Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 2

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 2

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Geologists tell ns of the great Glacial Period, when Minnesota was covered with a sheet of iee. In time this melted away, and it is thought probable that there were men in southern Minnesota when what is now the northern part of the State was ice-bound. The scientifie men believe that 7,000 or 8,000 years ago the Falls were at the month of the Minnesota, and that during this time the long, great gorge between Fort Snelling and the present eataraet was eroded and dug, as it were, by the river.

THE FIRST WHITE EXPLORERS.

The city of Quebec was founded by Samuel Cham- plain, the French Governor of Canada, in 1608. He

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

was soon joined by missionary priests of the Mother Church who penetrated the surrounding wildernesses and labored among the savage Indians for their eon- version to the Christian faith. The capture of Canada by the English, in 1629, defeated any further mis- sionary efforts for a time, but the country was restored three years later and Jesuit priests set out to con- tinue the missions alone.

These zealous religious workers became the first diseoverers of the greater part of the interior of the North American Continent, especially of a great part of the Northwest. Within ten years after their second arrival, they had not only examined much of the country from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico and founded several Christian villages, but they had planted the eross at the Sault Ste. Marie, from whence they looked out and down upon the country of the Sioux and the valley of the upper Mississippi. But for these courageous and pious men very much of early Northwestern history would not have been made. and much more of it would not have been recorded and preserved.

WHAT JEAN NICOLET SAW.

It was, however, not a priest, but a layman, Mon- sieur Jean Nicolet, who first heard of "a great water" which proved to be the upper Mississippi. He came to Canada from France in 1618 and had been much in the service of the Government as an emissary and explorer. In 1639 he was sent to Green Bay and went, by way of the Fox River and a portage, to the Wis- eonsin, and down that river for some distance. Of this journey Father Vimont, in the Jesuit Relations of that year (Rel. 1639-40. p. 135), writes: .

"The Sienr Nicolet, who had penetrated furthest into these distant countries, avers that had he sailed three days more on a great river which flows from that lake [Green Bay] he would have found the sea."

Now it was the Ouinipegon (or Winnebago) Indians with whom Nieolet was at the time. They told him simply of "a great water," by which term they described the big river. From his imperfect under- standing of their language, he believed they were tell- ing him of the great ocean, and he hastened baek with the astounding news. At that time the belief was common that the sea was to be found not many hundred miles west of Canada. The Jesuit fathers now had high hopes of reaching the Pacifie with their mission stations and prepared to send some of their number to "those men of the other sea." (Ibid., 132-35.) It was not long, however, before the truth was learned. or at least enough to realize that the Winnebagoes meant a big river and not the vast ocean when they told Nieolet of the "great water .??

The Spaniards had discovered the lower Mississippi a hundred years before, and De Soto had died on its banks and been buried in its bosom in 1542. It is, however, quite certain that to Jean Nieolet, the Frenchman," is due the eredit of having first reached and reported upon the waters of the upper portion of the great river. which has been not inaptly styled the "Father" of them and of many others.

* Nicolet was drowned at Three Rivers, Canada, in 1642.

THE GOOD WORK OF THE JESUIT FATHERS.

In 1641 Fathers Isaae Jogues and Charles Raym- bault, at Sault Ste. Marie, and in 1660 Father Men- ard. another Jesuit. with a mission on the southern shore of Lake Superior, heard of and reported upon "the great river to the westward," and of the nation of people living upon it and its waters. This nation, it was reported, spoke another language and differed in other characteristics from the Algonquins. Father Allouez, who succeeded Father Menard on Lake Superior, was the first to report the name of the people and of the river. In the Jesuit Relations for 1666-67 (p. 106) he writes: "The Nadouessi live on the great river called Messipi, which empties, as far as I can conjecture, into the sea by Virginia."

The Jesuit father. James Marquette, and the Sienr Louis Joliet. instructed by the French Governor of Canada. Frontenae, embarked June 10, 1673, in two birch bark canoes on the Wisconsin for an explora- tion of the upper Mississippi. Sailing slowly down the Wisconsin, amid its vine-clad isles, its varied shores, and numerous sand-bars. on the 17th they glided into the great river, "with a joy I cannot express," writes Father Marquette. They went south over the river as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. The good father wrote "Meskonsing" for Wisconsin, spelled the name of the great river "Missisipi," wrote "Quabache" for Wabash, "Akansea," for Arkansas, etc.

