society; some hundreds of letters
saved by Colonel John H. Stevens, and deposited by him in the same
library; the papers of Ignatius Donnelly, in the hands of his family;
the great collection of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien papers belonging
to the Wisconsin Historical Society; the remarkable group of early
French documents owned by the Chicago Historical Society; and finally,
the priceless collection of Minnesota newspapers preserved by the
Minnesota Historical Society.
Grateful acknowledgments are offered to many citizens who have given
information out of their own knowledge, or have directed the writer to
other sources. Among “old Territorians” who have rendered invaluable
aid must be named Simeon P. Folsom, John A. Ludden, Joseph W. Wheelock,
Benjamin H. Randall, A. L. Larpenteur, A. W. Daniels, John Tapper, and
William Pitt Murray. The last named has put me under the heaviest
obligation.
W. W. F.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA,
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., June 1, 1908.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FRENCH PERIOD 1
II. THE ENGLISH DOMINION 29
III. MINNESOTA WEST ANNEXED 42
IV. FORT SNELLING ESTABLISHED 54
V. EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS 70
VI. THE TERRITORY ORGANIZED 86
VII. TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT 108
VIII. TRANSITION TO STATEHOOD 133
IX. THE STRUGGLE FOR RAILROADS 159
X. ARMING FOR THE CIVIL WAR 178
XI. THE OUTBREAK OF THE SIOUX 190
XII. THE SIOUX WAR 205
XIII. SEQUEL TO THE INDIAN WAR 222
XIV. HONORS OF WAR 240
XV. REVIVAL 254
XVI. STORM AND STRESS 267
XVII. CLEARING UP 304
XVIII. FAIR WEATHER 333
XIX. A CHRONICLE OF RECENT EVENTS 340
INDEX 367
MINNESOTA
CHAPTER I
THE FRENCH PERIOD
The word Minnesota was the Dakota name for that considerable tributary
of the Mississippi which, issuing from Big Stone Lake, flows
southeastward to Mankato, turns there at a right angle, and runs on to
Fort Snelling, where it empties into the great river. It is a compound
of “mini,” water, and “sota,” gray-blue or sky-colored. The name was
given to the territory as established by act of Congress of March 3,
1849, and was retained by the state with her diminished area.
If one should travel in the extension of the jog in the north boundary,
west of the Lake of the Woods, due south, he could hardly miss Lake
Itasca. If then he should embark and follow the great river to the Iowa
line, his course would have divided the state into two portions, not
very unequal in extent. The political history of the two parts is
sufficiently diverse to warrant a distinction between Minnesota East
and Minnesota West. England never owned west of the river, Spain gained
no foothold east of it. France, owning on both sides, yielded Minnesota
East to England in 1763, and sold Minnesota West to the United States
in 1803. Up to the former date, the whole area was part of New France
and had no separate history.
Although the French dominion existed for more than two hundred years,
it is not important for the present compendious work that an elaborate
account be made of their explorations and commerce. They made no
permanent settlement on Minnesota soil. No institution, nor monument,
nor tradition, even, has survived to determine or affect the life of
the commonwealth. It will be sufficient to summarize from an abounding
literature the successive stages of the French advance from the
Atlantic to the Mississippi, their late and brief efforts to establish
trade and missions in the upper valley, and the circumstances which led
to their expulsion from the American continent.
It is now well known that in the first decade of the sixteenth century
Norman and Breton fishermen were taking cod in Newfoundland waters, and
it is reasonably surmised that they had been so engaged before the
Cabots, under English colors, had coasted from Labrador towards Cape
Cod in 1497. The French authorities, occupied with wars, foreign and
domestic, were unable to participate with Spain, England, and Portugal
in pioneer explorations beyond seas. It was not till 1534 that Francis
I, a brilliant and ambitious monarch, dispatched Jacques Cartier, a
daring navigator, to explore lands and waters reported of by French
fishermen, and, if possible, to discover the long-sought passage to
Cathay. In the summer of that year Cartier made the circuit of the Gulf
of St. Lawrence, and returned to France disappointed of his main
purpose. His neglect to enter the great river flowing into the gulf is
unexplained. At two convenient places he went ashore to set up
ceremonial crosses and proclaim the dominion of his king. In the
following year (1535), on a second expedition he ascended the St.
Lawrence River to the Huron village Hochelaga, on or near the site of
Montreal. He wintered in a fort built near Quebec, where one fourth of
his crew died of scurvy. In May, 1536, after setting up another cross
with a Latin inscription declaring the royal possession, he sailed away
for home. Five years later (1541) Cartier participated in still another
expedition, which, prosecuted into a third year, resulted disastrously.
The king had spent much money, but the passage to China had not been
found, no mines had been discovered, no colony had been planted, no
heathen converted.
Throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century the French kings were
too much engrossed in great religious wars, fierce and bloody beyond
belief but for existing proofs, to give thought or effort to extending
their dominion in the New World. The treaty of Vervins with Spain and
the Edict of Nantes, both occurring in 1598, gave France an interval of
peace within and without. Henry IV (“Henry of Navarre”) at once turned
his eyes to the coasts of America, on which as yet no Europeans had
made any permanent settlements. His activity took the form of
patronizing a series of trading voyages. On one of these, which sailed
in 1603, he sent Samuel Champlain, then about thirty-five years of age,
a gallant soldier and an experienced navigator. He had already visited
the West Indies and the Isthmus of Darien, and in his journal of the
voyage had foreshadowed the Panama Canal. He was now particularly
charged with reporting on explorations and discoveries. On this voyage
Champlain ascended the St. Lawrence to Montreal and vainly attempted to
surmount the Lachine Rapids. On the return of the expedition in
September of the same year, Champlain laid before the king a report and
map. They gave such satisfaction as to lead to a similar appointment on
an expedition sent out the following year. For three years Champlain
was occupied in exploring and charting the coasts of Nova Scotia and
New England, a thousand miles or thereabout.
In 1608 he went out in the capacity of lieutenant-governor of New
France, a post occupied for the remaining twenty-seven years of his
life, with the exception of a brief interval. On July 3 he staked out
the first plat of Quebec. His trifling official engagements left him
ample leisure to prosecute those explorations on which his heart was
set; chief of them the road to China.
In 1609, to gain assistance of the Indians in his neighborhood, he
joined them in a war-party to the head of the lake to which he then
gave his name. A single volley from the muskets of himself and two
other Frenchmen put the Iroquois, as yet unprovided with firearms, to
headlong rout. Six years later he led a large force of Hurons from
their homes in upper Canada between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay,
across Lake Ontario, to be defeated by the well-fortified Iroquois. The
notes of his expedition added the Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, the
French River, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario to his map. Could Champlain
have foreseen the disasters to follow for New France and the Huron
nation, he would not have made the Iroquois his and their implacable
enemy. He made no further journeys westward in person, but adopted a
plan of sending out young men, whom he had put to school among native
tribes, to learn their languages and gather their traditions and
surmises as to regions yet unvisited. One of them, Etienne Brulé, who
had been his interpreter on the second expedition against the Iroquois,
and detached before the battle on an embassy to an Indian tribe, did
not return till after three years of extensive wanderings. He showed a
chunk of copper which he declared he had brought from the shore of a
great lake far to the west, nine days’ journey in length, which
discharged over a waterfall into Lake Huron.
In 1634 another of Champlain’s apprentices, Jean Nicollet by name,
passed through the Straits of Mackinaw and penetrated to the head of
Green Bay and possibly farther. He may have been at the Sault Sainte
Marie. So confident was he of reaching China that he took with him a
gorgeous mandarin’s robe of damask to wear at his court reception.
Attired in it he addressed the gaping Winnebagoes, putting a climax on
his peroration by firing his pistols. Champlain’s map of 1632 showed
his conjectured Lake Michigan north of Lake Huron. Nicollet gave it its
proper location.
Champlain’s stormy career closed at Christmas, 1635. The honorable
title of “Father of New France” rightly belongs to him, in spite of the
fact that in none of his great plans had he achieved success. He had
not found the road to the Indies, the savages remained in the power of
the devil, and no self-supporting settlement had been planted. Quebec’s
population did not exceed two hundred, soldiers, priests, fur-traders
and their dependents. There was but one settler cultivating the soil.
Exploration languished after Champlain’s death, and for a generation
was only incidentally prosecuted by missionaries and traders. In 1641
two Jesuit fathers, Jogues and Raymbault, traveled to the Sault Sainte
Marie, and gave the first reliable account of the great lake.
From the earliest lodgments of white men on the St. Lawrence the
fur-trade assumed an importance far greater than the primitive
fisheries. In the seventeenth century the fashion of fur-wearing spread
widely among the wealthier people of Europe. The beaver hat had
superseded the Milan bonnet. No furs were in greater request than those
gathered in the Canadian forests. A chief reason for the long delay of
cultivation in the French settlements was the profit to be won by
ranging for furs. Montreal, founded in 1642 as a mission station, not
long after became, by reason of its location at the mouth of the
Ottawa, the entrepôt of the western trade. The business took on a
simple and effective organization. Responsible merchants provided the
outfit, a canoe, guns, powder and lead, hulled corn and tallow for
subsistence, and an assortment of cheap and tawdry merchandise. Late in
the summer the “coureurs des bois” set out for the wilderness. Those
bound for the west traveled by the Ottawa route in large companies, for
better defense against skulking Iroquois. On reaching Lake Huron, they
broke up, each crew departing to its favorite haunts.
The chances for large profits naturally attracted to this primitive
commerce some men of talent and ambition. In 1656 two such came down to
Montreal piloting a flotilla of fifty Ottawa canoes deeply laden with
precious furs. They had been absent for two years, had traveled five
hundred leagues from home, and had heard of various nations, among them
the “Nadouesiouek.” The author of the Jesuit Relation for the year
speaks of them as “two young Frenchmen, full of courage,” and as the
“two young pilgrims,” but suppresses their names. Again, in 1660 two
Frenchmen reach Montreal from the upper countries, with three hundred
Algonquins in sixty canoes loaded with furs worth $40,000. The journal
of the Jesuit fathers gives the name of one of them as of a person of
consequence, Des Groseilliers; and says of him, “Des Grosillers
wintered with the nation of the Ox ... they are sedentary
Nadwesseronons.”
The two Frenchmen of 1660 are now believed to have been Medard Chouart,
Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre d’Esprit, Sieur de Radisson, both
best known by their titles. The latter was the younger man, and brother
to Groseilliers’ second wife. In 1885 the Prince Society of Boston
printed 250 copies of the “Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson,” written
by him in English. The manuscript had lain in the Bodleian Library of
Oxford University for nearly two hundred years. No doubt has been
raised as to its authenticity. While the accounts of the different
voyages are not free from exaggerations, not to say outright
fabrications, the reader will be satisfied that the writer in the main
told a true story of the wanderings and transactions of himself and
comrade. These two men a few years later went over to the English and
became the promoters of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
If Radisson’s story be true, he and Groseilliers were the first white
men to tread the soil of Minnesota. As he tells it, the two left
Montreal in the month of August, 1658, and after much trouble with the
“Iroquoits” along the Ottawa, reached the Sault Sainte Marie, where
they “made good cheare” of whitefish. Embarking late in the same
season, they went along “the most delightful and wonderous coasts” of
Lake Superior, passed the Pictured Rocks, portaged over Keweenaw Point,
and made their way to the head of Chequamegon Bay. Here they built a
“fort” of stakes in two days, which was much admired by the wild men.
Having cached a part of their goods, they proceeded inland to a Huron
village on a lake believed to be Lake Courte Oreille, in Sawyer County,
Wisconsin, where they were received with great ceremony. At the first
snowfall the people departed for their winter hunt, and appointed a
rendezvous after two months and a half. Before leaving the village the
Frenchmen sent messengers “to all manner of persons and nations,”
inviting them to a feast at which presents would be distributed. The
best guess locates this rendezvous on or near Knife Lake, in Kanabec
County, Minnesota. That was then Sioux country, and the people
thereabout were long after known as Isantis or Knife Sioux, probably
because they got their first steel knives from these Frenchmen. While
at their rendezvous eight “ambassadors from the nation of the Beefe”
(i. e. Buffalo, of course) came to give notice that a great number of
their people would assemble for the coming feast. They brought a
calumet “of red stone as big as a fist and as long as a hand.” Each
ambassador was attended by two wives carrying wild rice and Indian corn
as a present. For the feast a great concourse of Algonquin tribes
gathered and prepared a “fort” six hundred paces square, obviously a
mere corral of poles and brush. A “foreguard” of thirty young Sioux,
“all proper men,” heralded the coming of the elders of their village,
who arrived next day “with incredible pomp.” Grand councils were held,
followed by feasting, dancing, mimic battles, and games of many sorts,
including the greased pole. As described, this was no casual
assemblage, but a great and extraordinary convocation. It lasted a
fortnight.
The two Frenchmen now made seven small journeys “to return the visit of
the Sioux, and found themselves in a town of great cabins covered with
skins and mats, in a country without wood and where corn was grown.”
The account of this six weeks’ trip is brief and indefinite. The
conjecture that Groseilliers and Radisson traveled a hundred and fifty
miles, more or less, into the prairie region west of the Mississippi,
either by way of the Minnesota or the Crow Wing rivers, has slight
support. The account may have been invented from information obtained
of the Sioux at the convocation.
In the early spring of 1660 the two adventurers returned to Chequamegon
Bay, whence they continued to Montreal without notable incident. In his
narrative Radisson injects after the return from the nation of the
Beefe a story of an excursion to Hudson’s Bay, occupying a year, which
is probably fictitious. The time occupied by the whole journey is well
known and could not have included a trip to the “Bay of the North.”
Still, it is reasonably certain that Groseilliers and Radisson were in
Minnesota twenty years before Duluth.
The reader will have already inquired whether the two young Frenchmen
of 1654-56, unnamed, might not have been the same with these of
1658-60. This inquiry was frequently made before the discovery of
Radisson’s narrative. The question was settled by that document.
Radisson gives a separate and circumstantial account of a three years’
journey of trade and exploration to the west taken by himself and his
brother-in-law in 1654. Leaving Montreal in the summer of that year,
Groseilliers and Radisson, as the story runs, taking the usual Ottawa
River route, reached the Straits of Mackinaw in the early fall. They
passed the winter about Green Bay, Wisconsin. The following summer they
coasted Lake Michigan and proceeded southward through a country
“incomparable, though mighty hot,” to the shores of a great sea. They
found “a barril broken, as they use in Spaine.” They passed the summer
on “the shore of the Great sea.” Returning to the north, they spent a
winter with the Ottawas on the upper Michigan peninsula. As the
excursion to Hudson’s Bay already mentioned was a fiction, so is this
to the Gulf of Mexico. The traders could not have been absent from the
French settlement more than two years. It is in the early spring of
1655, therefore, that we find them setting out from their winter
quarters to countries more remote. The essence of Radisson’s text is as
follows: “We ... thwarted a land of allmost fifty leagues.... We
arrived, some 150 of us men and women, to a river-side, where we stayed
3 weeks making boats.... We went up ye river 8 days till we came to a
nation called ... the Scratchers. There we gott some Indian meale and
corne ... which lasted us till we came to the first landing Isle. There
we weare well received againe.”
Upon this indefinite passage has been put the following interpretation.
The land journey of fifty leagues (about one hundred and forty miles)
took the traders to the east bank of the Mississippi near the southeast
corner of Minnesota, where they built boats; the nation who furnished
provisions resided about the site of Winona, and the “first landing
Isle” was Prairie Island, between Red Wing and Hastings. If this
interpretation shall at length be confirmed, Groseilliers and Radisson
were in Minnesota twenty-four years before Duluth. Subsequent passages
of the narrative lend it some support.
These able and enterprising characters deserve, however, not the least
degree of credit as explorers. If they saw the Mississippi and in the
later voyage penetrated beyond the Big Woods, they studiously concealed
their knowledge. They left no maps, and for no assignable reason
suppressed a discovery which would have given them a world-wide fame.
* * * * *
When Cardinal Mazarin died, in 1661, Louis XIV, then twenty-two years
of age, stepped on to the stage, “every inch a king.” He willingly
listened to the suggestion of Colbert, his new minister, that it was
time for France to follow English example and establish a colonial
system for profit and glory. The Company of New France, promoted by
Richelieu, which for nearly forty years had governed Canada, were quite
content to surrender their franchises. In 1663 the colony was made a
royal province. Associated with the governor a so-called “intendant of
justice and finance” was provided in the new administration. The first
incumbent was Jean Baptiste Talon, a man of brains, energy, and
ambition. He was no sooner on the ground than he began to conceive
great projects for extending the French dominion, expanding commerce,
and fostering settlements. Colbert, although he sympathized, was
obliged to restrain him and suggest that “the King would never
depopulate France to people Canada.”
Rumors were multiplying of great openings for trade and missions along
and beyond the great lakes. Talon was keen to follow up and verify
them. In 1665 the Jesuit father Claude Allouez established a mission at
La Pointe on Chequamegon Bay. Upon an excursion to the head of the lake
(Superior) he saw some of the Nadouessiouek (Sioux) Indians, dwellers
toward the great River Mississippi, in a country of prairies. They gave
him some “marsh rye,” as he called their wild rice.
Four years later Father Jacques Marquette succeeded Allouez in that
mission. He also heard stories of a great river flowing to a sea, on
which canoes with wings might be seen. The Jesuit Relation of 1670-71
gives reports from Indians of a great river which “for more than three
hundred leagues from its mouth is wider than the St. Lawrence at
Quebec;” and people dwelling near its mouth “have houses on the water
and cut down trees with large knives.” In the summer of 1669, Louis
Joliet, whom Talon had sent to Lake Superior to search for copper,
returned; and it was then, probably on his suggestion, that Talon
resolved that it was time for the French to plant a military station at
the Sault Sainte Marie, a point of notable strategic importance. He
determined also to make an impression of French power on the Indians of
the West. In the following year he dispatched Nicholas Perrot, of whom
we are to hear later, to summon the Pottawattamies, the Winnebagoes,
and other accessible nations to a grand convocation at the Sault Sainte
Marie in the spring of 1671. To represent the government, Simon
François Daumont, Sieur de St. Lusson, was commissioned and took his
journey in October, 1670.
On the 14th of June, 1671, the appointed day, the council was held.
Fourteen Indian nations were represented. Among the French present were
Joliet, Father Allouez, and Perrot. The central act was the
proclamation by St. Lusson of King Louis’s dominion over “lakes Huron
and Superior, ... all countries, rivers, lakes and streams, contiguous
and adjacent thereto, with those that have been discovered, and those
which may be discovered hereafter, ... bounded by the seas of the
north, west, and south.” This modest claim covered perhaps nine tenths
of North America. As usual, a big wooden cross was erected and blest. A
metallic plate bearing the king’s arms was nailed up, and a
“procès-verbal” drawn and signed. In that day such a proclamation gave
title to barbarian lands until annulled in battle by land or sea.
Father Allouez made a speech, which has been preserved, describing the
power and glory of the French king in extravagant terms.
Talon could not rest. He was on fire to unlock the secret of the great
river and extend the French dominion to the unknown sea into which it
might empty. In 1672, with the approval of Colbert, he planned an
expedition to penetrate the region in which it was supposed to flow.
Joliet was chosen to lead, and at the end of the year he was at
Mackinaw. It was probably no accident that Père Marquette had just been
transferred from La Pointe to that station. But the enthusiastic
intendant was to close his Canadian career. In the very same year Count
Frontenac, the greatest figure in Canadian history, came over to be
governor. He was already past fifty, had seen many campaigns, and had
wasted his fortune at court. He, too, had ideas, and an ambition to do
great things for Canada and France. There was not room enough in the
province for two such men as Talon and he. The intendant obtained his
recall, and disappeared from the scene.
Frontenac at once adopted Talon’s scheme, and gave Joliet leave to go.
