USA > Minnesota > Polk County > Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74
The theory of those believing in the genuineness of the Kensington Rune Stone and in the authenticity of its inscription may be here stated. It is believed that the starting point of the expedition was, as the inserip- tion says, in Vinland (or Wineland) the Scandinavian Colony on the eastern coast of America. Although unchallenged records prove that there was such a col- ony between the XI and the XIV Centuries, its exact location has never been determined. It may have been in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick or Maine or Massa- chusetts. It is supposed to have been founded by Leif Erickson, in about A. D. 1000. The records also prove that this colony sent out numerous exploring expedi- tions.
It is further believed that the expedition left Vin- land in a ship of the prevailing character of the period and sailed successively through Davis Straits, Hud- son's Strait and across IIndson's Bay to the mouth of the Nelson River. Here the ship was left in charge of ten men, as the inscription states, and the remain- der of the party, including the priest, ascended Nel- son River in smaller boats to Lake Winnipeg. Pass- ing through the lake, they ascended the Red River, probably to the Grand Forks. Here, for some reason -perhaps on account of low water-they left the stream and marched overland in a southeasterly direc- tion, through what are now Polk, Norman, or Mahno- men, Becker, and Otter Tail Counties, and then into Douglas, where the ten men were killed and where the stone was found.
What finally became of the party can now never be known. It is barely possible that it, or the most of its members, succeeded in returning to Vinland; it is more probable, however, that all perished under the stone weapons of the savages of the country that killed the ten men in the camp by the two skerries (or big rocks in the water) of the lake now believed to be Pelican Lake. These savages may not have been the ancestors of the Red Indians of modern centuries; for there is a belief that the ancestors of these Indians are
30
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
not the barbarians that drove away the Mound Builders.
If the Kensington Rune Stone be genuine, it can be readily accepted that the members of the party that made it were the first Caucasians or white men to visit and tread upon the soil of what is now Polk County. For they must have come up the Red River from Win- nipeg in boats or canoes, since they could hardly have proceeded on foot through the swampy valley with its rank vegetation ; and they must have strnek out over- land when the navigation of the river further south- ward became impracticable, which would be at the month of the Red Lake River, or "the Grand Forks" of the olden time.
All depends upon whether the stone is genuine or not. And at present a very large majority of those that may be considered authorities on the subject are of the decided opinion that it is what it purports to be, and that it is in no respect a fake or fraudulent. The latest history of Minnesota which is by the aceom- plished and conservative Capt. Henry A. Castle, gives it full endorsement.
THE EARLIEST WHITE EXPLORERS.
Following the party of Seandinavians that made and left the Rune Stone in Douglas County-assum- ing that there was such a party-the next Caneasians to visit the region of what is now northwestern Min- nesota, ineluding Polk County, eame in perhaps be- tween the years 1655 and 1660. These were the two French adventurers, Radisson and Groseilliers. It is not certain through what portions of northwestern Minnesota they passed, if indeed they passed through any. Warren Upham (Minn. in Three Cents., Vol. 1, p. 274) says that their journeys extended into the present area of Minnesota, "but not, as I think to its western or northern boundaries." Yet the accom- plished George Bryce, in his History of the Hudson's Bay Company, (p. 6) states: "They visited the coun- try of the Sioux, the present states of Dakota, and promised to visit the Christinos (or Crees) on their side of a lake evidently either the Lake of the Woods or Lake Winnipeg."
Radisson left a "journal," written in English, which has been printed, and this is substantially the authority of all historians and writers for their asser- tions concerning the two unserupulous adventurers. But the statements of Radisson in the "journal" of his alleged travels and adventures is confusing rather than enlightening. It is not certain where or when they went, what rivers or lakes they saw, or what peo- ple they met. No two writers agree on these points. Bryce and Upham disagree as to whether or not they visited western Minnesota and the Dakotas, and Bryce ean be no more definite about a certain lake they reached than to say it was either Lake of the Woods or Lake Winnipeg, which are 100 miles apart. The "journal" says they passed fourteen months on "an island," and Blakely, writing in the Minnesota IIis- torieal Collections, says this "island" was in a lake on the northern boundary of Minnesota, while War- ren Upham says it was in the Mississippi, near Red Wing.
