Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 13

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 1190

USA > Minnesota > Hennepin County > Minneapolis > Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota > Part 13

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In 1820 the Sioux bands about Mendota gave, or attempted to give, the island in the Mississippi opposite Fort Snelling, and commonly called Pike's Island, to their kinswoman, Mrs. Pelagie Faribault, the mixed-blood wife of old Jean Baptiste Faribault. the trader that lived on the island. At this treaty of 1837 Alexis Bailly, her son-in-law, presented the deed given Mrs. Faribault by the Indians and sought to have it acknowledged in one of the treaty provisions, but the demand was refused. Following is an extract from the deed itself, which is dated August 9, 1820, and fully signed :

"Also, we do hereby reserve, give, grant, and con- vey to Pelagie Farribault, wife of John Baptist Farri- bault, and to her heirs forever, the island at the mouth of the River St. Pierre, being the large island con- taining by estimation 320 acres * the said Pelagie Farribault being the daughter of Francois Kinie, by a woman of our nation."

At one time Pike's Island-or Faribault's Island, as it came to be called,-was considered valuable. John B. Faribault lived on it in a somewhat pre- tentious establishment, and had the greater part of it under cultivation. It was thought that, from its

situation, it was destined to be a great trading site. Samuel C. Stambaugh, at one time post sutler of Fort Snelling, and later a trader, offered $10,000 for it, but the offer was refused, But in 1838 eame a Mississippi River flood which submerged the island and well nigh swept away everything upon it, Fari- bault's buildings included; in 1839 came another which completed the destruction and nearly every vestige of improvement was washed off. Mrs. Fari- bault's ownership was refused in the treaty; the Gov- ernment finally decided that the island belonged to the United States, under the Pike treaty; the Fari- baults were refused anything for their improvements, and not long afterward, in indignation and disgust, and mortified because they had refused Stambaugh's offer of $10,000 for it, they abandoned it permanently, leaving it in the ownership of the Government and at the mercy of the Great Father of Waters when he indulges in his customary sprees in the spring.

THE "SOONERS" BEGIN OPERATIONS.

Gov. Dodge's treaty with the Chippewas at Fort Snelling for the cession of the St. Croix country was signed July 29, or practically August 1, 1837. Hardly was the ink of the signatures dry on the paper when Franklin Steele, Dr. Fitch, Jeremiah Russell, and a man named Maginnis and eight laborers set out from Fort Snelling to make claims commanding the water-power of the river at the St. Croix Falls. In advance of them, however, was the alert and sagacious Joseph R. Brown, who had come over from Gray Cloud Island, established a trading house, and begun cutting pine at the present site of Taylor's Falls. These men were what are now called "sooners;" they went upon the country and made claims "sooner" than anybody else and before it was legally open for filing claims and making entries.

Franklin Steele was born in Chester County, Pa., May 12, 1813. He came of a good family, was fairly well educated, and early in life he manifested the traits of character which afterwards so distinguished him, His father, Dr. John II, Steele, was a prominent Democratic politician, and President Andrew Jack- son became the friend and adviser of young Frank and urged him to go to the St. Peter's country and make his fortune. He came to Fort Snelling as the post sutler in the spring of 1837, when he was but 24 years of age. After, a brief study of the situation he saw that the country had large advantages and possibilities, and he determined to make it his home. In 1837, even after the treaty was signed, the St. Croix Falls seemed a better site for business operations than the Falls of St. Anthony, for at the St. Croix site both sides of the river were open to occupation, while at St. Anthony only the east side could be settled upon by the whites. Of his venture and opera- tions on the St. Croix at this time, Mr. Steele has left us a good account, (Vol. 2 Min. in 3 Cents., P. 137) as follows :

"In September [?] 1837, immediately after the treaty was made ceding the St. Croix Valley to the Government, I with Dr. Fiteh, of Bloomington, [now

* See U. S. Stats. at Large, Vol. 7, "Indian Treaties," pp. 539-40.

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

Muscatine] Iowa, started from Fort Snelling in a bark canoe, accompanied by a scow loaded with tools, supplies, and laborers. We descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the St. Croix, and thence ascended the St. Croix to the Dalles. We clambered over the rocks to the Falls, where we made two large claims, cover- ing the Falls on the east side and the approach in the Dalles. We built a log cabin at the Falls and a sec- ond log house we built in the Dalles, at the head of navigation. While we were building, four other parties arrived to make claims to the water power.

