USA > Iowa > Dickinson County > History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 5
USA > Iowa > Emmet County > History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45
THE WAHPEKUTE
The name of this tribe meant in the Sioux language "Shooters in the leaves," indicating that they were huntsmen and lived in the forests. One of their early chiefs was White Owl, the Chippewa name of whom was "Wa-pa-cut," and some writers claim that the tribal name was derived from this similarity. They had no fixed villages and lived in skin lodges or tepees that were easily transported from one place to another as they roved around on their hunting migrations. In 1766 Carver met them on the Minnesota River. Lewis and Clark found them in 1804 on both sides of the Minnesota, below the mouth of the Redwood, and estimated the number of warriors at less than two hundred. Two years later Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike spoke of them as being "the smallest band of the Sioux, residing generally between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and hunting commonly at the head of the Des Moines."
Pike also pronounced them "the most stupid of all the Sioux," and when Maj. Stephen H. Long made his exploration of the St. Peter's River in 1824 he met some of the Wahpecute, of whom he said: "This tribe has a very bad name, being considered to be a lawless set of men. They have a regular chief, Wiahuga (the Raven), who is acknowledged as such by the Indian agent, but who, disgusted by their misbehavior, withdrew from them and resides at Wapasha's."
At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century they occupied the country of Northwestern Iowa and Southwestern Minnesota. They joined in · the treaties of 1830 and 1851, but six years after the latter treaty some Vol. 1-3
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ten or fifteen lodges, under the disreputable chief, Ink-pa-du-ta, com- mitted the Spirit Lake massacre, a full account of which will be found in another chapter.
THE WAHPETON
Students of Indian history and tradition are practically unanimous in the belief that the Wahpeton was one of the seven primary tribes of the great Sioux nation. The name signifies "Dwellers among the leaves." Like the Mdewakanton, the warriors of this tribe were well formed, good-looking men. In 1680 their principal place of residence was near Mille Lacs, but fifty years later they occupied the country along the lower Minnesota River, their headquarters being near the present City of Belleplaine. Long visited the tribe in 1824, and in his report says : "They wore small looking glasses suspended from their garments. Others had papers of pins, purchased from the traders, as ornaments. We observed one, who appeared to be a man of some note among them, had a live sparrow-hawk on his head by way of distinction; this man wore also a buffalo robe on which eight bear tracks were painted. The squaws we saw had no ornament of value. The dress of the women consisted of a long wrapper, with short sleeves, of dark calico. Others wore a calico garment which covered them from the shoulders to the waist; a piece of blue broadcloth, wound around the waist, its end tucked in, extended to the knee. They also wore leggings of blue or scarlet cloth. Hampered by such a costume, their movements were not graceful."
Chief Other-Day, who played such a conspicuous part in the Indian uprising of 1862, was a Wahpeton. Between the various Sioux tribes and the Sacs and Foxes there was a deadly enmity. The United States government tried to establish a boundary between them that would keep them from being at constant war with each other, but with only partial success. The treaties negotiated for this purpose, as well as those by which the lands of Northwestern Iowa passed into the hands of the white men, are described in the next chapter. R. A. Smith, in his History of Dickinson County says the last hostile meeting between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes was in Kossuth County, Iowa, In April, 1852, "between two straggling bands, both of whom at that time were trespassers and had no legal right on Iowa soil. The number engaged was about seventy on each side and the result was a complete victory for the Sacs and Foxes."
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CHAPTER III THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN-EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN AMERICA-STRENGTH- ENING SPANISH CLAIMS-WORK OF THE ENGLISH-FRENCH EXPLORA- TIONS-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET-LA SALLE'S EXPEDITIONS SETTLE- MENT OF LOUISIANA-CONFLICTING INTERESTS-FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR-CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST-NAVIGATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI-THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE-TREATY OF PARIS-EXPLOR- ING THE NEW PURCHASE-ACQUISITION OF THE INDIAN LANDS-TREATY OF 1804-THE NEUTRAL GROUND-TREATY OF 1830-TREATY OF 1832- TREATY OF 1842-TREATY OF TRAVERSE DES SIOUX.
