Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 14

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 14

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Nicollet's proposition would have been a good thing for Iowa, but bad for Minnesota, Minneapolis included. That he did not carefully forecast the future of the country is evidenced. He was an aeeom- plished engineer and his surveys of the country were accurate almost to a dot; but the adaptability of a country to civilization is not computed by theodolitic measurements or ealeulations by sines and tangents.

The great surveyor failed to note the importance of the St. Peter's country; failed to conceive that white men would invade it; failed to discern that a conflict between the forces of civilization and of bar- barism for the permanent possession of this and the vast regions surrounding was certain to ensue, and that civilization would win; and failed to discover that in this confliet the Falls of St. Anthony would con- stitute the key-point of the battlefield.

MINNESOTA PASSES PERILOUS CRISES.

Minnesota passed many erises in early days. The Iowa bonndary proposition was only one. The north- ern boundary proposed first by the Iowa people, and which Congress rejected for the one they rejected in 1845, was worse for Minnesota than the latter. It was fixed as a line from the mouth of the Big Sioux to the mouth of the Blue Earth then down the Minne- sota to the Mississippi and thence down that river to the Missouri line. If this boundary had been adopted by Congress-and it eame near adoption-and rati- fied by the people, Mendota and all of the present Southeastern Minnesota south of the Minnesota and west of the Mississippi would be now a part of Iowa.

Another crisis was the Doty treaty of 1841, made at Traverse des Sioux between Gov. James D. Doty, then Governor of Wisconsin Territory, and the Sioux chiefs of Minnesota. The Sioux agreed to sell all their lands in what are now Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Northwestern Iowa, except some small reservations. The country acquired was to be made a Northern Indian Territory, the equivalent of the Southern Indian Territory, (now Oklahoma) and used as a dumping ground for all the Indian tribes and frag- ments of tribes east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. The Democratic Senators in Congress killed this treaty, because they considered it a Whig meas- ure authorized and promoted by John Bell, of Ten- nessee, then Secretary of War. Had they ratified it, Minneapolis and Minnesota would not have come into existence when and as they did. Indian occupation might have held them in the clutches of barbarism until in 1907, when Oklahoma beeame a State in the Union.

THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS OF MINNEAPOLIS AND THE MEN WHO LAID THEM.

The now distinguished men that visited the site of Minneapolis advertised it. The Indian treaties of 1837 opened the country on the eastern side of the Mississippi to white occupation, and as soon as the news of their ratification reached the St. Peter's coun- try that occupation began. In the ease of Minne- apolis that beginning had to be confined for a con- siderable time to the east side of the river. The Fort Snelling reservation and the Indian title to the Trans- Mississippi country forbade settlement on that side. The boundaries of the reservation were not well defined, but when Lieut. Pike treated for it the reserve itself was described merely as nine miles square abont an indefinite point somewhere "below the mouth of the St. Peter's." However, this was sufficient to keep off settlers from the vicinity of the west end of St. Anthony's Falls, unless the military authorities per- mitted them to come.

The U. S. Senate ratified the Indian treaties of 1837 on June 15, 1838, but not until a month later did the authentie news reach Fort Snelling per the steamboat Palmyra, Capt. John Holland master, nine days up from St. Louis. The boat first carried the news up the St. Croix to the Falls, whither it went with some mill machinery and other supplies for

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

Frank Steele's lumbering company, with something of the same sort for Joseph R. Brown, who, foreseeing that the treaties would soon be ratified, had already begun the cutting of pine timber to be sawed in a mill already in process of erection.

The Palmyra with her good news came to Fort Snelling a few days later, or July 15, 1838, and soon afterward Franklin Steele, the new sutler at Fort Snelling, and more justly entitled to be called the founder of Minneapolis than any other person, began preparations for building a city at the great tumultu- ous Falls of St. Anthony of Padua. On the eastern shore of the river, at the north end of the ledge over which rolled the cataract he made a "claim" to 160 acres of land. All he could do was to "claim" the land and occupy it; it was not then subject to regular entry and did not become so until in 1847. The particulars of Mr. Steele's "claim" of the land are given on subsequent pages.

THE CRITICAL YEARS OF 1838-39.