"I found the veritable Joe Brown on the west side, cutting timber and trading with the Indians, where now stands the town of Taylor's Falls. His were the first pine logs cut in the St. Croix Valley, and they were used mostly in building a mill."

Steele and Maginnis remained at the Falls with the laborers. Two cruising parties, under Russell and Dr. Fitch, were sent out to search for good pine lands. Jesse B. Taylor and a man named Robinette came over to the site in the interest of B. F. Baker, who was often called "Blue Beard," the old time trader of Fort Snelling and the head of "Baker's settlement." The foundations of a milling industry were laid, but for some time no town was projected-none was needed, none was wanted. Of operations the follow- ing year Mr. Steele, in his account referred to, says :

"In February, 1838, I made a trip from Fort Snell- ing to Snake River, (via St. Croix Falls) where I had a crew of men cutting logs. While I was there Peshig, the local Chippewa chief, came to me and said : 'We have received no money for our lands and these logs can't go until we do.' He further said that, if trouble arose between the whites and the Indians over the matter, he could not 'control his young men, and he would not be responsible for their acts. The treaty was ratified, however, in time for the logs to be moved."

But as payment for the Chippewa lands was not made for nearly two years after the ratification of the treaty, Chief Peshig, and his warriors must have been placated in some other way if they allowed the logs to be moved in 1838. Joseph R. Brown, however, rafted a lot of his logs down the river in the fall of 1837, and the Indians did not try to stop him.

The dissatisfaction of Chief Peshig and his war- riors with the delay in the payment under the treaty and his covert threats to Mr. Steele seem to have con- stituted the beginning of the long series of troubles, not yet ended, between the Chippewas on one side and the lumber cutters and the Government on the other over the Indian pine timber. Millions of dollars' worth of pine timber have been taken from the Chip- pewa Indians of Minnesota illegally and without proper compensation.

Mr. Steele further states that in the spring of 1838 "we" descended the Mississippi to St. Louis, where he and others organized the St. Croix Falls Lumber- ing Company. The co-partners were Mr .. Steele, Dr. Fitch, of Muscatine; Washington Libby, of Alton; W. S. Hungerford and James Livingston, of St. Louis; Hill and Wm. Holcombe (afterwards Lieuten- ant Governor) of Quincy.

While at St. Louis the parties heard of the ratifica- tion of the treaties. . At once they chartered the steamer Palmyra, (owned in and named for Palmyra, Mo.,) loaded her with materials for building a saw- mill, took on board 36 laborers, and set out for the St. Croix and St. Peter's. What Mr. Steele did when he reached the latter port, at Fort Snelling is told on subsequent pages.

LATER VISITORS TO ST. ANTHONY FALLS.

Perhaps a brief statement of later visits to Fort Snelling and St. Anthony's Falls by scientific men, who came prior to 1840, is proper in this history.

FEATHERSTONHAUGH'S VISIT.

In September and October, 1835, a geological exami- nation of certain parts of Southwestern Minnesota was made, under Government authority, by an Eng- lish geologist named Geo. W. Featherstonhaugh (pro- nounced in England "Frestonhaw") and his assist- ant, Prof. W. W. Mather, an American, and a gradu- ate of West Point. Featherstonhaugh had made a somewhat extensive journey. He left Washington July 8, (1837) by canal, and went to Cumberland, Md., thence by land to Pittsburg and Detroit ; thence by lake to Mackinaw and Green Bay; thence, over the old route of Joliet, Marquette, Carver, and others, by canoe, via Fox River and its Portage, to the Wis- consin, then down the Wisconsin to Prairie du Chien and up the river from the Prairie to Fort Snelling.

The results of Featherstonhaugh and Mather's trip are preserved in the former's two volumes which he brought out in London in 1847, and entitled, “A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor." The volumes contain some singular statements. The author's spellings of Indian names are invariably incorrect and without authority. He says he plainly heard the roaring of the Falls of St. Anthony when he was at Lake Pepin ; he was the only explorer to say that he believed in Carver's "extensive ancient fortifications, " west of Lake Pepin, which he says he visited and studied. He thought the ridges and other elevations and the depressions which he saw were not formed by the action of the strong prairie winds upon the loose, sandy soil. He denounced, and ridiculed the mis- sionaries. He criticised nearly everybody that did not abstain from the use of tobacco in his presence, and did not furnish him all the good wines and liquors he desired. At the same time, chiefly from what his guide, Henry Milord (an intelligent half-blood in Trader Sibley's employ) told him, he put on record some interesting items of history, especially concern- ing the "Minnay Sotor" and its valley. Of St. Anthony's Falls, in addition to what has been already quoted, he says :

"They perhaps look best at a distance; for although upon drawing near to them they present a very pleas- ing object still, from their average height, which does not exceed perhaps 16 feet, they appeared less inter- esting than any other of the great cascades I had seen in North America."