Civilization is the product of a gradual evolution. Emmet and Dickinson counties, like all the political divisions or subdivisions of the civilized nations of the world, are the outgrowth of a series of events dating back for many years. Bastiat, the eminent French writer on political economy, once wrote an essay entitled "The Seen and the Unseen," the object of which was to show how necessary it is to be able to reason from the effect (the Seen) back to the cause (the Unseen). The theories advanced in that essay will apply to history as well as to economics. The people of Emmet and Dickinson counties see now on every hand the evidences of progress; the great State of Iowa, with its busy com- mercial centers, its fertile fields and miles of railroad; the thriving towns in their own counties, with their banks and public buildings; but do they ever pause to consider the forces which brought about the pres- ent state of development? Long before the counties, as such, were even dreamed of, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, was the first link in a chain of events that culminated in the establishment of the American Republic and the division of the interior of North America into states and counties. In order that the reader may under- stand how Iowa and its counties were called into existence by this process of evolution, it is deemed advisable to give a general account of the events that preceded and led up to their establishment.
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EARLY EXPLORATIONS
Spain was the first European nation to lay claim to the New World. In 1493, the year following the first voyage of Columbus to America, the pope granted to the King and Queen of Spain "all countries inhabited by infidels." The extent of the continent discovered the year before was not then known, but Spain was a Catholic nation, the whole of what is now the United States was inhabited by Indians who knew not the religion of the Catholic Church and therefore came within the category of "infidels." Hence, in a vague way, the papal grant included the present State of Iowa.
Three years later Henry VII of England granted to John Cabot and his sons a patent of discovery, possession and trade "to all lands they may discover and lay claim to in the name of the English crown." Dur- ing the next four years the Cabots, acting under this patent, explored the Atlantic coast and made discoveries upon which England at the begin- ning of the Sixteenth Century claimed practically all the central portion of North America.
Farther northward the French Government, through the discoveries of Jacques Cartier, laid claim to the Valley of the St. Lawrence River and the country about the Great Lakes, from which base they pushed their explorations westward toward the sources of the Mississippi River and southward into the Valley of the Ohio.
Thus at the very beginning of American history, three great Euro- pean nations were actively engaged in making explorations and estab- lishing dominion over certain portions of the Western Hemisphere. Fol- lowing the usage of nations, each claimed title to the lands "by right of discovery." It is not surprising that in course of time a controversy arose among these three great powers as to which was the rightful pos- sessor of the soil.
STRENGTHENING SPANISH CLAIMS
In November, 1519, Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico with a strong force of Spanish soldiery, captured Montezuma, the "Mexican Emperor," and after a two years' war succeeded in establishing Spanish supremacy .. It was not long until Cortez fell into disfavor with the Spanish author- ities at Madrid, but possession of the country was retained and Mexico was given the name of New Spain. Military governors failed to give satisfaction in controlling the affairs of the conquered province, and in 1535 Antonio de Mendoza was appointed viceroy, with almost unlimited powers. He was known as the "good viceroy." By his diplomacy he succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the native inhabitants
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and, did much toward advancing their interests. Under Mendoza and his successors, many of the Indians were converted to the Catholic faith and exploration and settlement were pushed northward into California, New Mexico and Texas.
The grant of the pope to infidel countries was further strengthened in 1540-42 by the expedition of Hernando de Soto into the interior of the continent. De Soto was born in Spain about 1496 and had been connected with some of the early expeditions to Peru, in which service he demonstrated his qualifications to command. Charles I appointed him governor of Florida and Cuba in the spring of 1538 and one of his first official acts was to issue orders for the fortification of the harbor of Havana. About a year later he was ordered by his royal master to explore the interior of Florida.