The upper Mississippi was now fairly well known, but nobody had made known to the world the Great Falls which constituted its most important natural feature. The first white man to see them was to come seven years after Father Marquette and Joliet had learned for a certainty that there was such a great river identical with that discovered and reported upon by De Soto's expedition.

ALL HAIL, FATHER HENNEPIN. THE FIRST WHITE MAN AT THE SITE OF MINNEAPOLIS !

The first pure Caucasians or men of full white blood to look upon the site where afterwards arose the great city of Minneapolis were Rev. Father Louis IIennepin and his associate. Anthony Auguelle. and the date of their visit was in July, 1680. There is but a single source of information to warrant this statement. but yet it has been made myriads of times, seldom questioned, and is still listened to with inter- est ; it cannot become too well known, and perhaps it cannot be too often made.

Father Hennepin was born in the Province of ITainault. Flanders. (now Belgium). in about 1640. He became a Franeisean monk and in 1674 was present as a chaplain in the French army at the bat- tle of Senef. A year or so later he was sent to Canada. In December, 1679. he was at Fort Creve Coeur, on the Illinois River, eager to engage in mis- sionary work among the savages. His commander was the renowned Chevalier Robert de La Salle : his religions counselor was the venerable Father

Ribourde.

IIISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

FIRST CAUCASIAN VOYAGE TO THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

On the 29th of February, 1680, Father Hennepin and two Frenchmen left Fort Creve Coeur in a large canoe and sailed down the Illinois River, which the French, and especially Father Hennepin, called the Seignelay. The party consisted of the Franciscan priest and Michael Accault (Hennepin spells the name Ako and others write it Le Sieur d'Accault, d' Acau, D' Ako, and Dacan) and Antoine Auguelle, who was a native of the Province of Picardy and often termed "Le Picard" and "Picard du Gay." They had fire arms and other weapons, a good stock of provisions, and Father Hennepin carried all the articles commonly employed by a priest in his sacred calling.

In his "Description of Louisiana" Father Hen- nepin states the object of and some other circum- stances connected with the expedition. He says :

"I offered to undertake this voyage to endeavor to go and form an acquaintance with the natives among whom I hoped soon to settle in order to preach the faith. The Sieur de La Salle told me that I gratified him. He gave me a peace calumet and a canoe with two men."

The real leader or commander of the party was not Father Hennepin; he was merely the chaplain of the expedition. He admits in his journal that his com- panions often disobeyed his requests. The real com- mander seems to have been Michael Accault. Father Hennepin says that La Salle, "intrusted him [ Accault] with some goods intended to make presents, which were worth a thousand or twelve hundred livres [or nearly $240]. He gave me ten knives, twelve awls, a small roll of tobacco to give the Indians, about two pounds of black and white beads, and a small package of needles. He is very liberal to his friends.".

About March 7, the party reached the mouth of the Illinois. Here they were detained five days by the floating ice in the Mississippi, which river was then called by the French of the country the Colbert. Two leagues from the confluence of the two rivers they came upon some Indians whose villages were west of the Colbert and who called themselves Maroa or Tamaroa, and were probably the bands known to the Algonquins as the Messouret or Missouris. They used wooden canoes, or canoes fashioned from logs, while the Algon- quins of the lakes had boats of birch bark, and the word Missouri, or Miehouri, means wooden canoe; not muddy, as is commonly supposed. The Maroas were at war with the Northern Indians towards whom Father Hennepin and his companions were going with arms and other iron implements. The Indians shot arrows at the white inen in the endeavor to prevent the reenforcement of their enemies.

The explorers renewed their voyage up the Colbert on March 12. The work of paddling the rather heavily laden canoe against the strong swollen current of the Mississippi in the month of March and the first part of April, when much driftwood and floating iee must have been encountered, was of course very hard and toil- some. Landings and encampments were made every night and progress was necessarily very slow. In his Journal Father Hennepin does not mention these

embarrassing circumstances, however, and doubtless they were cheerfully endured. He speaks joyously of the abundance of fresh provisions the country afforded them, saying: "We were loaded with seven or eight large turkeys, which multiply of themselves in these parts. We wanted neither buffalo, nor deer nor bea- ver, nor fish nor bear meat, for we killed those animals as they swam across the river."

