USA > Minnesota > Concise history of the state of Minnesota > Part 5
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
favourable reception at St. Louis. The newspapers an- nouncing his arrival, and general Scottish appearance, all tend to discompose me; believing as I do, that he is plotting with his friend Dickson our destruction-sharp- ening the savage scalping knife, and colonizing a tract of country so remote as that of the Red River, for the purpose, no doubt, of monopolizing the fur and peltry trade of this river, the Missouri and their waters; a trade of the first importance to our Western States and Terri- tories. A courier who had arrived a few days since, confirms the belief that Dickson is endeavouring to un- do what I have done, and secure to the British govern- ment the affections of the Sioux, and subject the North- west Company to his lordship. * Dickson, as I have before observed, is situated near the head of the St. Peter's, to which place he transports his goods from Selkirk's Red River establishment, in carts made for the purpose. The trip is performed in five days, sometimes less. He is directed to build a fort on the highest land between Lac du Traverse and Red River, which he sup- poses will be the established lines. This fort will be defended by twenty men, with two small pieces of artil- lery."
In the year 1820, at Berne, Switzerland, a circular was issued, signed R. May D'Uzistorf, Captain, in his Brit- anic Majesty's service, and agent plenipotentiary to Lord Selkirk. Like many documents to induce immi- gration, it was so highly colored as to prove a delusion and a snare.
Under the influence of these statements, a number were induced to embark. In the spring of 1821, about two hundred persons assembled on the banks of the Rhine to proceed to the region west of Lake Superior.
63
SWISS IMMIGRANTS.
Having descended the Rhine to the vicinity of Rotter- dam, they went aboard the ship "Lord Wellington," and after a voyage across the Atlantic, and amid the ice-floes of Hudson Bay, they reached York Fort. Here they debarked, and entering batteaux, ascended Nelson Riv- er for twenty days, when they came to Lake Winnipeg, and coasting along the left shore they reached the Red River of the North, to feel that they had been deluded, and to long for a milder clime. If they did not sing the Switzer's "Song of Home," they appreciated its senti- ments, and gradually many of these immigrants removed to the banks of the Mississippi River. Some settled in Minnesota, and were the first to raise cattle and till the soil in this State.
Major Stephen H. Long of the Engineer Corps of the United States Army, in 1817, ascended in a six-oared skiff to the Falls of Saint Anthony. His party con- sisted of a Mr. Hempstead, a native of New London, Connecticut, who had been living at Prairie du Chien, several soldiers, and a half-breed interpreter named Rocque. A bark canoe accompanied him, containing two grandsons of Captain Jonathan Carver. On the twelfth of July, Long arrived at Trempe a l'eau, or Kettle Hill. Crossing the river, he visited the Sioux village of which Wapashah, called by the French, La Feuille (Fuhyay), was chief, but who was then absent. On the six- teenth he approached the vicinity of where is now the city of Saint Paul, and in his journal wrote: "Passed a Sioux village on our right containing fourteen cabins. The name of the chief is the Petit Corbeau, or Little Raven. The Indians were all absent, on a hunting party, up the River St. Croix, which is but a little distance across the country, from the village. Of this we were
64
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
very glad, as this band are said to be the most notorious beggars of all the Sioux on the Mississippi. One of their cabins is furnished with loop holes, and is situated so near the water that the opposite side of the river is within musket-shot range from the building. By this means, the Petit Corbeau is enabled to exercise a com- mand over the passage of the river, and has in some instances compelled traders to land with their goods, and induced them, probably through fear of offending him, to bestow presents to a considerable amount, before he would suffer them to pass. The cabins are a kind of stockade buildings, and of a better appearance than any Indian dwellings I have before met with.
" Two miles above the village, on the same side of the river, is Carver's Cave, at which we stopped to break- fast. However interesting it may have been, it does not possess that character in a very high degree at pres- ent. We descended with lighted candles to its lower extremity. The entrance is very low and about eight feet broad, so that a man in order to enter it must be completely prostrate. The angle of descent withiin the cave is about twenty-five degrees. The flooring is an inclined plane of quicksand, formed of the rock in which the cavern is formed. The distance from its entrance to its inner extremity is twenty-four paces, and the width in the broadest part about nine, and its greatest height about seven feet. In shape it resembles a baker's oven. The cavern was once probably much more extensive. My interpreter informed me, that, since his remembrance, the entrance was not less than ten feet high and its length far greater than at present. The rock in which it is formed is a very white sandstone, so friable that the fragments of it will almost crumble to sand when taken
65
CAVES AT ST. PAUL.
into the hand. A few yards below the mouth of the cavern is a very copious spring of fine water issuing from the bottom of the cliff.