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

And yet in the next paragraph, describing the fall, he says :

"In its details this is a cascade of very great beauty. Its incessant liveliness contrasts pleasingly with the sombre appearance of the densely wooded island, and presents to the observer that clement in motion which has so much modified the whole channel of the Missis- sippi. The current above the cascade is very strong and eomes dashing over the fractured limestone of this irregular curvature, where it recedes and advances with a great variety of plays, etc., etc."

Featherstonhaugh and Mather, with IIenry Milord for a guide and a crew of mixed-blood boatmen, set out in a big canoe from Fort Snelling on the 16th and after a month's paddling reached Lake Traverse and were entertained at Joseph R. Brown's trading post. Returning he reached Fort Snelling in a cold snap, with ice forming in the Minnesota. October 23, he left Fort Snelling and descended the Mississippi in a boat to Galena. He took with him a young lad of 14, Jolın Bliss, Jr., the son of Major John Bliss, the commandant of Fort Snelling at the time. The boy's parents desired and sent him to attend school in the Eastern States. At Galcna they took the steamboat Warrior for St. Louis. From St. Louis Featherston- haugh made an overland journey through Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia to Washington City, where he arrived October 9, 1836.

Featherstonhaugh's survey was not of much advan- tage to Minnesota when it was made. His description of the country was not printed in time. Not appear- ing until in 1847, it eame too late to be of much advan- tage as an advertisement of the new land of promise.

"Mr. Frestonhaw," as his eountrymen called him, did not conduct himself seemingly when he was in Minnesota. Sibley assisted and befriended him greatly, and in return he abused Sibley and all other traders severely. Joseph R. Brown entertained him and gratuitously furnished him with goods and sup- plies, and in return he slandered Brown outrageously.

GEORGE CATLIN, THE PAINTER, COMES.

In the summers of 1835 and 1836 George Catlin, the noted American painter of Indian and frontier scenes, came to Fort Snelling. He painted the portraits of several Indian chiefs of the vicinity, and he made the first pretentious painting of St. Anthony's Falls. Prc- viously many little imperfect sketches of the Falls had been made, chiefly by officers' wives at the Fort, but his painting was of valuable character and of fair proportions.

Catlin came first to Fort Snelling in June, 1835, by a steamer from St. Louis ; he returned in a canoe. The next year in the early summer he came again, travel- ing in a birch eanoe from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien and thence up the Mississippi to Fort Snelling. In the autumn he returned in a dug-ont canoe to Rock Island and from thence went east. Hc spent several years in touring among the American Indians, painted hundreds of pictures illustrating them and the lives they led, and finally took a delegation of them to Europe. He also published several books describing

his travels, Indian life, the country, etc. His pietures are in a collection called "the George Catlin Indian Gallery," and are hung in the U. S. Museum at Wash- ington, D. C.

While in Minnesota Catlin's greatest single piece of work was his journey on horseback, via Traverse des Sioux and Little Rock, to the Red Pipestone Quarries, and his accurate sketeh of that remarkable natural formation. His printed description of the country and of his experience en route is of value and great interest. He rode a horse given him by Gen. Sibley. Joseph La Framboise, Jr., son of the old trader at Little Rock, was his guide and his main guard. From the Rock, on the Minnesota, four miles below Fort Ridgely, to the Quarry the route was over a prairie trail never before followed by a white man of full blood. Joe La Framboise (who died but a few years since) was a mixed-blood Sioux. Catlin was the first white man to visit and describe the noted Quarry with pen and pencil. The peculiar red syenitic stone was and still is called eatlinite.

Catlin's Minnesota pictures are still in the U. S. National Museum at Washington. They include views of Fort Snelling, St. Anthony's Falls, the "Little Falls," (Minnehaha) Cloud Man's village at Lake Calhoun in 1835, and portraits of old Great War Eagle, Chief of the Black Dog band; Toe Walkon Dah-pe (or Blue Sacred Clay) the medicine man of Shakopee's band; Tah-tonka Manne (or Walking Buffalo) of Red Wing's band, etc. Copies of these sketches ought to be in the State's public halls and galleries.