It is certain that Groseilliers and Radisson were in the Lake Superior region and in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, but it is hardly possible that they ever saw northern Minnesota, or any part of what is now Polk County.
OTIIER EARLY VISITORS TO MINNESOTA.
After Groseilliers and Radisson, the first Europeans to come to Minnesota were some other French traders and adventurers, whose leader was Daniel Greysolon Du Luth, for whom the present city of Duluth was named. These people came first in 1679 to northwest- ern Minnesota, below Duluth. Du Luth elaimed that he went that year to the great Sionx village on the largest of the Mille Laes, but this can hardly be be- lieved. IIe was there the following year, however.
For in the spring of 1680 came Father Louis Henne- pin, a Belgian Franeisean priest, and two Frenchmen named Aceault and Anguelle to the Mille Laes as pris- oners of the Sioux. They were coming up the Mis- sissippi in a eanoe, when met by a Sioux war party at Roek Island, made prisoners and taken back to the
31
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
villages of their captors. The following July they were released and started with a large Sioux hunting party down the river. Below the mouth of the St. Croix they met Du Luth and his party and returned with them and the Indians to Mille Lacs, where they arrived August 14. Here they remained until the end of September, when they set out in canoes for Can- ada. They passed down the Rum and the Mississippi to the Wisconsin and then up that river and ou to Green Bay, where was a large French trading post. Neither Du Luth or Father Hennepin ever saw the Red River Valley.
Subsequent white explorers, traders, and visitors to Minnesota-Capt. Perrot, Pierre La Sueur, and a few others-confined thicir investigations and operations to the southeastern part of what is now Minnesota and never visited the Red River Valley. They do not seem even to have gone very far up the Minnesota or the Mississippi. Le Sueur went up to the Blue Earth and a few miles up that stream, where he said he found extensive copper mines and took 30,000 pounds of their ore to France. He also said he had but 32 men, yet for a winter's meat supply he and his men killed 400 buffaloes. Of the buffalo meat so furnished, he and his chronicler, M. Penicant, said that the party ate on an average six pounds a day, besides drinking four bowls of broth and that this diet "made us very fat, and there was then no more sickness among us."
Every one is at liberty to believe as much or as lit- tle of these portions of Le Sueur's reports as he pleases. If there was ever any copper ore on the Blue Earth River, Le Sueur must have taken it all away, for none has ever been found there since, although it has been diligently and thoroughly sought for. Le Sueur also claimed that he ascended the Mississippi "a hundred leagues" above the Falls of St. Anthony, which would have taken him up into Manitoba, al- though he says he went only withiu "ten days' jour- ney," or 250 miles, from the source of the great river. Had Le Sueur visited the Red River Valley, which he did not, what wonderful reports he might have made!
It is an unpleasant fact that nearly all of the earli-
est white visitors and explorers in Minnesota have given us incorrect, erroneous, misleading, and even knowingly false statements of their adventures and of conditions in the country. Father Hennepin made no mischievous or hurtful statements, but even he wrote that, a little above where Fort Snelling now stands, he killed a snake "as big around as a man's thigh," and other of his assertions are gross exag- gerations. Du Luth and Le Sneur make numerous incredible asseverations and falsifications of history. Radisson, as a narrator and historian, is simply pre- posterous and ridiculous. Capt. Jonathan Carver was a great liar, but every other American visitor that came after him in early days, as Pike, Long, Cass, Cat- lin, and others, wrote the truth, or at least tried to be accurate.
THE LA VERENDRYES DISCOVER THE RED RIVER VALLEY.
The first Caucasians to look upon any portion of the Red River and its valley were a party of Frenchmen whose principal members were Pierre Gautier de Varennes, Sieur (or Lord) de la Verendrye, his sons, and a nephew named De la Jemeraye. The senior Verendrye (pro. Vay-ron-dr-yay) was, in 1728, a "chief factor," or head trader, in the fur trade at Lake Nipigon, north of Lake Superior. From what the Indians told him, he was induced to undertake a rather formidable expedition to the far westward, ex- pecting to secure large quantities of furs, to establish permanent trading posts or forts in the country, to get great gain for himself, and to advance the interests of his government. Verendrye was born in Canada, but was loyal to the French Government and its authorities.
