USA > Minnesota > Lyon County > An illustrated history of Lyon County, Minnesota > Part 3
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About the middle of the eighteenth century the aggressive Ojibways, or Chippewas, made successful war on the
into Mexico by incursions of the Indian tribes that were found in our country at the first coming of white men. This view, however, has been generally given up. The researches of Powell and other specialists, including Winchell and Brower in Minnesota, have well referred the building of the mounds to the ancestors of the present Indians."-Warren Upham in Minnesota in Three Centuries.
3The Dakotan stock embraced many tribes and according to Indian tradition came from the Atlantic seaboard. Their original homes, according to the best authorities, were in the Carolinas, Virginia, and possibly portions of the Gulf coast. Into that region formerly the buffalo ranged. It is suggested that the quest for food probably led the Dakotas to follow the movements of that animal and thus in time to possess the country west of the Mississippi river.
The migration, which occurred several centuries before the discovery of America, covered a great length of time and was by way of the Ohio valley, which was the home of the Dakotas at one time. Some authori- ties assert that the Dakotan stock built at least a part of the celebrated mounds of the Ohio valley, as well as those of Eastern Tennessee and West Virginia.
The most important branches of the Dakotan stock that migrated to the West are given as follows (abridged) in The Aborigines of Minnesota, published by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1911:
"Hidatsa. The Minitari or Gros Ventres of the Missouri valley. Probably the first of the expelled mound builders to reach Minnesota.
Sioux and Crees, driving the Sioux to the south and the Crees to the north. Thenceforth until the white man sup- planted the red these two tribes occupied all the area of Minnesota, the Ojibways holding the northeastern wooded half and the Sioux its prairie half on the southwest.
The Sioux nation was divided into several different tribes, each of which laid claim to certain tracts. The south- western part of Minnesota, including the present county of Lyon, was claimed by the Sissiton tribe. The location of the several bands inhabiting Southern Min- nesota in 1834 has been told by the missionary, S. W. Pond, who came to Minnesota that year. He has written: "The villages of the . M'dewakanton- wan were on the Minnesota and Mis- sissippi rivers, extending from Winona to Shakopee. Most of the Indians living on the Minnesota river above Shakopee were Warpetonwan. At Big Stone lake there were both Warpetonwan and Sissitonwan, and at Lake Traverse Thanktonwan [Yankton], Sissitonwan and Warpetonwan. Part of the War- pekute lived on Cannon river and part at Traverse des Sioux. There were
"Crows, or Absaruka, or Upsarata. Still further up the Missouri river.
"Mandan. On the Missouri river.
"Sioux, or Dakota. Embraced Santee (Issanti), Sissiton, Wahpeton, Yankton, Yanktonai, Teton (embracing Brule, Sans Ares, Blackfeet, Minneconjou, Two Kettles, the Ogallala and the Hunkpapa) and the Assiniboin, or Stone Sioux.
"Winnebago. Originally in Central Wisconsin and Northwestern Illinois and later in Northern Minnesota and Iowa.
"Omaha (Maha) and their kindred, Ponca, Osage, Kwapa and Kansa. Formerly of the Ohio and Wabash rivers. Later in Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, sometimes extending their domains temporarily to Minnesota and the Black Ilills.
"Iowa (Dusty Heads). Included also the Otoe and the Missouri. Along the Mississippi river north of the Missouri, along the Des Moines river, and temporarily in Minnesota."
The word Dakota, by which the Indians preferred to be designated, signifies allies, or joined together in friendly compact. But from the earliest days the nation has been more commonly referred to as Sioux, a word of Ojibway origin and bestowed by the French voyageurs. For centuries the Ojibways of the Lake Superior country waged war against the Dakotas and whenever they spoke of the latter they called then Nadowaysioux, which signifies enemies. The French- men nicknamed the Dakotas Sioux, a contraction of the Ojibway word.
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HISTORY OF LYON COUNTY.
frequent intermarriages between these divisions of the Dakotas, and they were more or less intermingled at all their villages. Though the manners, lan- guage and dress of the different divisions were not all precisely alike, they were essentially one people."
As has been mentioned before, the southwestern part of Minnesota was the country of the Sissiton branch of the Sioux nation from the time white men first visited it. The timber land along the Redwood river in Lyon county was a paradise for these Indians of the prairie and some of the band had their homes there; others frequented it on trapping and hunting expeditions and to gather the syrup from the maple trees.