In his printed reports Catlin gives a bright and interesting description of Minnesota country gen- erally but makes very brief mention of St. Anthony's Falls, saying :

"The Falls of St. Anthony, which are 900 miles above St. Louis, are the natural curiosity of this eoun -. try. They are nine miles above the mouth of the St. Peter's, where I am now writing. The Falls are also about nine miles above this fort (Snelling) and the junction of the two rivers, (Mississippi and Minne- sota) and although the fall is a picturesque and spir- ited scene, it is but a pygmy in size to Niagara. The actual perpendicular fall is but 18 feet, though of half a mile or so in extent, which is the width of the river, with brisk and leaping rapids above and below, giving life and spirit to the scene. * *** *

"To him or her of too little relish for Nature's rude works, there will be found a redecming pleasure at the mouth of St. Peter's and the Fall of St. Anthony. These scenes have often been described, and I leave them for the world to come and gaze upon for them- selves. At the same time, I recommend to all people to make their next 'fashionable tour' a trip to St. Louis; thence by steamer to Roek Island, Galena, Dubuque, Prairie du Chien, Lake Pepin, the St. Peter's, Falls of St. Anthony; then back to Prairie du Chien, etc."

Catlin, too, was ungrateful for favors. He eould not have made the trip to Pipestone Quarry without the help of Sibley and La Framboise, and yet in his report he denounced them unjustly and shamefully.

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

NICOLLET'S FOUR VISITS, 1836-37-38-39.

The first large and almost exactly correct map of nearly all of the area of Minnesota and of much other portions of the western and northwestern parts of the United States was drafted by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, a French astronomer and civil engineer, and pub- lished by the U. S. Government a short time after his death, in 1843, in connection with his report of his extensive official surveys. Nicollet was born in Savoy, France, in 1786. He came to the United States in 1832 and not long afterward entered the engineering service of the regular army.

In 1836 he came first to Fort Snelling and ascended the Mississippi to its sources, surveying the country en route. He passed the winter of 1836-37 at Fort Snelling, and he says, "was a witness that $15 was paid for a barrel of flour and $25 for barreled pork at St. Peter, which had probably cost respectively $5 and $8 at St. Louis."

In 1838 he surveyed the valley of the Minnesota and much adjoining territory, ascended that river to Lake Traverse and then went south by way of Lake Shetek to the Red Pipestone Quarry. Here on the crest of the "leaping rock," on July 1, he carved his name; the other members of his party, including the afterwards distinguished John C. Fremont (who then wrote his name Charles Fremont simply) cut their initials. In the almost adamantine jasper rock the carved letters are as plain to-day as when made.

In 1839 he ascended the Missouri as high as to Fort Pierre Chouteau. This place was then a trading post owned by the American Fur Company, of which Pierre Chouteau, of St. Louis, was a prominent mem- ber. The name of the fort was afterwards contracted to Fort Pierre; now there stands opposite the site of the old fort the city of Pierre, the capital of South Dakota.

He surveyed the country as far north as to Devil's Lake, and then came back across the prairies to the Minnesota, or St. Peter's, as it was then called. His map of the country over which he passed was by all odds the best made up to that time. His descriptions of the lands are accurate, his spelling of Indian names uniformly correct, or so that they can be distinctly and rightly pronounced, and altogether his report is in certain respects invaluable. Of the locality called "St. Peter's," which included the trading houses then on the Mendota side of the Minnesota, Fort Snelling, and the plateau upon which it is situated, Nicollet says spiritedly :

"St. Peter's is, in my opinion, the finest site on the Mississippi River. The natural beauties of its environs add to its importance and grandeur. Upon reaching this place, the traveler is already premon- ished of the magnificent scenery which he will enjoy in ascending the river through its long, narrow, and deep valley. At the confluence of the St. Peter's and the Mississippi there is an extensive and fertile plateau. This reaches far to the west and presents to the delighted gaze a level country, interrupted by moderate undulations of the surface and beautified by intervening prairies, tracts of woodland and lakes."

