Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 3

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

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

the year before Father Hennepin was taken to it, but Father Hennepin does not say so. Du Luth returned with the Father to the village in the early autumn of 1680, and in mentioning this fact the priest does not hint that this was Du Luth's second visit. It is singu- lar that Du Luth never claimed until late in 1680, after Father Hennepin's release, that he was at Mille Lacs, the village of the Issatis, in the summer of 1679. Many have boldly claimed that Father Hennepin and his two companions in captivity were the first white men to visit the ancient Sioux at Mille Lacs, and that Du Luth willfully and knowingly testified falsely when he asserted that he was there in 1679.

CONDITIONS AND INCIDENTS OF INDIAN LIFE AT MILLE LACS IN 1680.

Father Hennepin and his white companions had a rather uneventful experience among the Indians of Mille Lacs. This great lake at the time was called the Spirit Lake, or in Sioux "Meday Waukon." The peo- ple dwelling on its banks came to be called the Meday (or Meda or M'da) Waukontonwan, or people of the Spirit Lake; Meda, lake; Wankon, spirit; Tonwan, people or village. Father Hennepin found them boil- ing their meat and wild rice in earthen pots. He had an iron pot "with three lion-paw feet," which the Indians were afraid of as "Waukon" and would not touch.

It is therefore certain that the early Sioux made pottery, as did the Mound Builders. It is not proba- ble, however, that they made flint implements, or at least Father Hennepin does not tell us so. They prob- ably used stone war clubs, weapons formed of egg- shaped stones fastened in the ends of sticks. Henne- pin tells us that on one occasion Chief Aquipaguetin, the Meeter at the Fork, came at him with his "head- breaker," which was no doubt a war club. The French term is "casse-tete," which Dr. Shea and others trans- late tomahawk, but which the best dictionaries render a bludgeon, or a mace. Literally the term means head breaker. The Indians had no tomahawks or other metallic implements at the time of Hennepin's visit, for this was doubtless their first meeting with white men. Prof. Thwaites translated "casse-tete" club.

The lot of Father Hennepin and his white com- panions among the Sioux at Mille Lacs was not an espe- cially happy one. They were slaves and had to work. The good father was kept busy at garden making on the island of his master. He had brought some vege- table seeds with him, it seems, and they came handy. He planted tobacco, cabbages, and purslain (portu- lacca), as well as corn and beans. He had the satisfac- tion of baptizing a child, a little girl, the daughter of "Maminisi" (probably Maminni-sha. meaning looks at red water ), as she was believed to be dying. The child recovered, but died some weeks later. He christencd her Antonetta, chiefly for Anthony Auguelle, who stood as her godfather.

Michael Accault (or Ako) and the Picard had a hard time of it too. Father Hennepin says the latter was especially illy used. The Indian women recoiled from both men in horror because of "the hair on their

faces;" they seemed to think they were practically wild beasts of some sort, or the missing links between the human and the brute. Father Hennepin shaved himself and they liked him. He was then about 40 years of age and the Flemings were generally good looking men. But he was not favored by the Indian women. In fact they did not even use him kindly. He says :

"I had been well content had they let me eat as their children did; but they hid the victuals from me and would rise in the night to eat, when I knew noth- ing of it. And although women have usually more compassion than men, yet they kept the little fish they had for their children. They considered me as their slave, whom their warriors had taken in their enemies' country, and preferred the lives of their children before any consideration they had for me ; as indeed it was but reasonable they should."

Of course the father had told the men that he did not want a wife; that he had promised "the Great Master of Life" never to marry, and that he only desired to instruct them in regard to that Master and His com- mands. They accepted his statement agreeably, but when he told them that white men had but one wife each, they received the information with derision, and intimated that such men must be idiots. They bade him have patience, for a great buffalo hunt was coming off soon and he should be a member of the party, when he would have all the sport and all the buffalo meat he wanted. The head chief, the Pinc Shooter, was good to the prisoners and denounced the other Indians for their neglect and cruelty. Father Hennepin gives the name of this chief as "Quasiconde," in Nadouessioux, and translates it Pierced Pine; but it is altogether probable that the Indian name was Wahze Coota, which means Pine Shooter ; in Sioux Pierced Pine would be Wah-ze Pakdoka.