Accompanied by Marquette he struck the great river at Prairie du Chien,
June 17, 1673, and then followed its flow far enough to satisfy himself
that it ran to the Mexican gulf. Joliet’s great map has a truly modern
aspect. The importance of this discovery of the Mississippi for the
present purpose is, that it was by way of the great river that the
French, with a notable exception, pushed their way into Minnesota.
A company of Canadian merchants resolved to attempt an opening of trade
about and beyond the head of Lake Superior, and selected as their agent
Daniel Greyloson, the Sieur Duluth, a man of ability and enterprise. He
evidently received some kind of public character from Frontenac, whose
enemies insinuated that he was to be a sharer in profits. In the spring
of 1679 Duluth penetrated to the shores of Mille Lacs, and in a great
Sioux village which he understood to be called “Kathio,” on July 2 he
planted the king’s arms and took possession in the royal name. Duluth,
therefore, was the first white man in Minnesota not ashamed to report
and record the fact. In the same season he retraced his steps to the
head of the lake, and passed down the north shore to Pigeon River,
which forms part of the Canadian boundary. There, on the left bank of
that river, he built a trading post, on the site afterwards occupied by
Fort William.
The next dash into the territory of the North Star State was directed
by one who has been called the most picturesque figure in American
history, Réné Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle. At the age of
twenty-three he broke away from the Jesuits with whom he was in
training, and set sail for Canada with four hundred francs in his
pocket, in the year 1663. When Frontenac came, nine years later, he
found in young La Salle a man after his own heart, and sent him to
France in 1674 to secure royal support for further explorations. Such
support, then withheld, was vouchsafed four years later, when La Salle
was again in Paris on the same errand. By a royal patent signed May 12,
1678, La Salle was authorized to extend the scope of Joliet’s
exploration to the Gulf of Mexico and to pay his expenses by trade,
provided he kept off the preserves of the Montreal traders.
With the king’s patent in hand, it was easy to attract capital and
enlist volunteers. Early in the fall of the same year, La Salle was
back in Canada with his men and outfit, and soon set out for the west.
After battling with a series of delays and discouragements which need
not be narrated, the undaunted leader established himself in a fort
built on the east bank of the Illinois River, near Peoria, Illinois, in
the winter of 1680. There is no record that La Salle had been
authorized to explore the upper Mississippi, but he was not the man to
lose a good opportunity for lack of technical instructions. To lead an
exploring party up that stream he chose Michael Accault, an experienced
voyageur, “prudent, brave, and cool,” and gave him two associates:
Antoine Auguelle, called the Picard du Gay, was one; the other was the
now famous Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar of the Recollet
branch, who came over in the same ship with La Salle in 1678. He had
wandered in many lands, knew some Indian dialects, and shared La
Salle’s passion for adventure.
In a bark canoe laden with their arms, personal belongings, and some
packs of merchandise which served for money between whites and Indians,
the little party set out, after priestly benediction, on February 28,
1680. They dropped down the Illinois to its mouth, and took their
toilsome way against the current of the Mississippi. On April 11, when
near the southern line of Minnesota, they encountered a fleet of
thirty-three canoes carrying a war-party intent on mischief to certain
Illinois tribes. The savages frightened but did not harm the Frenchmen.
Accault was able to inform them that the Illinois Indians had crossed
the river to hunt. They therefore turned homewards, taking the
explorers with them. At the end of the month the flotilla rounded up,
as is believed, at the mouth of Phalen’s Creek, at St. Paul. Here they
abandoned their canoes and set out overland by a trail which would
naturally follow the divide between the waters of the Mississippi and
the St. Croix, for their villages on Mille Lacs. On May 5 they arrived,
and the Frenchmen, compelled to sell their effects to their captors,
were sent to separate villages. The friar lost his portable altar and
brocade vestments; otherwise they were not unkindly treated. Some weeks
passed, when Hennepin and Auguelle were allowed to take a canoe and
start for the mouth of the Wisconsin, where La Salle promised to send
supplies. Accault preferred to join a great hunting party that was
about setting out. Hennepin and his comrade left the hunters at the
mouth of Rum River, and paddling with the current soon found themselves
at the falls called by the Dakotas Mi-ni-i-ha-ha, the rushing water,
then first seen by white men, to which he gave the name of his patron
saint, Anthony of Padua. His description of the cataract and
surroundings is reasonably accurate, although he greatly exaggerated
its height. No rival has claimed the credit of their discovery. Passing
on down the river, they met an Indian who informed them that the
hunting party was not far away, on some tributary. They abandoned their
lonesome journey and joined the hunters, who, the hunt over, were about
returning to their villages.
We left Duluth in his fort at the mouth of Pigeon River in the fall of
1679. He wintered there, and, as he relates, dissatisfied with his
discoveries of the previous summer, resolved on a new adventure. When
the season of 1680 opened he set out with four Frenchmen and two Indian
guides, ascended the Bois Brulé River, portaged over to the head of the
St. Croix, and followed that down to Point Douglass, where he doubtless
recognized the great river. Here he learned that but a short time
before two Frenchmen had passed down in a canoe. He instantly followed,
and after forty-eight hours of lively paddling met the Sioux hunters
and with them Accault, Auguelle, and Hennepin. All the French now
traveled with the Indians to their villages on Mille Lacs, this time up
the Mississippi and Rum rivers. The season was now far advanced and
Duluth was obliged to give up his project of a journey to “the ocean of
the west,” which he believed to be not more than twenty days’ march
distant. Furnished with a rude but truthful map sketched by one of the
Sioux chiefs, and promising the Indians to return to trade, the eight
white men took their departure for home by Prairie du Chien and Green
Bay. Hennepin returned to France and in 1682 published his “Description
of Louisiana.” He knew how to tell an interesting story, and stuck as
close to the truth as most annalists of his day. He assumed to have
been the leader of the exploring party. Fifteen years later there was
published in Holland a book under the title of “A New Discovery of a
Great Country.” It contained all the matter of Hennepin’s
“Description,” and some one hundred and fifty pages more. These
interpolated into the original story a journey of more than three
thousand miles in thirty days, from the mouth of the Illinois to the
Gulf of Mexico and back, before ascending the Mississippi. If Hennepin
himself wrote the injected pages, he was the shameless liar which he
has been frequently declared to be. There is room, however, for the
suggestion that the added pages were the work of some literary hack
employed by dishonest publishers to give the book the appearance of a
new one; but a good degree of charity is necessary to entertain this
theory, as there is no record of any disavowal by Hennepin. Granting
Hennepin to have been the leader, it must be remembered he was an agent
of La Salle. La Salle’s foresight and enterprise sent him to the land
of the Dakotas and to the Falls of St. Anthony.
It was not till the winter of 1682 that La Salle was able to embark
from his fort at Peoria. Sixty days of easy canoe navigation brought
him to one of the islands at the mouth of the Mississippi. There in the
month of April, under his royal patent, he set up a cross and
proclaimed the sovereignty of Louis le Grand over the whole valley of
the great river and all its tributaries. On the “procès-verbal” of that
transaction rests every land title in Minnesota.
Duluth and La Salle by means of Accault’s reports revealed to Count
Frontenac the magnificence of the upper Mississippi region, and Father
Hennepin’s book, dedicated to the king, seems to have inspired Louis
XIV with a desire to occupy and possess that goodly land. In 1686 the
able and experienced Nicholas Perrot, who had been appointed commandant
of the west with orders to make an establishment there, built a fort on
the east bank of Lake Pepin, and called it Fort St. Antoine. The site
has been clearly identified about two miles below the “Burlington”
railroad station of Stockholm, Pepin County, Wisconsin. Summoned the
following year to lead a contingent of voyageurs and savages in the
campaign against the Iroquois in the Genesee valley of western New
York, he did not return to Fort St. Antoine till late in 1688. To
satisfy any lingering doubts about the legitimate sovereignty of those
parts, he made formal proclamation of his king’s lordship over all the
countries and rivers he had seen and would see. Perrot was too useful a
man to be left in the wilderness, and was presently ordered on other
service and his fort left empty.
Another attempt at settlement on the upper Mississippi was made by a
Canadian, Pierre Le Sueur, an associate of Perrot, who in 1694
established a trading post on Prairie Island in the Mississippi, about
nine miles below Hastings, the same on which Groseilliers and Radisson
are imagined to have camped in 1655. Le Sueur stayed over one winter in
the west, and returned to Montreal to discover to Frontenac a new
project. He had located a copper mine. He hastened to Paris to obtain
the king’s license, then necessary for mining operations. After a
struggle of two years he got his permit and started for Canada. The
English caught him and held him a prisoner for some months. Returning
to France, he found his license canceled, because of a resolution of
the government to abandon all trade west of Mackinaw. At length Le
Sueur was excepted from the rule and his license renewed. In 1699 he
sailed with the expedition of D’Iberville, which was to make and did
make the first settlement out of which New Orleans grew.
In the midsummer following he made his way with a sailboat and two
canoes up the Mississippi, reaching Fort Snelling September 19. He
doubtless knew where he was going, for without delay he turned into the
Minnesota River, which he followed to the mouth of the Mah-ka-to or
Blue Earth. A short distance above, the latter stream receives the Le
Sueur. At their junction he built a fort to which he gave the name of a
treasury official of Paris who had supported him, “Fort L’Huillier.”
The spot has been identified by a local archæologist. He was obliged to
pacify with presents the Sioux who were displeased because he did not
build at the mouth of the Minnesota. His company passed a comfortable
winter, but before it was over they had to come down to buffalo beef
without salt. Some of them could put away six pounds along with four
bowls of broth daily. In the spring Le Sueur departed for Biloxi, with
his shallop loaded with bluish green earth taken from a bluff near his
fort. He never saw Minnesota again, and no later explorer has
rediscovered his mine. The state geologist has not found the least
trace of copper in the region.
The last decade of the seventeenth century was one of discouragement
for old France and new. Louis XIV, decrepit and bankrupt, dominated by
Madame Maintenon and a group of ecclesiastics, had, by revoking the
Edict of Nantes in 1685, driven three hundred thousand and more of the
most industrious and skillful artisans and tradesmen of France into
exile. The dragonades, countenanced even by such men as Fénelon and
Bossuet, had spread ruin throughout whole provinces. Foreign wars along
with domestic convulsions had almost beggared the kingdom.
Frontenac had died in office in 1698, and Canadian affairs, fallen into
less capable hands, were languishing. There was lack of men and money
to protect the northwest trade. It needed protection. The English,
holding the Iroquois in alliance, had pushed their trade into the Ohio
valley and the lower peninsula of Michigan. The Sacs and Foxes of the
Illinois country, old allies of the French, had broken away, and closed
all the roads from the lakes to the Mississippi unless that of the St.
Croix. For these reasons the Canadian government had in 1699 withdrawn
the garrison from Mackinaw, abandoned all posts farther west, and
ordered the concentration of Indian trade at Montreal. It was not till
after the war of the Spanish Succession was closed by the treaty of
Utrecht, in 1713, that any thought could be taken for the revival of
trade and missions in the Mississippi valley. England might at that
time have stripped France of all her transatlantic holdings, but
contented herself with Newfoundland and the posts on Hudson’s Bay.
In 1714 the French garrison was reëstablished at Mackinaw, which
remained the headquarters of trade with the Algonquins of the northwest
till far into the nineteenth century. Three years later Duluth’s old
fort on Pigeon River was reoccupied, to become a great entrepôt of
trade with the inland natives; a year later still La Pointe received a
small garrison.
Ten years passed before the effort to plant French trade and missions
was renewed on the upper Mississippi. Charlevoix, the historian of New
France, was over in 1720 and traveled by way of Mackinaw and Green Bay
to New Orleans. By his advice the French government resolved to plant
an establishment in the country of the Sioux, as a centre of trade and
mission work, and as a point of departure for expeditions to gain the
shores of the western sea. The hostile Sacs and Foxes having been
placated, an expedition was planned with all the care which long
experience could suggest. For leader was chosen Réné Boucher, Sieur de
la Perrière, the same who in 1708 had headed the raiding party which
descended on Haverhill, thirty-two miles north of Boston, where his
Indians butchered thirty or forty of the English. Two Jesuit fathers,
Guinas and De Gonor, attached themselves to the expedition, and asked
for a supply of astronomical instruments. In June, 1727, the expedition
set out from Montreal and took the then main traveled road by way of
Mackinaw and Green Bay. A letter of De Gonor, which has been preserved,
gives an interesting account of the journey.
On September 17, 1727, at noon, La Perrière beached his canoes on a low
point of land on the west shore of Lake Pepin, near the steamboat
landing at Frontenac. Putting his men to work with axes, he had them
all comfortably housed by the end of October. There were three log
buildings, each 16 feet wide; one 30, a second 38, and the third 25
feet long. Surrounding them was a stockade of tree-trunks 12 feet out
of ground, 100 feet square, “with two good bastions.” The fort was
named “Beauharnois” after the governor-general of Canada. To the first
mission on Minnesota soil the priests gave the title, “Mission of St.
Michael the Archangel.” On November 4 the company celebrated the
birthday of the governor, but were obliged by the state of the weather
to postpone to the night of the 14th the crowning event of their
programme. They then set off “some very fine rockets.” When the
visiting Indians saw the stars falling from heaven, the women and
children took to the woods, while the men begged for an end of such
marvelous medicine. The Sioux were not disposed to be hospitable, and
the good behavior of the Sacs and Foxes could not be counted on. In the
following season La Perrière departed with the Jesuits and eight other
Frenchmen for Montreal. The post was held, and occupied off and on for
twenty years or more. No settlement was made about it, no permanent
mission work was established, and no expedition towards the Pacific was
undertaken. The Indians were unreliable, the French had other interests
to attend to, and, contrary to expectation, game was scarce in the
region.
One of the successors of La Perrière in command of Fort Beauharnois was
Captain Legardeur Saint Pierre, the same officer who in 1753 at his
post on French Creek, not far from Pittsburg, was waited on by young
Mr. Washington, bearing Governor Dinwiddie’s invitation to the French
to get out of Virginian territory.
Another French adventure, although of slight import to Minnesota,
deserves mention. The Sieur de la Verendrye, commanding the French post
on Lake Nipigon, fell in with the Jesuit Guinas, who went out with La
Perrière in 1727, and was inflamed by him with a desire to find the
western ocean. At his own post he had found an Indian, Ochaga by name,
who sketched for him an almost continuous water route thither; another
offered to be his guide. He hastened to Montreal, secured the assent of
the governor-general, Beauharnois, and in 1731 dispatched his advance
party. It reached the foot of Rainy Lake that year, and there built a
fort on the Canadian side. The next year the expedition made its way to
the southwest margin of the Lake of the Woods and there built Fort
Charles, giving it the Christian name of the governor-general. Whether
this fort was on Minnesota soil is undecided.
So ardent was Verendrye’s passion for the glory of discovering the way
to the western sea that, encouraged by the Canadian authorities, he
kept up the quest for more than ten years longer. On January 12, 1743,
the Chevalier Verendrye, as related, climbed one of the foothills of
the Shining or Rocky Mountains, and gave it over. Sixty years later
Lewis and Clark passed that barrier and won their way to the Pacific.
CHAPTER II
THE ENGLISH DOMINION
If the French failed to establish any permanent settlement in
Minnesota, it was not wholly because their passion for trade
discouraged home-building and cultivation; they had interests elsewhere
in America more important than those of the northwest. La Salle’s
proclamation of 1682 asserted dominion of the whole region drained by
the Mississippi and its tributaries. For a time the Ohio was regarded
as the main river and the upper Mississippi as an affluent. Before the
close of the seventeenth century both French and English were awake to
the beauty and richness of the Ohio valley and the Illinois country.
The building of a fort by Cadillac at Detroit in 1701 revealed the firm
purpose of the French to maintain their claim of sovereignty. In the
treaty of Utrecht, 1713, the English, with a long look ahead, secured
the concession that the Iroquois were the “subjects” of England. In a
series of negotiations culminating in a treaty at Lancaster, Pa., the
Iroquois ceded to the English all their lands west of the Alleghanies
and south of the great lakes. On this cession the English put the
liberal construction that the Iroquois were owners of all territory
over which they had extended their victorious forays, and these they
had good right to convey. In 1748 the Ohio Company, formed in Virginia,
sent Christopher Gist to explore the Ohio valley. The next year a
governor of Canada sent an expedition down the Ohio to conciliate the
Indians and to bury leaden plates at chosen points, asserting the
dominion of France. A line of fortified posts was stretched by the
French from Quebec to Fort Charles below St. Louis, on the Mississippi.
When in 1754 a French battalion drove off the party of English
backwoodsmen who had begun the erection of a fort at the forks of the
Ohio, and proceeded to build Fort Duquesne, the French and Indian War
began. The course of this struggle, exceeding by far in point of
magnitude the war of the Revolution, cannot here be followed. At the
close of the campaign of 1757 the French seemed triumphant. In the year
following they lost Fort Duquesne, in 1759 Quebec, and in 1760
Montreal. The power of the French in North America was broken.
Historians of Canada still name the epoch that of “the Conquest.”
The diplomatic settlement of this contest awaited the outcome of a
great war raging in Europe, the so-called Seven Years’ War of Frederick
the Great against Austria, Russia, and France. England was early drawn
into the support of the Prussian monarch, and supplied his military
chest and sent an army to the continent. France presumptuously aspired
to wrest the empire of the seas from Britain, with the result that her
navies were sunk or battered to useless wrecks. In a separate treaty
signed at Paris, February 10, 1763, France surrendered to England all
her possessions and claims east of the Mississippi except the city of
New Orleans and the island embracing it. The British government,
however, was none too desirous to accept this cession. It was a matter
of lively debate in the ministry whether it would not be the better
policy to leave Canada to the French and strip her of her West Indian
possessions. That course might have been adopted, but for the influence
exerted by Benjamin Franklin’s famous “Canada Pamphlet,” which is still
“interesting reading.” Franklin was in England while the question was
pending, and published his views in answer to “Remarks” ascribed to
Edmund Burke.
It may be well to note here that in the year preceding the treaty of
Paris (1762) France had taken the precaution to assign to Spain, by a
secret treaty, all her North American possessions west of the
Mississippi, in order to put them out of the reach of England.
It was the 8th of September, 1760, when the capitulation of Montreal
was signed, turning all Canada over to the British. Five days later
Amherst, the victorious commander, dispatched Major Robert Hayes with
two hundred rangers to take possession of the western posts. Expected
opposition at Detroit was not offered, and that important strategic
point was occupied on November 29. The season was then too late for
further movements, and more than a year passed before garrisons were
established at Mackinaw and Green Bay. The British were none too
welcome among the savages, long accustomed to French dealings and
alliances. But French influence was not what it had formerly been.
During the long struggle for the mastery of the continent the Indian
trade had languished, and in remoter regions the savages had reverted
to their ancient ways and standards of living. The trade revived,
however, under British rule, which brought peace and protection. In
1762 the British commandant gave a permit to a Frenchman named Pinchon
to trade on the Minnesota River, then in Spanish territory. Four years
later the old post on Pigeon River was revived and trade was reopened
in northern Minnesota. Prairie du Chien became in the course of a
decade a village of some three hundred families, mostly French
half-breeds, and remained a supply station for the Indian trade of
southern and central Minnesota till far into the nineteenth century.
The British authorities in Canada indulged no romantic passion to
discover the south or western sea, and were indifferent for a time to
the development and protection of trade in the northwest. This fact
lends brilliance to the adventures of a single American born subject
who in 1766 set out alone for the wilderness, resolved to cross the
Rocky Mountains, descend to the western ocean, and cross the Straits of
Anion to Cathay. Such was the bold enterprise of Jonathan Carver of
Canterbury, Connecticut, at thirty-four years of age. He was not
unlettered, for he had studied medicine; and he was not inexperienced,
for he had served with some distinction as a line officer in a colonial
regiment in the French and Indian War. Departing from Boston in June
(1766), he traveled the usual way by the lakes to Mackinaw, where he
found that versatile Irish gentleman, Major Robert Rogers, his comrade
in arms, in command. There is a tradition, needing confirmation, that
this officer “grub-staked” Carver for trade with the Sioux and possible
operations in land. However, he left Mackinaw in September supplied
with credits on traders for the goods serving for money with Indians,
and taking the Fox-Wisconsin route, found himself at the Falls of St.