The year 1837 was a memorable one in Minnesota and Minneapolis history, for during that year were made the important treaties before described; also, during that year something occurred which had an important bearing upon the founding and future destiny of Minneapolis. This something was the action taken by the military authorities of Fort Snelling to eject and evict the settlers on the reserva- tion in the vicinity of the Fort.

Maj. Joseph Plympton, a Massachusetts man, took command of Fort Snelling in the summer of this year, and it was he who instituted the action. The Major was an anomalous character. The descendant of Puritans and himself a psalm-singing Presbyterian from the Bay State, he desired to own slaves, pur- chased two from brother officers, but failed to buy a woman from Agent Taliaferro. An officer of the U. S. army, with a sworn duty to protect American citi- zens and settlers, he was especially hostile to those about Fort Snelling. He had arrested and confined in the guard-house those well-meaning and God-fear- ing men, Abraham Perret, the French-Swiss watch- maker, and Louis Massie, the Canadian farmer, and confined them in the guard-house because their cattle broke into the enclosures of the Fort. Maj. Plympton was typical of the then commanders of the Fort, of whom Col. John H. Stevens, in an address before the Minneapolis Lyccum, in 1856, said :

"At that time, as often before and since, the com- manding officers at the Fort were 'the Lords of the North.' They ruled supreme. The citizens in the neighborhood of the Fort were at any time liable to be thrust into the guard-house. While the commander of the Fort was the King, the officers were the princes, and persons were deprived of their liberty and imprisoned by these tyrants for the most trivial wrong, or even for some imaginary offense."

It was perhaps not best that Maj. Plympton should have been in command at Fort Snelling at any time ; it certainly was not well that he had that authority in 1837-38-39 and that he inaugurated and enforced a particularly unjust and harmful policy.

In October, 1837, by order of Major Plympton, a survey was made by Lieutenant Ephraim Kirby Smith .* The white inhabitants in the vicinity of the Fort were found to number 157. On the Fort Snell- ing side, in what was called Baker's settlement, (around the old Camp Coldwater) and at Massie's Landing, (three or four cabins strung along under the bluff) there were 82 people; on the south side of the Minnesota, including those at the Fur Company's establishments presided over by Sibley, Alex. Fari- bault, and Antoine Le Claire, there were 75. Seven families were living opposite the Fort, on the east bank of the Mississippi, and the head of one of them was Francois Desire, alias Francois Fronchet, who had been a soldier under Napoleon and also of the American army, mustered out from the latter service at Fort Snelling. He was in the service of Nicollet when the latter made his explorations in this quarter. Lieut. Smith further reported that the settlers had "nearly 200 horses and cattle."

In transmitting Lieut. Smith's report to the War Department Maj. Plympton indicated his determina- tion to eject the settlers from the reserve, alleging that they were consuming the wood on the tract which was needed by the garrison. The Secretary thought Plympton must know best, and directed him to mark over on a map an area of land necessary to be reserved. In March, 1838, he transmitted such a map and upon it was marked an extensive tract, embracing a considerable quantity of land on the east side-now the St. Paul side-of the Mississippi.

About the same time Plympton wrote and caused other letters to be written to the Department favor- ing a large reservation. Writing himself, he declared that the interests of the military post (the future of the country and the welfare of the people being dis- regarded) demanded the reservation he had marked on his map. Surgeon John Emerson (Dred Scott's owner) wrote, in April, that the reservation ought to be "twenty miles square, or to the mouth of the St. Croix River."

In July (1838) following, Plympton ordered away all the settlers from the reserve. His order forbade :

"All persons not attached to the military from erecting any building or buildings, fence or fences, or cutting timber for any but for public use within said line, which has been surveyed and forwarded to the War Department subject to the final decision thereof. My order must, as a matter of right, more particularly allude to persons urging themselves within the lines at this time."

Meanwhile the settlers had not been idle and unconcerned. About the time of the making of the treaties, in 1837, they had a hint that they were to be turned out of and away from their homes and from the reservation as soon as the treaties went into effect. Thereupon they sent a memorial to President Van Buren upon the subject of their imperiled situation. They said that they had settled upon lands which they

* A Connecticut man, a West Pointer, killed at Molino del Rey, in the Mexican War. He bas sometimes been confounded with Edmund Kirby Smith, who became a prominent Confed- erate general.

