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Gc 977.6 N31c 1727559
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01053 2197 -
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840
CONCISE HISTORY
OF THE
STATE OF MINNESOTA
BY
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EDWARD D. NEILL.
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MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. S. M. WILLIAMS, PUBLISHER.
1887.
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048
F 911 5 62
1.27559
PRINTING HOUSE HARRISON & SMITH. 367 AND 250 FIRST AVENUE SOUTH. MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
Paxorax
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
http://www.archive.org/details/concisehistoryof00neil
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PREFACE.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle. thought that the commence- ment of a people was "more than half of the whole," In all ages men have looked back with interest to the origin of the particular community in which they lived, and loved to compare the then with the nou; the struggles of the past with present attainment. To meet a desire for a concise history of Minnesota the author has prepared the present volume. For some time. the fifth edition of a large, and to some extent documentary History of Minnesota. con- taining nearly a thousand pages has been exhausted. It was pre- pared as a work of reference suitable for large libraries, and will always be of some service. The present history, it is thought, may be adapted to the frontiersman's cabin, the farmer's fireside, and to the large number of intelligent youth, natives of Minnesota, who can appreciate the remark of the Roman orator "that to be ignorant of what has happened before you were born, will always keep you a child."
For valuable assistance rendered, acknowledgments are due to N. H. Winchell, State Geologist of Minnesota: H. D. Harrower; Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Company, New York City; and Gen. H. H. Sibley, the commander of the expedition, which released the white captives among the Sioux.
ST. PAUL, February, 1887.
CONCISE HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
CHAPTER FIRST.
FRENCH EXPLORERS AND FUR TRADERS.
Stephen Brule, ( Broolay) employed by Champlain to collect peltries for the fur company of which he was the head, after a three years' absence, among the Indian tribes, bordering on the shores of Lake Huron, in the year 1618, returned to Quebec with a lump of copper, and mentioned that he ha'l heard, from the Indians. of an upper lake connected with, but superior to Lake Huron, which was so long that it required nine days for an Indian to pass, in a canoe, from one end to the other.
On the 4th of July, 1634, Jean Nicolet, the son of poor parents at Cherbourg, France, who had been in the service of the same fur company as Brule, left Three Rivers, a trading post on the Saint Lawrence River ninety miles from Quebec, for the distant West, and was the first white man to reach the Green Bay of Lake Michigan.
It was not however, until the winter of 1659-60. that white men entered the region. within the present bound- aries of the State of Minnesota. Medard Chouart, born near Meaux, France, known in history as Sieur des Groseilliers, ( Grozayyay) and his brother-in-law, Pierre d'Esprit, the Sieur Radisson. a native of St. Malo, were the first Europeans to describe the Mississippi as a "deep, wide and beautiful
.
6
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
river comparable in its grandeur to the Saint Lawrence," explore the shores of Lake Superior, and visit the Dakotahs of Minnesota, known among the Algonquin tribes, because of their hostility, as the Nadouessiouk, and for brevity, called by the traders, Siou, or Sioux.
After passing Sault St. Marie at the entrance of Lake Superior, they paddled their canoes towards a small stream called Pawabick Konesibis, 1 the Ojibway word for Iron River, on modern maps called Little Iron River, and from thence pushed on to the Picture Rocks, called by the Algonquin Indians, Namitouck Sinagoit, and were the first white men to enter the Grand Portal, an arched cave, which Radisson described in these words: "It is like a great portal, by reason of the beat- ing of the waves. The lower part of the opening is as a tower, and grows bigger, in the going up,
I gave it the name of the portal of Saint Peter, because my name is so called, and that I was the first Christian who ever saw it."
After an encampment of three days, at the month of the Huron River, they journeyed to Portage River on the west shore of Keweenaw Bay, where they heard of rich copper deposits. Carrying the canoes across the peninsula they were launched, and at length they came to Montreal River, and in a half day from this stream saw a long point jutting into Lake Superior for two leagues, but only sixty paces in width. Crossing this narrow neck of land they found themselves in a beauti- ful bay, and going to the bottom of it near a brook, in the vicinity of the modern town of Ashland. erected a rude trading post made of logs, triangular in shape, with
1 Baraga, in his Ojibway Dictionary, gives "Biwabikosibi" as the name for Iron River.
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FIRST EXPLORERS.