SEIZED AND ENSLAVED BY THE SAVAGE SIOUX.

After a month's journey up the great river an extra- ordinary ineident occurred. The reverend father tells us that during the voyage they had been considering the river Colbert (Mississippi), "with great pleasure, and without hindrance to know whether it was naviga- ble up and down." It is quite probable that they had been instructed to investigate and report upon the navigability of the river, and that they were also to examine and describe the country upon both its shores. The priest expected to proclaim the Gospel to the sav- ages to whom they should come, and the daily prayers of all three of the white men were that these people might be encountered in the daytime, and not at night, when they might be mistaken for enemies and ruth- lessly killed. Their prayers were answered when, on the 11th of April, "about 2 o'clock in the afternoon," says Father Hennepin, they encountered 33 birch bark canoes with 120 warriors of the great Nadouessioux or Sioux nation of Indians. The savages were on their way "to make war on the Miamis, the Islinois, and the Maroa" Indians, whose country was to the southward, and who were the hereditary enemies of the Sioux. Of course the Sioux were armed and very desirous of kill- ing somebody.

There was the greatest excitement among them. The white men had the peace pipe which La Salle had given them, and which Father Hennepin now held conspieu- ously and ostentatiously aloft that the Indians might plainly see it. A peace pipe or calumet was a white flag, and not only meant that the bearer was harmless and friendly but that he must be respected and pro- tected from all harm and injury. It was very valuable on this occasion. The Indians yelled and screamed and fired arrows at the white strangers, but Father Hennepin says: "The old men, seeing us with the calumet of peace in our hands, prevented the young men from killing us."

It was a perilously critical time, according to Father Hennepin's narration. Some think he exaggerated the danger and peril of the conditions, which were doubtless bad enough at the best. He says that by the signs of the Indians-for their language could not be understood-the white men comprehended that the savages were on a hostile expedition against their old time enemies, the Miamis and others down below. Then the good father, "took a little stick and by signs which we made in the sand showed them that their ene- mies, the Miamis, whom they sought, had fled across the river Colbert to join the Islinois."

TORRENTS OF TERRIFYING TEARS.

Wherenpon, realizing that their enemies had escaped them, the Sioux lifted np their voices and wept-wept

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

loudly and their tears flowed profusely. Their foes had fled in safety ; hinc illa lachrymae. Father Hen- nepin, "with a wretched handkerchief I had left," wiped away some of the tears; the remainder either fell on the ground and rolled into the river or were swal- lowed up by the earth. The savages refused to be comforted. They would not smoke the peace pipe of the white men, and even wrenched it from their hands. They made the poor prisoners cross the river and go into camp with them. Then they called an assembly which determined that the wretched eaptives should be tomahawked outright. As a peace offering Father Hennepin then gave them six axes, fifteen knives, and six fathoms (24 feet) of a rope or twist of tobaeco an ineh thick. At last, wishing to end it all, the good priest, as he says, handed them an ax and bowing his head and baring his neek told them to go ahead and deeapitate him, and so make an end !

At once there was a change of sentiment among the Indians. They approached the father in a friendly manner, put three pieces of hot cooked beaver meat into his mouth before presenting him with a bark dish full of the same food. Then they returned the peace pipe, but the three white men spent the night in great anxiety. Auguelle and Aceault had their arms and swords at hand, determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible. The zealous and pious priest was, as he says, in a different mood. Says he :

"As for my own part, I determined to allow myself to be killed without any resistance, as I was going to announce to them a God who had been falsely accused, unjustly condemned, and cruelly crueified without showing the least aversion to those that put him to death. But we watehed in turn, in our anxiety, so as not to be surprised asleep."

LIVES SAVED BUT LIBERTIES LOST.

The morning of April 12, a chief or head warrior, whom Father Hennepin calls "one of their captains." and whose name he gives as Narhetoba, all in war paint, asked the white men for their peace pipe. Re- eeiving it, he filled it "with tobaceo of his country" (probably kinnikinnick), smoked it himself, and then made all of the other members of the band smoke it. That settled the fate of the distressed captives; they were to live. Narhetoba (sec definition, post) told them that their lives would be spared, but that they must go back with them to their own country. With this decision they were well enough satisfied, sinee the Indians' country was their intended destination.