Anthony on the 17th of November. Although he estimated the descent of
the cataract at thirty feet, it impressed him only as the striking
feature of a beautiful landscape. “On the whole,” says he, “when the
Falls are included, ... a more pleasing and picturesque view, I
believe, cannot be found throughout the universe.” After a short
excursion above the falls, Carver took his way up the Minnesota, as he
estimated, two hundred miles. He passed the winter with a band of Sioux
Indians which he fails to name, and in a place he does not describe,
and in the spring came down to St. Paul with a party of three hundred,
bringing the remains of their dead to be deposited in the well-known
“Indian mounds” on Dayton’s Bluff. The cave in the white sand rock
entered by him on his upward journey, and which bore his name till
obliterated by railroad cuttings, was nearly beneath the Indian mounds.
His report of a funeral oration delivered here by one of the chiefs so
impressed the German poet Schiller that he wrote his “Song of the
Nadowessee Chief,” which Goethe praised as one of his best. Two very
distinguished Englishmen, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Sir John
Herschel, made metrical translations of this poem in the fashion of
their time.
This journey was but a preliminary one to find and explore the
Minnesota valley and acquaint Carver with the tribes dwelling there and
their languages. He had conceived that a short march from the head of
that river would take him to the Missouri. This he would ascend to its
sources in the mountains, and crossing over these he would float down
the Oregon to the ocean. Major Rogers, as he relates, had engaged to
send him supplies to the Falls of St. Anthony. Receiving none, Carver
hastened down to Prairie du Chien, to be again disappointed.
Resolved on prosecuting his great adventure, he decided to apply to the
traders at Pigeon River for the necessary merchandise. Paddling back up
the Mississippi, he took the St. Croix route to Lake Superior, and
coasted along the north shore to that post, only to find, after many
hundred miles of laborious travel, that the traders had no goods to
spare him. He could do nothing but return to his home. In 1768 he went
to England, hoping to interest the government in his project, and in
the following year published his book of travels. It is now known that
little if any of it was his own composition. His account of the customs
of the Indians was pieced together from Charlevoix and Lahontan. But
the work of his editor, a certain Dr. Littsom, was so well done that
“Carver’s Travels” have been more widely read than the original works
drawn upon.
There is very doubtful testimony to the effect that in 1774 the king
made Carver a present of £1373 13s. 8d., and ordered the dispatch of a
public vessel to carry him and a party of one hundred and fifty men by
way of New Orleans to the upper Mississippi, to take possession of
certain lands. The Revolutionary War breaking out, the expedition was
abandoned.
Carver died in poverty in England in 1780, and might be dismissed but
for a sequel which lingers in Minnesota to the present time. After his
death there was brought to day a deed purporting to have been signed by
two Indian chiefs, “at the great cave,” May 1, 1767, conveying to their
“good brother Jonathan” a tract of land lying on the east side of the
Mississippi one hundred miles wide, running from the Falls of St.
Anthony down to the mouth of the Chippeway, embracing nearly two
million acres. A married daughter, by his English wife, and her husband
bargained their alleged interest to a London company for ten per cent.
of the realized profits, but that company soon abandoned their venture.
Carver left behind him an American family, a widow, two sons, and five
daughters. In 1806 one Samuel Peters, an Episcopal clergyman of
Vermont, represented in a petition to Congress that he had acquired the
rights of these heirs to the Carver purchase, and prayed to have it
confirmed to him. This Peters claim was kept before Congress for
seventeen years. In 1822 the Mississippi Land Company was organized in
New York to prosecute it. They seem to have been taken seriously, for
in the next year a Senate committee, in a report of January 23, advised
the rejection of the claim as utterly without merit. But it has been
repeatedly renewed, and doubtless at the present time there are worthy
people dreaming of pleasures and palaces when they come into their
rights.
For the first three years following the Conquest all Canada remained
under military rule. In 1763 George III by proclamation established
four provinces with separate governments, but the great northwest
region was included in none of these. That remained as crown land,
reserved for the use of the Indians under royal protection. All
squatters were ordered to depart and all persons were forbidden to
attempt purchases of land from the Indians. This prohibition alone was
fatal to Carver’s claim. The United States could not possibly confirm a
purchase impossible under English law. It was the express design of the
British government to prevent the thirteen colonies from gaining ground
to the west, and “leave the savages to enjoy their deserts in quiet.”
In 1774, about the time when Parliament was extending its novel sway
over the American colonies, the “Quebec act” was passed. This act
extended the Province of Quebec to the Mississippi and gave to
Minnesota East its first written constitution. This provided for a
government by a governor and an appointed legislative council, but it
was never actually effective west of Lake Michigan.
Under the definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the
United States, the dominion of the former over Minnesota East ceased,
but that of the United States government did not immediately supervene.
Virginia under her charter of 1609 had claimed the whole Northwest, and
her army, commanded by General George Rogers Clark, had in 1779
established her power in the Illinois country. Three years later the
county of Illinois was created and an executive appointed by Governor
Patrick Henry. The act of Congress of March 1, 1784, accepting the
cession of her northwestern lands, amounting to a concession of
colorable title, ended Virginia’s technical government in Minnesota
East. From that date to the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 (July 13)
this region remained unorganized Indian country. This great ordinance
made it part of “the Northwest Territory” and gave it a written
constitution. But this was nugatory for the reason that although Great
Britain had in form surrendered the territory in the treaty of 1783,
she continued her occupation for thirteen years longer. Her pretext for
maintaining her garrisons at Detroit, Mackinaw, Green Bay, and
elsewhere was the failure of the United States to prevent the states
from confiscating the estates of loyalists and hindering English
creditors from collecting their debts in full sterling value, as
provided in the treaty. The actual reason was an expectation, or hope,
that affairs would take such a turn that the whole or the greater part
of the Ohio-Illinois country might revert to England. A new British
fort was built on the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio in 1794. The
surrender of this to General Anthony Wayne after the battle of Fallen
Timbers, in August of that year, has been regarded as the last act in
the war of the Revolution. By the Jay treaty it was agreed that the
western posts should be given up to the United States, and on or about
the 12th of July, 1796, the British commanders hauled down their flags
and marched out their garrisons.
There was a powerful interest which had encouraged the British
authorities to hold their grip on the Northwest. The revival of the
fur-trade after the Conquest was tardy, but soon after Carver’s time a
notable development took place. Another Connecticut Yankee, Peter Pond
by name, in 1774 established a trading post at Traverse des Sioux on
the Minnesota. On a map left by him it is marked “Fort Pond.” The trade
west of the lakes, however, early fell into the hands of adventurous
Scotchmen of Montreal, among whom competition became so sharp as to
lead to what would have been called, a hundred years later, a “trust”
or “combine.” An informal agreement between the principal traders at
Montreal ripened, in 1787, into “The Northwest Company,” with
headquarters in that city. This company promptly and effectually
organized the northwestern fur-trade. It established a hierarchy of
posts and stations, and introduced a quasi-military administration of
the employees. It wisely took into its service the old French and
half-breed “engagés and voyageurs,” and rewarded them so liberally as
to win them from illicit traffic. For forty years the Northwest Company
was the ruling power west of the lakes, although it had not, as had the
Hudson’s Bay Company, its model, any authorized political functions.
Its policy and discipline served in place of laws and police.
The greater distributing and collecting ports were Detroit, Mackinaw,
and Fort William; and next in importance were such places as La Pointe,
Fond du Lac, and Prairie du Chien, from which the trade of the upper
Mississippi was managed. Fond du Lac, near the mouth of the St. Louis
River, at the head of Lake Superior, was the gateway to an immense
region abounding in the finest peltries and occupied by a large
Chippeway population, eager to buy the white man’s guns and ammunition,
knives, kettles, tobacco, and, most dearly prized of all, his deadly
fire-water. From Fond du Lac there was a canoe route to the lakes which
are the proximate sources of the great river. It led up the St. Louis
River to the mouth of the East Savanna near the Floodwood railroad
station. From the head of the East Savanna a short portage led to the
West Savanna, an affluent of Prairie River which empties into Sandy
Lake, near the southwest corner of Aitkin County. That water covers
near half a township and discharges by a short outlet into the
Mississippi, some twenty-five miles above the village and railroad
station of Aitkin. Here in 1794 the Sandy Lake post of the Northwest
Company was built. There was a stockade one hundred feet square, of
hewn logs one foot square, and thirteen feet out of ground. Within were
the necessary buildings, and without, fenced in, a considerable garden.
From Sandy Lake radiated numerous “jackknife posts,” where the
bushrangers wintered and swapped gewgaws for pelts. For many years
Sandy Lake was the most important point in Minnesota, the chief factor
there the big man of the Chippeway country.
CHAPTER III
MINNESOTA WEST ANNEXED
The reader is asked to recall the cession by France, in 1762, of her
American territory west of the Mississippi to Spain. The French
population of Louisiana, resenting this arbitrary transfer, drove out
the Spanish governor who came in 1766, and organized for a free state
under French protection. In 1769 a Spanish fleet of twenty-four sail,
bringing an army of twenty-six hundred men and fifty cannon, under the
command of a forceful captain-general, securely established the power
of Spain. The laws of Castile, derived from the civil code of Rome,
were put in force, and they continue in force to the present day. By a
line about on the latitude of Memphis a province of Upper Louisiana was
set apart and placed under the control of a lieutenant-governor
residing at St. Louis. Minnesota West was of course a part of this
jurisdiction.
In the last years of the eighteenth century Napoleon Bonaparte was
absolute in France, although not yet crowned emperor. Among the schemes
with which his imagination was busied was one to establish another new
France on the western continent. Louisiana had been a costly dependency
for Spain, and it was only by a reluctant but timely concession of the
right of navigation and deposit that an armed descent of Americans from
the Ohio valley on New Orleans had been averted. That would have put an
end to Spanish rule. Spain willingly retroceded to France for a nominal
consideration, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, March 13, 1801.
Already Napoleon had formed a definite plan and begun preparations to
send 25,000 veteran soldiers to Louisiana, under convoy of a powerful
fleet. His secret could not be kept, and England made ready to attack
the expedition at sea. Napoleon had reason to expect that she would
descend on New Orleans herself, and take possession of the province.
While he was in this frame of mind the American minister, under
instructions, expressed the desire of his government to buy the city
and island of New Orleans and thus make the Mississippi the
international boundary to its mouth. To his surprise Napoleon offered
to sell the whole province, spite of his agreement with Spain never to
cede to any other power. The Louisiana purchase was consummated by
treaty April 30, 1803. Meantime the province had remained in the
possession of Spain, and it was not till November 30 that she turned
New Orleans over to the French. Twenty days later the United States
came into possession. The upper province of Louisiana was held but one
day by a French commissary, who on March 10, 1804, at St. Louis,
conveyed it to the United States. The cost to the government was three
and six tenths cents per acre.
The actual surrender of Upper Louisiana in 1804 added geographically
Minnesota West, included in that province, to Minnesota East, then part
of Crawford County, Indiana. The whole region was still occupied by
aborigines, and a generation was to pass before any of it became white
man’s country. Two great nations divided the territory: the Chippeways,
of Algonquin stock, occupying the north and east; the Sioux or Dakotas
the south and west. Both were immigrant from early eastern habitats,
the Chippeways moving north of the lakes (Lake Superior split the
stream), the Sioux south of the same. When first seen by white men, the
latter held the country about the sources of the Mississippi, the head
of Lake Superior, and to the St. Croix. The Chippeways were first to
obtain guns from the white man, and began at once to push the Sioux
before them. In Hennepin’s time (1680) the principal villages of the
Sioux were in the Mille Lacs region. By the close of the Revolutionary
War the Chippeways had driven them south of the Crow Wing and west of
the Mississippi, leaving them only a precarious hold on the margin of
their old hunting grounds. From their earliest encounters the two
nations had been unremitting foes. But for occasional truces they were
always at war; and this perennial feud did not cease till the
government in 1863 moved the Sioux beyond the Missouri, out of the
reach of the Chippeways. The two nations possessed in common the
well-known characteristics of the red man, physical, mental, and
social, but a difference of environment had established marked
peculiarities. The Chippeways were men of the forest and stream; their
women gathered wild rice, excellent for food. The Sioux, men of the
prairie, were the taller and more agile, but the Chippeways outmatched
them for strength and endurance.
Both peoples had already been profoundly affected by contact with white
men. If the missionary had not broken the power of the medicine-man and
converted them to the true faith, the trader had revolutionized their
whole manner of life. He had given the Indian the gun for his bow and
arrows, axes and knives of steel for those of stone, and the iron
kettle for the earthen pot. The Mackinaw blanket and the trader’s
strouds had replaced garments made from skins, and ornaments of shell
and feathers had given way to those of metal and glass.
Before the trader the Indian had hunted for subsistence, content when
he had supplied his family and dependents with food and clothing. The
trader made him a pot-hunter, killing mostly for the skins alone. Game
animals became scarce about the villages, and hunting expeditions had
to be made to distant grounds, where the enemies’ parties would be met
and fought. The Indian had become a vassal to the trader, who outfitted
him for the hunt, and at its end took his furs in payment at rates
little understood by the man who did not know that the white metal was
worth more than the red. If anything remained from the Indian’s pack it
was very likely to be forthwith spent for the highly diluted whiskey of
the trader. The Indian’s fondness for spirits and their effects was at
least equal to the white man’s, and he had not become immune from
immemorial indulgence. The resulting crime and misery are beyond
description,—conception, almost. And the trader’s excuse was that the
Indians would not trade if whiskey was not furnished, and that it was
absurd for one to refuse it when all the rest were selling. Along with
the white man came his epidemic diseases. Smallpox and measles
depopulated villages and almost extinguished tribes. A nameless
contagion was only less deadly. Unbridled commerce with the women
multiplied half-breeds, possessing frequently all of the vices and few
of the virtues of both races. The half-breed was always a misfit,
because he could assume by turns the character of white or red,
according to convenience and profit.
All the Minnesota Indians were clients of the Northwest Company, unless
where along the northern border the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company
were drawing off the trade by abundant whiskey. This competition at
length brought the two companies to open war.
Long before he became president, Jefferson was curious to unlock the
secret of the unknown west and learn the road to the Pacific. It was
not till the early winter of 1803, however, that he was able to
persuade Congress to make a small appropriation for a military
expedition of discovery, and then under color of “extending the
external commerce of the United States.” And more than a year passed
before the expedition of Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis May 4,
1804.
A similar expedition on a smaller scale left St. Louis in August, 1805,
to discover the source of the Mississippi. It was led by First
Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike of the First Infantry, a native of
New Jersey, then twenty-six years of age. “He was five feet eight
inches tall; eyes blue; hair light; abstemious, temperate, and
unremitting in duty.” If there could have been doubt of his fitness for
the enterprise, the sequel fully justified his selection. His
instructions were carefully drawn to keep him and his errand within
constitutional limits. The first entry of his journal reads, “Sailed
from my encampment, near St. Louis, at 4 o’clock, P. M., on Friday the
9th of August, 1805: with one sergeant, two corporals, and seventeen
privates, in a keel boat, 70 feet long, provisioned for four months.”
On the 21st of September Pike reached the mouth of the Minnesota, and
“encamped on the northeast point of the big island,” which still bears
his name. The next day Little Crow, grandfather of the chief of the
same name who led the outbreak of 1862, came with his band of one
hundred and fifty warriors. On the third day a council was held under
the shelter of the sails, on the beach. In his speech Pike let the
Indians know that their Great Father no longer lived beyond the great
salt water, and that the Canadian traders who tried to keep them in
ignorance of American independence were “bad birds”; that traders were
forbidden to sell rum, and the Indians ought to coöperate in preventing
them; and that the Sioux and Chippeways ought to live in peace
together. In particular he asked that they allow the United States to
select two tracts of land, one at the mouth of the St. Croix, the other
above the mouth of the Minnesota. On these the Great Father would
establish military posts, and public trading factories, where Indians
could get goods cheaper than from the traders.
The well-advised officer had already crossed the hands of the two head
chiefs. He closed his speech with a reference to their “father’s
tobacco and some other trifling things” as evidence of good will, and
promised some liquor “to clear their throats.” The chiefs saw no need
of their signing any paper, but did it to please the generous orator.
The “treaty” is a curiosity in diplomacy. The first article grants,
what the United States already possessed, “full sovereignty and power”
over two tracts of land: one of nine miles square at the mouth of the
St. Croix; the other “from below the confluence of the Mississippi and
St. Peter’s (Minnesota) up the Mississippi to include the Falls of St.
Anthony, extending nine miles on each side of the river.” Pike
estimated the area of the latter grant to be about one hundred thousand
acres and the value to be $200,000. The second article provides that
“the United States shall pay ... dollars.” The final article permits
the Sioux to retain the only right they could legally convey, that of
occupancy for hunting and their other accustomed uses.
Five days were passed at the Falls of St. Anthony, partly because of
the sickness of some of the men. Pike took measurements and made a map.
He found the depth of the fall to be sixteen and a half feet. The
portage on the east bank was two hundred and sixty rods. The navigation
of the river above proved so difficult that it was not till the 16th of
October that the party reached the mouth of the Swan River. It was the
expectation of his general and of Pike himself that the march to the
source of the Mississippi and back would certainly be finished before
the close of the season. By the time he was ready to leave the falls,
September 30, it was evident that the journey could not be accomplished
in any such period. Resolved to prosecute it, and not go back defeated,
he formed the plan to push on to the mouth of the Crow Wing, put his
stores and part of his men under cover, and go forward on foot to his
destination. On the way up river he had a foretaste of the hardships
which awaited him. As he says, he “literally performed the duties of
astronomer, surveyor, commanding officer, clerk, spy, and guide.”
Finding it impossible to force his boats through the rapids below
Little Falls, he selected a favorable site below the junction of the
Swan with the Mississippi (the spot has been clearly identified), where
he built, in the course of a week, two blockhouses, and in them
bestowed his baggage and provisions. Here he remained till December 10,
occupied with hunting, chopping out “peroques,” and building bob-sleds.
It took thirty-four days to reach Sandy Lake, where the party met with
generous hospitality at the post of the Northwest Company. A week was
passed here in which the men replaced their sleds with the traineaux de
glace, or toboggans, used by the voyageurs. On February 1 the leader,
marching in advance, reached the establishment of the Northwest Company
on the western margin of Leech Lake, and highly relished a “good dish
of coffee, biscuit, butter, and cheese for supper.” Pike had now
accomplished his voyage by reaching the main source of the Mississippi.
Seventeen days were passed here, including three devoted to an
excursion on snowshoes to Cass Lake, then known as Upper Red Cedar
Lake. He now believed himself to have reached the “upper source of the
Mississippi,” but wasted not a word of rhetoric on the achievement.
While resting at Leech Lake Lieutenant Pike wrote out for the eye of
Mr. Hugh McGillis, director of the Fond du Lac department of the
Northwest Company, there present, a formal demand that he should
smuggle no more British goods into the country, haul down the British
flag at all his posts, give no more flags or medals to Indians, and
hold no political intercourse with them. Mr. McGillis in a
communication equally formal promised to do all those things. Pike
estimated that the government was losing some $26,000 a year of unpaid
customs. The two functionaries parted with mutual expressions of
regard, and the genial lieutenant started off home with a cariole and
dog team worth $200 presented by the gracious factor. Before his
departure, however, he had his riflemen shoot down the English jack
flying over the post. The return journey, ending April 30, 1806, cannot
be followed. On the 10th of the month the expedition passed around the
Falls of St. Anthony, and the journal records, “The appearance of the
Falls was much more tremendous than when we ascended.” The ice was
floating all day. The leader congratulated himself on having
accomplished every wish, without the loss of a man. “Ours was the first
canoe,” he says, “that ever crossed this portage.” In that belief he
was content. Pike’s journal was not published till 1810, and it
included his account of an expedition to the sources of the Arkansas,
and an enforced tour in New Spain. It had but slight effect on the
authorities at Washington, and still less on the public. The War of
1812 was brewing and there was little concern about this remote
wilderness. The effect of Pike’s dramatic incursion, and his fine
speeches to the Sioux and Chippeways soon wore off, the British flag
went up over the old trading posts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the
Northwest Company resumed its accustomed control over the Indians. It
is not likely that many of their goods paid the duties at Mackinaw.