During the less than three months when he was their prisoner, Father Hennepin tried hard to learn the Nadouessioux language, but did not succeed very well. He set about compiling a dictionary of it, but did not get very far. He says :

"As soon as I could catch the words Taketchiabihen,* which means in their language, How do yon call that ? I became in a little while able to converse with them, but only on familiar things."

Yet on a subsequent page he pretends to give us a full and correct translation of a rather long prayer made by a Sioux at St. Anthony Falls to the deity of the place. entreating vengeance on the Fox tribe of Indians, the deadly enemies of the Sioux.

FATHER HENNEPIN VISITS THE FUTURE SITE OF MINNEIP- OLIS AND ST. ANTHONY.

In the beginning of July the Nadouessioux set out on their grand buffalo hunt, going down the Mississippi to the great prairies of Southern Minnesota and North- ern Illinois and Iowa, Two months of fine grazing had made the animals fat, and they were abundant. Headed by the Pine Shooter, 80 cabins, of more than

* Take, pronounced tah-kay; chiabi, keabi; han, hah. Prob- ably in modern Sioux Taku keapi hay, meaning, What call it?

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

130 families and 250 warriors, composed the party. The women went along to care for the meat and of course had to take their children with them. Many of the villagers (perhaps the women and children) walked from their villages to the Elk and the Rum Rivers, where they embarked in birch bark canoes and paddled down the upper Mississippi, making portages at the Great Falls by carrying their canoes, etc., around the cataracts and putting them in the water below.

Father Hennepin embarked in a canoe with some Indians on Rum River, called by him the St. Francis .* A sort of boat yard was established at the mouth of this river and quite a number of new canoes made. The women made the frames and the men cut and brought in the bark to cover them. This delayed mat- ters so long that Father Hennepin and Anthony Auguelle had permission to go in their boat in advance of the hunting party. When they embarked on Rum River the Picard and Accault would not let the priest go in the boat with them. "Michael Ako told me very brutally ('brutalement') that he had carried me long enough." The Picard said the canoe allotted them was a very rotten one and would have burst had all three been in it; but the priest thought this was not a sufficient excuse. He reproached his companions for their desertion; said that whatever favors they had received from the savages was due to his good work among the latter ; that acting as a surgeon he had often bled them and cured them of sickness and rattlesnake bites, by administering orvietan ** and other medicines to them; having kept a stock of thesc remedies with him, and for all this his sworn companions werc now ungrateful.

However, on being allowed to go in advance of the hunting party, Anthony Auguelle, the Picard, agreed that the Father might go in the boat with him; but Michael Ako preferred to stay with the Indians. Father Hennepin had protested that he must hasten to the mouth of the Wisconsin, because his superior, the Chevalier La Salle, had promised to have men and sup- plics for him there about that time. Doubtless this was a made-up story to deceive the Indians into allow- ing their prisoners an opportunity to escape; for this is the first mention Father Hennepin makes of such a promise on the part of La Salle.

LOOKS UPON AND NAMES THE GREAT CATARACT.

Father Hennepin and the Picard were allowed by the Indians the Picard's gun, fifteen charges of pow-

* It has been disputed that the stream called by Father Hennepin the St. Francis River was the one so named on subsequent maps. Many think it was really the Rum River which he named for the saint, and not the stream which other travelers and certain maps considered to be the St. Francis and which is now called Elk River. The learned Dr. Elliott Coues (deceased) who in 1895 republished Lieut. Z. M. Pike's Journal of his ascent of the Mississippi, with invaluable notes and comments, was positive that Hennepin's St. Francis was really Rum River. Seemingly as a sort of compromise an upper branch of Elk River is now called St. Francis. Both the Rum River and the Elk (or St. Francis) have their head- waters in the Mille Lacs and the Nadouesiouxs would have but a small portage to make between them and their villages.

** Orvietan, now obsolete, was a drug described as a counter poison, made in Italy, and given in extreme cases.

der, a knife, a beaver robe, and a "wretched earthen pot," the latter their only, cooking utensil; what had become of the iron pot with the three lion paws is not recorded. The two white men paddled swiftly down the Mississippi and soon landed above the great falls, probably opposite the head of the present Nicollet Island, or maybe a little farther up the stream. They had to make a portage around the falls of more than a mile. That is to say, they had to drag their canoe from the water, hoist it upon their shoulders, and carry it and their baggage around the cataracts from the calm water above to the navigable current below. It was well that the canoc was of birch bark and not very heavy, yet its transportation was a disagreeable and toilsome job at best.