With the permission of the French authorities of Canada and the financial aid of some Montreal mer- chants, the senior Verendrye, with his sons and his nephew-the latter the Sieur Jemeraye-began, in 1731, a series of explorations and developments far west of Lake Superior. They followed rather closely a line which is now practically the northern boundary of Minnesota. They built a trading post, which they
32
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
called Fort St. Pierre, at the mouth of Rainy Lake; another which they called Fort St. Charles, on the west side of the Lake of the Woods, near the 49th parallel of latitude, and finally other posts as far west as on Lake Winnipeg and the Assiniboine and Sas- katehewan Rivers. The Verendryes and their asso- ciates were probably the first Caucasians to see the Red River of the North, and this at its entrance into Lake Winnipeg.
The senior Verendrye was far more anxious to eross the continent and reach the Pacific Ocean than to dis- eover and note the local geographic features of the country through which he passed. He left very mea- ger and unsatisfactory records of his travels and those of his sons. Ile sent the latter very far west- ward and they discovered some considerable elevations which they called "the Great Shining Mountains." Some modern historians and investigators think these were the Big Horn Mountains of Montana, while oth- ers think they were the Black Hills of South Dakota.
In June, 1736, a party of 22 French voyageurs ac- companied by a priest and one of Verendrye's sons, were murdered by the Sioux Indians of northern Min- nesota on an island in the Lake of the Woods. The Sioux considered that the Frenchmen were too friend- ly with their old-time foes, the Crees. Thereafter the Verendryes kept out of the Sioux country, and kept within the country controlled by the Crees and the latter's kinsmen, the Chippewas or Ojibways.
Verendrye's sons built a trading post on the south- ern shore of Lake Winnipeg, near the month of the Red River. Only the sons were here; the father re- mained at Lake Nipigon. We cannot tell what his sons reported to him, but in his records he makes no mention of any stream which can now be identified as the Red River of the North. Of course his sons were familiar with the river, but they either did not tell their father of it, or else he did not think it worth mentioning. It is not probable that they ascended the river any eonsiderable distance, because, for one rea- son, they were afraid of coming upon the bloody- minded Sioux.
In 1734, Verendrye, or his sons, built a fort near "Lake Ounipegon," at the mouth of the Maurepas River (which is now known as the Winnipeg River), and not far from the present Fort Alexander, on the southeastern projection of the lake. Here the French- men passed at least a year, engaged in trading with the Indians between Lake Winnipeg and the Grand Portage (Bryce's History of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, p. 85), and during this time they must have become acquainted with the Red River, although they made no written mention of it.
A CHIPPEWA HALF-BLOOD GAVE THE FIRST PRINTED DESCRIPTION OF TIIE RED RIVER REGION.
The earliest printed description of the northern part of Minnesota, and especially of the lower Red River region, was published by Arthur Dobbs, in London, 1744. Among other articles it contains a narrative by a French-Chippewa half-breed named Joseph La France, who, from 1740 to 1742, traveled extensively through what are now the northern parts of Minnesota and all of Manitoba. Ile reached Lake Winnipeg (or "Quinipique") in September, 1740, and spent the autumn there hunting beavers with the Crees. From these Indians he learned of the big Red Lake of Minnesota, but he understood them (or else his amannensis misunderstood him) to say that it lay west instead of south of Lake Winnipeg. His descrip- tion reads :
"On the west side of this lake [Winnipeg] the Indians told me that a River entered it, which was navigable with Canoes ; it descended from Lae Ronge, or the Red Lake, ealled so from the Colour of the Sand. They said there were two other Rivers run out of that [the Red] lake, one into the Mississippi, and the other westward into a marshy Country, full of Beavers."
This is the earliest known printed description of the lower Red River Valley. It will be noted that La France says Red Lake was so called "from the Colour of the Sand," presumably to be found on its beaches and shores. Some other observers saw the reflection of a red sunset on its surface and thought the derivation of the name came from the apparent
33
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
color of the water they saw, and which of course the aborigines had seen.