When the war broke out the British-American authorities used all
needful means in the way of presents and promises to hold the
attachment of the nations. Some of the principal agents of the
Northwest Company were actually commissioned in the British service and
collected considerable bodies of Indians and half-breeds for the
western operations. The news of the end of the war was slow in reaching
these allies, and it was not till May 24, 1815, that the British
captain commanding at Prairie du Chien, having received his orders,
hauled down his flag and marched away with his garrison for Green Bay
and Montreal. The treaty of Ghent had been concluded eight months and
some days before. A serious proposition made by the British
plenipotentiaries for negotiating that treaty proves that the British
had cherished the hope that they might retain the great Northwest under
their virtual dominion. The proposition was that the two powers should
agree that the territory north and west of the “Greenville line of
1795,” roughly a zigzag from Cleveland to Cincinnati, should remain as
a permanent barrier between their boundaries. Both parties were to be
prohibited from buying land of the Indians, who were thus to be left in
actual occupation. The British would continue to control their trade
and hold their accustomed allegiance. The American commissioners
refused of course to entertain the proposal.
CHAPTER IV
FORT SNELLING ESTABLISHED
Readers of Irving’s “Astoria” know how a young German, coming to
America in the last year of the Revolution, by accident learned of the
possible profits to be won in the fur-trade, and how he presently
embarked in it. In the course of twenty-five years he made a million
dollars, a colossal private fortune for that day. In 1809 he obtained
from the New York legislature a charter, and organized the American Fur
Company. The war suspended the development of its plans. In 1816 Mr.
John Jacob Astor had little difficulty in securing an act of Congress
restricting Indian trade to American citizens. This patriotic statute
was intended to put the Northwest Company out of business on American
territory. It did, and that company sold out to Mr. Astor all its posts
and outfits south of the Canadian boundary at prices satisfactory to
the purchaser. In 1821 the Northwest Company was merged into the
Hudson’s Bay Company.
The American Fur Company adopted the policy of filling its leading
positions with young Americans of good education and enterprise, and
taking over the old engagés and voyageurs, inured to the service and
useless for any other. These old campaigners easily won over the
Indians to the new company and taught them to look to a Great Father at
Washington. The chief western stations for the trade of the upper
Mississippi were Mackinaw and Prairie du Chien. There was now an
“interest” which desired the development of the upper country; and it
lost no time in moving on the government. In the year last mentioned
(1816) four companies of United States infantry were sent to Prairie du
Chien, where they at once built Fort Crawford. In the next year, Pike’s
reports having apparently been forgotten, Major Stephen H. Long of the
Engineers traveled to Fort Snelling and in his report gave a
conditional approval to Pike’s selection of a site for a fort; but it
was not till the winter of 1819 that the government was moved to
establish a military post at the junction of the St. Peter’s with the
Mississippi. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Leavenworth was ordered February
10 to proceed from Detroit, Michigan, to that point with a detachment
of the Fifth Infantry.
Taking the Fox-Wisconsin route, his party of eighty-two persons reached
Prairie du Chien July 1. “Scarcely an hour” after his arrival this
number was increased by the birth of Charlotte Ouisconsin (Clarke) Van
Cleve, long known to all Minnesotians, whose life was not ended till
1907.
The command arrived at Mendota August 24 and was at once put to
building the log houses of a cantonment. The site was near the present
ferry and the hamlet of Mendota, where a sharp eye may still note
traces of foundations. In September a reinforcement of one hundred and
twenty arrived. In the spring of 1820 the companies were put into camp
above the fort, near the great spring known to all early settlers. It
was named Camp Coldwater. In July the command passed to Colonel Joseph
Snelling, who held it till near the time of his death in 1828. A
daughter born in his family a short time after their arrival was the
first white child born in Minnesota.
Colonel Snelling at once began the erection of a fort, which, however,
was not ready for occupation till October, 1822. It was a wooden
construction, for which the logs were cut on the Rum River. In 1821 a
rude sawmill was built at “the Falls” which converted the logs into
lumber. This was of course the first sawmill in Minnesota. Two years
later a “run of buhrs” was put in, and a first flour mill established.
Colonel Snelling named his work “Fort Saint Anthony,” but in 1824, upon
recommendation of Major-General Winfield Scott, after a visit to the
place, that name was changed to “Fort Snelling,” in recognition of the
enterprise and efficiency of its builder.
The reader must not be allowed to fear that the government was
trespassing on Indian ground when building Fort Snelling. Pike had
bargained for the site in 1805, but the government for fourteen years
neither took possession nor tendered payment. The Senate on ratifying
the treaty filled the blank in article II by inserting $2000, and
Congress in 1819 made an appropriation of that amount. In anticipation
of the dispatch of a detachment of troops, Major Forsyth was ordered to
transport $2000 worth of goods to the Sioux country and deliver them in
payment for the lands ceded to Pike. It chanced that his boats arrived
at Prairie du Chien in time to make the further ascent of the river in
company with the command of Colonel Leavenworth. The payment was
happily managed. On his way up river Major Forsyth called at the
villages of Wabashaw, Red Wing, and Little Crow, and gave each of those
chiefs a present of blankets, tobacco, powder, or other goods. On
arrival at destination similar presents were made to five other chiefs,
whose villages were not distant. In each case the major records that he
had to give a little whiskey. The United States could afford such
generosity.
A period of thirty years intervened between the arrival of Colonel
Leavenworth’s battalion at Fort Snelling in 1819, and the establishment
of the Territory of Minnesota. The events of the period are too
slightly related to the subsequent history of the state to call for
minute narration in the way of annals, and may preferably be grouped
under a few heads for compendious treatment.
When Colonel Leavenworth was starting from Detroit, Michigan, he was
intrusted by the governor of the Territory of Michigan with blank
commissions for appointive county officers for Crawford County,
included in that territory. This duty was performed at Prairie du
Chien, and justice was established in Minnesota East. That region had
previously been successively within the jurisdiction of the Northwest,
Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois territories. Minnesota West at the same
time was part of Missouri Territory, and previous to 1812 had been in
the Territory of Louisiana. There was, however, slight occasion for the
exercise of civil or judicial functions in the upper Mississippi
country.
The American Fur Company had succeeded not merely to the business of
the “old Northwest Company,” but to its quasi-political control. The
chief factor at Mendota, and his subordinate traders at the more
important trading places, exercised a control over the Indians and
half-breeds which government officials, civil and military, vainly
endeavored to win from them. The few whites in the region, aside from
the garrison of the fort, were at the first traders’ employees; later a
handful of missionaries acceded, and still later an advance guard of
settlers, mostly lumbermen and Selkirk refugees. The dominance of the
fur company and its principal agents was in great part due, as already
suggested, to a policy inherited from the Northwest Company of
retaining in service the old French and half-breed voyageurs, and
filling the clerical and managing places with young Americans of
ability and enterprise. Such men would have been leaders anywhere. The
chief factor at Mendota was the great man of the Sioux country; his
colleague at Fond du Lac held a like relation in the country of the
Chippeways. They furnished their licensed traders with their outfits,
assigned them their respective districts, served as their bankers, and
exercised over them an interested supervision. The fidelity of these
subordinates was such as to form them into an effective combination,
which after a few futile attempts at competition gave the American Fur
Company a complete monopoly.
The one name to be brought forward as representative of the American
Fur Company, and what was good in it, is that of Henry Hastings Sibley,
who came to Mendota in November, 1834, as partner and chief factor. He
had been preceded by other traders of inferior rank and consideration.
Although but twenty-three years of age, he had already served an
apprenticeship of five years at Mackinaw, the western headquarters of
the Fur Company. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, where his parents,
having removed from Sutton, Massachusetts, had settled before the close
of the eighteenth century. The father, Judge Solomon Sibley, was a
notable character in Michigan for a long lifetime. The boy received a
good “academy” education, had two years of classical language study
under private tuition, and pursued the study of law. This early
training equipped him with a correct and graceful English style of
expression, which in later life he was fond of practicing in manuscript
of singular beauty. The boy’s heart was in the wilderness and on the
wave. Tall, handsome of face, and lithe of limb, he early became expert
with the rifle, the bridle, and the oar. So fleet and tireless was he
on foot that the Sioux named him Wa-zi-o-ma-ni, Walker-in-the-pines.
His grave and ceremonious manner was well calculated to gain the
respect of the Indians, fond as they were of etiquette. Within two
years after his arrival at his post he built and occupied a large stone
house at Mendota, in which, especially after his marriage a few years
later, he maintained a generous and elegant hospitality. The building
still stands in a dilapidated condition. For many years Mr. Sibley, as
justice of the peace, exercised jurisdiction over a territory of
imperial extent, and was believed by his simple-minded clients, the
voyageurs, to hold the power of life and death. As the trusted adviser
of the Indian agent and the military commander, he steered them past
many a difficult emergency.
With the extension of the Indian trade under the protection of a
military garrison, it was to be expected that an Indian agency would be
established at a point so prominent and convenient as Fort Snelling. As
the first agent, Lieutenant Lawrence Taliaferro, of the Third United
States Infantry, was personally selected by President Monroe. He was a
member of a well-known Virginia family of Italian extraction, and had
given evidence in the service of capacity and enterprise. His
appointment was dated March 27, 1819. His age was twenty-five. For
twenty years he held his position, at times against powerful
opposition, ever a true friend of the Indian, a terror to illicit
whiskey sellers, and never the tool of the American Fur Company.
It was the desire of the government to put an end to the ancient
warfare between the two great tribes of Minnesota Indians. Pike in 1806
had induced some of their chiefs to smoke the calumet. In 1820 Governor
Cass repeated the operation with the result of burning much good
tobacco. Agent Taliaferro conceived a plan for keeping the peace
between the Sioux and the Chippeways, which was to survey and stake out
a partition line between their countries. In 1824, by permission of
President Monroe, he took a delegation of Sioux, Chippeways, and
Menominees to Washington, where an arrangement was made for a “grand
convocation” of all the northwestern nations, to be held in the summer
of 1825 at Prairie du Chien. That convocation was held, with many
spectacular incidents, and a variety of adjustments were consummated.
In particular it was agreed between the Sioux and Chippeway nations
that their lands should be separated by a line to be drawn and marked
by the white man’s science. That line, when tardily staked out ten
years later, started from a point in the Red River of the North near
Georgetown, passed east of Fergus Falls and west of Alexandria, crossed
the Mississippi between St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids, and went on in a
general southeast direction to the St. Croix, which it struck not far
from Marine. The savages paid little respect to this air line, but went
on with their accustomed raids. Within a year there was a bloody
encounter in sight of the agent’s office. A single example of these
savage frays may be given to illustrate their recurrence in series.
In April, 1838, a party of Sioux hunting in the valley of the Chippeway
River (of Minnesota) left a party of three lodges in camp near Benson,
Swift County. Hole-in-the-day, the Chippeway chief from Gull River,
with nine followers, came upon this camp, and professing himself
peaceable was hospitably treated. In the night following he and his men
rose silently, and upon a given signal shot eleven of the Sioux to
death. One woman and a wounded boy escaped.
In August of the same year Hole-in-the-day, with a small party, was at
Fort Snelling. His arrival becoming known to neighboring Sioux, two or
three relatives of the victims of the April slaughter waylaid him near
the Baker trading-house, and opened fire. Hole-in-the-day escaped, but
the warrior with whom he had changed clothes was killed.
In June of the following year a large party of Chippeways from the
upper Mississippi, from Mille Lacs and the St. Croix valley, assembled
at Fort Snelling. For some days they were feasted and entertained by
the resident Sioux, and agent Taliaferro got them started homewards.
Two Chippeway warriors, related to the tribesmen killed by the Sioux
the previous summer, remained behind, and went into hiding near the
large Sioux village on Lake Calhoun. At daybreak, Nika (the badger), a
warrior much respected, was shot in his tracks as he was going out to
hunt, and the assassins made their escape. As the Sioux could easily
surmise that they belonged to Hole-in-the-day’s band, they decided not
to retaliate on it, because they would be watched for. Two war-parties
were immediately formed, the one to follow the Mille Lacs band, the
other that from the St. Croix. It was lawful to retaliate on any
Chippeways. The Mille Lacs Indians were overtaken in their bivouacs on
the Rum River at daylight on July 4. Waiting until the hunters had gone
forward, the Sioux fired on the women, children, and old men, and
harvested some seventy scalps, but they lost more warriors in the
action than the Chippeways. The war-dance of the exulting Sioux went on
for a month on the site of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. Little
Crow and his Kaposia band gave their attention to the St. Croix
Chippeways, who returned, as they had come, by canoe down the
Mississippi and up the St. Croix. Little Crow marched overland and got
into position at Stillwater, where he lay in ambush for the retreating
foe, who he knew would bivouac on the low ground near the site of the
Minnesota state prison. A daybreak assault killed twenty-five of the
Chippeways, but they made so good a defense that the Sioux were glad to
retire. The mortality in the so-called “battles” of Rum River and
Stillwater was exceptionally great.
In the middle of the period now in view, a new influence, not heartily
welcomed by the traders, came over the Minnesota Indians,—that of the
missionaries, mostly Protestant. The first efforts at evangelization
were made for the Chippeways and probably at the instance of Robert
Stuart, the principal agent of the American Fur Company at Mackinaw, an
ardent Scotch Presbyterian. In 1823 a boarding-school was opened at
that place and flourished for some years. In 1830 a mission was opened
at La Pointe, Wisconsin, on the spot occupied by the Jesuit fathers one
hundred and fifty years before. From this place as a centre mission
work was extended into Minnesota. In 1833 the Rev. W. T. Boutwell
proceeded to Leech Lake, built a log cabin, and began work. The Rev.
Frederick Ayer opened a school at Yellow Lake, on the Wisconsin side of
the St. Croix, and the Rev. E. E. Ely began teaching at Sandy Lake.
Three years later all of these were removed for more concentrated,
coöperative effort to Lake Pokegama in Pine County. This mission was
carried on with much promise for five years, when it was interrupted by
a descent of a large war-party of Sioux led by Little Crow. Among the
killed were two young girls, pupils of the mission school. The
Chippeways abandoned the place for homes farther from the danger line,
and this mission came to an end. The Chippeways had their revenge a
year later (1842), when they came down to the near neighborhood of St.
Paul and got in the so-called battle of Kaposia the scalps of thirteen
Sioux warriors, two women, and a child.
The missions to the Sioux were begun in the spring of 1834 by two young
laymen from Connecticut, who appeared at Fort Snelling without
credentials from any synod or conference, but with abundant faith and
zeal. They were brothers, Samuel William and Godwin Hollister Pond,
then twenty-six and twenty-four years of age respectively. Although
they had entered the Indian country without leave or license, they
secured at once the confidence of Agent Taliaferro and Major Bliss,
commander of Fort Snelling. With their own hands they built a log cabin
on the east shore of Lake Calhoun, on the edge of Cloudman’s village.
That chief selected the site. Established in this “comfortable home,”
they devoted themselves to learning the Dakota language. Within a few
weeks they adapted the Roman letters to that language with such skill
that the “Pond alphabet” has with slight modification been ever since
used in writing and printing it. A Dakota child can begin to read as
soon as it has “learned its letters.” The zealous brothers made the
first collections for the dictionary, later enlarged by others,
prepared a spelling-book, and formulated a rude grammar. Mr. Sibley,
who came in the fall of the same year, became a warm friend of the
Ponds.
The next missionary effort was by appointees of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, best known by the short title
“American Board.” These were the Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, missionary
and physician; the Rev. Jedediah D. Stevens, missionary; Alexander
Huggins, farmer; their wives, and two lady teachers. These arrived at
Fort Snelling in May, 1835. Mr. Stevens, who had made a tour of
exploration in the country six years before, at once established
himself on the northwest margin of Lake Harriet, now in the city of
Minneapolis. He built two considerable log houses near the site of the
street railroad station, in one of which he opened a school. The
nucleus was a number of half-breed daughters of traders and military
men, some of whom became highly respected Minnesota women. This school,
however, was not the first in Minnesota, if the collection of Indian
boys and men gathered by Major Taliaferro on the east bank of Lake
Calhoun in 1829, and put to learning the art and mystery of
agriculture, may be called a school. Philander Prescott was the
teacher, and his pupils numbered twelve; the next year he had one
hundred and twenty-five “different scholars.” Within a few days after
the arrival of these missionaries a Presbyterian church was organized
at Fort Snelling, June 11, the first in Minnesota, with the Rev. Mr.
Stevens in charge.
The American Fur Company had an important stockaded post on Lac qui
Parle in Chippeway County. The trader there was Joseph Renville, who
had been captain in the British frontier service in the War of 1812. He
had married a woman of the Sioux by Christian rite, and had a large
family growing up. Although Catholic by birth and education, he invited
Dr. Williamson to come and establish his mission near him, so that his
children might be taught. The mission at Lac qui Parle was thus
promptly opened. Dr. Williamson has recorded that this school, begun in
his house in July, was the first in Minnesota outside of Fort Snelling.
It was continued for many years by his sister, Miss Jane Williamson,
who perhaps rendered more lasting service than any of the noble band to
which she belonged. After some two years’ study of the Dakota language
Dr. Williamson set about what became his life work, the translation of
the Holy Scriptures into that tongue. The Rev. Stephen Return Riggs
joined the Lac qui Parle mission in 1837, after having studied the
Dakota under Samuel Pond. He soon became expert, prepared text-books
for the schools, and later edited the Dakota dictionary and grammar, to
which all the Sioux missionaries contributed. Mission work begun in
1837 at Kaposia (now South St. Paul) by Methodist preachers, and at Red
Wing in 1839 by Swiss Presbyterian evangelists, however praiseworthy
for intention, was too early abandoned to have permanent results.
Equally transient was the ministration of the Catholic father Ravoux,
at Lac qui Parle and Chaska, in 1842. The missions of the American
Board to the Minnesota Sioux were maintained until that nation was
removed to the Missouri in 1863. The results were sufficient to
encourage persistence, in hope of future success, but the great body of
the Indians was not affected. For a time this was due to suspicion on
the part of the Indians of the sincerity of the missionaries. They
could understand the soldier and the trader, but the missionary was a
puzzle. He had nothing to sell, he asked no pay for teaching the
children, caring for the sick, or preaching the word. Why he should
teach a religion of brotherhood, and still keep to himself his
household stuff, his little store of food, and his domestic animals,
was beyond the comprehension of savages accustomed to communistic life.
A greater obstacle lay in the fact that the missionary had first to
break down faith in an ancient religion, and the dominance of a body of
medicine-men who maintained their cult by a ceremonial interwoven with
the whole life and habits of the people. Not less obstructive was the
example of most white men known to the Indians,—greedy, dissolute, and
licentious.
