USA > Minnesota > Concise history of the state of Minnesota > Part 7
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KEEL BOATS ATTACKED.
galling shots of the Winnebagoes. As they floated down the river, during the night, they heard a wail in a canoe behind them, the voice of a father mourning the death of the son, who had scaled the deck, and was now a corpse in the possession of the white men. The rear boat passed the Bad Axe River late in the night and escaped an attack.
The first keel-boat arrived at Prairie du Chien, with two of their crew dead, four wounded, and the Indian that had been killed on the boat. The two dead men had been residents of the Prairie and now the panic was increased. Soon the second keel-boat appeared and among her passengers was W. Joseph Snelling, the tal- ented son of the colonel, who wrote a story of deep in- terest, based on the facts narrated.
At a meeting of the citizens it was resolved to repair old Fort Crawford, and Thomas MeNair was appointed captain. Dirt was thrown around the bottom logs of the fortification to prevent its being fired, and young Snelling was put in charge of one of the block-houses. On the next day a voyageur named Loyer, and a well- known trader, Duncan Graham, started through the in- terior, west of the Mississippi, with intelligence of the murders, to Fort Snelling, which was received at the Fort on the evening of the ninth of July, and Col. Snelling started in keel boats with four companies to Fort Crawford, and on the seventeenth four more companies left under Major Fowle. After an absence of six weeks, the soldiers, without firing a gun at the enemy, returned.
A few weeks after the attacks upon the keel boats General Gaines inspected the Fort, and, subsequently in
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
a communication to the War Department wrote as fol- lows:
"The work may be made very strong and adapted to a garrison of two hundred men by removing one-half the buildings, and with the materials of which they are constructed building a tower sufficiently high to com- mand the hill between the Mississippi and St. Peter's [Minnesota ], and by a block house on the extreme point, or brow of the cliff, near the commander's quarters, to secure most effectually the banks of the river, and the boats at the landing.
"Much credit is due to Colonel Snelling, his officers and men, for their immense labors and excellent work- manship exhibited in the construction of these barracks and store houses, but this has been effected too much at the expense of the discipline of the regiment."
In accordance with the suggestion, a stone tower was erected near the commandant's quarter, but within a few years it has been removed.
During the fall of 1827 the Fifth Regiment was relier- ed by a part of the First, and the next year Colonel Snelling proceeded to Washington on business, where he died with inflammation of the brain. Major General Macomb announcing his death in an order, wrote:
"Colonel Snelling joined the army in early youth. In the battle of Tippecanoe he was distinguished for gallantry and good conduet. Subsequently and during the whole great war with Great Britain, from the battle of Brownstown to the termination of the contest, he was actively employed in the field, with credit to himself, and honor to his country."
93
AN OLD SPANISH COMMISSION.
CHAPTER SIXTH.
EVENTS IN AND AROUND FORT SNELLING, A. D. 182S, TO A. D. 1840.
During the month of June, 1828, Samuel Gibson, a drover from Missouri, lost his way, in bringing cattle to Fort Snelling, and abandoned them, near Lac qui Parle. Joseph Renville, the trader, then collected them and sixty-four were sold and the money obtained there- for, forwarded to the drover.
An old Sioux, this month visited the Fort, and pro- duced a Spanish commission issued in 1781, and signed by Colonel Francis Cruzat, military governor of Louisi- ana, under whose jurisdiction was the valley of the Min- nesota river.
The winter, spring and summer of 1829 were very dry, and for ten months, the average monthly fall of rain and snow was one inch.
In May, forty Sioux of Red Wing's band called upon the Indian agent, and said that since the death of their old chief, Red Wing, they had not been able to choose another, but after the conference they selected Wakou- ta, a step-son of the deceased chief. On the twentieth of May, there was a peace dance, by about one hundred relatives of the four Sioux, who, in 1827. had been deliv- ered up, and shot by the Ojibways. The dance was to throw off their mourning, and each dancer walking up to an uncooked dog, hung to a stake, bit off a portion.
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94
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
A week later a party of Ojibways arrived, with B. F. Baker, who had been trading at Gull Lake, and on Sun- day, the last day of May, the Indians of both tribes drew together, before the Indian agent's house, and agreed that they would hunt in peace upon the prairies above Sank River.