In neither of his two books-"A Description of Louisiana," and "A New Discovery of a Vast Coun- try," etc.,-does Father Hennepin give a very clab- orate description of the great falls which he discovered and named. In the prelude of the "Description" he says :

"Continuing to ascend the Colbert River ten or twelve leagues more, the navigation is interrupted by a fall, which I called St. Anthony of Padua's, in grati- tude for the favors done me by the Almighty through the intercession of that great saint, whom we had chosen patron and protector of all our enterprises. This fall is forty or fifty feet high, divided in the mid- dle by a rocky island of pyramidal form."

In his account of the descent of the Mississippi when he first saw the falls, as contained in what may be con- sidered his journal in the "Description," he makes no elaborate mention of his particular discovery. One would expect him to give us a rapturous description of all the circumstances, his sensations, etc., covering sev- eral pages. But he makes simply a brief reference : "As we were making the portage of our canoe at St. Anthony of Padua's Falls, we perceived five or six Indians who had taken the start," etc. Then he goes on to describe the performance of one of the Indians. He says the savage climbed an oak tree opposite the fall and on one of its branches hung an elaborately dressed beaver robe, which he suspended as an offering to the spirit that dwelt under the falls-probably Onk- tay-hee, the greatest of all the Sioux water spirits, the great Nadouessioux Neptune-and begged that the hunting party might be successful, etc. But as Father Hennepin understood the Indian language quite imper- fectly, his pretended literal translation of the aborig. ine's prayer cannot be relied upon. Later Michael Accault took away for his own use the fine beaver robe which he had seen offered to the water god.

In referring to the Falls, which he was the first white man to see, Father Hennepin invariably calls them "St. Anthony of Padua's Falls," or "the falls of St. Anthony of Padua." Hc seldom leaves off the affix "of Padua." He evidently wants it understood that his patron saint was the Portuguese St. Anthony, who died at Padua in 1231, and not the St. Anthony of Egypt, who died as early as A. D. 356. It was the Paduan Saint that is said to have preached to a school of fishes and they understood him.

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

THE GOOD FATHER'S SNAKE STORY.

About three miles below the falls, or probably just above Minnehaha, the Picard discovered that he had left his powder horn, with its precious fifteen charges, where they had re-embarked and they landed and he ran back to get it. And here Father Hennepin tells his remarkable snake story. He gravely relates :

"On the Picard's return I showed him a huge ser- pent, as big as a man's leg and seven or eight feet long. [' Un serpent gros comme la jambe d'un homme, qui etoit long de sept ou huit pieds.'] She was working herself insensibly up a steep, craggy rock to get at the swallows' nests ['nids d' hirondelles'] to eat the young ones. At the bottom of the cliff we saw the feathers of those she had already devoured. We pelted her so long with stones till at length she fell into

the river. Her tongue, which was in the form of a lance, was of an extraordinary length. Her hiss might be heard a great way and the noise of it seized us with horror. Poor Picard dreamed of her at night and was in a great agony all the while. He was all in a sweat with fright. I have likewise myself been often disturbed in my sleep with the image of her."

Such a monster, "as thick as a man's leg," would be of the proportions of a python or anaconda, and not easily knocked down with stones. Nor do snakes, when they partake of swallows au naturel, stop to pick off the feathers, but bolt the delicate morsels whole and without much preparation. A snake of the character and dimensions described by Hennepin could take a young bird into its stomach-that is to say, swallow a swallow-feathers and all, as easily as a man can bolt an oyster.

CHAPTER II.

FURTIIER INCIDENTS OF THIE ERA OF DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION.

FATHER IIENNEPIN'S WORK OF TOIL, SUFFERING, AND GLORY-DU LUTH'S ATTEMPT TO ROB THE GOOD PRIEST OF CER-

TAIN HIONORS AND DISTINCTIONS-GROSEILLIERS AND RADISSON'S DOUBTFUL EXPLORATIONS-PERROT'S AND LE SUEUR'S EXPLORATIONS AND OPERATIONS-CERTAIN ALLEGED VOYAGES ABOVE ST. ANTHONY NOT AUTHENTI- CATED-VERENDRYE AND SONS' EXPEDITION THROUGH NORTHERN MINNESOTA-FROM 1727 TO 1767.