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the door facing the bay. The Indians who had accom- panied them to this point were Hurons, some of which tribe fleeing from the Iroquois, lived for a time upon an island in the Mississippi River above Lake Pepin, about three leagues below the town of Hastings, but owing to a quarrel with the Sioux had retired to one of the lakes toward the sources of the Chippewa, and Black River, in Wisconsin.
After they had been about two weeks at Chagonamigon Bay, the Hurons, who had been informed of their arrival, sent a deputation to invite them to visit them on the banks of an inland lake, eight leagues in circumference and four days' journey from the Bay. Here the winter of 1659-60 was passed in hunting.
Early in 1660, before the snow had melted, eight dele- gates from the Sioux visited the Frenchmen among the Hurons in Wisconsin. Each of the deputation had two wives. They approached the white men with great deference, and first greased their feet and legs and then stripped them of their clothes, and covered them with hides of buffalo and white beaver skins. After this they wept over their heads and then offered them the calu- met or pipe of peace, made of the red pipestone, the stem of which, about five feet in length, was adorned with eagle's tail, painted with several colors. For eight days, feasts and councils were held, at which the Sioux expressed their friendship and desire to have thunder, as they called a gun.
Afterwards the Frenchmen visited a large hunting village of the Tatanga Sioux, whose wigwams were of skins and mats, and remained with them six weeks. This band were called Tatanga, the Sioux word for buffalo, because they came from their winter cabins, in
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
the northern forests, to hunt this animal on the praries. It is noteworthy that Tatanga is one of the first Sioux words mentioned by any Frenchman.
Radisson, in his Journal. describes the Mississippi as having two forks, one running toward the south and the other westward. The tributary known as the Min- nesota River runs southward as far as Mankato. Upon one of the earliest maps of the upper Mississippi River the Minnesota is called the River of Maskoutens (Prairie) Nadouessioux, and, perhaps, in the valley of this stream, the Frenchmen first visited the Sioux.
Returning to Chagouamigon Bay, they coasted from island to island on the north shore, and learned of rivers that flowed into Hudson's Bay. For a long period Pigeon River, part of the boundary between the United States and British Possessions, was called Groseilliers.
After the middle of August, 1660, after a voyage of twenty-six days, Groseilliers and Radisson arrived at Montreal, from Lake Superior, with three hundred Indians, and a flotilla of sixty canoes laden with "a wealth of skins," valued at 200,000 livres, French cur- rency.
Before the month had closed, the Frenchmen were on their return, with six others, also the Jesuit Father, Menard, and his servant Jean Guerin, a lay brother. On the 15th of October, Saint Theresa's day, of the cal- endar of the Church of Rome, the party reached Ke- weenaw Bay, and here, Menard stopped, began a mission, and passed the winter. On the 13th of June, 1661. he and Guerin left Keweenaw to visit the Hurons, toward the sources of Black River, accompanied by a few Indian guides who soon deserted. The route was circuitous, by way of streams tributary to Lake Michigan, and
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COPPER. DISCOVERED.
down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi river. Ascend- ing this, to one of the mouths of the Black river they slowly moved up this, until they came to rapids, seven weeks from the time they left Lake Superior. While Guerin was making a portage with the canoe, Menard disappeared, and it was supposed that he had been killed by some skulking savage. South of the Montreal river, of Lake Superior, upon an old map, 1 one of the earliest to show the valley of the upper Missis- sippi, a point near one of the branches of a river flowing into the Mississippi, is marked as the place where Menard died.
After the explorations, Groseilliers again visited Canada and in May, 1662, left Quebec to go by way of Lake Superior to Hudson's Bay, and on the 25th of July, 1663, he and all the Frenchmen who had been with him, with thirty-five canoes, and one hundred and fifty Indians arrived at Montreal.
The Canadian authorities displeased because the Indian guides had forsaken the missionary Menard, imprisoned and ironed one of the chiefs. The Indians, by large presents, secured his release, and immediately returned to their own country.
The information relative to the region west, and north of Lake Superior, given by Groseilliers and Radisson, was valued by the fur merchants at Quebec and Mon- treal, and excited the attention of the French Governor. Pierre Boucher, an intelligent citizen of Canada, while on a visit, published in 1664, a little treatise, in Paris, in which he writes: "In Lake Superior, there is a great island, fifty or one hundred leagues in circumference, in which there is a very beautiful mine of copper. There
1. Vol. IV., p. 206, Nar. and Crit. Hist. of America.
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
are other places, in those quarters, where there are sim- ilar mines, so I learned from four or five Frenchmen lately returned. * They told me that they had seen an ingot of copper all refined, which was on the shore, and weighed more than eight hundred pounds according to their estimate, and said that the savages on passing it, made a fire on it, after which they cut off pieces with their axes."