Parker-I. Pierce, who passed through Lyon county in the early sixties and was quite well informed on Indian affairs, has given an interesting account of Indian life in Lyon county before the coming of white settlers. In the Lyon County Reporter of December 26, 1896, he wrote:
At Lynd there were about 1500 acres of timber (most of it having later been cut by the settlers), consisting of cak, bass and sugar maple. This timber was paradise for the Indians, furnishing shelter and fuel for winter and a feeding ground for their ponies. In the summer they would hunt and kill buffalo and dry the meat for winter. After the cold weather set in they devoted their time to trapping the fur-bearing animals, such as otter, mink and muskrats, which were abundant. In every slough one could count from three to forty houses or dens, which were made of rushes and varied in height. When there was to be high water in the spring they were built high, and when low water they were built low. That sign hardly ever failed. Now the rats have dis- appeared. The otter were not very plentiful, as the Indians kept them well trapped out. Their skins brought a fair price, probably two quarts of brown sugar. Wolves were very plentiful before the white trapper came among them. The Indian was so superstitious that he would not kill any; he said they were his Great Father's dogs. The same with a snake.
As I said before, there were plenty of sugar maples and the Indian women made hundreds of pounds of sugar. In the spring the surplus would go to the Indian trader and shortly would be traded back to them for furs and robes.
Each band of Indians had their allotment of trees. The troughs that were made to catch the sap remained under the trees until the following spring; then the same ones would go back to their camping ground.
The Indians were happy and rich with ponies. Their burial places were the oaks that stood on the bluffs. The ones that died were wrapped in a blanket and put in the fork of a tree and left there until they crumbled to dust. The older settlers can recollect seeing the burial places in Lyons township, adjoining the town of Lynd.
There is a mound the settlers call the knob, which is no doubt an ancient burial place. This knob looks as though the dirt had been carried and laid as systematically as for some observatory or look-out place; for one can stand there and see for miles in each direction. It once faced a lovely sheet of water which is now dry and is one of the best stock farms in the Northwest, owned and occupied by Mr. Ruliffson and sons. This mound has been nearly ruined by wolf hunters. There have been human bones found when digging for wolves. Years ago there was a hard-beaten trail leading to this mound from the timber, thence toward Wood lake, passing a very high peak where there was a large pile of rocks one could see for miles. No doubt this mound and peak have been used for look-outs, as the enemy, another tribe, was very troublesome.
The history of Lyon county before the white race took possession must be left almost entirely to the imagination; there is little data from which to write it. If inanimate things could speak, what wild tales of Indian adventure could be poured forth! But inanimate things cannot speak and the animate aborigine is a notoriously worthless historian, so a very interesting part of the history of Lyon county must forever remain unrecorded. Only trifling bits of history, intermingled with a plethora of legend, are preserved of the days before the Caucasian race took pos- session.
Let us, in imagery, take a look at the Lyon county of years gone by, when it was in primeval state, when it was as Nature had formed it. Its topography was practically the same as we find it to- day. There were the same broad, rolling prairies, stretching as far as the eye might reach, presenting in summer a perfect paradise of verdure, with its
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HISTORY OF LYON COUNTY.
variegated hues of flowers and vegeta- tion; in winter a dreary and snow- mantled desert. The rivers and creeks flowed in the same courses as now; the lakes occupied the same banks as at the present day. But what a contrast!
Wild beasts and birds and wilder red men then reigned supreme. Vast herds of bison, elk and deer roamed the open prairies and reared their young in the more sheltered places along the streams. With that wonderful appreciation of the beautiful which Nature has made an instinct in the savage, the untutored Sioux selected the country as his hunting ground and roamed it at will. Such was the Lyon county before the march of civilization brought the white man to supplant the red.
Before introducing the first white man who set foot on the soil of Lyon county, let us review briefly the explorations that had been made in other parts of Minnesota.