CHAPTER V
EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS
To discover the true source of any of the great rivers of the world,
that is, that one of all sources which measured along the axis of its
channel is farthest from its mouth, has ever been an alluring problem
to the exploring geographer. David Thompson, geographer of the
Northwest Company, in the course of a journey of exploration lasting a
year and extending to the Missouri River, on April 23, 1798, reached
Turtle Lake, four miles north of Lake Bemidji, and believed himself the
discoverer of the true source of the Mississippi. Lieutenant Pike was
confident that when on the 12th day of February, 1806, he reached the
upper Red Cedar (Cass) Lake he was at the “upper source of the
Mississippi.” These claims were either not known or not trusted, and a
series of expeditions to reach the “true source” of the Mississippi was
begun, soon after the military occupation in 1819. Lewis Cass, known
best in American history by his national employments as senator,
cabinet officer, and foreign minister, had cut such a figure as colonel
of an Ohio regiment and brigadier-general in the War of 1812 that the
President made him governor of the Territory of Michigan; an office
which he held for seventeen years. That territory in 1819 was extended
to the Mississippi River. Its governor was naturally curious to see
something of this immense addition to his jurisdiction and the great
river forming its western bound. He sought and obtained leave to
conduct an expedition. An engineer officer, Captain Douglass, was
ordered to join it, and Governor Cass employed Henry R. Schoolcraft, of
whom we are to hear later, as mineralogist at one dollar and a half a
day. Leaving Detroit late in May, 1820, with ten Indians and seven
soldiers, in three birch-bark canoes, Cass was at the American Fur
Company’s post at Fond du Lac (of Superior) on the 6th of July. He
ascended the St. Louis River and took the Savanna portage to Sandy
Lake. With a reduced party he pushed up stream through Lake
Winnebigoshish to that upper Red Cedar Lake which Pike had seen
fourteen years before. Assured that this was the true source of the
Mississippi, he ended his journey. Mr. Schoolcraft doubted, but he was
too polite to differ openly with his chief. Captain Douglass on his map
gave the lake the name “Cassina,” which, shorn of two superfluous
syllables, has remained in use. Mr. Schoolcraft wrote a narrative of
the expedition which is very pleasant reading. The return journey,
beginning July 22, was down the Mississippi to Prairie du Chien and
thence to Green Bay by the Fox-Wisconsin portage. At Fort Snelling the
party were feasted with fresh vegetables from the post garden. At the
Sioux agency, then on the Mendota side of the Minnesota, some chiefs of
the Sioux and Chippeways were got together in council and a reluctant
consent was obtained to cease from troubling one another. The high
contracting parties were content to gratify the white man, but they
understood the farcical nature of the convention. Governor Cass
reported the cost of the expedition at $6156.40-1/4.
It seems proper to interpolate here some account of the expedition
conducted by Major Stephen H. Long of the topographical engineers of
the army, in 1823, to the valleys of the Minnesota and Red rivers. Six
years before, that officer had made an uneventful journey to St.
Anthony’s Falls, of which he left a graphic and appreciative
description. His party, escorted by a detail of soldiers, left Fort
Snelling on July 9 with Joseph Renville as interpreter and guide. At
Traverse des Sioux, Long abandoned his canoes and set out overland by
the well-worn trail for Lake Traverse, where he was welcomed at the
headquarters of the Columbia Fur Company. On August 2 Long reached
Pembina, where he established a monument to mark a point astronomically
determined in the international boundary. His instructions had been to
strike east from Pembina and trace the boundary to the Lake of the
Woods. This he found to be impracticable. Putting his people into bark
canoes, he descended the Red River past Fort Garry to Lake Winnipeg,
traversed the south arm of that water, and ascended the Winnipeg River
to Rat Portage on the Lake of the Woods.
The homeward journey by the old Dawson route to Lake Superior, along
the north shore to the Sault Sainte Marie and thence by the lower lakes
and the Erie Canal, was rapidly made without notable incident.
Professor William H. Keating of the University of Pennsylvania, who was
geologist of the expedition, published a narrative abounding in varied
and interesting knowledge. It will ever remain indispensable to the
historian of the period and region.
Major Long had been accompanied from Fort Snelling to Pembina by an
Italian gentleman of a romantic and enterprising nature, Giacomo
Constantino Beltrami by name. Little is known of his early life beyond
the facts that he had held military and civil appointments, and had,
for reasons not revealed, found it desirable to absent himself from
Italy. He came to America full of zeal to be the discoverer of the true
source of the Mississippi, and thus place himself in the company of
great Italian explorers. Agent Taliaferro came upon him in Pittsburg
and offered to further his ambition. They reached Fort Snelling on the
10th of May, 1823, by the steamboat Virginia, the first steam vessel to
reach that post. The crowd of wondering Indians gathered on the levee
were sufficiently impressed by the bulk of the white man’s fire canoe;
but the scream of her steam whistle, opportunely let out, sent them
scampering far off on the prairie.
When Beltrami at Pembina found Major Long pointing his canoes down the
Red River, he detached himself, and with a slender outfit and uncertain
guides struck out to the southeast, where he expected to find the
object of his journey. After a few days of hardship he reached the
south shore of Red Lake, and there he found a “bois-brulé” who guided
him up a tributary then called Bloody River. It is marked “Mud Creek”
on modern maps. A short portage brought him to a small, heart-shaped
lake, to which he gave the name “Lake Julia,” in memory of a deceased
friend. Here on the 28th of August he reports himself as resting at the
most southern source of the Red River and the most northern source of
the Mississippi. He found no visible outlet to his lakelet and fancied
that its seepage was indifferently the true source of the two rivers.
His dream fulfilled and his ambition satisfied, he made all possible
haste to Fort Snelling. He proceeded to New Orleans and in the next
year (1824) published in French his “Discovery of the Sources of the
Mississippi.” An English version appeared under the title “A Pilgrimage
in Europe and America.” Lake Julia is still on the map, lying some two
miles north of Turtle Lake, which David Thompson had charted
twenty-five years before. The Minnesota geologists found no connection
between it and Mississippi waters. It is noteworthy that Beltrami
placed on his map a “Lac la Biche” as the “western source of the
Mississippi,” which later explorers identified as approximately the
true source. This knowledge he may have obtained from the intelligent
guide, whom he praises highly, but whose name he neglected to report.
It has been mentioned that Henry R. Schoolcraft, mineralogist of Cass’s
expedition in 1820, was by no means satisfied that Cass Lake was the
true source of the great river. Appointed Indian agent of the
Chippeways, he resided for many years at the Sault Sainte Marie,
longing for another plunge into the wilderness of the upper
Mississippi. It was not until 1832 that the War Department, deferring
to Governor Cass, was content to give him leave, and then by
indirection only. The instructions given Mr. Schoolcraft were to
proceed to the country at the head of the Mississippi, to visit as many
Indians as circumstances might permit, to establish permanent peace
among them, to look after the Indian trade and in particular the
trespasses of Hudson’s Bay traders, to vaccinate Indians as many as
possible, and to gather statistics. He had no commission to explore. An
officer of the army, Lieutenant James Allen, with a small detachment of
soldiers, was ordered to be his escort. Traveling by way of Fond du Lac
and the Savanna portage, Schoolcraft’s party was at Cass Lake on July
10. The same day his guide Ozawindib (the Yellowhead) collected five
small canoes and made all needful preparations for the further journey,
which began the morning after. The Yellowhead led the party up to and
across Lake Bemidji, and from its southern limb up an east fork now
mapped as the Yellowhead River, to a lakelet at its head. A six-mile
portage to the west brought Schoolcraft, about two o’clock P. M., on
the 13th of July, to a body of transparent water, which his guide
assured him was the true source. In expectation of that moment the
ardent explorer had cogitated on a suitable name. The missionary
Boutwell, already mentioned, was a member of his party, having joined
it to spy out the land for evangelical work. When asked by Mr.
Schoolcraft the Latin for “true source,” the reverend gentleman could
only remember that the Latin for truth was _veritas_, and for head
_caput_; and he obligingly wrote the two words on a slip of paper. The
leader cut off the head of the former and the tail of the latter, and
joining the remaining syllables made the word “Itasca,” as beautiful an
Indian name as could be desired. On the island, bearing still his name,
Mr. Schoolcraft erected a flagstaff and flew the American colors.
Lieutenant Allen in his report uses the French name Lac la Biche, the
same communicated to Beltrami. How much attention the explorer gave to
gathering statistics, vaccinating Indians, pacifying the Indians, and
the like, may be inferred from the promptness with which he set out for
home the very same day, and the speed of his journey. Taking an unused
canoe route via Leech Lake and the headwaters of the Crow Wing, he was
at Fort Snelling on the 24th of July. Leaving his escort, without a
guide he hastened with all possible celerity by the St. Croix-Brulé
route to “the Sault.” In his report to the War Department, dated
December 3, 1832, he makes not the slightest reference to his excursion
from Cass Lake to Itasca. His published narrative, however, shows no
such gap. He had no orders to discover anything.
What fortune or misfortune brought the French astronomer, Jos. N.
Nicollet, to this country early in the thirties is not well known. Like
Beltrami, he had the fever for exploration and discovery. In the
midsummer of 1836 this gentleman went from Fort Snelling up to Leech
Lake, where he was sheltered by the missionary Boutwell. Here he found
guides who took him by a new route out of the west arm of Leech Lake to
Lake Itasca at the point reached by Schoolcraft. He made camp on
Schoolcraft’s Island and proceeded to take its latitude, longitude, and
height above sea. So far he was merely confirming the work of
Schoolcraft and Allen. Selecting the largest of three tributary inlets,
he traced it three miles through two lakelets to a third, from which he
found “the infant Mississippi flowing with a breadth of a foot and a
half, and a depth of one foot.” In the years 1889 and 1891 J. V.
Brower, commissioned by the Minnesota Historical Society and the
governor of Minnesota, devoted many months to a careful examination of
the region above (south of) Itasca Lake. The result was the
confirmation of Nicollet’s work, with a further discovery of an
“ultimate bowl” in the highlands (Hauteurs des Terres) from which
Nicollet’s lakes were fed. And then the long quest came to an end.
* * * * *
The first white settlers in Minnesota, or rather squatters, for the
region was not open to settlement for nearly twenty years after the
military occupation, came from an unexpected quarter. A Scotch
nobleman, the Earl of Selkirk, of a romantic turn, formed a scheme for
relieving congested European districts by planting colonies abroad, and
in Canada preferably to the United States. He bought of the Hudson’s
Bay Company a tract of something over 100,000 square miles, south and
west of Lake Winnipeg, and in 1812 sent over a small party of
Highlanders and a few Irish. Later additions were made to the colony,
among them two hundred Scotch in 1815. What with the persecutions of
the bois-brulés, of the Northwest Company, the destruction of crops by
rats, grasshoppers, early frosts, and high water, the colonists led a
stormy and precarious life for some years; but they survived. In 1821
came a party of one hundred and fifty or more Swiss clockmakers, wiled
from their homes by the seductive allurements of an ingenious agent.
When the deluded people reached Fort Douglass and Pembina they found
things far different from their expectations. Five families at once
took the trail for the American fort. Two years later thirteen more
families followed. In 1826, after a devouring flood in the Red River,
two hundred and forty-three persons, Swiss and others, left Pembina for
the south. In following years the migration continued, and by 1836
nearly five hundred had come over the border. The greater number of
them journeyed on to the French settlements down the river in Illinois
and Missouri, but many preferred to tarry on the Fort Snelling
reservation. The military gave them protection, allowed them to pasture
their cattle and cut grass on the bottoms, and to fence in and
cultivate considerable farms.
The reports of the military, the open secrets of the American Fur
Company, the revelations of explorers, and later the correspondence of
missionaries, at length made the upper Mississippi valley known as a
land of promise. Travelers from Fort Snelling to “the head of the lake”
by the old St. Croix canoe route had disclosed the existence of
magnificent bodies of pine timber. A market for pine lumber had been
opened about the Galena and Dubuque lead mines and the prairie regions
abutting on the river. The voracious lumbermen of Wisconsin, mostly
emigrants from Maine, were fierce to get their axes into this pine. As
early as 1822 a sawmill had been built on the Chippeway River near
Menominee, and the stumpage bought of Wabashaw, chief of the lower
Sioux, for one thousand dollars a year in goods. But there was no white
man’s country in Minnesota, except the Fort Snelling tract bought by
Pike in 1805 and paid for in 1819, and that was not open to settlement,
unless by tolerance of the military. The time came for extending the
area of settlement and cultivation, and that was effected by two Indian
treaties made in 1837. By a treaty with the lower Sioux the United
States acquired all their lands east of the Mississippi up to the
Sioux-Chippeway partition line of 1825. The consideration was a half
million dollars; but two hundred thousand dollars went to the traders
and half-breeds in nearly equal sums. That was the price paid by the
government for the use of their influence with the Indians. The
Chippeways sold east of the Mississippi from the partition line up to
the line running a little north of east from the mouth of the Crow Wing
River. The delta between the Mississippi and the St. Croix up to the
Crow Wing line was thus opened to settlement on the ratification of the
treaties, on June 15, 1838. When the tidings of the ratification
reached Fort Snelling a month later, the grass did not grow under the
feet of waiting citizens, who had made notes of good locations. A claim
abutting on the Falls of St. Anthony, on the east bank, was staked out
before daylight of the following morning, and the falls of the St.
Croix were preëmpted before sunset, all in accordance with law and
custom.
The first collection of people in Minnesota, aside from the garrison of
Fort Snelling, was the little hamlet of Mendota, inhabited by French
half-breeds and their Indian wives and children. At times its numbers
were swelled by traders from outposts coming in to headquarters to
bring their furs and obtain supplies. Mendota is a French hamlet
to-day. The first American settlement was made at Marine, on the St.
Croix, early in 1839, where a sawmill was put into operation August 24.
In the year following, on a claim previously made, Joseph R. Brown laid
out the town site of Dakotah on land now forming a part of Stillwater.
This city was not laid out till 1843, when settlement was begun in full
confidence that Stillwater was to be the great city of the region. Its
progress for a few years seemed to justify that expectation. Later many
of its people migrated to the new towns on the Mississippi. In the year
of the treaties (1837) the officer commanding at Fort Snelling had a
survey made, to carve out of the Pike tract of nine by eighteen miles
the land to be held by the government for military use. The bounds
included practically all of Reserve Township of Ramsey County, the east
line passing through the “Seven Corners” of St. Paul. Because of
growing scarcity of timber, and alleged trespasses of the squatters,
Major Plympton in the spring of 1838 ordered all those settled on the
main reserve west of the Mississippi to move over to the east side. A
very few had sufficient foresight to place themselves beyond the
military lines,—among them one Pierre Parrant, a Canadian voyageur,
who, not waiting for the ratification, built a whiskey shanty near the
issue of the streamlet from Fountain Cave, in upper St. Paul, thus
becoming the first inhabitant of that city. The evicted Swiss mostly
settled on ground within easy reach of the fort, and there built their
cabins anew. They were, however, not long allowed that indulgence.
Their number was reinforced by a few voyageurs, discharged soldiers,
and perhaps some other whites. Among the whites were a few who opened
grog-shops at which the custom of the soldiers was very welcome. These
places became so intolerable that the commandant begged the War
Department to require all squatters to get off the reservation. His
recommendation was adopted, and on the 6th of May, 1840, a deputy
United States marshal, supported by a detachment of soldiers, drove
them all over the lines and destroyed their cabins. What did they do
but reëstablish themselves just beyond the line, about Parrant’s claim?
French fashion, they grouped their cabins and formed a little French
village, the nucleus of the capital city of Minnesota. A memorial of
the evicted Swiss to Congress for indemnity for loss of improvements on
land they had been suffered to occupy and cultivate, and for the
destruction of their shelters, was ignored.
At all the trading stations of the American Fur Company there was a
group of employees and hangers-on. At Mendota, the headquarters, the
number was greater than elsewhere. In 1837 there were twenty-five such.
When in July, 1839, Bishop Loras of Dubuque made a visitation there, he
found one hundred and eighty-five Catholics gathered in to approach the
sacraments of the church. In May of the following year the Rev. Lucius
Galtier, sent up on an hour’s notice from Dubuque, reached Mendota to
begin a mission there. He naturally took under his care the Catholic
families just then getting themselves under cover on the hillsides
nearly opposite. November 1, 1841, he blessed a little log chapel the
people had built under his direction, and dedicated “the new basilica”
to St. Paul, “the apostle of the nations.” The name “St. Paul’s
landing,” for a time used, gave way to the more convenient St. Paul’s
and, later, to “St. Paul.” Père Galtier, however, remained at the more
considerable Mendota till called to other duty in 1844. Father Ravoux,
succeeding him, divided his time between the two hamlets till 1849.
Up to 1845 St. Paul was a straggling French village of some thirty
families, a floating population of voyageurs and workmen, to which two
or three independent traders had joined themselves. In the next years
Americans arrived in increasing numbers. In 1846 a post-office was
established, and in the year after a regular line of steamboats began
to ply down river in the season.
The city at the falls was later in getting its start. The lucky citizen
who preëmpted the land abreast of the falls on the left bank of the
Mississippi did not lay out his town site of St. Anthony’s Falls till
late in 1847. A sawmill built that year went into operation the next,
and the manufacture of lumber has since remained a leading industry. At
Pembina, in the extreme northwest corner of Minnesota, was an
aggregation of French half-breeds of some hundreds. The rural
population of the whole region well into the fifties was very sparse. A
few farms had been opened along the St. Croix in Washington County. The
principal part of the subsistence for man and beast was brought up from
below in steamboats.
When Iowa Territory was organized in 1838, Wisconsin Territory was
restricted on the west to the line of the Mississippi. Minnesota East
then formed part of Crawford County of the latter territory. In the
same year the governor of Wisconsin appointed as justice of the peace
for that county a man who was to play a conspicuous part in Minnesota
affairs. Joseph Renshaw Brown came to Minnesota as a drummer-boy of
fourteen with the Fifth Infantry in 1819. Honorably discharged from
that command some six or seven years later, he went into the Indian
trade at different posts, at some of which he opened farms. He
appreciated, as perhaps no other man in the region did so clearly, the
possibilities of the future, and was fitted by nature, education, and
experience to lead. In 1840 he was elected a member of the Wisconsin
territorial legislature from St. Croix County, a new jurisdiction
separated from Crawford County by a meridian through the mouth of the
Porcupine River, a small affluent of Lake Pepin. The county seat was of
course Mr. Brown’s town of Dakotah, already mentioned. There is reason
to surmise a disappointed expectation that this town might become the
capital of a state. In 1846 Congress passed an enabling act in the
usual form for the promotion of Wisconsin to statehood. About the same
time the Wisconsin delegate introduced a bill to establish the
Territory of Minnesota. It was understood that Mr. Sibley would be the
first governor and that Mr. Brown would not be neglected. The bill
passed the House and reached its third reading in the Senate, when it
was tabled on the suggestion of an eastern senator that the population
was far too scanty to warrant a territorial organization.
CHAPTER VI
THE TERRITORY ORGANIZED
On May 29, 1848, Wisconsin was admitted to the Union as a state, with
her western boundary fixed where it has since remained, on the St.
Croix River line, Congress having refused to extend Wisconsin’s area to
the Rum River line. The delta between the St. Croix and the Mississippi
was politically left in the air. In the earlier correspondence and
personal conferences of Minnesotians the only thought was of obtaining
from Congress the establishment of a new territory. On August 4 a call
signed by eighteen prominent residents of the wished-for territory was
issued, for a convention to be held at Stillwater on the 26th.
Sixty-one delegates appeared and took part in what has since been known
as “the Stillwater Convention” of 1848. The proceedings resulted in two
memorials, one to the President, the other to Congress, both praying
for the organization of a new territory; in corresponding resolutions;
in the raising of a committee to prosecute the purposes of the
convention; and in the election of Henry H. Sibley as a “delegate” to
proceed to Washington and urge immediate action.
The late governor of Wisconsin Territory, Hon. Henry Dodge, had been
elected United States senator. The secretary of the territory had been
Mr. John Catlin. A letter written by him August 22 was read before the
Stillwater convention. It embodied the suggestion that the Territory of
Wisconsin might be considered as surviving in the excluded area. He
transmitted a letter from James Buchanan, Secretary of State,
expressing the opinion that the laws of Wisconsin Territory were still
in force therein, and that judges of probate, sheriffs, justices of the
peace, and constables might lawfully exercise their offices. Such being
the case, what was there to hinder him, Mr. Catlin, from assuming the
position of acting-governor of Wisconsin Territory, and performing the
proper duties? In particular, why might he not appoint an election for
the choice of a delegate to Congress in a regular manner, if a vacancy
should occur? His judgment was that a delegate elected “under color of
law” would not be denied a seat. This scheme, which seems to have made
no impression on the Stillwater convention, was rapidly incubated after
its dispersion. Mr. Catlin took up a constructive residence at
Stillwater. John H. Tweedy, delegate from Wisconsin Territory to the
Thirtieth Congress, obligingly put in his resignation. Thereupon
Acting-Governor Catlin issued a call for an election of a delegate to
be held on the 30th of October. The result was the choice of Mr. Sibley
against a slight and ineffective opposition.