"Five miles above this, is the Fountain Cave, on the same side of the river, formed in the same kind of sand- stone but of a more pure and fine quality. It is far more curious and interesting than the former. The en- trance of the cave is a large winding hall about one hundred and fifty feet in length, fifteen feet in width, and from eight to sixteen feet in height, finely arched overhead, and nearly perpendicular. Next succeeds a narrow passage and difficult of entrance, which opens into a most beautiful circular room, finely arched above, and about forty feet in diameter. The cavern then con- tinues a meandering course, expanding occasionally into small rooms of a circular form. We penetrated about one hundred and fifty yards, till our candles began to fail us, wlien we returned. To beautify and embellish the scene, a fine crystal stream flows through the cavern and cheers the lonesome, dark retreat with its enliven- ing murmurs. The temperature of the water in the cave was 46 deg., and that of the air 60 deg. Entering this cold retreat from an atmosphere of 89 deg. I thought it not prudent to remain in it long enough, to take its sev- eral dimensions, and meander its courses, particularly as we had to wade in water to our knees, in many places, in order to penetrate as far as we went. The fountain supplies an abundance of water as fine as I ever drank. This cavern, I was informed by my interpreter, has been discovered but a few years, and that the Indians former- ly living in its neighborhood knew nothing of it till within six years past. That it is not the same as that discovered by Carver is evident, not only from this cir-
66
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
cumstance, but also from the circumstance that instead of a stagnant pool, and only one accessible room of a very different form, this cavern has a brook running through it, and at least four rooms in succession, one after the other. Carver's Cave is fast filling up with sand, so that no water is now found in it, whereas this, from the very nature of the place, must be enlarging, as the fountain will carry along with its current all the sand that falls into it from the roof and sides of the cavern."
On the night of the sixteenth, he arrived at the Falls of Saint Anthony aud encamped on the east shore just below the cataract. He writes:
"The place where we encamped last night needed no embellishment to render it romantic in the highest de- gree. The banks on both sides of the river are about one hundred feet high, decorated with trees and shrub- bery of various kinds. A few yards below us was a beautiful cascade of fine spring water, pouring down from a projecting precipice about one hundred feet high. On our left was the Mississippi hurrying through its channel with great velocity, and about three-quarters of a mile above us, in plain view, was the majestic cata- ract of the falls of St. Anthony. The murmuring of the cascade, the roaring of the river, and the thunder of the cataract, all contributed to render the scene the most interesting and magnificent of any I ever before wit- nessed."
"The perpendicular fall of the water at the cataract, was stated by Pike in his journal, as sixteen and a half feet, which I found to be true, by actual measurement. To this height, however, four or five feet may be added for the rapid descent which immediately succeeds to the
67
FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY, A. D. 1817.
perpendicular fall within a few yards below. Imme- diately at the cataract, the river is divided into two parts, by an island which extends considerably above . and below the cataract, and is about five hundred yards long. The channel on the right side of the Island is about three times the width of that on the left. The quantity of water passing through them is not, however, in the same proportion, as about one-third part of the whole passes through the left channel. In the broadest channel, just below the cataract, is a small island also, about fifty yards in length and thirty in breadth. Both of these islands contain the same kind of rocky forma- tion as the banks of the river, and are nearly as high. Besides these, there are immediately at the foot of the cataract, two islands of very inconsiderable size, situa- ted in the right channel also. The rapids commence several hundred yards above the cataract, and continue about eight miles below. The fall of the water, beginning at the head of the rapids, and extend- ing two hundred and sixty rods down the river to where the portage road commences, below the cataract is, according to Pike, fifty-eight feet. If this estimate be correct the whole fall from the head to the foot of the rapids, is not probably much less than one hundred feet. But as I had no instrument sufficiently accurate to level, where the view must necessarily be pretty extensive, I took no pains to ascertain the extent of the fall. The mode I adopted to ascertain the height of a cataract, was to suspend a line and plummet from the table rock on the south side of the river, which at the same time had very little water passing over it as the river was unusu- ally low."