White men first penetrated the North- west country to the present state of Minnesota in the middle of the seven- teenth century (1655-56). In 1683 the first map on which physical features of Minnesota were pictured was published in connection with Father Hennepin's writings. The map is very vague and demonstrates that little was known of the Northwest country. Five years later, in 16SS, J. B. Franquelin, a Canadian-French geographer, drafted for King Louis XVI. of France a more detailed map of North America, making use of information gathered by Joliet and Marquette, La Salle, Hennepin, DuLuth and others. Some of the prin- cipal streams and lakes are marked and more or less accurately located, among others the R. des Moingene (Des Moines), which rises not far from our
4Le Sueur had first visited the upper Mississippi country in 1683 with Perrot, in the interests of trade.
territory. The data for a greater part of the map were doubtless secured from the Indians.
A few French explorers, named above, had penetrated the present area of Minnesota, but none of them had ex- plored the southwestern portion. The first white man to visit the interior of Southern Minnesota was Le Sueur, who in 1700 ascended the Minnesota river to near the present site of Mankato.
In 1699 Le Sueur received a com- mission from D'Iberville to visit and examine a copper mine which the former claimed to have learned of in the country of the Iowas.+ In April, 1700, with a company of about twenty- five persons he set out from the settle- ment on the lower Mississippi with a single shallop. On the nineteenth of September he reached the mouth of the Minnesota river and on the last day of that month, having reached the Blue Earth river, he built a fort in which he spent the winter. Fort L'Huillier, named for one of the chief collectors of the king of France, was a league up the Blue Earth river. A short distance from the fort the Frenchmen gathered large quantities of blue or green earth, which they believed to be copper ore. In the spring of 1701 Le Sueur with a part of his force descended the Missis- sippi with the "ore," 4000 pounds of which were sent to France. The garri- son which had been left at Fort L'Huil- lier, having received ill treatment at the hands of the Indians and having run short of provisions, in 1703 returned to civilization in charge of Derague.
The data secured by Le Sueur were used in the preparation of a map of the Northwest country by William De L'isle, royal geographer of France, in 1703. Several of the larger and more important
He built a trading post at Isle Pelee, a few miles below Hastings, in 1695.
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HISTORY OF LYON COUNTY.
physical features of Southwestern Min- nesota were more or less accurately located. For the first time the Minne- sota river appeared upon a map, being labeled R. St. Pierre, or Mini-Sota. The Des Moines river also has a place on the map, being marked Des Moines, or le Moingona R., and its source was definitely located. There is nothing in the writings of Le Sueur, however, to lead to the belief that he extended his exploration to any country except along the Minnesota river and not much farther up that stream than the mouth of the Blue Earth.
During the next sixty-six years after Le Sueur visited the Minnesota river country, no white man was in South- western Minnesota, so far as we know. Then, in November. 1766, Jonathan Carver ascended the Minnesota and spent seven months with the Indians at the mouth of the Cottonwood river, in the vicinity of the present city of New Ulm. He remained with the Indians until April, 1767, and learned their language.5
5Of his trip to this point Carver wrote:
"On the twenty-fifth [of November, 1766] I returned to my canoe, which I had left at the mouth of the river St. Pierre [Minnesota]; and here 1 parted with regret from my young friend, the prince of the Winnebagoes. The river being elear of ice by reason of its southern situation, I found nothing to obstruet my passage. On the twenty-eighth, being advanced about forty miles, I arrived at a small branch that fell into it from the north; to which, as it had no name that I could distinguish it by, I gave my own, and the reader will find it in the plan of my travels denominated Carver's river. About forty miles higher up I came to the forks of the Verd [Blue Earth] and Red Marble [Waton- wan] rivers, which join at some little distance before they enter the St. Pierre.
"The river St. Pierre at its junction with the Mis- sissippi is about a hundred yards broad and continues that breadth nearly all the way I sailed upon it. It has a great depth of water and in some places runs very swiftly. About fifteen miles from its mouth are some rapids and much higher up are many others.
"I proceeded up this river about 200 miles, to the country of the Nadowessies [Sioux] of the plains, which lies a little above the fork formed by the Verd and Red Marble rivers just mentioned, where a branch from the south [the Cottonwood] nearly joins the Messorie [Missouri] river." [The sources of the Cot- tonwood river are near those of Roek river, the latter being a tributary of the Missouri.]