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

were assured belonged to the public domain; that they had only exercised the privileges extended to them by the benign and salutary laws under whose operation other parts of the Western country had been peopled ; that they had ereeted houses and culti- vated fields upon the traets they occupied; that many of them had large families of children that had no other homes; that the labor of years had been invested in these homes, and they appealed to the President for protection in them. They further asked that, if in the pending treaty the lands they occupied should be purchased from the Indians for a military reservation and they ejeeted from them, then, and in that case, a provision should be inserted in the treaty providing for a just payment to them for their improvements.

This memorial seems to have been prepared by H. H. Sibley and among its many signers (some of whom could not write) were Louis Massie, Abraham Perret, Peter Quinn, Antoine Pepin, Duncan Graham, Oliver Cratte, Joseph Bisson, Lonis Dirgulee, Jaeob Falstrom, and Joseph Reasehe. Numerous descend- ants of the first seven named now live in the State. Jacob Falstrom, subsequently connected with the Methodist missionary serviee, and who was married to a Chippewa woman, was the first Swede to perma- nently settle in Minnesota. All the signers were white men but all those named except Perret and Massie had Indian wives.

Yet the impassioned remonstrances of the settlers were without avail. No provision to pay them for the improvements they had made was inserted in either of the treaties, and they were commanded to abandon their homes and little farms and go across the river, to the east side, into the Territory of Wis- consin, and outside of the reservation. Some of them left during the summer of 1838; a few left the country entirely, going down to Prairie du Chien. Those who remained did so in the hope that there would be an intervention in their favor-that some- thing would turn up. Certain influential persons endeavored to have Maj. Plympton beeome satisfied with the departure of several settlers, and for a time he was quiet and let those who had remained dwell in peace in their humble homes.

But in 1839 Plympton broke out again. He deelared that all settlers should be driven from the reserva- tion at the muzzle of the musket and point of the bayonet if necessary. The reason he assigned was that some of them were selling whisky on the east side of the river, and that therefore everybody on both sides should be driven away. Now, there was an illegal and very harmful liquor traffie being carried on by four establishments east of the river. These were eondueted by Theodore Menk and "Nigger Jim" Thompson, on the east bank; Pierre Parrant, down at the Fountain Cave, and Donald McDonald, on the plateau back of the Cave. For this miseonduet some 40 or 50 innocent men and their families were expelled from their homes on the west side to make new homes on the east side. There were no exeep-

tions. The wife of Abraham Perry, good old "Aunt Mary Ann," was an accomplished and expert mid- wife, or accoucheuse, and the married ladies of the garrison at the Fort begged Plympton to allow her and her husband to remain, but the officer was inexorable.

The result was that the settlers went away from the west side of the river to the east side-though some of them did not go far enough eastward until in 1840, when they were again evicted by the U. S. Marshal from Prairie du Chien with two companies from Fort Snelling. The people were forced to move all their property away. The soldiers, under the direction of Marshal Ira B. Brunson, threw their furniture and other belongings out of their eabins and then burned the eabins. The settlers went down to about where the "Seven Corners"' now are in St. Paul, and some of them farther below. The whisky sellers also moved farther down; Menk and "Nigger Jim" were closed up, but MeDonald and Parrant kept on selling whisky.

EFFECTS OF THE EVICTION.

Had the unjust and unreasoning Major Plympton (really he was only a brevet-major at the time) allowed the settlers to remain on the west side of the Mississippi, about Fort Snelling, what mighty and everlasting good would have been effeeted !

The people he drove away formed a settlement which in time beeame St. Paul. Had Plympton allowed them to remain near Fort Snelling, their settlement would in time have beeome the nueleus of a great and powerful eity extending from south of the Minnesota northward to beyond St. Anthony Falls and east and west from the Mississippi to beyond Lake Harriet. Within these boundaries would now be a solid, compact city ; suburbs would be beyond these borders.

Fort Snelling, if not abolished, would now stand on the east side of the river. The State capitol build- ings would probably stand where Stephen A. Douglas wanted them to stand. on that "heaven-kissing hill" which we call Pilot Knob, with the State House on the erest visible 50 miles away in every direction.

There would be no St. Paul, no Twin Cities, but one great, magnificent city, larger by far and better in all respects than the aggregated cities as they now are.