Maps of the region of the Great Lakes were now enlarged. Sanson, the Geographer, had published a map, in 1656, on which Green Bay was for the first time properly placed as an arm of Lake Michigan, and called Lac des Puans. In 1660, in the map of Crenxius, this Bay is the extremity of geographical knowledge.
Soon after the explorations of Groseilliers and Radis- son, maps began to be drawn, showing the Mississippi, above the Wisconsin river. Upon one of Joliet's maps, drawn about 1674, the "Sion" are represented at Mille Lacs, and on the Mississippi are marked beginning south- ward, the Ihanctona, now known as the Yankton Sioux; the Pintoua; the Napapatou; the Ouapikonti; the Cha- iena, now Cheyennes who formerly lived in the Red River Valley; the Agalomiton; the Ousittoau; and Alempigouak.
In the year 1678, several prominent merchants of Quebec, and Montreal, formed a company to open trade with the Sioux of Minnesota. Oneof these, was named Patron, and his nephew Daniel Gresolon Du Luth was made the leader of the expedition. He was born near Paris, and was a gendarme in the king's guard at the battle of Seneffe. His name is variously spelled in the documents of his day, Du Lha, Du Lhut, Du Lut, and
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DU LUTH'S EXPLORATIONS.
Du Lud, but the pronunciation was not essentially dif- ferent.
With a party of three Frenchmen and three Indians, he left Montreal on the Ist of September, 1678, and on the 5th of April, 1679, when he was on the shore of Lake Superior, three leagues beyond Sault Ste Marie he wrote to Frontenac, Governor of Canada, that he would 'not stir from the Nadoussioux, until further orders," and that he would set up the King's arms, "lest the English, and other Europeans, settled towards California, should take possession of the country." During that summer he explored that part of Minnesota west of Lake Superior, and east of the Mississippi and on the second of July, 1679 set up the arms of France among the Isanti or Kuife Sious whodwelt around Mille Lacs, and then visited the Songas- kitons, probably the Sissetons, and the Houetpatons, who were one hundred and twenty leagues beyond, perhaps at Sandy Lake. He came back to Lake Superior, and on the 15th of September, and at Kamanistigonia1 or Three Rivers, where, Fort William was built, at the beginning of this century, he held a conference with the Assine- boines, and other northern tribes, and persuaded them to make peace with the "Nadouecioux," and inter-marry. During the next winter he encouraged them to hunt together, and hold feasts.
In June, 1680, with two canoes, an Indian and four Frenchman, he entered the Brule ( Broolay ) River, which flows into Lake Superior, and slowly ascended, owing to numerons beaver dams, and toward its source, by a short portage, reached a lake, the outlet of which, was the Saint Croix River, which he descended to the Mississippi, and there learned from some Sioux, that there were French-
1. Baketigueia is the Ojibway for a forked river.
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
men on the Mississippi, with some of their tribe. Leav- ing two of his men and his goods behind, he proceeded with the other two, and two Indians, in a canoe, and descending the river eighty leagues, occupying two days and two nights, found early on the third day, the traders sent up the Mississippi, by La Salle, who were accompa- nied by the Dutch Franciscan priest, Louis Hennepin. Accault and his companions had been taken to the Mille Lacs region, by a trail, which began at the large marsh just below, where is now the city of Saint Paul. In July, 1680, by way of the Falls of Saint Anthony, they descended the Mississippi with a hunting party of Sioux, to the point where Du Luth found them. They went back with Du Luth to the Sioux villages, and in a few weeks, all the Frenchmen again passed the Falls of Saint Anthony, on their way to Canada.