With about one thousand men, he left Havana on May 12, 1539, and the following month marched his little army into the interior. At a place called Tascaluza he met a large force of hostile Indians and a battle ensued which lasted for several hours, resulting in the ·defeat of the savages. The spanish loss was seventy killed and a number wounded, among who was De Soto himself. This battle delayed the movement of the expedition until the wounded were sufficiently recovered to resume the march. Like all the early Spanish explorers, De Soto's chief object was to discover rich mines of the precious metals. After wandering about through the forests until the spring of 1541, he came to the Missis- sippi River, not far from the present City of Memphis, Tennessee. He then tried to reach the Spanish settlements in Mexico, but was stricken with fever and died in the wilderness, his body being buried in the river he had discovered. A few of his men finally managed to reach Florida and gave an account of the country through which they had passed. Upon their report Spain claimed "all the land bordering upon the Grande River and the Gulf of Mexico."
WORK OF THE ENGLISH
While Spain was operating in the West Indies and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the English were by no means idle. In 1620 the British crown, ignoring Spain's papal grant and the claims based upon the explorations of De Soto, issued to the Plymouth Company a charter which included "all the lands between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels of north latitude from sea to sea." The entire State of Iowa was included in this grant. Eight years later (1628) the Massachusetts Bay Company received a charter from the English Government to a strip of land one hundred miles wide, "extending from sea to sea." Had the lands of the Massachusetts Bay Company been surveyed, the northern
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boundary of this one-hundred-mile strip would have crossed the Missis- sippi River not far from the present City of McGregor and the southern not far from Davenport.
Thus it was that Iowa, or at least a portion of it, was early claimed by both Spain and England "by right of discovery," though no repre- sentative of either country had ever set foot upon the soil. No efforts were made by either Spain or England to extend settlement into the interior. The Spaniards were so intent upon discovering rich gold and silver mines that no attention was paid to founding permanent settle- ments, while the English were apparently content with their little colonies at Jamestown, Virginia, and in New England.
FRENCH EXPLORATIONS
In the matter of extending her explorations and planting colonies, France was perhaps more aggressive than England and Spain put together. Port Royal was settled in 1604 and Quebec was founded by Samuel Champlain in 1608. As early as 1611 Jesuit missionaries from the French settlements in Canada were among the Indian tribes along the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. In 1616 a French explorer named Le Carron visited the country of the Iroquois and Huron Indians. The reports of Le Carron and the missionaries showed the pos- sibilities of opening up a profitable trade with the natives, especially in furs, and French explorations were extended still farther westward. In 1634 Jean Nicollet, agent of the "Company of One Hundred," which was authorized by the King of France to engage in the Indian trade, explored the western shore of Lake Michigan about Green Bay and went as far west as the Fox River country, in what is now the State of Wisconsin. He is said to have been the first white man to make a report upon the region west of the Great Lakes.
Early in the year 1665 Claude Allouez, one of the most zealous of the Jesuit missionaries, visited the Indians in the vicinity of what is now known as Ashland Bay, on the southern shore of Lake Superior. In the fall of the same year he held a council with representatives of several of the western tribes at the Chippewa village, not far from Ashland Bay. At this council Chippewa, Sioux, Sac, Fox, Potawatomi and Illini chiefs were present. To them and their people Allouez promised the protec- tion of the great French father and paved the way for a profitable trade. Here Allouez also learned from some of the Sioux and Illini chiefs of a great river farther to the westward, "called by them the Me-sa-sip-pi, which they said no white man had yet seen (they knew nothing of De Soto's discovery of the river more than twenty years before), and along which fur-bearing animals abounded."
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Three years later Father Allouez and Claude Dablon, a Jesuit asso- ciate, founded the mission of St. Mary's, the oldest white settlement within the present State of Michigan. The French authorities in Canada, influenced by the reports of Nicollet and the missionaries, sent Nicholas Perrot as the accredited agent of the French Government into the country to arrange for a grand council with the Indians. The council was held at St. Mary's in May, 1671. Before the close of that year Father Jacques Marquette, one of the most influential of the Jesuit Fathers in America, founded the mission at Point St. Ignace for the benefit of the Huron Indians. For many years this mission was regarded as the key to the great unexplored West, and its founder was destined to play an import- ant part in the early history of the country.