The 157 souls, "in no way connected with the mili- tary," which Lient. E. K. Smith found in the fall of 1837, were enough, with their 200 horses and eattle, to start a city with. The first plat, after old St. Anthony, might have been laid out near Fort Snell- ing, but in time it would have extended clear up to the Falls.

But for the ungenerous and even tyrannical dispo- sition of Major Joseph Plympton, dressed in his brief authority, Minneapolis might today, or in the near future, be a strong rival of Chicago. It is a very good and a very great eity as it stands ; perhaps there is no use in making it any better, but it may well be made greater.

CHAPTER VII. PRELIMINARIES OF THE CITY'S FOUNDING.

CLAIM-MAKING FOLLOWS TREATY RATIFICATION-FRANKLIN STEELE MAKES THE FIRST LEGAL LAND CLAIMS AT ST. ANTHONY'S FALLS-WHO HIS ASSOCIATES WERE-BUILDING THE FIRST MILL ON THE EAST SIDE-THE WORK OF DEVELOPMENT PROCEEDS SLOWLY FOR WANT OF A LITTLE MONEY- FIRST HOMES AND OCCUPANTS AT ST. ANTHONY-THE COUNTRY AND THE GENERAL SITUATION IN 1847, ETC., ETC.

Among all the white men that came to Minnesota prior to 1840 only the refugees from Red River and perhaps four missionaries came with the intention of making homes, identifying themselves with the coun- try, and remaining permanently. All the rest had come as transients, as soldiers, as traders, as employes, under engagements for a certain length of time, and when this time expired they expected to and generally did leave the country. A few voyageurs and other engagees of the fur company and a few discharged soldiers from Fort Snelling concluded to remain and take chances. They had no settled purposes in life or abiding places, and might as well be one place as another. Like most of their comrades and associates, they were mere birds of passage, flitting from one locality to another, and never resting long on any perch.

One reason why the duration of the existence of these people in Minnesota was, practically speaking, merely ephemeral, was because they could not make permanent homes worthy of the name. They could not marry according to their tastes and ideals, and a home without a wife is practically no home. There were no marriageable white women in the country- or but very few-and to many a white man the idea of miscegenation or union with a woman of an alien and barbaric race was disagreeable, if not repulsive. Yet it was an Indian wife or none! It is the natural desire of men to perpetuate their names through their children. And some men insisted that theirs should be white children only, and so they left the region where there were no white women and went elsewhere.

Other men selected Indian women for wives and had children by them. Uniformly, with hardly an exception, these Indian women made most excellent wives for their husbands. They were chaste and pure; they were domestic and affectionate; they were industrious and economical; they loved their hus- bands and children devotedly and would make any sacrifice for them. Some of the best people in Minne- sota are the descendants of early mixed-blood families, and the women as a rule manifest the exemplary traits of their Indian grandmothers.

THE PIONEERS WERE NOT PLUTOCRATS.

In 1840 one might count on the fingers of his hands the men in the Minnesota country with money, or resources convertible into money on sight, to the value

of $5,000. The wealthiest man was Franklin Steele, who probably could command $15,000. Sibley, the trader, was working for a salary of $1,000 a year and house rent and a percentage of the profits of the Fur Company above a certain sum ; sometimes this commis- sion amounted to $1,500, but generally to about half that amount, and sometimes it was nothing. Joseph R. Brown had some means; but his operations were so diversified, and he moved from one place to another so frequently, that it was difficult to keep track of him, and to tell what he was worth at any particular time. The mill men had a snug sum in the aggregate, but perhaps their average wealth per man did not exceed $5,000. By combining, they were able to build a mill and conduct lumbering operations at St. Croix Falls.

But no combination of men could be found with disposition and capital to build adequate mills at St. Anthony's Falls. Franklin Steele had to do the work practically alone.

FRANK STEELE AND JOE BROWN BELIEVED IN MINNESOTA.

Steele and Joseph R. Brown were the most promi- nent of the men in the St. Peter's country who were determined to make Minnesota their permanent homes. Sibley, a few years before his death, told the present writer that in 1840 he had no thought of passing the remainder of his days here. As soon as he had secured a comfortable "stake" from his business in the fur trade he meant to return to Detroit and settle down. He did not think the country would be any farther developed in fifty years, or by the year 1890, than the region in Canada north of Lake Superior.