6From information reecived from the Indians Carver made some wonderful deductions as to the physical features of the country. In his narrative of the trip he wrote:
"By the accounts I received from the Indians I have reason to believe that the river St. Pierre [Minnesota] and the Messorie [Missouri], though they enter the Mississippi twelve hundred miles from each other, take their rise in the same neighborhood, and this within the space of a mile. The river St. Pierre's
It is possible that Carver during this time may have visited the country which is now included within the bound- aries of Lyon county, for he hunted with the Indians over some of the great plains of Southwestern Minnesota which, "according to their [the Indians'] ac- count, are unbounded and probably terminate on the coast of the Pacific ocean."
Undoubtedly white men, engaged in trade with the natives or trapping and hunting for the fur companies or for themselves, visited that part of South- western Minnesota which is now desig- nated Lyon county in the early part of the nineteenth century. But such men left no records of their operations, and our information concerning the explora- tion of the country is obtained almost wholly from expeditions sent out by the government.
An early visitor to Southwestern Minnesota was Major Stephen H. Long, who conducted a party of exploration, under direction of the secretary of war,
northern branch [that is, the main river] rises from a number of lakes [Big Stone lake] near the Shining Mountains [the Cotenu des Prairies] and it is from some of these also that a capital branch [Red River of the North] of the river Bourbon [Nelson river], which runs into Hudson's Bay, has its sources. . . I have learned that the four most eapital rivers of North America, viz., the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon [Nelson] and the Oregon [Columbia]. or River of the West, have their sourees in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather farther west.
"This shows that these parts are the highest lands of North America; and it is an instance not to be paralleled on the other three-quarters of the globe, that four rivers of such magnitude should take their rise together and each, after running separate courses, discharge their waters into different oceans at the distance of 2000 miles from their source."
Of the country through which he traveled Carver wrote:
"The river St. Pierre, which runs through the terri- tory of the Nadowessies flows through a most delightful country, abounding with all the necessaries of life that grow spontaneously, and with a little cultivation it might be made to produce even the luxuries of life. Wild riee grows here in great abundance; and every part is filled with trees bending under their loads of fruit, such as plums, grapes and apples; the meadows are covered with hops and many sorts of vegetables; whilst the ground is stored with useful roots, with angelica, spikenard and ground nuts as large as hens' eggs At a little distance from the sides of the river are eminenees from which you have views that cannot be exceeded by even the most beautiful of those l have already described Amidst these are delightful groves and such amazing quantities of maples that they would produce sugar sufficient for any number of inhabitants."
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HISTORY OF LYON COUNTY.
to the source of the Minnesota river and to Lake Winnipeg in 1823. In the party were several scientific gentlemen from Philadelphia, among them Professor William Keating of the University of Pennsylvania, who was the historian of the party.
It was during the month of July, 1823, that Major Long and party made the trip up the Minnesota river, traveling on the south side of the stream. Pro- fessor Keating mentions the Redwood river and states that the red pipestone was said to exist on its banks three days' journey from its mouth. Mention is made of Patterson's rapids, the Grand portage, the Pejehata Zeze Watapan (Yellow Medicine) river, Beaver rivulet (Lac qui Parle river) and other physical features. Interesting observations were recorded respecting the fauna and flora of the prairies.
Another exploration of Southwestern Minnesota was made in the summer of 1835 by G. W. Featherstonhaugh, an English gentleman. He bore the title United States geologist and was com- missioned by Colonel J. J. Abert, of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers. Featherstonhaugh proceeded up the Minnesota river for a considerable dis- tance and explored parts of the Coteau des Prairies, which he described at some length. His exact route is not known and it is possible he passed through Lyon county.7
A white man first established a home 'at the falls of St. Anthony and was in Lyon county in 1835. He was
7From Featherstonhaugh's expedition resulted two works, one entitled "Report of geological reconnoisance made in 1835 from the seat of government by the way of Green Bay and the Wisconsin Territory to the Coteau des Prairies, an elevated ridge dividing the Missouri from the St. Peter's [Minnesota] river," printed by order of the Senate in 1836, and the other "A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotar," published in London in 1847.
sMost of the information concerning the operations of Joseph LaFramboise herein contained was obtained by Doane Robinson, now secretary of the South Dakota Historical Society, in an interview with Joseph LaFramboise, Jr., in 1900. The latter re- membered well the time of the family's residence in Lyon county and the visit of George Catlin in 1837.