In his perturbation and nervousness Father Henne- pin was constantly muttering and mumbling his pray- ers. The Indians noticed him, and the father says they cried out, "Oua-Kanche," which the three whites thought was an expression of anger and denunciation. Michael Aeeault said to him: "Keep quiet; if you continue to mutter your prayers and reeite your bre- viary, we shall all be killed." Thereupon the good father ceased to pray in publie, but uttered his orisons in the dark or within the seelusion of a wood. But what the Indians really said was "Wau-Kawn," or

perhaps "wau-kawn-de," meaning supernatural. In effect they said, respectfully enough, "He is saying something of a supernatural or saered character." He afterward read from his breviary in an open canoe the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, and was not dis- turbed. The Indians seemed to think that the book was sacred.

The point on the Mississippi where Father Hennepin and his companions met the Sioux cannot now be definitely fixed. The most reasonable estimate has been made by that eminent authority on Northwestern History, Warren Upham. Secretary of the State His- torieal Society. In his Volume 1 of "Minnesota in Three Centuries" (P. 229) Mr. Upham says :

"Hennepin's estimate of the distance voyaged in the aseent of the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois River before meeting the Sioux was about 200 . Freneh leagues ; and from the place of that meeting to where they left this river, at the site of St. Paul, about 250 leagues. The whole distance, thus represented to be about 450 French leagues, or 1,242 English miles, is ascertained by the present very accurate maps to be only 689 miles, following the winding course of the river. If we can truthfully accept the proportional ratio of the estimates of Hennepin, indicating four- ninths of the whole voyage to have been passed when he met the Sioux and was taken captive, that place was near the head of the Rock Island Rapids, some 15 miles above the cities of Rock Island and Daven- port.'

DAY'S OF DEADLY PERILS AND DANGERS.

It was probably on the 14th of April when the fleet of Indian bark canoes, including the boat of the eaptive white men, set out for the Sioux country up the river- the Indians abandoning their war expedition in-great sorrow. These particular Sioux, commonly ferocious and very savage, were, according to Father Hennepin. very lugubrious and laehrymose. They burst into tears and wept copiously on the smallest occasion. In tearful tones they would tell the white men how much they loved them ; the next minute, in voices choked with sobs. they would announce that they meant to dash out the brains of the helpless captives because the Miamis had killed some Sioux once upon a time.

More than once Father Hennepin's life was saved by the intervention of the kind-hearted "captain" whom the father calls Narhetoba. (Probably, Nah- ha-e-topa, meaning, kicks twice to one side.) The head chief of the party, according to the father's aceount, was ealled Aquipaguetin. (Probably A-kee-pa Ga-tan, meaning a forked or pronged meeting. from a-kee-pa, a meeting and gatan, forked or pronged. and meaning one who meets at a forked or pronged division of the road or path.) For some time this chief was deter- mined to kill the three white men in order to assuage his grief for the death of his son, who had been killed by the Miamis. He bawled almost constantly and kept up a special roaring at night. Father Hennepin says he. indulged in all this extravagant demonstration of a poignant sorrow and a broken heart in order to obtain the sympathy of his followers so that-probably to

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

stop his noise-they would murder the white men and appropriate their goods. But the father says that their lives were spared by the savages for merely commercial reasons. He explains :

"Those who liked European goods were much dis- posed to preserve us, so as to attract other Frenchmen there and get iron, which is extremely precious in their «ves, but of which they learned the great utility only when they saw one of our French boatmen kill three or four bastards [turkeys] at a single shot, while they can scarcely kill only one with an arrow. In conse- quence, as we afterward learned, the words 'Manza Quackange' mean iron that has understanding." (Mah-zah Waukon means supernatural iron, and a gun was often so called.

The white men's boat bore such a load of freight that with its ordinary erew it could not keep pace with the light birch-bark canoes of the Sioux ; and so the Indians sent four or five of their number to help the French- men paddle their craft. The majority of the Indians were fairly kind to the prisoners, but their kindness sometimes took disagreeable forms. The father tells us :

"During the night some old men came to weep piteously, often rubbing our arms and whole bodies with their hands, which they then put on our heads. Besides being hindered from sleeping by these tears, I often did not know what to think-whether these Indians wept because some of their warriors would have killed ns, or out of pure compassion at the ill- treatment shown us."