6S
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
CHAPTER FIFTH.
OCCURRENCES DURING THE MILITARY OCCUPATION.
On the tenth of February, 1819, General Jacob Brown, the General-in-Chief of the United States Army, issued an order, that a portion of the Fifth Regiment should proceed to the mouth of the Minnesota River, and estab- lish the first military post, in the valley of the Missis- sippi, above the Wisconsin River. -
On Wednesday, the last day of June, Colonel Leaven- worth, and a portion of his regiment, arrived at Prairie du Chien. At this point Charlotte Seymour, a native of Hartford, Conn., the wife of Lieutenant, afterwards Captain Nathan Clark, gave birth to a daughter, whose first baptismal name became Charlotte, and middle name Ouisconsin, the French form of spelling, given by her father's fellow officers, because she was born at the junction of the Wisconsin River with the Mississippi1 River.
In June, under instructions from the War Depart- ment, Major Thomas Forsyth, connected with the office of Indian Affairs, left St. Louis with two thousand dol- lars worth of goods, to be distributed among the Sioux
1 The babe Charlotte Onisconsin Clarke developed into a cheery girl, and in March, 1-36, was married to a graduate of West oint. Lt. Horatio P. Vant'leve, at Fort Winnebago, Wisconsin. When the war for the Union began, her his- band was commissioned Colonel of the Second Minnesota Regiment, and led his men to victory at Mill Spring, Kentucky. He was afterward- Brigadier General. Both were living in January, 1997, in Minneapolis, honored and be- loved by the citizens of Minnesota.
ARRIVAL OF UNITED STATES TROOPS AT MENDOTA. 69
Indians, in accordance with the agreement of 1805, already referred to, by the late General Pike.
About nine o'clock of the morning of the fifth of July, he joined Leavenworth and his command at Prairie du Chien. Some time was occupied by Leavenworth await- ing the arrival of ordnance, provisions, and recruits, but on Sunday morning, the eighth of August, about eight o'clock, the expedition set out for the point now known as Mendota. The flotilla was quite imposing; there were the Colonel's barge, fourteen batteaux with ninty- eight soldiers and officers, two large canal or Mackinaw boats, filled with various stores, and Forsyth's keel boat, containing goods and presents for the Indians. On the twenty-third of August, Forsyth reached the mouth of the Minnesota with his boat, and the next morning Col. Leavenworth arrived, and selecting a place at Mendota, near the present railroad bridge, he ordered the soldiers to cut down trees and make a clearing. On the next
Saturday, Col. Leavenworth, Major Vose, Surgeon Pur- cell, Lieutenant Clark, and the wife of Captain Gooding, visited the Falls of Saint Anthony, with Forsyth, in his keel boat. Early in September, two more boats and a bateau, with officers, and one hundred and twenty recruits arrived.
The officers with their wives lived in the boats until rude huts and pickets were erected. Before the quar- ters were completed the rigor of winter was felt, and the removal from the open boats to the log cabins, plastered with clay, was considered a privilege. Though the first winter was extremely cold, the garrison remained cheer- ful, and the officers maintained pleasant social inter- course
During the winter of 1820, Laidlow and others, in
6
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
behalf of Lord Selkirk's Scotch settlers at Pembina, whose crops had been destroyed by grasshoppers, passed the cantonment on their way to Prairie du Chien to pur- chase wheat. Upon the fifteenth of April they began their return, with their Mackinaw boats, each loaded with two hundred bushels of wheat, one hundred of oats and thirty of peas, and reached the mouth of the Minne- sota early in May. Ascending this stream to Big Stone Lake, the boats were drawn on rollers a mile and a half to Lake Traverse, and on the third of June arrived at Pembina, and cheered the desponding and needy set- tlers of the Selkirk colony.
The first sutler of the post was a Mr. Devotion. He brought with him a young man named Philander Pres- cott, who was born in 1801, at Phelpstown, Ontario county, New York. At first they stopped at Mud Hen Island, in the Mississippi, below the mouth of St. Croix River. Coming up late in the year 1819, at the site of the present town of Hastings, they found a keel-boat loaded with supplies for the cantonment, in charge of Lieut. Oliver, detained by the ice.
Amid all the changes of the troops, Mr. Prescott remained nearly all his life in the vicinity of the post, to which he came when a mere lad, and was at length killed in the Sioux massacre.