Brown said he would stay. There were so many chances for an energetic man. Grain could be grown successfully here, for he had grown it. The country was finely adapted to stock raising, to growing corn, and to raising all kinds of vegetables; hence it would be a farmer's country. The vast forests of the best pine timber were practically inexhaustible; the water power was incalculable and would last forever. A great deal of the country could be reached by steam- boats, and all these things would make a country of cities and towns and a large, thrifty population. (See Brown's letter to B. H. Eastman, Sibley papers.)

Soon after the treaties of 1837 had been ratified, Brown planned the creation of a new Territory of the

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

United States, which was to comprise a great deal of the country west of the Chippewa River in Wisconsin and north of the lowa boundary, and this Territory was to be called Minnesota, for its principal river, wholly within the State. In the prosecution of this plan he went to the present site of Stillwater in 1839, laid ont the first town, which he called "Dakotah," and which he designed should be the capitol of the new Territory, and he built a huge two-story log building which he expected would be the capitol building.

Steele believed that the timber and water power of the country alone insured its future, and he was determined to venture his existence in that futurc. Although a young man, and withont experience in milling or as a lumberman, he resolved to build big saw mills at St. Anthony and St. Croix and run them in connection with his sntler store at Fort Snelling.

FIRST CLAIMANTS AND LAND OWNERS AT ST. ANTHONY.

In 1836, before the land was subject to entry, the Indian title not having been relinquished, Major Joseph Plympton, Capt. Martin Scott, and another officer of the Fifth U. S. Infantry from Fort Snelling, made "claims" to a tract of land on the east side of the river, at St. Anthony's Falls, and built a log cabin upon it. Maj. Plympton had succeeded Maj. John Bliss in command of the Fort, and subsequently drove away the settlers from the Fort reservation. In 1837 Sergeant Nathaniel Carpenter, also of the Fifth Infantry, made a "claim" adjoining the Plympton claim.

Although it was illegal for a military officer to pre- empt land while holding a military commission, yet Maj. Plympton and his associates continued to claim their lands until after the time of the ratification of the treaty, or in July, 1838, and they were called "the Plympton claim" by many as late as in 1845. About the 16th of July, 1838, however, Frank Steele "jumped" the claim and continued to hold it.

Mr. Steele had spent the winter of 1837-38 in Wash.' ington, endeavoring to secure the ratification of the Indian treatics. He returned from St. Louis to Fort Snelling June 13, 1838, on the steamboat Burlington, Capt. Joseph Throckmorton. Among his fellow pas- sengers were Benj. F. Baker ("old Blue Beard"), a trader at Fort Snelling or "Coldwater"; Capt. Fred- erick Marryat, the novelist, but then of the British navy, and Gen. Atkinson, of the U. S. army. The next day after their arrival the entire party rode up to the Falls of St. Anthony.

Five days later, on June 18, came the steamer Ariel, also from St. Louis. One of its passengers, a Mr. Beebee, announced that when he left there was a "rumor" current in St. Louis that the treaties had been ratified. The "rumor" was premature, for the ratification was not made until three days before the Ariel arrived at Fort Snelling. It was generally believed, however, and created much interest among Stcele, Brown, and others who had already made "claims" to certain sites.

MR. STEELE "JUMPS" THE PLYMPTON CLAIM.

The night of the arrival of the Palmyra (July 15) Mr. Steele made due preparations and set out from Fort Snelling for the Plympton claim at the north end of the Falls. He crossed the river at the Fort, went up on the east side, and at daylight had his tent pitched on the claim, and with his men went to work making "improvements." Capt. Martin Scott, one of the partners in the Plympton claim, appeared on the west side of the Falls about the time Steele appeared on the east side. The captain had come up to "cinch" the title of the partners to the claim by occupying and "working" it; but he did not succeed in crossing the river until Steele and his forces were securely in adverse possession and boasting of the fact.

Capt. Scott protested against Steele's "jumping" tactics. He pointed to the cabin built by Plympton the year before as evidence of prior ownership of the claim by the partners. But Steele confidently replied : "You and Major Plympton know full well that you have no good claim to this site. You made your claim to it a year before it was subject to claiming; and, moreover, the law is plain and imperative that army officers are wholly incapable of either claiming or pre- empting land while they are in the military service. You have neither a moral or a legal claim here."

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Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 14

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