When the fleet reached Lake Pepin there was another outburst of Indian tears. Father IIennepin says he named this lake the Lake of Tears ("Lac des Pleurs"), "because some of the Indians who had taken us and wished to kill us wept the whole night to induce the others to consent to our death." The voyage was con- tinned, amid occasional showers of tears and the con- stant threats and menaces of old Forked Meeting, for nineteen. days. It was a voyage of physical toil and hardship as well as of mental discomfort. Only one thing was comforting, game was abundant and there was plenty to eat.

VOYAGE ENDS AT PRESENT SITE OF ST. PAUL.

On the nineteenth day after the capture, or April 30, the expedition landed on the east side of the Colbert, or Mississippi. Father Hennepin says this landing was made "in a bay." and at a point "five leagues [15 miles] below St. Anthony's Falls." The locality has been identified as Pig's Eye Lake, a few miles east of St. Paul, on the north or east side of the river. In the early spring this lake has always been connected by water with the Mississippi, and Father Hennepin very properly called it "a bay." Subsequently the place was called "La Pointe Basse," or the shoal point; Point Le Claire, for Michel Le Claire, the first bona- fide white settler on its banks; and "Pig's Eye," for the nickname of an old Canadian Frenchman, Pierre Parrant, who kept whisky for sale at the western end of the lake, at Dayton's Bluff.

Here the Indians broke up the white men's boat and

seized all their goods, taking even Father Hennepin's entire equipment for his sacerdotal functions, all the articles pertaining to a portable chapel which he was carrying with him, his robes, chasuble, etc., everything except the chalice, which, because it glittered, they thought was "Wankon" and had better be let alone. They also distributed the hapless prisoners separately to three heads of families, "in place of three of their children that had been killed in war." Then they hid their own canoes and some other articles amid the tall and rank growth of weeds and rushes in Pig's Eye Lake, and then set out for their principal villages on Mille Lacs, or among the "thousand lakes" of that locality.

The journey from the river to the village occupied about five days. Presumably the Indians followed a well known trail, but the march was a hard one, espe- cially for Father Hennepin and his companions. The distance, as the crow flies, is a little more than a hun- dred miles, and the trail was not very far from straight. But the Rum River and other streams were to cross, swamps and marshes had to be waded, and elevations climbed. It was early spring and many of the lakes and swamps were covered with a thin ice which broke under the feet of the prisoners, and the father says: "Our legs were all bloody from the ice which we broke as we advanced in lakes which we forded." They ate only once in 24 hours and often the priest fell by the wayside in the dead prairie grass, "resolved to die there," he tells us. But the Indians set fire to the grass and he was forced to trudge on or be burned to death. Hle swam the chilly water of the Rum River, but his companions could not swim, and the Indians had to carry them across on their shoulders.

IN SLAVERY AT MILLE LACS.

At last, about the 5th of May, they reached the Mille Lacs village, which Father Hennepin calls Issati, per- haps a corruption of E-san-te (or Isanti), meaning a knife. A number of the Indian women and children came out to meet the warriors and welcome them home. The white men were objects of curiosity but not of admiration. Their status was that of slaves and nobody envied them. One old man ("weeping bitterly, " of course) rubbed Father Hennepin's legs and feet with wild-cat oil and was very sorry for him, while another Indian gave him a bark dish full of wild rice well sea- soned with blueberries.

Father Hennepin's master (A-keepa Ga-tan) had five wives. He lived on an island to which he soon conveyed his adopted son, whom Hennepin says he called Mitchinchi (Me-Chincha, meaning my child), and to whom he was reasonably kind.

PROBABLY THE FIRST WHITE MEN AT MILLE LACS.

Nothing is said by Father Hennepin, in his rather elaborate account of his captivity, indicating that he and his companions were the first white men that the Sioux (or Nadouessis) had seen. He makes no refer- ence to the subject whatever. The Sieur du Enthi claimed that he was at this same Issati village in 1679.

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Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 2

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