La Salle's account of this expedition, written at Fort Frontenac, on August 22d, 1682, contains many interest- ing facts. He writes: "The river Colbert, named Gas- tacha by the Iroquois, and Mississippi by the Outaouacs, comes from the Northwest. I have caused it to be ex- plored by two of my men, one named Michel Accault, and the other a Picard [Anthony Augelle], with whom the R. P. Louis Hennepin was associated. *
They had about a thousand pounds of goods, such as are most valued in those regions, which with the peace calumet are never disregarded by those tribes, since they are nearly destitute of everything. *
* * Following the course of the Mississippi, one finds the river Ouisconsing, Misconsing, or Meschetz Odeba, [a Sioux name perhaps intended for Meshdeke Wakpa, River of the Foxes. ] About twenty-three or twenty-four leagues to the north or northwest, from the
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MICHEL ACCAULT'S EXPEDITION.
mouth of the Onisconsing, which has a rocky shore on the south side and a beautiful prairie on the north, near to three beautiful basins or bays of still water is the river Noire [ Black ], called Chabadeba [Chapa Wakpa, Beaver River], by the Nadone-Sioux. Ascending about thirty leagues we have the river Bœufs [ Chippewa ], about as large at its mouth as the Islinois. It is so called because of the number of these animals [buffalo ] `which are there found. There are several islands at its mouth.
" Thirty-eight or forty leagues higher is found the river [Saint Croix ] by which Du Lath descended to the Mis- sissippi. * Ascending still the Mississip- pi are found the falls which those whom I sent, passed there first of all, named from St. Anthony. They have the height of thirty or forty feet. and there the river is also narrow. There is an island in the midst of the fall. * Here the canoes are car- ried about three or four hundred steps, and eight leagues above, is the river of Nadoesioux. It is narrow at its entrance, and drains a poor country covered with shrubs through about fifty leagues, when it terminates in a lake called Lake of the Issati [ Mille Lacs] which spreads over a great marsh, where grows the wild rice, at the point of its outlet in this river.
"The Mississippi comes from the west, but it was not followed because of the adventure which befell R. P. Louis, Michel Accault, and their comrade [Augelle]. This affair thus happened. After having pursued the course of the Mississippi till the 11th of April, about three o'clock in the afternoon, rowing along the shore, a band of a hundred Nadouessionx warriors, who were going to kill some of the Tchatchakigoua, were descend-
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
ing in thirty-three birch bark canoes. There were with them three women, and one of those base fellows who serve the women, though they are men, which the Islinois term Ikoueta. They passed on the other side of some islands, and thus some of their canoes descended below the French; perceiving this, they all collected together, and those who were below, ascending easily, closed the passage. There was one party on the land who invested . them on that side.
"Michel Accault, who was the leader, presented the calumet. They received it and smoked, after having made a circle upon the ground, covered with straw, where they made the Frenchmen to seat themselves. Then two old men commenced to weep for the death of relatives, whom they designed to avenge; and after hav- ing taken some tobacco, they caused our men to embark and cross over first to the other shore of the river. They followed after, having made their cries, and rowing rapidly. Upon leaving their canoes Michel Accault gave them twenty knives and a fathom and a half of tobacco, which they accepted. They had already stolen a short pike and some other small trinkets. They then traveled ten days together, without any evidence of dis- content or ill will; but on the twenty-second of April, hav- ing arrived at the isles, where they had killed some Mas- koutens, they held up to view the two dead whom they were going to avenge, and whose bones they carried with them, between P. Louis, and Michel Accault. This is a ceremony which they perform, before their friends to incite them to compassion, and induce them to give presents to cover their dead.
"Michel Accault, unfortunately, did not understand this people, and there was not a slave of the other nations
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FRENCHMEN NEAR THE SITE OF ST. PAUL.
whom he understood, which hardly ever happens, all the tribes in America having a number of those to whom they have given life to take the place of their dead, after having sacrificed a large number to satiate their veng- ance. This makes them able to understand all those nations, since they became familiar with three or four languages of those who go the farthest to war, as the Iroquois, the Isliuois, the Akansa, the Nadouesioux and Sauteurs. Accault understood these, with the exception of the Nadouesioux; yet there are among them a num- ber of tribes who have been slaves to the others, but not one was found willing to interpret. As a mark of friendship he gave a full case of goods, and the next day, twenty-four hatchets.
"Eight leagues below the Falls of St. Anthony [just below the present capital of Minnesota] they resolved to go, by land, to their village, sixty leagues from where they left their canoes, not wishing to carry the baggage of our men, nor to conduct them by water. They made them give the rest of their hatchets, which they dis- tributed among themselves, promising to pay well for them at their village, but two days after, they divided among themselves two cases of goods and had a quarrel concerning the merchandise and the tobacco, each chief asserting that he was master, when they separated on account of their jealousy, and led the Frenehmen to the village, where they promised to render satisfaction with beaver skins, of which they said they had a large num- ber.