As Father Hennepin and the Picard du Gay descended the Mississippi they found several Indians on the various islands-probably Pike's, Gray Cloud, Red Wing, and Prairie among others-and these people were happily situated. Some of them were of the party that had come down the Rum River; others were probably those who had marehed rapidly across the country from Mille Laes to Pig's Eye Lake, or Bay, resnrreeted the eanoes they had left there some weeks before, and hurried down the river. The idea was to be first among the buffaloes, which were known to be then eoming north, and get the choice of the herds. They had succeeded and had plenty of fresh meat upon which they were feasting. Of course the Indians divided their supplies with the two white men and all were happy, for a time at least. But for the Indians when on a hunting expedi- tion to go ahead of a hunting party into the region where the game abounded, was a serious infraetion of the game laws. As Hennepin and Accault and some of the "sooner" Indians were feasting on an island, suddenly there appeared 15 or 16 warriors from the party that had been left at the mouth of Rum River. These men had their war clubs in their hands and were very indignant at the "sooners."' They at once seized all the meat and bear's grease and reproached the offenders angrily for their viola- tion of the Indian hunting rules.

After leaving this island, which they did secretly, Hennepin and the Picard suffered severely for the want of provisions. They were not with the Indians and Auguelle was a poor hunter. At last they killed a buffalo eow and on her flesh and that of some turtles and fish they got on very well for a time.

Hennepin and Auguelle rowed "many leagues, " says the father, but could not find the mouth of the Wiseon- sin. About the middle of July the Forked Meeting suddenly overtook them with ten warriors. The white men thought he had come to kill them because they had deserted him up the river. But he gave them some wild riee and buffalo meat, and asked if they had found the white men they expected to meet at the mouth of the Wiseonsin. When they told him they had not been down to the expected meeting, the chief said he and some of his good boatmen would hasten down in a light eanoe and see if the white men had eome.

Akeepa Gatan and his men returned in three days,

saying there were no white men at the mouth of the Wisconsin. The Pieard was out hunting when the chief returned and Father Hennepin was alone in his shack. The chief came forward with his "head breaker, " or war club, in his hand ("'son easse tete a la main") and the father thought he was to have his brains beaten out. He tells us that he seized two poeket pistols and a knife, but says: "I had no mind to kill the man that had adopted me, but only meant to frighten him and keep him from murder- ing me."

The chief eontented himself with reprimanding and scolding his adopted son for deserting him, and for exposing himself to the attacks of the enemies of the Sioux, saying that he ought at least to have remained on the other side of the river. He then said, in effect : "Come with me ; I have 300 hunters and they are killing far more buffaloes than all the other hunters; it will be better for you." The father says: "Probably it would have been better for me to have followed his adviee." But he was resolved to go on to the Wisconsin and meet La Salle's men, and then the Pieard was afraid to accompany the Forked Meet- ing, and "would rather venture all than go up the river with him." So Hennepin and Anguelle toiled on down to the mouth of the Wiseonsin, but found no white men waiting for them, and were forced to turn about and paddle up the strong eurrent of the Mississippi again. Says the father :

"Pieard and myself had like to have perished on a hundred different occasions ('en eent occasions differentes') as we came down the river, and now we found ourselves obliged to go up it again, which could not be done withont repeating the same dangers and other difficulties."

For the first few days of their return they had nothing to eat, but at the mouth of the Buffalo River the Picard eaught two big eatfish, bullheads. Father IIennepin says : "We did not stand to study what sauce we should make for these monstrous fish, which weighed about 25 pounds, both, but eut them in pieces and broiled them on the eoals. Boil them we eould not, as our little earthen pot had been broken some time before." That night they were joined by another large detachment of the Nadouessi hunting party and among the hunters was the Looker on Red Water, father of the little girl whom Father Hen- nepin had baptized, and who died later in the odor

HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

of sanctity. They now fared sumptuously, for the Indians had plenty of meat, and gave it to them freely.

The Indians continued down the river, and the two white men accompanied them on the hunting expedi- tion. Hennepin says the Indian women hid a lot of meat at the mouth of the Buffalo River, but it is hard to understand why it did not spoil. However, it is difficult to understand many things which the good father states as facts.

HENNEPIN MEETS DU LUTH.