During the summer and autumn of 1741 La France canoed to a lake which he called "the Lake du Siens." Warren Upham concludes that this lake is probably the present Rice Lake, in Clearwater County, fifteen or twenty miles northwest of Lake Itasca, and on the Wild Rice River, near its source. The Sioux word for wild rice is psin, pronounced as spelled, and Mr. Upham thinks La France corrupted the word into "Siens." Why he should use a Sioux word in a region peculiarly Chippewa to describe a natural fea- ture cannot here be explained. Moreover La France's "Siens" may be a corruption of the French "cygnes" (pro. seens), meaning swans. However, Mr. Upham's theory is rational and quite plausible.
Mr. Upham is also of the opinion that a river which La France called the "River du Siens" is the present Red River; that a "fork" of this river, which he mentions, is at the month of the Wild Rice River, and that an "eastern tributary" which he noted would be the Red Lake River. Although the conclusions of Prof. Burpee, in his "Search for the Western Sea," differ from Mr. Upham's regarding the lakes and rivers mentioned by La France, Mr. Upham still thinks he has identified these natural features cor- rectly. (See Minn. in Three Cents., Vol. 1, p. 302.)
EARLY WHITE EXPLORERS OF THE REGION WERE NOT NUMEROUS.
After Verendrye and La France the English trav- elers and explorers were the first to come to what are now northern Minnesota and southern Manitoba. These were first of all fur traders, and their explora- tions in behalf of development and civilization were secondary considerations and operations. Some of them visited the Red River but others of them never saw it, confining their observations to the country eastward of the river and its valley. Two of them wrote out and committed to print instructive and valuable descriptions of the country they visited and interesting accounts of their experiences therein.
Alexander Henry, the senior, traversed the central route along a portion of the northern boundary of
Minnesota in 1775, but did not get as far westward as to the Red River. In 1809 he published in book form a record of his investigations as a traveler, trader, and explorer, and his book "Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories Between 1760 and 1765," is frequently consulted and quoted from by modern historians.
Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who, in 1789, discovered the great northern river which still bears his name, came to the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior in 1785 and finally crossed the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range to the Pacific, going by the way of the Peace River. In his book of "Voyages," etc., pub- lished in 1801, he narrates much concerning the white men and the Indians of northern Minnesota during the latter part of the XVIII Century. But he makes no particular mention of the Red River, which he never saw.
David Thompson, born in London in 1770, entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company when he was 19 years old, or in 1789. In 1797 he joined the Northwest Fur Company and in the Spring of 1798 he traveled through the Red River Valley, visiting Red Lake and even Turtle Lake, the latter about seven miles north of Bemidji, in Beltrami County. His other explorations for the Northern Fur Com- pany were important. He became renowned for his maps of the country and his plats, field notes, etc., fill forty large record books of the public surveys department at Toronto. Portions of his records were published by the Canadian Institute in 1888 and by the eminent historian, Dr. Elliott Coues, in 1897. It is unfortunate, however, that his description of the Red River and its region is not very elaborate.
The younger Alexander Henry, as he is called, a nephew of the senior Alexander Henry, spent from 1799 to 1808 in the region of Lake Winnipeg and the Red River. He was engaged in the fur trade and his principal posts were at the mouths of the Park and the Pembina Rivers. His journals, in which he gives many geographic names of Northern Minnesota, were edited and published by Dr. Coues in 1897. Henry's names of very many of the lakes and rivers of the region are still used.
CHAPTER IV.
FUR TRADERS THE FIRST WHITE RESIDENTS.
TIIE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY-DUNCAN GRAHAM COMES TO EAST GRAND FORKS PRIOR TO 1800-DAVID THOMPSON FINDS JEAN BAPTISTE CADOTTE HERE IN 1798-THE NORTHWEST FUR COMPANY FORMED AND SENDS IN TRAD- ERS-THE COLUMBIA AND AMERICAN FUR COMPANIES.
The first white men with fixed residences and steady occupations in the country to visit and occupy por- tions of what is now Polk County, were fur traders in the service of the Hudson's Bay and the Northwest Fur Companies, both English corporations.
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.