MARQUETTE AND JOLIET
Father Marquette had heard the reports concerning the great river to the westward and was filled with a desire to discover it, but was deterred from making any attempt in that direction until after Perrot's council in 1671, which placed the French and Indians upon a more friendly footing. Even then he was delayed for nearly two years with his preparations and in obtaining the consent of the Canadian officials. In the spring of 1673, armed with the proper credentials, he went to Michilimackinac to complete his arrangements for the voyage. It is said the friendly Indians, who had formed an attachment for the missionary, tried to dissuade him from the undertaking by telling him that the Indians living along the great river were cruel and bloodthirsty, and that the stream itself was the abode of terrible monsters that could easily swallow a canoe loaded with men.
Such stories had no effect upon the intrepid priest, unless it was to make him the more determined, and on May 13, 1673, accompanied by Louis Joliet, an explorer and trader, and five voyageurs, with two large canoes, the little expedition left the mission. Passing up the Green Bay to the mouth of the Fox River, they ascended that stream to the portage, crossed over to the Wisconsin River, down which they floated until June 17, 1673, when their canoes shot out upon the broad bosom of the Mississippi. The bright June morning white men beheld for the first time the bluffs of Iowa, near the present city of McGregor. Turning their canoes down stream they descended the great Father of Waters until the 25th, when they landed on the west bank, "sixty leagues below the mouth of the Wisconsin River," where they noticed footprints in the soft earth. Sixty leagues below the mouth of the Wisconsin would throw this landing place about twelve miles above the present City of
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Keokuk, Iowa. There is little doubt that Marquette and Joliet and their voyageurs were the first white men to set foot upon Iowa soil.
When Marquette and Joliet saw the footprints they decided to follow them and learn something of the natives. Leaving the voyageurs to guard the canoes and supplies, they followed the trail for several miles, when they came to an Indian village and noticed two other villages in the vicinity. The Indians informed the two Frenchmen that they belonged to the Illini tribe and that the name of their village, as well as the river upon which it was located, was "Moingona." After a visit of several days among the Indians Marquette and Joliet were accompanied back to the river by the chiefs and a large party of braves. As they were about to reembark, one of the chiefs addressed Marquette as follows:
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"I thank the black-gown chief for taking so much pains to come and visit us. Never before has the earth been so beautiful nor the sun so bright. Never has the river been so calm and free from rocks, which your canoe has removed. Never has the tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we behold it today. Ask the Great Spirit to give us life and health, and be you pleased to come and dwell among us."
One of the chiefs then presented Marquette with an elaborately decorated calumet, or peace pipe, as a token of the tribe's good wishes, after which the canoes were pushed out into the stream and the voyage was continued. They descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas River, where they met with a tribe of Indians whose language they could not understand, when they turned back up the river. They reached the French settlement at Michilimackinac after an absence of some four months, during which time they had traveled about two thou- sand five hundred miles. Joliet was a good topographer and he prepared a map of the country through which they had passed. The reports of their voyage, when presented to the French governor of Canada, made the knowledge of the Mississippi's existence a certainty and steps were soon afterward taken to claim the country it drained in the name of France.
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LA SALLE'S EXPEDITION
In 1674 Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was granted the seigneury of Fort Frontenac, where the City of Kingston, Canada, is now situated, and on May 12, 1678, Louis XIV, then King of France, granted him a permit to continue the explorations of Marquette and Joliet, "find a port for the King's ships in the Gulf of Mexico, discover the western parts of New France, and find a way to penetrate Mexico."