On the 28th of July the whole party began to re-ascend the Mississippi. For Hennepin and Au- guelle this was the third time they had paddled up the great water-course. The Indians wanted them to go with them to the head of Lake Superior to make peace and an alliance with their enemies in that quarter. At a point which Father Hennepin esti- mates (and doubtless over-estimates) as 120 lcagues from the Sioux country, they met, to their great joy, the Sieur Daniel Greysolon du Luth, who, with four or five men and two Indian women, had come down the Wisconsin, by way of Fox River and its portage, in canoes from Lake Superior. And great was the joy of Du Luth and his companions at the meeting with Father Hennepin. Good Catholics that they were, they had not approached any of the sacraments for more than two years.

HENNEPIN ESCORTS DU LUTH TO MILLE LACS.

Hearing Father Hennepin's account of his experi- ences, Du Luth was anxious to visit the villages of the Nadouessioux (or Issati), up in the Mille Lacs region, and urged the father, because he understood Sioux, to accompany him and his party to the vil- lages of those people. ("De les accompagner et d'aller avec eux aux villages de ces peuples.") But if Du Luth had visited the villages a year before, why had he not learned something of the language of the people? Why did he want to go to the vil- lages if he had already been there and formally taken possession of them for the King of Franee ? He says he went to reprove the people for their unkind treat- ment of the three white men in making slaves of them. But he further says that 1,000 or 1,100 of the Indians, including the head chief, were with Father Hennepin when he met him. Surely that number was enough to declare his displeasure to, especially as he did not punish the Indians in any other way than to scold them.

There is abundant evidence that Du Luth, in July, 1680, had never seen the villages of the "Issati," or Naudouessioux, nor the Falls of St. Anthony of Padua, but wanted very much to, and. readily embraced the opportunity to do so, in company with the 1,000 Indians and the two white men. The trip was at once entered upon ; apparently it was made the greater part of the way by water-up the Mississippi to Rum River, and then up that stream to a point opposite the Mille Lacs villages, when the remainder of the journey was by land on foot.

The next paragraph in Hennepin's "New Dis- covery" after that describing the meeting with Du Luth reads: "The Sieur du Luth was charmed at the sight of the Fall of St. Anthony of Padua, which was the name we had given it, and which will prob- ably always remain with it. I also showed him the craggy roek where the monstrous serpent was climb- ing up to devour the young swallows in their nests,"' etc.

The return party arrived at the villages of the Issati (or Sioux), August 14, and all the white men remained there until the end of September. Father Hennepin was fortunate in finding his silver chalice and all his books and papers, which he had buried, safe and well preserved; the Indians had been afraid to meddle with them. The tobacco he had planted was choked with grass, but, the cabbages and the portulacca ("purslain") had grown to prodigious sizes.

DU LUTH'S IMPROBABLE STATEMENTS.

Du Luth says that he assembled the savages in council in their chief village and denounced them very vigorously for their treatment of Father Hen- nepin and his companions. (One white man with but seven companions denouncing in the harshest terms thousands of savages in a locality hundreds of miles from any other white men!) Father Hennepin, how- ever, gives a different account of this council. He says it was a "great feast to which the savages invited us after their own fashion." He says that "there were above 120 men at it naked." The head chief, the Pine Shooter, roundly denounced the Sicur du Luth because he did not show proper respect to the Indian dead, and told him plainly that Father Hennepin was a better man and "a greater captain than thou." The only evidence that Du Luth was at Mille Lacs in 1679 is his statement to that effect in his report to the Marquis de Seignelay, wherein he says :

"On the 2d of July, 1679, I had the honor to plant His Majesty's arms in the great village of the Nadouecioux, called Izatys [meaning Issatis or Isan- tis] where never had a Frenchman been-any more than one had been at the Songaskitons [ Shonka-ska- tons, or White Dog People], and the Houctbatons [Wat-pa-tons, or River People], six score leagues from the former [the Issatis], where I also planted His Majesty's arms in the same year, 1679."

LA SALLE DENOUNCES DU LUTH.

If this statement were true, Du Luth visited the Mille Lacs villages a year before Hennepin. But the Chevalier La Salle, who at the time was in gen- eral charge of Du Luth, Hennepin, and all of the other French forces, and interests in the country,* says, in a letter to the Governor of Canada, dated August 22, 1682, quoted in the Margry Papers, Vol. 2, p. 245:

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Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 3

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