In the spring of 1820, Jean Baptiste Faribault brought up Leavenworth's horses from Prairie du Chien.
The first Indian Agent at the post was a former army officer, Lawrence Taliaferro, pronounced Toliver. As he had the confidence of the Government for twenty-one successive years, he is deserving of notice.
His family was of Italian origin, and among the early settlers of Virginia. He was born in 1794, in King
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TALIAFERRO FIRST INDIAN AGENT.
William county in that State, and when, in 1812, war was declared against Great Britain, with four brothers, he entered the army, and was commissioned as Lieutenant of the Thirty-fifth Infantry. He behaved gallantly at Fort Erie and Sackett's Harbor, and after peace was de- clared, was retained as a First Lieutenant of the Third Infantry. In 1816, he was stationed at Fort Dear- born, now the site of Chicago. While on a furlough, he called one day upon President Monroe, who told him that a fort would be built near the Falls of Saint An- thony, and an Indian Agency established, to which he of- fered to appoint him. His commission was dated March 27th, 1819, and he proceeded in due time to his post.
On the 5th day of May, 1820, Leavenworth left his win- ter quarters at Mendota, crossed the stream, and made a summer camp near the present military graveyard, which in consequence of a fine spring had been called Camp Cold Water. The first distinguished visitors at the new encampment were Gov. Lewis Cass, of Michigan, and Henry R. Schoolcraft, who arrived in July, having by way of the St. Louis River visited Red Cedar Lake, after this period, known as Cass Lake.
The Indian Agent, on the third of August, wrote to Colonel Leavenworth: "His Excellency, Governor Cass, during his visit to this post, remarked to me that the Indians were spoiled, and said they should not be per- mitted to enter the camp. An unpleasant affair has lately taken place; I mean the stabbing of the old chief Mahgossan, by his comrade. This was caused, doubt- less, by an anxiety to obtain the chief's whiskey. I beg, therefore, that no whiskey whatever be given to any In- dians, unless it be through their proper agent. While an overplus of whiskey thwarts the beneficent and hu-
72
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
mane policy of the government, it entails misery upon the Indians, and endangers their lives."
A few days later, Col. Josiah Snelling recently pro- moted, came, with his family, relieved Leavenworth, in- fused energy, and on the tenth of September laid the corner stone of the Fort in the presence of the troops. About the same time the daughter of Captain Gooding was married to Lieutenant P. R. Green, the Adjutant of the regiment, the first marriage of white persons in Minnesota. The wife of the Colonel, during the sum- mer, gave birth to a daughter, the first child of white parents, born in Minnesota. The infant lived thirteen months, was buried in the military grave yard, and a stone placed over the remains.
Soon after Col. Snelling assumed command, a party of the Sisseton Sioux killed, on the Missouri, Isadore Poupon, a half breed, and Joseph Andrews, a Canadian, engaged in the fur trade. The Indian Agent, through his interpreter, Colin Campbell, notified the band that trade would cease, until the murderers were delivered. At a council held at Big Stone Lake, one of the murder- ers, and the aged father of another, agreed to surrender themselves. On the twelfth of November, 1820, accom- panied by their friends, they approached the encamp- ment, and solemnly marched to the center of the parade. A Sisseton, bearing a flag, was at the head; then the murderer, and the father who had offered himself as a substitute for his son, their arms pinioned, and large wooden splinters thrust the flesh above the elbows indi- cating their contempt for pain and death; in the rear followed friends and relatives with them, chanting the death dirge. Having arrived in front of the guard, fire was kindled, and the British flag burned; then the mur-
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73
FIRST OCCUPATION OF FORT.
derer delivered up his medal, and both prisoners were surrounded. Col. Snelling detained the okl chief, while the murderer was sent to St. Louis for trial.
The fort was lozenge shaped, in view of the tongue of land, between the two rivers, on which, it was built. The first row of barracks was of hewn logs, obtained from the pine forests of Rum River, but the other buildings were of stone. Mrs. Van Cleve, writes: "In 1821 the fort, although not complete, was fit for occupancy. My
father had assigned to him, the quarters next beyond the steps, leading to the Commissary's stores, and during the year, my little sister Juliet was born there. At a later period, my father and Major Garland obtained per- misison to build more commodious quarters outside the walls, and the result was the two stone houses, after- wards occupied by the Indian Agent, and interpreter, lately destroyed.