La Salle's ambition was to follow the Mississippi from its source to its mouth. Late in the year 1678 he made his first attempt to reach
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and descend the river, but it ended in failure, chiefly because his prepa- rations had not been made with sufficient care. Affairs at Fort Frontenac then claimed his attention until December, 1681, when he started upon what proved to be his successful expedition. He was accompanied by his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti; Jacques de la Metarie, a notary; Jean Michel, who was surgeon; Father Zenobe Membre, a Recollet missionary, and "a number of Frenchmen bearing arms." It is not necessary here to follow this little expedition through all its vicissitudes and hardships in the dead of winter and a wild, unexplored country. Suffice it to say that on April 8, 1682, La Salle and Tonti passed through two of the channels at the mouth of the Mississippi, both reaching the Gulf of Mex- ico. The next day La Salle formally took possession of "all the country drained by the great river and its tributaries in the name of France, and conferred upon the territory the name of Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV, the French King." Under this claim, which was afterward acknowledged by the European powers, Iowa became a dependency of France.
In the meantime La Salle had sent Father Louis Hennepin in 1680 on an expedition from the mouth of the Illinois River to the headwaters of the Mississippi. In April of that year Hennepin reached the Falls of St. Anthony, where the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, now stands, and on April 8, 1689, Nicholas Perrot took formal possession of the upper Mississippi Valley. He built a trading post on a river which he named the St. Nicholas.
SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA
Before the close of the year 1682, immediately after La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi, small trading posts were established by the French at Kaskaskia and Cahokia-the oldest settlements on the river. Soon after the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, France decided to send colonists to Louisiana. Consequently, in 1712, a charter was granted to Antoine Crozat, a wealthy merchant of Paris, giving him exclusive control of the Louisiana trade under certain conditions, one of which was that he should send a given number of colonists to the prov- ince within three years. When Crozat's agents arrived in America to carry out his orders they found the Spanish ports closed against his vessels, for Spain, while recognizing France's claims to the province, as based upon the explorations of La Salle, was jealous of French ambi- tions. At the end of five years, tired of combatting this Spanish opposi- tion and the many other difficulties encountered, Crozat surrendered his charter.
About that time John Law organized the Mississippi Company as a
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branch of the Bank of France. This company succeeded Crozat in the control of the Louisiana trade and in 1718 Law sent some eight hundred colonists to the province. The next year Philipe Renault went up the Mississippi to the Illinois country with about two hundred immigrants, his object being to establish posts and open up a trade with the Indians. Law was a good promoter but was lacking in executive ability to carry out his ideas. In 1720 his whole scheme collapsed, and so disastrous was the failure that his company is known in history as the "Mississippi Bubble." For a few years he tried to reorganize, but finally on April 10, 1732, he surrendered his charter and Louisiana again became a crown province of France. The white population at that time did not exceed three hundred and fifty.
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CONFLICTING INTERESTS
In the meantime the English had been gradually pushing the fron- tier of their civilization farther toward the west. On May 2, 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company was chartered in London, being the first of the great trading associations. Within a short time its trappers and traders were operating among the Indian tribes of the interior, in spite of the French claim to the Mississippi Valley and oblivious to French pro- tests against their trespasses. Its agents were generally English or Scotch, though a few Frenchmen entered the employ of the company. Many of the representatives and employees of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany intermarried with the Indians, which placed them upon a more friendly footing with the natives. A. F. Chamberlain, of Clark Univer- sity says: "The method of the great fur companies, which had no dreams of empire over a solid white population, rather favored amal- gamation with the Indians as the best means of exploiting the country in a material way. Manitoba, Minnesota and Wisconsin owe much of their early development to the trader and the mixed-blood."
What is true of Manitoba, Minnesota and Wisconsin is also true in a lesser degree of every northwestern state. Agents of the North-West, Missouri and American fur companies, as well as the "free trappers and traders," intermarried freely with the Indians. The rivalry between the French and English traders soon brought on a conflict of interests that embroiled their mother countries. In 1712 the English traders incited the Fox Indians to hostilities against the French. Again in 1730 the English and Dutch traders joined in an effort to drive the French out of the country by inciting some of the Indian tribes to acts of hostility. The first open rupture between France and England did not come, how- ever, until 1753, when the French began building a line of forts from the Great Lakes down the Ohio Valley to prevent the English from
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