Early in September, 1829, Surgeon R. C. Wood left the Fort, on a visit to Prairie du Chien, and by the last of the month, returned in an open boat, with a bride, the daughter of General Zachary Taylor, then in com- mand at Fort Crawford and subsequently President of the United States. Another daughter married Lt. Jef- ferson Davis, who became the President of the so-called Confederate States, while John, the son of Surgeon Wood, obtained notoriety, as commander of the Talla- hassee, a rebel privateer.
In 1832, under instructions from the Secretary of War, Henry R. Schoolcraft visited the Ojibways toward the sources of the Mississippi. At two o'clock of the afternoon of the twelfth of July his party reached Elk Lake. Lieutenant Allen, the commander of the military detachment, who made the first map of this lake, thus wrote in his Report:
"From these hills, which were seldom more than two or three hundred feet high, we came suddenly down to the lake, and passed nearly through it to an island near its west end, where we remained one or two hours. We were sure that we had reached the true source of the great river, and a feeling of great satisfaction was mani- fested by all the party. Mr. Schoolcraft hoisted a flag on a high staff on the island and left it flying. The lake is about seven miles long, and from one to three broad, but is of an irregular shape, conforming to the bases of
95
LAKE ITASCA.
pine hills which, for a great part of its circumference, rise abruptly from its shore. It is deep, cold, and very clear, and seemed to be well stocked with fish. Its shores show some boulders of primitive rock, but no rock in place. The island, the only one of the lake, and which I have called Schoolcraft Island, is one hundred and fifty yards long, fifty yards broad in the highest part, elevated twenty or thirty feet, overgrown with elm, pine, spruce, and wild cherry."
The chaplain of the expedition was the Rev. W. T. Boutwell, still living, in January, 1887, near Stillwater, Washington County. Mr. Schoolcraft, who was not a Latin scholar, asked the chaplain for a Latin word which signified truth, and was told veritas, and the word for source, and caput was mentioned. Schoolcraft was fond of coining words, and by striking out the first syl- lable of veritas, and the last of caput, he made the word Itasca. In a reprint of his Narrative, published in 1855, appears the following: "I inquired of Ozari- dib, the Indian name of this lake; he replied Omush- kos, which is the Chippewa name of the elk. Having previously got an inkling of some of their mythological and necromantic notions of the origin and mutations of the country, which permitted the use of a female name for it, I denominated it Itasca." Schoolcraft remained one day at Itasca, and the next morning descended the Mississippi, and on the twenty-first of July, reached Fort Snelling. Featherstonhaugh, in company with Prof. W. W. Mather, under direction of the U. S. gov- ernment, stopped at Fort Snelling, while on his way to explore the Minnesota valley. After returning to England, his native country, he published a work en- titled "Canoe voyage up the Minnaysotor," which is
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
chiefly remarkable for its ill-natured remarks, about gentlemen, who did not show him the attention, which he craved.
On the second of July, 1836, the steamboat Saint Peter landed supplies, and among its passengers was the dis- tinguished French astronomer, Jean N. Nicollet (Nico- lay ). Major Taliaferro on the twelfth of July, wrote: "Mr. Nicollet, on a visit to the post for scientific re- search, and at present in my family, has shown me the late work of Henry R. Schoolcraft on the discovery of the source of the Mississippi; which claim is ridiculous in the extreme." On the twenty-seventh, Nicollet left the fort with a French trader, named Fronchet, to ex- plore the sources of the Mississippi. While at the Falls of St. Anthony, the Dahkotahs pilfered some of his pro- visions, but writing back to the fort for another supply, he ascended the Mississippi, telescope in hand, and with a trustful, child-like spirit, hoped with Sir Isaac New- ton, to gather a few pebbles from the great ocean of truth. After reaching Crow Wing River, he entered its mouth, and by way of Gull River and lake, he reach- ed Leech Lake, the abode of the Pillagers. When the savages found that he was nothing but a poor scholar, with neither medals nor beef, nor flags to present, and constantly peeping through a tube into the heavens, they became very unruly.