Of Minnehaha Falls he writes :

"Three miles from Fort Snelling, and on the right bank of the Mississippi, there is a very pretty cas- cade." Of St. Anthony's Falls he makes but brief mention, viz. :

"Four miles further up from the Little Falls we reach the celebrated Falls of St. Anthony. This fall -examined in detail, with the noisy boiling of its waters, rebounding in jets from the accumulated debris at its foot, its ascending vapors, and the long and verdant island that separates the two portions of the falls, with the solitary rocky island that stands in front-altogether form a grand and imposing spectacle."

The possibilities and the probabilities of the utiliza- tion of the tremendous power of St. Anthony's Falls, and of the necessary and resultant foundation of a great city at their site, are not even hinted at by Nicol- let, or indeed by any other of the distinguished early visitors to the great cataract. The Falls, in their entirety, seem to have impressed them only as a natural beauty, a thing of picturesqueness and charm, worth traveling hundreds of miles to see.

Nor did the country of Minnesota impress them as a promising future seat of a great civilization. They gave favorable descriptions thereof, wrote rhapsodical delineations of its topography, its scenery, its rich soil, its beautiful lakes and streams, but said no word of recommendation concerning its fitness as a site for future permanent white settlement, occupation, and development. Only the pine timber was mentioned as the resource of the country likely to become of some, but not of great, importance. They seemed to be keeping back or withholding some information and ideas ; doubtless they were, and these ideas were prob- ably those given them by certain white inen to the effect, that, owing to its high latitude and extremely cold seasons, the country would not, because it could not, even be a valuable agricultural region or attain to a high state of civilization and development.

Nicollet's descriptions of the country and his map were embodied in'a little volume printed and widely circulated by the Government in 1843. His map became a standard one; it was often cited in treaties, State and Territorial boundaries, etc., and "accord- ing to Nicollet's map" appeared frequently in the printed documents connected with such matters. His descriptions of the country hardly induced immigra- tion to it. He made no reference to a future city of the proportions of Minneapolis at the Falls, and all he said of the country about the great cataract was:

"From St. Anthony's Falls may be visited the Lake of the Isles, Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, and other lakes. Then, crossing the St. Peter's near its mouth, the traveler ascends the Pilot Knob, from the summit of which he enjoys a magnificent view, embracing the whole surrounding horizon; and if he will conclude lis excursion by going to two natural grottoes [Car- ver's and the Fountain Cave, St. Paul] in the vicinity, he may flatter himself that it has been most actively and pleasurablerformed."

Of the more remote country on the prairies, he thought none of it hardly worth settling upon save at "the oases of timber" dispersed here and there. He

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

thought Traverse des Sioux eligible to become a place of importance, but the only other available sites for villages in the Minnesota country which impressed him favorably were the shores of Lae qui Parle, Lake Benton, Lake Shetek, Lake Tetonka, Spirit Lake (now in lowa) and two or three other lakes. Tetonka was then the site of Alexander Faribault's trading post which he afterwards removed to Lake Sakatah, near by.

Moreover the accomplished engineer favored and recommended the proposed establishment of the north- ern boundary of the fortheoming State of Iowa as the parallel of latitude passing through the present site of the village of Hanska, Brown County, and the mouth of the Blue Earth and extending eastward to the Mississippi above Minnesota City, in the northern part of Winona County. He preferred that the west- ern boundary of Iowa be a meridian running due south of the mouth of the Blue Earth.

In 1844 a proper convention of the people of the Territory submitted a constitution to Congress for the proposed new State of Iowa, with boundaries defined, etc. March 3, 1845, Congress rejected these proposed boundaries, and substituted others embody- ing the Nicollet idea regarding the northern and west- ern, save that the latter should be the meridian of Hanska, a few miles south of New Ulm. The constitu- tion as amended had to be adopted by the voters of Iowa Territory and at the election in the fall of 1845 they rejected it, but by the narrow margin of 596 votes. Had 500 electors who voted against it cast their ballots in its favor, it would have been adopted. Then all of the present part of Minnesota east of the meridian of Hanska and south of the parallel between Mankato and Whitman City would now be in Iowa ! Onr State would not include the eleven fine counties of Southeastern Minnesota-Houston, Winona, Fill- more, Olmsted, Dodge, Mower, Freeborn, Steele, Waseca, Faribault, and Blue Earth, nor all of Brown, Watonwan, and Martin. Just to what extent Nicol- let's declared preferenee influenced Congress to fix the boundaries as it did cannot be said; but as other points were described in the aet as "according to Nicollet's map," it may be presumed that his opinions were at least given consideration.

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Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 13

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co. Number of Pages: 1190

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 1190