"There they were well received and made a feast for Accault, who was in a different village from R. P. Louis and the Picard, who were, also, well received, except that some frolicsome young fellows told the Picard to
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
sing. The fear he experienced made him show coward- ice, because slaves only sing on arriving at a village. Accault, who was not there, could not prevent it, but they experienced no other treatment, like that of slaves. They were never bound, and after that, they promised to pay for what the young men had seized, since Accault had found some to whom he could convey his ideas, and comprehend the importance of it. Then they danced two calumets, and gave some beaver skins as the begin- ning of payments, but as they were too little, Accault was not satisfied.
"Six weeks after, all having returned toward the Ouisconsing with the Nadouesioux, on a hunt, the R. P. Louis Hennepin, and the Picard determined to go to the mouth of the river, where I had promised to send mes- sages, as I had done, by six men whom the Jesuits had enticed away, telling them that the R. P. Louis Henne- pin and his companions had been killed. They suffered them to go alone, to show that they were not treated as slaves. * Jealousy was the sole cause of the pillage, because as they wereof different villages, and but few from that where the Frenchmen were to go, they did it to secure their portion of the goods. But the old men strongly censured the young, and offered and began to render the proper satisfaction to Accault. . "All that Du Luth can say is, that having arrived where the Father and the two Frenchmen had gone in a hunt from the village, where he for the first time went along with them when they returned. He made it easier for them to return sooner than they would have done, because messengers whom I had sent had been dis- suaded from going on."
With Du Luth, Aecault, Augelle, called the Picard,
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HENNEPIN CENSURED.
and Hennepin, the Franciscan, returned by way of the Wisconsin River, to Mackinaw. Hennepin, in 1682, went to France and published a book the next year, which did not add to his reputation for veracity. La Salle, in ref- erence to him, wrote in the communication from which the above extracts have been taken: "I have thought it proper to give this narrative of the adventures of this canoe, because I do not doubt it is talked of, and if you desire to confer with Father Louis Hennepin, Recol- lect, who has returned to France, it is well to know some- thing about it, for he will not fail to exaggerate every- thing; it is his character, and he has written, even to me, as if he had been almost burnt up, although not at all in danger; but he considers it honorable to act in this way, and he speaks more according to what he writes than as to that which he knows."
Father Gravier, a Jesuit Missionary in Louisiana in 1701, alluded to the "false stories" of Hennepin, and some years later, Charlevoix, another priest, used this language: "All his works are written in a declamatory style, offensive by its inflation, by the liberties which the author takes, and by his indecent invectives."
Du Luth was in Paris in the winter of 1683, but in the spring returned to America, and during the summer reached Mackinaw, with a license to trade. On the eighth of August he left with thirty men, to trade with the Sioux, and proceeded by the way of Green Bay. It · is probable that he established the post at the sources of the St. Croix River, which, as early as 1688, is marked Fort St. Croix, upon one of Franquelin's Maps. In 1686, Du Luth was withdrawn from the far West, and ordered to erect a fort near the entrance of Lake Huron, about thirty miles above Detroit.
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
Nicholas Perrot. forty years of age, and long identi- fied with the Indian trade, in the spring of 1685, was commissioned by Governor De la Barre, as commander for the West. During the autumn, he reached the Miss- issippi, and sent some Winnebago Indians to notify the Aionez ( Ioway ) tribe who lived in the valley of the river which still bears their name, that he would be glad to see them. Discovering a point on the east shore of the Mississippi where there was an abundance of wood, at the foot of a high hill, behind which was an extensive prairie, he directed his voyageurs to erect a stockade; and there he passed the winter of 1685-6, and on Fran- quelin's Map, just above the Black River, is marked the place. He afterwards, built the post on the east side of Lake Pepin, just above its entrance.
Recalled by the Canadian authorities, to aid in the war against the Senecas, it was not until the autumn of 16SS that he again reached the post he had erected. As soon as the ice melted in the spring of 1689, the Sioux came down and escorted Perrot to one of their villages, where he was received with much enthusiasm, and car- ried around on a beaver robe, followed by warriors sing- ing.
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