The Rev. Mr. Boutwell, whose mission house was on the opposite side of the lake, hearing the shouts and drumming of the Indians, came over as soon as the wind which had been blowing for several days, would allow the passage of his canoe. His arrival was very grateful to Nicollet, who says: "On the fourth day, however, he arrived, and although totally unknown to each other pre-
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NICOLLET'S EXPLORATIONS.
viously, a sympathy of feeling arose, growing out of the precarious circumstances under which we were both placed, and towhich he had been much longer exposed than myself. This feeling, from the kind attentions he paid me, soon ripened into affectionate gratitude."
Leaving Leech Lake with an Indian, Fronchet and Francis Brunet, a Canadian trader of that post, "a man six feet three inches in height, a giant of great strength, and at the same time full of the milk of human kind- ness," he proceeded towards Itasca Lake. With the sextant on his back, thrown over like a knapsack, a ba- rometer and cloak on his left shoulder, a portfolio under his arm, and a basket in hand holding thermometer, chronometer, and compass, he followed his guides over the necessary portage. After the usual trials of an inex- perienced traveller, he pitched his tent on Schoolcraft's Island, in Lake Itasca, and proceeded to use his telescope and instruments.
Continuing his explorations beyond those of Lieut. Allen and Schoolcraft, he entered on the twenty-ninth of August, a tributary of the west bay of the lake, two or three feet in depth, and from fifteen to twenty feet in width. While the previous explorers had passed but one or tiro hours at Itasca Lake, he stayed three days with complete scientific apparatus, and sought the sources of the rivulets and lakelets that feed the lake. In his report he wrote: "Of the five creeks that empty into Itasca Lake, one empties into the east bay of the Lake, the four others into the west bay. I visited the whole of them; and among the latter there is one remarkable above the others, inasmuch as its course is longer, and waters more abundant; so in obedience to the geograph- ical rule that the sources of a river are those that are
1
9S
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
most distant from its mouth, this creek is truly the in- fant Mississippi; all others below, its feeders and tribu- taries. The day on which I explored this principal creek [August 29, 1836] I judged that at its entrance into Itasca Lake, its bed was from fifteen to twenty feet wide, and the depth of water from two to three feet. With great appropriateness has his claim been recognized by the State of Minnesota, as the individual who completed the exploration of the Mississippi, by giving his name to a county.
95
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LAKE ITASCA
AND VICINITY.
FROM NICOLLET'S MAP, NOW DEPOSITED IN THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D. C. .
Scale: 20 miles to an inch.
Duponceat.
1. Marquette
Pike Sagidowag
Mississippi
Turtle R.
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LAKE ITASCA AND VICINITY.
Engraved from a fac-simile tracing of Nicollet's Map (1536-3%) now deposited in the Office of the Chief of Engineers, U. S. A., Washington, D. C.
Scale: same as original map.
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L.Irving
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100
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
The first engraving is a section of Nicollet's Map, now deposited in the office of the Commissioner of the United States General Land Office, at Washington. The other engraving is a section of Nicollet's Map of Lake Itasca, drawn in 1836-7, and now deposited in the office of Chief of Engineers United States Army in Washington. An inspection of these maps show how carefully the Lake Itasca region was examined a half century ago.
Within the last thirty years, the vicinity of Itasca has been repeatedly visited by trappers, immigrants, tourists, scientific explorers, and government surveyors, and yet, a person named Willard Glazier has imposed upon the London Geographical Society, and other respectable bodies, and led them to believe that he had discovered in July, ISSI, some new lake in that vicinity. 1
Nicollet in September returned from his trip, and on the twenty-seventh wrote the following to Major Taliafer- ro the Indian Agent at the fort, which is supposed to be one of the earliest letters written from the site of Minne- apolis. As a large hotel and one of the finest avenues of that city bears his name it is worthy of preservation. He spelled his name sometimes Nicoley, the same as if written Nicollet in French. The letter shows that he had not mastered the English language; it was dated the twenty-ninth of September, 1836, at St. Anthony's Falls:
"DEAR FRIEND :- I arrived last evening about dark; all
1. In June, 1572. Julius Chambers of the New York Herald visited the small lake near Itasca, called Elk Lake on the Map of the U. S. Surveyors in 1-75, and in I-AI, the Rev. J. B. Gilfilian, a Protestant Episcopal missionary, at the White Earth Reservation, visited Hik Lake, and found there wagon tracks and eviden- ces of an encampment. Mr. H. A. Harrower deserves the thanks of every lover of truth for his pamphlet, exposing the plagiarisms and persistent assumptions of Glazier, published by Ivison Blakeman, Taylor & Co., of New York city. To the courtesy of these publishers, I am indebted for the engraving of a sec- tion of Nicollet's Map.