The delegate-elect presented himself at the door of the national House
of Representatives at the opening of the second session of the
Thirtieth Congress. His credentials had the usual reference to the
committee on elections. Mr. Sibley’s argument was ingenious and
exhaustive, and it proved effective, for the committee absorbed its
substance into their favorable report. On January 15, 1849, the House
by a vote of 124 to 62 accorded Mr. Sibley his seat as delegate from
Wisconsin. The same House refused, however, to make any appropriation
for the expenses of a territory existing by virtue of mere geographical
exclusion. A bill for the establishment of the Territory of Minnesota
had been introduced into the Senate in the previous session. It was
identical with that which had been strangled on the last day of the
Twenty-ninth Congress. Mr. Sibley properly devoted himself to advancing
the progress of the bill. It was promptly passed by the Senate, but it
lagged in the House. The Whig majority had no consuming desire to favor
a beginning likely to result in a Democratic delegation from a new
state. They therefore clapped on an amendment, to which the Senate
could not possibly agree, that the act should take effect March 10, six
days after the expiry of President Polk’s term of office. The end of
the session was but four days away. A House bill for the establishment
of a Department of the Interior was still pending in the Senate. It
provided for a goodly number of officials to be named by the incoming
Whig President. Senator Douglas, acting for colleagues, authorized Mr.
Sibley to give out to his Whig opponents that the Senate would be
better disposed to passing their interior department measure if they
should find it agreeable to recede from their offensive amendment to
the Minnesota bill. On the last day of the session Mr. Sibley had the
pleasure of seeing his bill pass, under suspension of the rules,
without opposition. No one was so much surprised at the outcome as Mr.
Sibley himself. It took thirty-seven days for the good news to reach
St. Paul by the first steamer of the season from below. The boundaries
of the new territory were those of the state later admitted, except
that the west line was pushed out to the Missouri River, thus including
an area of some 166,000 square miles. The governorship fell to
Alexander Ramsey of Pennsylvania, then thirty-four years of age, who
deserved well of his party in its late campaign and had done some
excellent service as a member of the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth
Congresses. He had been well educated in the best school, that of a
life of industry and aspiration. Clear-headed, cautious, patient, he
knew how to anticipate the courses of things and to plan for the
probabilities of the future. He identified himself from the first with
his new territory, and remained to the end of his long life, in 1903, a
steadfast, loyal Minnesotian.
On May 27, in a small bedroom in Bass’s log tavern on the site of the
Merchant’s Hotel in St. Paul, Mr. Ramsey wrote out on a little
unpainted washstand his proclamation declaring the territory duly
established. On June 11 he announced the division of his immense
jurisdiction into three provisional counties, assigning to each one of
the three judges, Goodrich, Sherburne, and Meeker, who had been
appointed by the President. At the same time he directed the sheriff of
St. Croix County to make a census of the population. The reported total
did not measure up to the conjectures of hopeful citizens. After
counting the 317 soldiers at “the Fort,” all the attachés of the
trading posts, 637 dwellers at Pembina and 66 on the Missouri River,
the footing stood at 4680 souls.
Pursuant to the organic act Governor Ramsey by proclamation of July 7
divided the territory into seven council districts, and ordered an
election for August 1. The first territorial legislature that day
elected, consisting of nine councilors and eighteen representatives,
met at St. Paul, September 4. The organic act having provided that the
laws in force in the late Territory of Wisconsin should remain in
operation until altered or repealed by the Minnesota territorial
legislature, this inexperienced body was not heavily burdened. The most
notable enactment was that for the establishment of a system of free
schools for all children and youth of the territory, introduced by
Martin McLeod, but probably drawn up by the Rev. Edward Duffield Neill,
the well-known historian of Minnesota. A bill passed October 20,
incorporating the Minnesota Historical Society, was doubtless from the
same hand. Governor Ramsey’s message of 1849 was much extended by an
account of the Indian tribes of the territory, prepared for him by Dr.
Thomas Foster.
There was no legislative session in 1850. The statutes of 1851 embrace
but few of notable importance. After a long and bitter struggle the
capital, temporarily placed by the organic act at St. Paul, was
permanently located in that town. To secure the majority vote it was
necessary to concede to Stillwater the state prison and to St. Anthony
the university. The evidence of a formal “tripartite agreement” to this
arrangement is lacking, but it is probable that an understanding or
expectation influenced the voting. The diligence with which a body
composed largely of fur-traders and lumbermen overhauled a revision of
the territorial laws, prepared by a committee of lawyers, bears
testimony to a zeal for duty. The result was the well-known “Code of
1851.” It embodied substantially the New York code of procedure. The
general incorporation law did not include railroad corporations. An act
of 1852 prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors
was submitted to a vote of the electors and ratified by a vote of 853
to 662. Before the year was out the supreme court of the territory, on
an appeal from below, ruled the act to be unconstitutional on the
ground that the organic law having vested all legislative power in the
legislative bodies, the referendum was inoperative. In 1853 equity
procedure was conformed to that of civil actions.
* * * * *
The dominating feature of Governor Ramsey’s territorial governorship
was the extinguishment of the Indian title of occupancy to all the
lands of the Sioux in Minnesota, except the small reservations. No time
was lost by interested parties in impressing on Mr. Ramsey the
importance of increasing the area of settlement in his territory. Land
speculators and lumbermen desired an enlargement of their spheres of
operation. The Indian traders, who in previous years would have opposed
a treaty of cession, were at this time, under changed circumstances,
eager. The hunting of wild animals for their pelts had greatly reduced
their numbers, so that the trade had dwindled. The prospect of profits
in land speculation appeared likely to exceed those of Indian trading.
The traders also were of opinion that it was about time for a
substantial liquidation of Indian debts due them. The half-breeds and
squaw men had, as we shall see, a strong desire for a treaty. Moved by
what seemed a general demand, Governor Ramsey recommended to the first
territorial legislature that they memorialize Congress to provide for a
treaty of cession with the Sioux. That body promptly complied. The
commissioner of Indian affairs had meantime been interested to such a
degree that he arranged for a treaty, and to pay the expenses out of
funds already at his disposal. He appointed as commissioners to conduct
the negotiation Governor Ramsey, being already superintendent
_ex-officio_ of Indian affairs in his territory, and the Hon. John
Chambers of Iowa, and furnished them a body of instructions, which
served more than the immediate purpose. He restricted their expenditure
for presents to $6000. The Sioux were summoned by runners to come in to
council in October. The commissioner of Indian affairs was precipitate.
The traders were not quite ready, and there were prominent citizens in
St. Paul who feared that a big cession of Indian lands west of the
river might give Mendota a dangerous precedence. But few of the Sioux
came in, and they were unwilling to treat. The effort aborted. Its
success might have secured for Governor Ramsey political rewards for
which he had to wait. The Indian appropriation bill of 1850, carrying
$15,000 for the expenses of treating, was not approved till September
30. The season was too late for the assemblage of the Indians, widely
scattered on their fall hunts. Then ensued a contention, lasting many
months, over the appointment of a colleague to Governor Ramsey for the
negotiation of the treaty. At one time it appeared that a trading
interest adverse to the American Fur Company had virtually succeeded in
securing the appointment of a gentleman from Indiana, on whom it could
depend. To dispose of this and other aspirants, an amendment was tacked
on to the proper paragraph of the Indian appropriation bill of the
session, providing that commissioners making Indian treaties should
thereafter be selected from officials of the Indian Bureau, to serve
without extra compensation. The contemplated treaty with the Sioux
involving a cession of many millions of acres and large disbursements
for a long time, the commissioner of Indian affairs, the Hon. Luke Lea
of Mississippi, resolved to act in person.
The Minnesota Sioux comprised four of the seven tribes of the nation,
and were themselves geographically divided into “upper” and “lower”
Sioux. The two upper tribes were the Sissetons and Wahpétons. The
former had their villages on lakes Big Stone and Traverse, the latter
on the upper reaches of the Minnesota River, with some sandwiching of
bands. The lower Sioux were the Medawakantons and the Wah-pé-ku-tes:
the villages of the former were strung along the west bank of the
Mississippi from Winona to Fort Snelling and on up the Minnesota to
Belle Plaine. The Wah-pé-ku-tes dwelt on the headwaters of the Cannon
River, in what Nicollet called his “Undine region.” As they were
averse, like all barbarians, to having their numbers counted, the
Indian Bureau up to the time when all became “annuity Indians” could
only guess at the population. Eight thousand was the general estimate
at the middle of the century. Each tribe was subdivided into bands of
unequal numbers, each under its own chief. The bands of each tribe
recognized one of the older and most capable chiefs as their head
chief. Wabashaw was head chief of the Medawakantons. The instructions
of 1849, already mentioned, charged the commissioners to make but one
treaty, advised them to promise no money payments, and forbade them to
provide for debts due by Indians to the traders. The reader can surmise
why no Indians came to treat.
The new commissioner of Indian affairs did not of course have to
instruct himself, and he appears to have relaxed the conditions imposed
by his predecessor. At any rate, he soon found out that if he wished to
make a treaty it would be necessary for him to pay some money, and to
arrange for the payment of traders’ claims. Because of a diversity of
these claims against the upper and the lower Sioux it was desired that
separate treaties be made. This was conceded. Because the upper tribes
were thought to be less opposed to a treaty and a cession, it was
decided to begin with them; and those Indians were summoned to council
on July 1 at Traverse des Sioux. The commissioners and their party
found on their arrival none but those there resident. It was not till
the 18th that enough of the upper bands had come in to warrant
negotiation. Meantime the disinclination of the Indians had been
mitigated by the rations of pork, beef, and flour dispensed by the
commissary, and presents to reluctant chiefs. On July 23 the treaty was
signed in duplicate. As the chiefs left the table they were “pulled by
the blanket” and steered to another, where they touched the pen to a
third document, which later became notorious under the name of “the
traders’ paper.” The upper Sioux by this treaty sold to the United
States all their lands in Minnesota for $1,665,000, except a
reservation twenty miles wide straddling the Minnesota River, from Lake
Traverse down to the Yellow Medicine River. The principal consideration
was an annual payment of $68,000 for fifty years, of which $40,000 was
to be cash. The United States also engaged to expend $30,000 for
schools, mills, blacksmith shops, and like beneficial purposes, to
remove the Indians to their new homes, and to provide them with
subsistence for one year. A residue of $210,000 was to be paid to the
chiefs in such manner as they should thereafter in open council
request, to enable them “to settle their affairs and comply with their
present engagements”; in plain English, to pay the claims of the
traders. The traders’ paper amounted to an assignment in blank of this
whole sum. The schedule of claims was not attached to the paper till
the next day. On the question whether the chiefs who signed knew what
they were doing, the evidence is conflicting. On August 5 a second
treaty, ceding the same lands, was signed at Mendota. The reservation
for the lower bands was also on the Minnesota River, extending from the
upper reserve down to the neighborhood of New Ulm. Each of the two
tribes agreed to pay traders’ claims to the amount of $90,000. The
lower Sioux were encouraged to conclude the bargain by a promise that
$30,000 out of a $50,000 “education” fund provided for in the treaty of
1837 and never paid, but allowed to accumulate, should be distributed,
so soon as the treaty should be signed. The money was paid, and within
a week it was in the hands of St. Paul merchants and whiskey sellers;
$10,000 or thereabout went for horses. The commissioners congratulated
themselves and the country on this magnificent purchase of a region
larger than New York, at a cost of the “sum paid in hand.” The annual
payments promised would, they figured, be equaled by the interest from
the lands.
The treaties awaited the action of the Senate. Before that body
convened in the December following, representations were made to the
authorities at Washington that a “stupendous fraud” had been practiced
on the Sioux. The upper Sioux, inspired by a trader attached to an
interest adverse to the American Fur Company, which had not obtained
recognition for its claims, were much excited. In December twenty-one
chiefs resorted to St. Paul, where they represented to Agent McLean and
Governor Ramsey that their signatures to the traders’ paper were
obtained by fraud and deceit. They declared that their bands owed no
such sums of money, but were willing to pay what sums a fair
examination of the claims might prove to be just. The agent promised to
report their protest and demands to his superiors, which he did.
Governor Ramsey had only to assure the chiefs that as treaty
commissioner he had nothing to do with traders’ claims. The money would
be paid to their chiefs and braves, and it was for them to dispose of
it as they thought proper. When the treaties were laid before the
Senate in February, 1852, opposition to ratification at once sprang up,
and long delay ensued. It was not any allegations of fraud and deceit
which formed the ground of this opposition. It came from Southern
senators not willing to extend the area of settlement to the north, on
which to build another free state. It was not till June 28 that
ratification was voted by a slender majority, and that not till after
amendments were made, which opponents believed the Sioux would never
agree to. In particular the senators cut out the paragraphs providing
for the two reservations, and substituted a provision that the
President should select new homes for the Minnesota Sioux outside the
ceded territory.
In August Governor Ramsey was authorized to obtain the consent of the
Indians to the amendments. This was effected through persons
influential among them and without calling general councils of the
tribes. The consent of the upper Sioux, however, was not secured till
after the execution of a power of attorney to Governor Ramsey, which
they were allowed to believe “broke” all former papers, that of the
traders in particular. The money appropriated for the immediate
payments became available so soon as the Sioux chiefs had signed their
ratifications, and Governor Ramsey was designated as disbursing agent
and given a credit on the treasury for $593,000. The payments did not
begin till November, and then with the lower Sioux. The Wah-pé-ku-te
chiefs gave no trouble, but signed their joint receipt for $90,000 of
“hand money,” and a power of attorney to Mr. Sibley to receive the
money and distribute it to their licensed traders. The seven
Medawakanton chiefs would not sign receipts till after they had been
encouraged by the distribution of $20,000 in equal sums, deducted from
the amount of traders’ claims. Some minor enticements contributed. At
“The Traverse,” a fortnight later, “a very evil and turbulent spirit”
was manifest. The chiefs demanded the money “for settling their
affairs” to be paid to them. They would then decide “in open council”
how it should be distributed. Mr. Ramsey was firm, and held them to the
terms of the traders’ paper, which he considered an irrevocable
contract. The local Sissetons were so riotous that a company of troops
had to be summoned from Fort Snelling to keep them in order. After much
delay and no little effort he was able to obtain twelve signatures to a
receipt for the money to go to traders, but only two of the names were
those of old and well-recognized chiefs, and only one that of a signer
of the treaty of 1851. The moneys thus secured to the traders, and some
moderate gratifications to the half-breeds, were, with the exception of
the $90,000 paid the Wah-pé-ku-tes, delivered by Governor Ramsey to one
Hugh Tyler, a citizen of Pennsylvania holding powers of attorney. This
gentleman distributed according to the schedules of the traders’
papers, retaining by their consent the sum of $55,250, about thirteen
and one half per cent., as compensation for his services in securing
the ratification of the treaties and for other purposes.
Political enemies of Governor Ramsey, and parties dissatisfied with the
distribution of moneys under the treaties, laid formal charges and
specifications against him before the Senate at the next session, in
1853. Upon the request of that body the President undertook an
investigation and appointed two Democratic commissioners. Their report,
covering, with testimony and exhibits, 431 octavo pages, was submitted
to the Senate in 1854. It was on the whole moderate and even charitable
in tone, but conveyed a censure for allowing the Indians to deceive
themselves, for not paying strictly in accordance with the terms of the
treaties, for use of oppressive measures in securing the receipts of
the chiefs, and for allowing Hugh Tyler a percentage not “necessary for
any reasonable or legitimate purpose.” The testimony disclosed that
some amount of this money had been used as a “secret service fund” to
expedite the business. As to the use of money to influence officials,
the principal witness for the defense declared that none had gone or
would go into the hands of Governor Ramsey, but that as to other
officers, he declined to answer. The labored argument of his lawyers
served only to darken counsel, when compared with Governor Ramsey’s
clear and frank explanation, filed before the investigation was begun.
The report went to the Senate committee on Indian affairs, a Democratic
committee of a Democratic Senate. On February 24, 1854, they reported
that after a careful examination of all the testimony the conduct of
Governor Ramsey was not only free from blame, but highly commendable
and meritorious. Thereupon the committee was discharged from further
consideration.
The gist of the matter is, that a treaty of cession was much desired by
the people of the territory, and intensely by politicians and
speculators. It could not have been long delayed. No treaty could be
made with these Indians without the active aid and intervention of the
traders and half-breeds. Such aid could be had only by paying for it.
The device of allowing Indians to stipulate in treaties for the payment
to traders of debts due them from individual Indians, as if they were
tribal obligations, had long been practiced. But for the machinations
of disgruntled parties desirous of being taken into the happy circle of
beneficiaries, the scheme might have been worked as quietly and
comfortably as usual. An old interpreter says of these treaties that
“they were fair as any Indian treaties.” Having undertaken to see that
the traders and half-breeds should not go unrewarded for their
indispensable services, Governor Ramsey stood by them to the end. The
sums paid them were no robbery of the Indians. But for the fact that
the treaties of 1851 were the beginning of troubles to be later treated
of, they need not have taken so much of the reader’s time.
* * * * *
A few days after Governor Ramsey took up his residence in St. Paul,
another citizen established himself in that city of promise. His
ambition was not confined to sharing in the unearned increment of a
rapidly growing capital city; he wished also to take a part in public
affairs. Henry M. Rice, born in 1816 in Vermont, emigrated to Michigan
at the age of nineteen, equipped with an academy education and two
years of law studies. He came on to Minnesota in 1839, and was employed
presently by the Chouteaus of St. Louis, who took over the business of
the American Fur Company, to manage their Winnebago and Chippeway trade
from Prairie du Chien. In 1847 he became a partner in the business and
removed to Mendota, a place much too strait for two such men as himself
and Mr. Sibley. Established in St. Paul, Mr. Rice threw himself into
every movement and enterprise projected for the development of the
town. He generously shared his gains with the public. His personal
qualities were such that he could not help desiring public employment
and obtaining great success in it. His manners were so gracious and yet
not patronizing, that he made friends with all sorts and conditions of
men. He divined with an unerring instinct the motives of men and
parties, and knew when and how by appropriate suggestion to let them
apparently move themselves towards his desired ends. An early example
of Mr. Rice’s influence and success may be found in a contract which he
obtained in 1850 for collecting vagrant Winnebagoes and returning them
to their reservations. The Winnebagoes were a powerful Wisconsin tribe
when the white man came, and long after. The government persuaded them
to vacate first their mineral lands and later all their lands in
Wisconsin, and move to the so-called “neutral ground” in Iowa. This was
a strip of territory some twenty miles wide, starting from the
northeast corner of Iowa and running south of west to the Des Moines
River. The generous presents and annuities required to effect the sale
and removal were the ruin of the Winnebagoes. They became idle,
dissolute, mischievous. The white settlers could not endure them, and
the Indians themselves tired of their confinement to a narrow area.
Accordingly in 1846 a treaty was effected for the exchange of the
neutral ground for a reservation of eight hundred thousand acres in
Northern Minnesota. A tract lying between the Watab and Long Prairie
rivers, west of the Mississippi, was obtained from the Chippeways for
this purpose.
In the summer of 1848, with the help of traders and the military, the
Winnebagoes, by this time sick of their bargain, were put on the road
for their new home. Some did not start, others fell out by the way, but
a majority of the twenty-five hundred souls were landed at Long
Prairie. They liked the new home even less than they expected, and soon
began to desert and scatter; some to encamp along the upper
Mississippi, some to the neutral ground, others to their ancient
country in Wisconsin; and a few are said to have wandered off to the
Missouri. Wherever they went they were unwelcome, and the Indian office
was flooded with complaints of their depredations and trespasses. Mr.