Joseph LaFramboise, a trader in the employ of the American Fur Company, and his post was in the Lynd woods on the Redwood river. There for a period of two years he lived with his family, engaged in trade with the Indians.
So early as 1826 Joseph LaFramboise was a trader, licensed by the Indian agent at the agency established at the mouth of the Minnesota river. In the late twenties he established a trading post on the headwaters of the Des Moines river, probably in Murray county, where in 1829 a son, Joseph LaFram- boise, Jr., was born.8 In 1834 he moved the post to the "Great Oasis," at about the present location of Lowville, in Murray county, remained there one year, and in 1835 removed the post to the Lynd woods.
For two years LaFramboise and his family were residents of the future Lyon county, he acting as agent for the American Fur Company in bartering with the Indians. In 1837 he moved to the mouth of the Cottonwood river and the next year to a homestead in Ridgely township, Nicollet county, about eleven miles above the present site of New Ulm. LaFramboise died in 1856.
It was in 1837, while LaFramboise was residing in Lyon county, that George Catlin, the famous traveler and Indian delincator, traversed the county on his way to visit the Pipestone quarries. 9 He organized the expedition accompanied only by Robert Serril His mother was an Indian woman, the daughter of Walking Day. LaFramboise, Sr., was a much married man. His second and third wives were daughters of Sleepy Eye and his fourth was Jane Diekson, whom he married in 1845 at Traverse des Sioux. That marriage was the first performed in what is now Nicollet county.
9George Catlin made the trip from New York City, traveled 2400 miles, and devoted eight months' time, "traveling at considerable expense and for part of the way with much fatigue and exhaustion." He had planned to make the trip when at Fort Snelling in 1835, but learning of the Featherstonhaugh expedition that year to the Coteau des Prairies, he postponed the trip two years.
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HISTORY OF LYON COUNTY.
Wood, "a young gentleman from Eng- land of fine taste and education," and an Indian guide, O-kup-kee by name.
This little party traveled horseback and followed the usual route up the Minnesota on the south side. At Trav- erse des Sioux, near the present site of St. Peter, Mr. Catlin and his companion halted at the cabin of a trader, where they were threatened by a band of savages and warned not to persist in their determination to visit the quarries. They continued on their way, however, crossed to the north side of the river at Traverse des Sioux, proceeded in a westerly direction, and crossed the Min- nesota to the south bank near the mouth of the Waraju (Cottonwood), close to the present city of New Ulm.
There Messrs. Catlin and Wood left the river and journeyed "a little north of west" for the Coteau des Prairies. They traveled through the present counties of Brown, Redwood and Lyon and passed several Indian villages, at several of which they were notified that they must go back; but, undaunted, they continued their journey. Catlin states in one place that he traveied one hundred miles or more from the mouth of the Cottonwood, and in another place "for a distance of one hundred and twenty or thirty miles" before reaching the base of the coteau, when he was still "forty or fifty miles from the Pipestone quarries."10 He declared this part of the journey was over one of the most beautiful prairie countries in the world. 11
Mr. Catlin came to the trading post of the American Fur Company in charge
of Joseph LaFramboise, whom he re- ferred to as an old friend, at the Lynd woods. From the trading post the intrepid travelers journeyed to the quarries, guided by their Indian. The explorer described the land along the route as a series of swells or terraces, gently rising one above the other. According to his account, there was not a tree or bush to be seen in any direction and the ground was covered with a green turf of grass five or six inches high.
The next white men to penetrate Lyon county were a party of explorers in the government employ, who passed through in the summer of 1838. In the party were six men under command of Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, with John C. Fremont, later nominee of the Repub- lican party for president of the United States, second in command.12 Among the others were Charles A. Geyer, the botanist of the expedition; J. Eugene Flandin and James Renville.
Nicollet and Fremont traveled from Washington to St. Louis and thence up the Mississippi river to H. H. Sibley's trading post, near the mouth of the Minnesota river. Thence they journeyed over the general route of travel up the south side of the Minnesota river, crossing at Traverse des Sioux. They proceeded west across the "ox-bow," stopping at Big Swan lake in Nicollet county, and crossed the Minnesota again at the mouth of the Cottonwood. They proceeded up the valley of the Cotton- wood, on the north side of the river, to a point near the present site of Lam- berton, and then crossed to the south
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