In 1668 an American ship, the Nonsuch, Capt. Zachariah Gillan, a New Englander, sailed from Lon- don into Hudson's Bay and landed at the mouth of the Nelson River. It was sent out by some London furriers to investigate the fur and pelt resources of Hudson's Bay, which great inland sea had been dis- covered by Henry Hudson fifty years previously. A full ship-load of furs and peltries was easily secured, and on the return of the Nonsuch to London a great corporation was soon formed to make permanent occu- pation of the Hudson's Bay region and make thorough exploitation of its resources available for traffic. The corporation called itself, "The Governor and Com- pany of Adventurers of England Trading into Hud- son's Bay." King Charles II, England's "merry monarch" of the time, readily gave the company a charter which was dated May 2, 1670.
The first Governor of the Company was Prince Rupert, the dashing English cavalier, whose titles were Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria and Cumberland. The region of country in which the company was to operate was styled Prince Rupert's Land, which name is still in use. The gen-
erous King Charles gave the adventurers a vast expanse of country, which of course he did not really own, and which, according to the terms of the charter comprised,-
The whole trade of all those seas, streights, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatsoever lati- tude they shall be, that be within the entrance of the streights commonly called Hudson's streights-to- gether with all the lands, countries, and territories upon the coasts and confines of the seas, streights, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, and sounds aforesaid, which are not now actually possessed by any of our subjects or by the subjects of any other Christian Prince or state.
Of course, by the terms of the charter, the Red River region was included in the trade territory of the great corporation, since the water of the river whose name it still bears flows finally into Hudson's Bay and may be said to lie "within the entrance of the streights commonly called Hudson's Streights." Into Lake Winnipeg run both the Red River and the Saskatchewan, the latter rivaling the Mississippi in some respects, springing from the very heart of the Rocky Mountains. The vast territory drained by these streams was all legitimately covered by the language of the company's charter.
It must be borne in mind, however, that at the time the charter was given, the French owned Canada, including the country south of Hudson's Bay; and this great empire they continued to own and control until it was taken away from them by the English after the French and Indian War and by the treaty
34
35
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
of Paris in 1763. The charter recognized the facts, and therefore provided that the Hudson's Bay Com- pany was not to interfere with the trading posts already in the country in the actual possession of "the subjects of any other Christian prince or state."
Hence it was that the Verendryes, La France, and other French subjects acting under the French au- thority, visited Lake Winnipeg and the Red River and made establishments long before the English came. How far they ascended the Red River, if they ever ascended it at all, or what they did, if anything, in the Polk County country, is unknown to the pres- ent writer, and it seems now that it is too late to inquire into the subject. There is no known record of the French exploitation of this district beyond what has been noted, and it is not probable that the operations connected therewith were of much impor- tance or there would be such a record.
Moreover, it was many years after the Hudson's Bay Company began operations when its agents began to operate in the Red River region. We only have disconnected accounts of the presence of these traders in the country, and these accounts refer to only the latter part of the XVIII Century.
DUNCAN GRAHAM AT GRAND FORKS.
The first engagee of the Hudson's Bay Company to ascend the Red River, so far as the present writer is informed, was a young Scotchman named Duncan Graham. Ile came to Winnipeg and the Red River some time during the last half of the XVIII Century. A fairly reliable biographical sketch of the young trader was published in the Minnesota Pioneer of April 15, 1851, over the signature of "F." The author was probably Dr. Thomas Foster, a prominent pioneer newspaper man and a noted writer on Min- nesota early history. In this article it is stated that some time prior to the year 1800 Duncan Graham was "connected with a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company at the Grand Forks on Red River. Later he was for a long time in charge of an establishment at the place which is still called Graham's Point, south of the Grand Forks."
On which side of the river at the Grand Forks stood the trading establishment with which Graham was connected cannot with certainty be stated. Pre- sumably, however, it was on the Polk County side, for the Indians who were its patrons lived chiefly on that side, being the Chippewas of Red Lake and the other lakes and rivers directly east of the post. Graham had associates, of course, and he may have had predecessors, but we do not know who they were. He is the first white man whose identity has been clearly determined that established himself within what is now Polk County. A sketch of him seems proper in this connection.
Captain Duncan Graham was a native of the High- lands of Scotland, and a member of a prominent family of the region. The Clan Graham, or Graeme, is one of the most renowned in the early history of Scotland. He was not born in Edinburgh, as one account says. He was born about 1766, although there is ground for belief that his birth occurred near 1760. He came to the Northwest when a very young man, presumably in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was in the Minnesota country in the latter part of the XVIII Century.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.