Rice had traded with the Winnebagoes and had so attached them to
himself that they had made him their sole commissioner to choose their
new Minnesota home. His aid had been called in to persuade them to
move. To him now the Whig commissioner of Indian affairs resorted to
round up the vagrant Indians and corral them on their proper
reservation. He agreed to pay Mr. Rice seventy dollars per head for the
service. Meantime Governor Ramsey and Agent Fletcher were occupied with
collecting the Indians below, and preparing to transport or march them
northward without material expense to the government. Delegate Sibley
was supposed to be the proper territorial organ at the seat of
government. The feelings of these gentlemen may be imagined when they
learned that the “infamous Rice contract,” of which they had not had
the least knowledge or suspicion, had been concluded, and Mr. Rice’s
agents were on the road. In vain did Governor Ramsey inform the
commissioner that he had several hundred ready to march; in vain was
Delegate Sibley’s “official protest” against a secret, unconscionable,
insulting proceeding. A House committee of investigation exonerated the
commissioner, but he took early occasion to resign his office. The
point of interest to the Minnesota citizen was not the alleged
excessive cost to the government, or the comfort of the Winnebagoes. He
was concerned to know who had the greatest pull at Washington, and it
appeared to him at the close that a certain private citizen of St.
Paul, a Democrat, and not the Whig governor nor the Democratic
delegate, was the man to “swing things” there.
In the fall of the same year (1850) came the regular election for
delegate to succeed Mr. Sibley upon the expiration of his term. Mr.
Rice, who had contested Mr. Sibley’s election in 1848 as delegate from
Wisconsin,—with little vigor, however,—was too prudent to come out
against one who had brought home the organic act, and made no
opposition to Mr. Sibley’s unanimous election as delegate to the
Thirty-first Congress, although he organized the democracy of the
territory as if for a candidacy. Nor did he personally aspire to the
office when Mr. Sibley’s first term was to expire. To defeat that
gentleman he virtually dictated the Whig nominee, who had been useful
in securing the Winnebago contract, and persuaded the regular
Democratic nominee to retire on the eve of election in favor of the
Whig candidate.
Mr. Sibley, although a Jeffersonian Democrat dyed in the wool, ran as a
people’s candidate. The total vote was 1208; a transfer of 46 votes
would have elected the Whig candidate. The accounts of historians,
surviving citizens, and the newspapers of the day concur in pronouncing
this political campaign the bitterest and most intensely personal ever
known in Minnesota. Mr. Sibley’s opponents attacked him as the
representative and tool of the American Fur Company, an ancient,
shameless, intolerable monopoly. Party lines broke down, and the issue
became “Fur _versus_ Anti-Fur.”
Mr. Sibley served through the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses
with admirable efficiency. At one time objection was made against his
active participation in general legislation, and the suggestion made
that a delegate should confine himself to matters concerning his
territory. Mr. Sibley replied that Minnesota was part of the United
States, and that whatever concerned them concerned her, and claimed for
her delegate the right to be heard, and all the more because he had no
vote. The matter was dropped. He had little difficulty in obtaining for
Minnesota the needful appropriations for her government expenses,
roads, and public buildings, and the reservation in 1851 of two
sections in each township for common schools, and of two townships of
land for the endowment of a university. His most conspicuous act, in
the highest degree creditable to him, although barren of results, was
his effort to secure the passage of his bill to extend the laws of the
land over the Indians. His speech of August 2, 1850, in which he
denounced the rascality of the white man’s dealings with the natives,
the absurdity of treating with them as separate nations, and their need
of the protection of the law, is a splendid testimony to the
intelligence and wisdom of the man who doubtless knew more about Indian
affairs than any other man on the floor. He spoke to deaf ears. The
government went on sowing to the wind, to reap the whirlwind.
Mr. Sibley was permitted to return to private life at the close of his
second term and devote himself to closing up his relations with the
American Fur Company, of which he had remained the head. Mr. Rice was
selected to succeed him by a three fourths majority vote over Alexander
Wilkin, his Whig opponent.
CHAPTER VII
TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT
The triumph of the Democratic party in the elections of 1852 was notice
to all the appointive territorial officers of Minnesota that their days
were numbered. On May 15, 1853, Governor Ramsey gave place to the Hon.
Willis A. Gorman, and the Whig judges were succeeded by Messrs. William
H. Welch, Andrew G. Chatfield, and Moses G. Sherburne.
The appointment of governor was a disappointment to the friends of Mr.
Sibley, who felt that he had good right to aspire to the office. His
connection with the now discredited fur company, and his failure to
ally himself with the Democratic machine in Minnesota, left the
President free to bestow the appointment on some one who had done loyal
service in the late campaign. In this regard few were more deserving
than Colonel Gorman of Indiana. Born in 1816, he was admitted to the
bar at the age of twenty, and three years later became a member of the
legislature. At the outbreak of the Mexican War he raised and commanded
a battalion of riflemen and later a regiment of infantry. After that
war he served two years in Congress, and deserved well of his party.
His power upon the stump was enhanced by a graceful personality and a
voice of great melody and strength. The affairs of the territory had
already been organized and had fallen into an orderly routine, so that
Governor Gorman’s administration of four years was not marked by
notable executive acts. His messages abound in eloquent passages,
generally commendatory of worthy enterprises and objects. The
exigencies of politics and business presently put him and Mr. Sibley
into the same bed, and affiliated Mr. Ramsey to some degree with Mr.
Rice.
Legislative action was devoted mainly to provisions for the needs of a
rapidly swelling population and expanding settlements. New counties
were organized from year to year, and towns, cities, and villages were
incorporated in astonishing numbers. College and university charters
were distributed with liberal hand to aspiring municipalities. The
disposition of the government appropriation for territorial roads
occupied much time of the houses. The commissioners and surveyors
employed in laying out the roads, and the contractors who undertook the
construction, saw to it that no idle surpluses were left over.
Plank-road charters were numerous, but none were ever built. Railroad
incorporations occupy great space in the journals and statutes, perhaps
because they had been excepted out of the general law of 1851 for the
creation of corporations. Ferry privileges were much sought for.
The same conditions governed the activity of Mr. Rice, who took his
seat as delegate in Congress in December, 1853. Industrious,
persuasive, and soon influential, he promoted in many ways the
interests of the territory and his constituents, and by so doing
obtained a popularity hardly equaled in Minnesota history. He was
diligent in laboring for the extension of the land surveys and the
establishment of land offices. He secured the opening of post-offices
in the new villages. His influence contributed to the extension of the
preëmption system to unsurveyed lands, a change which virtually opened
all lands not Indian to settlement. Mr. Rice’s own personal qualities
were such as to give him wide acquaintance and influence, and these
were extended in no small degree by those of the charming Virginian
lady whom he had taken to wife. Standing for reëlection in the fall of
1855, he won by a handsome plurality over his Republican opponent,
William R. Marshall, and another Democratic candidate, David Olmstead,
supported by the friends of Mr. Sibley.
As the administration of Mr. Ramsey had been signalized by the opening
of many millions of acres of Indian lands to white men’s occupation in
southern Minnesota, so in Governor Gorman’s day great areas were opened
in the Chippeway country of northern Minnesota. It is probable that Mr.
Rice, more familiar with the Chippeways than any other public man, was
most influential of all in procuring the cessions.
The earliest explorers to the shores of Lake Superior had brought away
specimens of native copper and Indian reports of hidden metallic
treasure. In 1826 Governor Lewis Cass obtained, by a treaty made at
Fond du Lac with the Chippeways, the right of the whites to search for
metals and minerals in any part of their vast country. Although no
mining development took place, the belief persisted that there was
great metallic wealth in the upper lake region. The first cession in
the northwest was that of the Chippeways of Lake Superior in September,
1854, of the “triangle” north of the lake, extending westward to the
line of the St. Louis and Vermilion rivers, embracing nearly three
million acres. This great cession was followed by another still
greater, early in 1855. Nearly four hundred townships in the north
central part of the state were freed from Indian incumbrance. The two
cessions cover nearly one half of the area of the state. It was the
lumber interest which desired the acquisition of 1855. On the area
liberated stood large bodies of the finest pine forests of America. The
current belief was that they could never be exhausted. Of Chippeway
country there remained a trapezoidal block in the extreme northwest
corner of the state, which was not acquired by treaty until 1863.
In 1851, immediately after the conclusion of the Sioux treaties of
Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, Governor Ramsey made the long journey
from St. Paul to Pembina, and there made a treaty with the local
Chippeways for the cession of a great tract. This treaty went in with
the Sioux treaties for confirmation and had to be “sacrificed” to
secure favorable action by the Senate on them. What “interest” desired
the extinction of Indian titles upon such a remote and disconnected
area is not well known. Mr. Norman W. Kittson had operated there since
1843, for the American Fur Company. The ratified treaties mentioned
left the Chippeways, some ten thousand in number, concentrated on
reservations of moderate extent set apart in the ceded territory. These
they still occupy, generally in peace, depending largely on their
annuities for subsistence. Their progress in civilization and
Christianity has been sufficient to keep the missionaries and teachers
from giving up in despair. No body of ecclesiastics ever had a more
complete rule over a people than the medicine-men of the Chippeway
Indians.
* * * * *
An incident of the Chippeway treaty of 1854 must here have mention, at
the risk of tedium. As was usual, the half-breeds had to be conciliated
by a benefaction to prevent them from dissuading the Indians. It was
given them in the shape of an eighty-acre tract in fee simple to each
head of a family or single person over twenty-one years of age, of the
mixed bloods. This distribution was made and all beneficiaries, three
hundred and twelve in number, were satisfied, within two years. Ten
years after the negotiation of the treaty an accommodating commissioner
of Indian affairs, upon application through Delegate Rice, issued two
certificates for eighty-acre tracts to two members of a prominent
Minnesota family, mixed bloods of the Chippeways of Lake Superior, who
had never lived with those Indians. He also ruled that the grant
extended to Chippeway mixed bloods of any tribe wherever resident. To
prevent the oversight of any worthy beneficiaries under these rulings,
industrious gentlemen at once employed themselves in searching them out
and revealing their unsuspected good fortune. “Factories” were
established at La Pointe, Wisconsin, Washington, D. C., St. Paul, and
in the Red River country, and nearly twelve hundred were discovered.
Later examinations of the lists showed that in some cases both man and
wife had been reckoned as heads of families; and that the names of some
minors, of some Chippeway families with too little white blood to
fairly count as “breeds,” and of a few deceased persons had been
enrolled. The motive for this extraordinary diligence lay in the fact
that the certificates or “scrip” could be used for the location of pine
on unsurveyed lands, giving the holder the opportunity of ranging the
woods and selecting the most valuable. These certificates the
half-breeds were commonly willing to alienate for a small
consideration. That they were on their face absolutely unassignable,
and so good only in the hands of the beneficiary himself, was no
serious obstacle to the ingenious operators. Two powers of attorney,
one to locate, the other to sell, served as a virtual conveyance to the
speculating lumberman.
James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior in Lincoln’s second
administration, put a stop to this pretty game. But his successor, O.
H. Browning, yielded to the persuasions of interested parties, and on
July 11, 1868, reopened the doors to them. Within a few weeks a
prominent citizen filed 315 applications and received 310 pieces of
scrip. An investigating committee expressed the opinion that “probably
not one of these was valid.” They were good for 24,800 acres of pine.
The liberal secretary ruled that they might be located on any lands
ceded by the Chippeways by any treaty, and need not be selected on
those ceded at La Pointe in 1854. Applications continued to come in. In
the following year, 1869, Colonel Ely F. Parker, by birth a Seneca
Indian, was made commissioner of Indian affairs. Taking up the
applications, he rejected them all and gave notice that no more scrip
would issue under the treaty of 1854. Holders of certificates obtained
in the manner described were discouraged, but not cast down. They
prevailed on the Secretary of the Interior in 1870 to appoint a
gentleman of Minnesota a special agent to examine claims. Reporting
progress in March, 1871, that agent had found 135 persons entitled to
scrip.
Columbus Delano was Secretary of the Interior in the year last
mentioned. Assured that the subject of Chippeway half-breed scrip would
bear scrutinizing, he appointed the Neal commission. The report of that
commission brought the facts above related to the surface. Of the 135
claims reported valid by the late special agent they found two
legitimate. They approved eleven out of 495 others presented. The
commission also examined 116 “personal applications,” filed in the St.
Cloud land office, and these without exception were fraudulent. That
number of persons, belonging to a Red River train bivouacked at St.
Cloud, had been taken into the land office and steered through the
motions of applying for scrip. For this accommodating service they were
paid from fifteen to forty dollars apiece. The commission recommended
that no more Chippeway half-breed scrip under the treaty of 1854 should
be issued, unless by order of Congress, and that the persons who had
been guilty of subornation of perjury, forgery, and embezzlement should
be prosecuted.
This did not conclude the long drawn out matter. Pieces of scrip
accompanied with powers of attorney in blank had been freely bought and
sold for use in locating pine. These vouchers fell into the hands of
bankers, and represented considerable investments. It seemed a hardship
that these holders should suffer loss. On June 8, 1872, Congress passed
a bill with the innocent title “An act to quiet certain land titles.”
It provided that “innocent parties” holding Chippeway half-breed scrip
in good faith, for value, might purchase the corresponding lands at a
price to be fixed by the Secretary of the Interior, not less than one
dollar and a quarter an acre.
The Jones commission, appointed to ascertain the innocent holders,
reported thirteen individuals and firms entitled to the benefits of the
act, and approved 216 entries conveying 17,280 acres of the best pine
in Minnesota, worth eight to ten dollars an acre. As to the price to be
paid, the commissioners advised the department that it would be useless
to ask more than two dollars and a half an acre, for if put up at
auction, combinations of bidders would hold bids to that figure. The
commission vindicated the claimants from any participation in the
original frauds, but found that they had been much too careless in
their investments, and so had become victims of persons who had “got up
a scheme with wonderful prudence and caution.” These victims, thus
resorting to Congress for relief, were the sharpest pine land operators
ever known in Minnesota.
This recital may teach how and why liberal gratifications were always
desired for mixed bloods, when Indian treaties were negotiated.
A contemporaneous operation, similar in its results, took place with
the half-breeds of the Sioux nation. Account has already been made of a
gift of land which the Sioux were permitted to bestow on their
half-breeds in the treaty at Prairie du Chien in 1830. The tract
designated, roughly rectangular, long known as the “Wabashaw
reservation,” lay on the Mississippi, running down river from Red Wing
thirty-two miles, and back into the country fifteen miles. The treaty
provided that the President might in his discretion grant title to
parcels of one section in fee simple to individual breeds; and it was
the expectation of the able men who were working the scheme that they
would soon be in possession of extensive properties at slight outlay.
Agent Taliaferro, the incorruptible Sioux agent, revealed the plan in
so forceful a way that neither President Jackson nor any successor
would grant title to individuals. Failure to get possession of land was
followed by efforts to get money. The half-breeds had no desire to
settle on the reservation. In 1841 the unratified “Doty treaty” with
the Sioux included a sum of $200,000 to be paid the breeds for the
reservation, which they were to surrender. Again in 1849, when
Commissioners Ramsey and Chambers attempted to obtain a treaty of
cession of the Sioux, they only succeeded in securing an agreement of
the half-breeds to accept some such sum. The Senate refused to ratify.
A similar article was injected into the treaties of 1851, and this was
rejected by the Senate, to the disappointment of patient waiters.
The matter awaited the intervention of Delegate Rice, whose knowledge
and skill in Indian affairs had obtained him influence in Congress. On
July 17, 1854, a bill which had been introduced by him, providing for
the survey of the Wabashaw reservation in Minnesota, “and for other
purposes,” was approved. The “other purpose” was to give the President
authority to issue certificates or scrip to individual Sioux
half-breeds, under a _pro rata_ division of the tract. These
certificates might be located on any lands of the United States, not
reserved, unsurveyed lands included. In express terms the law forbade
the transfer or conveyance of the scrip. The tract was surveyed, and in
the course of two years 640 individual breeds were assigned 480 acres
each. Later 37 persons obtained each 360 acres; in all 320,880 acres
were disposed of. Very few of the beneficiaries settled on the
reservation. In many cases the scrip went to pay traders’ debts, and in
many others the beneficiaries got “dogs and cats” for it. White men who
had taken half-breed wives profited most. The size of some families is
remarkable.
The provision of law that no scrip could be transferred was evaded by
the same means as those employed in handling Chippeway half-breed
scrip. Two powers of attorney with the necessary affidavits worked a
transfer, which the courts sustained. Sioux half-breed scrip which
could be located on unsurveyed lands was soon in request, and served
the purposes of the well-informed. A batch of it went to California to
be located on forest and mineral lands. A moiety was used for the
acquisition of town sites in Minnesota in advance of surveys. Another
use involving some elasticity of conscience was the acquisition of pine
timber without the inconvenience of taking the lands with it. A plan of
“floating” scrip was worked out and prosecuted so habitually by men of
good report that no dishonor attached to it. The holder of scrip under
power of attorney would locate a piece, cut off the pine, and then
discover that he had not dealt wisely for his half-breed principal. He
would then obtain a cancellation of his location, place his scrip on
another piece, and repeat the process until the surveys were made. As
late as 1872 the commissioner of public lands issued a circular
condemning this practice in vigorous terms.
Soon after the unexampled development of the iron mines in the
“triangle” in the middle of the eighties, Sioux half-breed scrip was
used to obtain title to lands still unsurveyed in that region, likely
to be found iron-bearing. Mr. Vilas, Secretary of the Interior, and his
successor decided, in cases referred to them, that this scrip could not
pass title, the powers of attorney being but a means to evade the law
declaring the scrip to be non-transferable. A long series of
litigations followed, concluded by the Supreme Court decision of 1902
(183 U. S. 619), holding those powers of attorney to work a valid
conveyance. The title to many millions worth of mining property was
thus quieted.
It may here be noted that in 1855 the Winnebagoes, discontented with
their homes in the Long Prairie reservation, were glad to exchange it
for one of eighteen miles square, south and east of Mankato, whither
they removed in the same year. The new reservation being less than one
fourth the area of the old, a large addition was made to white man’s
country.
* * * * *
Of all the developments in the time of Governor Gorman none equaled in
importance the phenomenal increase of population. The census of 1850
showed a total of 6077 souls in the nine counties of the territory,
4577 of them in three counties. Pending the negotiation, amendment, and
ratification of the Sioux treaties of 1851 the accessions were small.
It was late in the season of 1853 when the bands of the upper and lower
Sioux were established on their reservations on the upper Minnesota.
Some adventurous prospectors had not waited for them to abandon their
villages on the Mississippi, but had staked out claims in their corn
and bean patches. There may have been 10,000 whites when the Indians
had departed.
In the early summer of 1854 the Rock Island and Pacific Railroad was
built through to the Mississippi. The event was celebrated by a grand
excursion from Chicago to St. Paul and Fort Snelling. Five steamers
carried the party from Rock Island up the river. Among the guests were
statesmen, divines, college professors, and eminent men of affairs. At
the reception in St. Paul addresses were made by ex-President Fillmore
and George Bancroft the historian. This excursion, widely heralded,
gave notice that Minnesota was in steam communication for half the
year. That year saw the arrival of the advance guard of the host to
follow. The season of 1855 saw 50,000 people in the territory; that
number was doubled in 1856. The sales of public lands, which in 1854
had been but 314,715 acres, rose to 1,132,672 in the next year, and to
2,334,000 in 1856. These figures indicate that the people came to stay
and cultivate the soil. The Middle States sent the largest contingent,
next the Northwestern States, and then New England. The prairie lands,
if broken early, would yield a crop of sod corn the same year, and in
any case returned a bounteous harvest in the second year.
In a time incredibly short these pioneers, rudely housed and their
animals sheltered, were surrounded by all solid comforts. They lost no
time in starting their schools, churches, and other associations.
Minnesota was hardly ever missionary ground for white people.