Early in August, a young and intelligent mixed blood, Alexis Bailly, in after years a member of the legislature of Minnesota, left the cantonment, with the first drove of cattle for the Selkirk Settlement, and the next winter, returned with Col. Robert Dickson, and Messrs. Laidlow and Mackenzie.
The next month a party of Sissetons visited the Indian Agent, and told him that they had started with another of the murderers, to which reference has been made, but that on the way, he had, through fear of being hung, killed himself.
This fall, a mill was constructed for the use of the garrison, on the west side of St. Anthony Falls, under the supervision of Lieutenant MeCabe. During the fall, George Gooding, Captain by brevet, resigned, and became sutler at Prairie du Chien. He was a native of
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
Massachusetts, and in 1SOS entered the army as ensign. In 1810, he became a Second Lieutenant, and the next year, was wounded at Tippecanoe.
Early in January, 1822, there came to the Fort, from the Red River of the North, Col. Robert Dickson, Laid- low, a Scotch farmer, the superintendent of Lord Sel- kirk's experimental farm, and one Mackenzie, on their way to Prairie du Chien. Dickson returned with a drove of cattle, but owing to the hostility of the Sioux, his cattle were scattered, and never reached Pembina.
During the winter of 1823, Agent Taliaferro was in Washington. While returning, in March, he was at a hotel in Pittsburgh, when he received a note signed G. C. Beltrami, who was an Italian exile, asking permiss- ion to accompany him to the Indian territory. He was tall, and commanding in appearance, and gentle- manly in bearing, and Taliaferro was so forcibly im- pressed as to accede to the request. After reaching St. Louis, they embarked on the first steamboat, for the Upper Mississippi.
It was named the Virginia, and was built in Pitts- burg, twenty-two feet in width, and one hundred and eighteen feet in length, in charge of a Captain Craw- ford. It reached the Fort, on the tenth of May, and was saluted by the discharge of cannon. Among the pass- engers, beside the Agent, and Italian, were Major Bid- dle, Lieut. Russell, and others.
The arrival of the Virginia is an era in the history of the Dakotah nation, and will probably be transmitted to their posterity as long as they exist as people. They say their sacred men, the night before, dreamed of seeing some monster of the waters, which frightened them very much. As the boat neared the shore, men, women, and
75
ARRIVAL OF FIRST STEAMBOAT.
children beheld with silent astonishment, supposing that it was some enormous water-spirit, coughing, pu fling out hot breath, and splashing water in every direction. When it touched the landing, their fears prevailed, and they retreated some distance; but when the blowing off of steam commenced they were completely unnerved; mothers forgetting their children, with streaming hair, sought hiding places; chiefs, renouncing their stoicism ran away, like affrighted sheep.
On the third of July, 1823, Major Long, of the U. S. Engineers, arrived at the Fort, in charge of an expedi- tion to explore the Minnesota River, and the region along the northern boundary line of the United States. Beltrami, at the request of Colonel Snelling, was per- mitted to join the party, but his relations with Long were not pleasant, and at Pembina he retired, and with a half-breed and two Ojibway Indians proceeded to the northern source of the Mississippi, which Thompson, the geographer, had visited and surveyed twenty-five years before.
He reached Cass ( Red Cedar ) Lake on the fourth of September, and in his book written in French, publish- ed in 1824, at New Orleans, he refers to a lake which he did not visit, called "La Biche," Elk Lake, and uses these words: " It is here, in my opinion, that we shall fix the western sources of the Mississippi." At a later period his opinion was confirmed by Schoolcraft, and Nicollet.
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
R Valeuse
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Samenskansig
L.
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Bed L
Kinia
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The highest Lang Sources of the Tifs
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In 182S, at London, an edition of his travels, in Eng- lish, was published, and with it a map of the Mississ- ippi. From the fac-simile of a portion of it it will be seen that Doe ( Elk) Lake is designated as the western source of the Mississippi. The trappers of the North- west Company were well acquainted with the region.
The mill constructed in 1821, for sawing lumber, at the Falls of Saint Anthony, was upon the site of the Holmes and Sidle flour mill in Minneapolis. and in 1823 was fitted up for grinding flour. Under date of August 5th, 1823, General Gibson writes to Lt. Clark, Commisary at Fort Snelling: "From a letter ad- dressed to the Quartermaster General, dated the 2d of April, I learn that a large quantity of wheat would be
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