The establishment of steam communication for the summer season made the
“territorians” of Minnesota feel the more keenly the isolation in the
long winters. Governor Gorman in his first message (January 11, 1854)
said: “To get out from here during the winter ... is far above and
beyond any other consideration to the people of Minnesota. To
accomplish this you must concentrate all the energies of the people on
one or two roads, and NO MORE for the present. I have but little doubt
that Congress will grant us land sufficient to unlock our ice-bound
home, if we confine our request to one point.” This wise counsel had
its effect on the legislature. On February 20 Joseph R. Brown
introduced into the council a bill to incorporate the “Minnesota and
Northwestern Railroad Company,” which was presently passed by that
body, but by no large majority. In the house lively opposition sprung
up, and dilatory proceedings delayed passage till the last night of the
session (March 3). Governor Gorman gave it a reluctant approval because
he had been allowed but sixty-five minutes before the expiration of the
session to examine its provisions. It is quite remarkable that a bill
of such importance, the talk of the town, had escaped his notice. The
act authorized the chartered company to build and operate a railroad
from the head of Lake Superior via St. Paul to Dubuque, Iowa, within a
specified term of years. The franchise was to be void unless the first
board of directors should be organized on or before the first day of
July following.
The real ground of opposition in the legislature, and of Governor
Gorman’s reluctance, lay in a provision, “that any lands granted to the
said territory to aid in the construction of said railroad shall be and
the same are hereby granted in fee simple, absolute, without further
act or deed,” to said company. There was ambiguity in the paragraph
relating to the northern terminus, leaving it in doubt whether that
might not be located outside of Minnesota. It was suspected that the
intention was to place it at Bayfield, Wisconsin, where influential
persons had made purchases of real estate. It remained to secure from
Congress the much needed and hoped for land grant. A bill to grant even
number sections of public lands for six sections in width on both sides
of the proposed railroad line, so drawn as to allow the grant to pass
to the company chartered by the Minnesota territorial legislature, was
introduced in the House on March 7. The Secretary of War, Jefferson
Davis, warmly recommended its passage because of the service the road
would render in transporting troops, munitions of war, and mail.
The proposition to grant a million acres and more to so remote and
thinly settled a territory at once aroused inquiry and opposition. The
policy of granting public lands for building railroads was still novel;
there were but three precedents, that of the Illinois Central grant of
1850 being the oldest. The measure, however, had its friends, and the
opponents were driven to the device of killing the bill by amendments.
And they succeeded. Presently came a revulsion. Members from the South
and West regretted that the railroad land grant policy had received so
rude a backset. There was no little sympathy for Minnesota, struggling
for an open road and a market. Another effort was resolved upon. Mr.
Sibley, then in Washington, drew a new bill identical in the main with
that which had been put to sleep, but so changed as to vest the grant
in the territory and leave its disposition to the next or a later
legislature. This bill was passed and approved on June 29.
The incorporators named in the Minnesota act creating the Minnesota and
Northwestern Railroad Company met in New York on July 1, on one day’s
notice, and “organized” by the election of a board of directors. The
board immediately elected the necessary officers and took the proper
resolutions for beginning their enterprise. On the 24th of July it was
charged on the floor of the House of Representatives at Washington that
the “Minnesota bill” had been mutilated after its passage by the House,
so that the Senate had really passed a differing bill. The effect of
the change (simply the word “and” written over an erasure of the word
“or”) had the effect to vest the lands granted in the Minnesota
corporation; just what Congress had intended not to do. An abortive
investigation followed, and the mutilated bill was repealed by a
section added to a private bill to increase a certain pension, pending
in the Senate, and awaiting third reading. This action was of course
disappointing to the railroad company and those friendly to it.
Delegate Rice was of opinion that the alteration of “or” to “and” was
purely verbal and immaterial, and eminent attorneys advised the company
that a grant having been made for sufficient considerations, it had
become an irrevocable contract. The pretended repeal, therefore, was
void. To test this question a case entitled The United States vs. The
Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad Company was brought before the
district court of Goodhue County, asking the award of damages for
certain oak trees felled on land belonging to the government. The
defense contended that no damages were done, because it had cut the
trees on land granted by Congress by the act of June 24, 1854. The
issue was, of course, the constitutionality of the repealing act. The
court held the act void, and the Supreme Court of the territory
sustained that judgment before the end of the year. This was very
encouraging to the company, but their joy was presently changed to
sorrow. When the Attorney-General of the United States learned from the
newspapers of this litigation, and of a suit brought in behalf of the
United States without his knowledge or authority, he removed the
accommodating district attorney from office (December 30, 1854), and
later discontinued the suit.
When the legislature of 1855 convened, on January 3, the company,
sustained by the Supreme Court of the territory, was in a position to
approach that body with confidence. Its affairs now entered more fully
than ever into territorial politics, and it is only on this account
that further notice of them is taken. Mr. Rice, supported by Mr.
Ramsey, a director of the company, championed the railroad cause.
Governor Gorman and Mr. Sibley led the opposition forces. The former in
his message denounced the “or” and “and” jugglery, and the latter, as
chairman of the judiciary committee of the lower house, framed a
damaging report which called for a memorial to Congress to annul the
charter of the company granted by the Minnesota legislature March 3,
1857. The memorial was not voted, but the national House of
Representatives by resolution of January 29 decided, for its part, to
annul. The Senate did not concur, and Delegate Rice was comforted. When
the news reached St. Paul on March 24 the whole town was illuminated.
The charter of the company provided that unless fifty miles of road
should be completed within one year the franchise should be forfeited.
An extension of time and certain modifications were necessary. A bill
granting these was passed by sufficient majorities. Governor Gorman
vetoed it in a message of great sharpness, closing with an insinuation
that the “money-king” had had more than his share of influence. The
houses by exact two thirds votes passed the bill over the executive
veto. Mr. Sibley and his friends had to content themselves with a
personal memorial to Congress, which his biographer declares to be
unequaled “for fearless and burning exposure of wrong and perfidy, in
the annals of any territory or state.” The company had been let to
live, but it was obliged to apply to the next legislature (1856) for a
further lease of life. This was accorded by good majorities in both
houses. Again Governor Gorman interposed his objections, declaring it
futile to extend the life of the corporation. A new bill, drawn in such
manner as to obviate the executive criticisms, was passed by a close
vote at the end of the session. The bill received the reluctant
approval of the governor. Three successive legislatures having
sustained the company’s charters, he acquiesced, with slight
confidence, however, in its professions.
The company now made a second resort to the courts to establish its
claim to the grant of June 29, 1854. One of its directors, having
bought of the United States a piece of land in Dakota County, brought
suit against the railroad company for trespass. The district and
supreme courts of the territory gave judgment for the defendant
company, holding that it had good title to the land grant and therefore
was not guilty of the alleged trespass. Before entry of judgment,
however, in the latter court, the case was removed to the United States
District Court; and this tribunal also found for the defendant. The
Supreme Court of the United States, on writ of error from below, in
December, 1861, disposed of the case by deciding (two justices
dissenting) that the act of Congress of June 29, 1854, vested in the
Territory of Minnesota no more than a naked trust or power, which could
be and was revoked by the repealing act. The territorial legislature
had exceeded its power in attempting to vest title in fee simple in the
railroad company.
* * * * *
It was in the period now in view that Minneapolis, which has become the
largest Minnesota city, had its beginning. The military reservation of
Fort Snelling as delimited by Major Plympton in 1839 comprised, as was
guessed, about 50,000 acres. The surveys made in later times show
nearly 35,000 acres. So soon as it became known that a treaty of
cession would be exacted from the Sioux, it was believed by the
neighboring residents that Fort Snelling would be abandoned and the
reservation opened for settlement. In 1849, when the first attempt was
made on the Sioux, Robert Smith of Alton, Illinois, a member of
Congress, having a “pull” at Washington, got leave of the War
Department to lease the government mill at the Falls of St. Anthony on
the west side. Later this concession ripened into a purchase of a
quarter section abutting on the cataract. In the next year John H.
Stevens, acting for himself and another, had similar leave granted to
occupy the river front above the Smith claim, on condition of operating
a ferry, free to government, at the falls. In the next year, 1851, a
number of citizens of St. Anthony, already a thriving village of some
six hundred people, thought it would be well to establish inchoate
claims on some of the beautiful terraces which lay in view from their
homes, beyond the river. They accordingly crossed over, staked out
quarter sections as well as possible in the absence of surveys, built
claim shanties, and had some plowing done. Still another year later,
1852, when in midsummer the Sioux treaties and amendments had been
ratified and it was evident that the Sioux must soon move towards the
sunset, and that the military reservation would be given up and opened
to settlement, there took place a wild rush of St. Anthony men across
the stream to seize on the coveted lands. It was not long till the
whole terrain of Minneapolis was covered with claims. The action of
Congress ordering a survey of the reserve expedited these irregular
preëmptions.
The expectations of the squatters were so far met that on August 26,
1852, Congress authorized the “reduction” of the reserve, and the
survey and sale of the excluded area. Two years passed before the
surveys were completed and the lands advertised for sale. It was not
desired that haste be made. On the completion of the surveyor’s work,
the squatters formed a so-called “Equal Rights and Impartial Protection
Claim Association of Hennepin County, M. T.,” the prime object of which
was to adjust the numerous tracts of claimants to the lines of survey.
This was effected by the action of an executive committee allowed to
use discretion and guaranteed support. There was a second use for this
organization. There was a considerable area east of the Mississippi
left outside the boundary of the reduced reserve. This had been offered
for sale in the usual subdivisions in September, 1854, at public
auction. There was but one bidder, and he was surrounded by interested
citizens who would have made it uncomfortable for any other person who
might thoughtlessly inject a superfluous bid and mar the harmony of the
occasion. The government got $1.25, the minimum price for wild lands,
for property worth easily ten times that sum, and nobody’s conscience
was strained. In anticipation of a public sale of the main portion of
the reserved lands on which Minneapolis has been built, the claim
association mentioned was prepared, by similar proceedings, to prevent
any speculators (others than themselves) from depriving them of their
rights by offering to pay value for the lands. But the plats were by
some unknown influence held back in Washington and the sale was
postponed. When Congress assembled in December, 1854, a strong
delegation of claimants appeared in Washington and secured further
postponement of the public sale. Delegate Rice took up their cause with
vigor and presently obtained the passage of an act granting preëmption
right to all who might comply with preëmption conditions. In the spring
of 1855 the fortunate claimants proved up, and the government received
$24,688.37 for 19,733.87 acres of land worth more than $200,000. There
is a tradition, lacking support by particular facts, that military
officers in the neighborhood profited by arrangements with squatters,
who agreed to divide spoils in consideration of being left undisturbed
on their claims. Citizens not having such arrangements were
discouraged, and in some cases driven off by force.
The nucleus of Minneapolis was well crystallized in 1855. The United
States land office was established, the first bridge over the
Mississippi in all its length was built, the first town plat surveyed,
and one hundred houses built. (In 1854 there were but twelve scattered
claim shanties.) Seventeen stores and artisans’ shops in many lines
sprang up. There was a hotel, a newspaper, and four organized churches.
Minneapolis existed under town government till 1867, and in 1872 was
united with St. Anthony, the latter city losing its historic name. The
name Minneapolis is a variant on Min-ne-ha-polis, proposed by Charles
Hoag. After this “reduction” of the Snelling reservation, its area
covered 7916 acres, as shown by later surveys.
The story of the clandestine sale of the whole by Buchanan’s secretary
of war in the spring of 1857, while abounding in incident, was too
slight in its results to call for complete narration. It is probably
not true that this sale was part of a scheme attributed to Floyd, to
squander the military resources of the North in anticipation of a
rebellion of the South. H. M. Rice interested himself in getting the
necessary legislation and orders for the sale. The whole tract was sold
for $90,000, of which one third was paid down. The purchaser defaulted
on the remainder, and the government resumed possession at the outbreak
of the Civil War. In 1872 the claims of the purchaser for his equity
and rentals were adjusted by a board of military officers, which
awarded him 6,394.80 acres, the government retaining 1,521.20 acres. It
has been found necessary to repurchase some of the alienated land for
the uses of the garrison.
In the winter of 1857 a bill to move the capital to St. Peter was
passed in both houses of the legislature. Joseph Rolette of Pembina,
chairman of the council committee on enrollment, absented himself with
the bill till after the close of the session. The speaker signed a
substituted copy, but the president of the council refused. Governor
Gorman approved, but the Supreme Court held that no law had been passed.
CHAPTER VIII
TRANSITION TO STATEHOOD
In his message of January, 1853, Governor Ramsey had prophesied a
population of more than half a million in ten years. Governor Gorman,
in a message three years later, figuring on an increase of 114 per
cent. in the previous year, advised the legislature that they might
expect a population of 343,000 in two years, and 750,000 one year later.
In the course of that year the newspapers began to discuss the question
of statehood, and when the legislature of 1857 assembled, Governor
Gorman’s proposition to call a convention without awaiting the
initiative of Congress received early consideration. A bill to provide
for a census and a constitutional convention was passed by large
majorities in both houses, but seems to have been lost by the enrolling
committee of the council, and was not presented for executive approval.
Pending action on this bill the houses passed a memorial to Congress
praying for an enabling act. Delegate Rice, much too enterprising a
politician to neglect his duty to constituents desirous of statehood,
early in the session of 1857 had introduced a bill to enable the people
of Minnesota to organize as a state and come into the Union. Besides a
little pleasantry about the formation of a sixth state in part out of
the old Northwest Territory, while the ordinance of 1787 had provided
for five only, there was no opposition to the bill in the House. It
found, however, a hard road to travel in the Senate. The ostensible
ground of opposition was that the bill allowed white inhabitants of the
territory, aliens and all, to vote for delegates to the convention. An
amendment to confine the suffrage to citizens of the United States
prevailed by a close vote on a late day in February. In this amendment
it was known the House would not concur, and the opposition were
content. A reconsideration was obtained, however, by the friends of the
bill, and a long debate followed, in the course of which the actual
ground of opposition was revealed. The “equilibrium of the Senate” was
threatened, and might be destroyed by the senators the new state should
elect. Regret was expressed that Iowa and Wisconsin had been admitted
as states, and one senator revived a letter of Gouverneur Morris in
which that statesman denied the right of Congress to admit new states
on territory acquired after the adoption of the constitution.
The alien suffrage amendment, however, was rescinded, and the bill as
it came from the House passed by a vote of 31 to 22; every negative
vote came from south of Mason and Dixon’s line. It may be conjectured
that the object of the Minnesota legislature in nursing along its bill
to form a state government without an enabling act of Congress was to
let Congress know that its action was not indispensable.
The enabling act as passed February 26, 1857, was in the form which had
become traditional, and embodied the usual grants of public lands for
schools, a university, and public buildings. The boundaries of the
proposed state were those of the territory except that on the west,
which was drawn in from the Missouri River to the line of the Red, thus
reducing the area about one half. Revised computations give Minnesota
84,287 square miles, or about 54,000,000 acres.
The act provided for an election of delegates to a convention on the
first Monday in June, under the existing election laws of the
territory. An ambiguous clause authorizing the election of “two
delegates for each representative,” according to the apportionment for
representatives to the territorial legislature, ignoring councilors as
such, became the occasion of trouble. The Minnesota legislature, in an
act of May 23, appropriating $30,000 for the expenses of the
convention, provided that each council district should have two
delegates, and each representative district also two. The number of
delegates was thus fixed at 108, instead of 68.
Governor Gorman on April 27 called a special session of the legislature
to take any necessary action regarding the coming convention, and to
dispose of a railroad land grant which Congress had made. This will
engage attention later. Governor Gorman, however, did not officially
survive to coöperate in the making of the state constitution. Mr. Rice,
warmly attached to President Buchanan, who had come into office in
March, would, it was well known, secure Governor Gorman’s early
retirement to private life. They had not been of much comfort to one
another in railroad and other matters. Governor Gorman resigned, and
was succeeded by the Hon. Samuel Medary of Ohio, who had done good
party service through his newspaper and otherwise. He was a gentleman
of excellent character, but remained in Minnesota too short a time to
identify or even acquaint himself with her people and interests.
The Whigs had never been strong in the territory, nor well organized.
The “Moccasin Democracy” had become habituated to control, and expected
indefinite enjoyment of official emoluments. The passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill by Congress on May 26, 1854, rudely disturbed this
pleasant dream. A new party of protest against the introduction and
maintenance of African slavery in the territories, under active
national protection, sprang into being. A Republican convention met in
St. Paul, July 28, 1855, adopted a platform, and nominated candidates
for territorial offices. It also nominated the leader of the movement,
William R. Marshall, to succeed Mr. Rice as delegate to Congress. Mr.
Rice had too many electors personally attached to himself to be beaten.
It has been thought, however, that Marshall might have won but for a
“prohibition” plank in the platform, which lost him the German vote. At
the election of 1856 the Republicans obtained a working majority in the
lower house of the legislature to meet in the following winter. As the
day drew on for the election of delegates to the convention both
parties were anxious about the result. The Democrats held on to the
hope of recovering control; the Republicans were none too confident
that they could hold their slight balance of power. The issue was
declared by the leading Democratic newspaper to be “White Supremacy
_versus_ Nigger Equality.” The vote was unexpectedly light, and the
results were not clearly decisive. In a few districts “councilor”
delegates had been distinguished on the ballots from “representative”
delegates; in most cases they had not. In the St. Anthony district the
canvassing officer gave certificates of election to Republican
candidates who had received fewer votes than the Democratic, on the
ground that the Democratic ballots had not distinguished the nominees
for councilor and representative delegates.
The control of the convention would, it was maintained, depend on the
action of the committee on credentials to be appointed by the presiding
officer. To capture the “organization” became the object of each of the
nearly balanced parties. It chanced that the enabling act had not
specified the hour for the assemblage of the convention. The excited
and suspicious leaders were unable to agree informally. To make sure of
being on hand the Republican delegates repaired to the capitol late on
the Sunday night preceding the first Monday in June, and remained
there, as one of them phrased it, “to watch and pray for the Democratic
brethren.” These did not appear till a few moments before twelve
o’clock noon of the appointed day. Immediately upon their entrance in a
body into the representatives’ hall Charles L. Chase, secretary of the
territory and a delegate, proceeded to the speaker’s desk and called to
order. At the same moment John W. North, a Republican delegate,
designated by his colleagues, called to order. A motion to adjourn was
made by Colonel Gorman, and the question was taken by Chase, who
declared it carried. The Democrats left the hall to the Republicans,
who proceeded to organize the convention. Fifty-six delegates presented
credentials in proper form and took their oaths to support the
constitution of the United States.
At noon of Tuesday the Democratic delegates assembled about the door of
the hall, and, finding it occupied by citizens who refused to give them
place, met in the adjacent council chamber and proceeded to organize
the convention. Henry H. Sibley was made chairman, on motion of Joseph
R. Brown, and later became president of the body. From that day till
the close of their labors, August 28, the two conventions sat apart.
St. Anthony was represented by six delegates in each, so that the whole
number participating was one hundred and fourteen. Their proceedings,
published in separate volumes, show a commendable diligence in
business. An undue amount of time was given to oratory in defense of
the legitimacy of the respective moieties.
As the delegates had for examples the constitutions of all the states
carved out of the Northwest Territory, and in particular of the very
recent ones of Wisconsin and Iowa, the task of framing the various
articles was not burdensome. Most of them were adopted, with little or
no debate, as reported from the standing committees. The Republicans
refused by a two-thirds vote to tolerate negro suffrage. A proposition
to submit to Congress the division of the existing territory by an east
and west line on the latitude of 45° 15′, or 45° 30′, was much
discussed in both bodies. It was so much favored by the Republicans
that a change of three votes would have given it a majority. The
Democrats, attached to St. Paul and strong in the northern counties,
gave the scheme slight support.
The absurdity of the situation was apparent, but pride restrained both
bodies from taking a first move towards coalescence. At length on the
8th of August Judge Sherburne, a member of the Democratic convention,
highly respected by Republicans as well, proposed the app
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