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101
LETTER OF J. N. NICOLLET.
well, nothing lost nothing broken, happy and a very suc- cessful journey. But I done exhausted, and nothing can relieve me, but the pleasure of meeting you again under your hospitable roof, and to see all the friends of the garrison who have been so kind to me.
"This letter is more particularly to give you a very ex- traordinary tide. Flat Mouth, the chief of Leech Lake and suite, ten in number are with me. The day before yesterday I met them again at Swan river where they detained me one day. I had to bear a new harangue and gave answer. All terminated by their own resolu- tion that they ought to give you the hand, as well as to the Guinas of the Fort ( Colonel Davenport.) I thought it my duty to acquaint you with it beforehand. Peace or war are at stake of the visit they pay you. Please give them a good welcome until I have reported to you and Colonel Davenport all that has taken place during my stay among the Pillagers. But be assured I have not trespassed and that I have behaved as would have done a good citizen of the U. S. As to Schoolcraft's statement alluding to you, you will have full and com- plete satisfaction from Flat Mouth himself. In haste, your friend, J. N. NICOLEY."
In April, IS38, a party of Sioux with their families, accompanied by the Presbyterian missionary, G. H. Pond, left Lac-qui-Parle to hunt on the Chippewa River near the site of the present village of Benson, in Swift County. The number of lodges was six, but three were separated by a short distance. One day at the advanced lodges, arrived the noted Ojibway Chief, the elder Hole- in-the-Day, his son, and nine of his band. They said that they had come to smoke the pipe of peace, and were cordially received. Two dogs were killed, and they were 8
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102
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
feasted. At length night came and all lay down, but not to sleep; about midnight Hole-in-the-Day and his friends arose, killed thirteen Sioux, captured a girl, but a wounded woman and a boy escaped to the other lodges. The next day the missionary Pond went out aud buried the mutilated and scalped Sioux.
In June the Indian Agent at Fort Snelling sent a deputy and interpreter, and held a council with Hole- in-the-Day, and other Ojibways, and demanded that the Sioux woman should be surrendered. After much ex- cited discussion the woman was given over to the Indian Agent. On the second of August Hole-in-the-Day and a number of his band came down to Fort Snelling, Ma- jor Plympton then in command. They stopped first at the cabin of a Peter Quinn, whose wife was a half-breed Ojibway. The next day the Presbyterian missionary, Samuel W. Pond, met the Indian Agent at Lake Harri- ett, and told him that a number of armed Sioux, from Mud Lake had gone to Baker's trading house, between the Fort and Minnehaha, to attack their ancient foes. The agent hastened in that direction, and reached the spot just as the first gun was fired, which killed an Ojib- way. An Ojibway of Red Lake in turn shot the Sioux just as he was scalping his vietim. The Ojibway was removed to Fort Snelling and at nine o'clock at night a Sioux was confined as a hostage. The next day, the fourth of August, the commanding officer, Plympton. and the Indian Agent, Taliaferro, held a council with the Sioux Major Plympton said: "It is not necessary to talk much. I have demanded the guilty. They must be brought." After five o'clock in the afternoon the Sioux brought to the Indian Agent two sons of Tokali. Their mother in surrendering them said: "Of seven sons, three only
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103
INDIAN FIGHT NEAR FORT SNELLING.
survive, one had been wounded and soon would die, and if the two now delivered were shot, all were gone. Sing- ing their death song I have delivered them at the gate of the fort. Have mercy upon them for their youth and folly." Notwithstanding the murdered Ojibway had been buried in the grave yard of the fort, an attempt was made by the Sioux on the night of the council day to dig him up. On the morning of the sixth of August Major Plympton sent the Ojibways to the east side of the Mississippi and ordered them to return home, and told the Sioux that the insult to the flag must be notic- ed, and that if they would punish the prisoners, he would release them. On the eighth the Sioux council reas- sembled and the chief of the Lake Pepin band said: "If you will bring out the prisoners I will carry your views fully into effect."
Lieutenant Whitehorn, the officer of the day, brought the prisoners, when the chief continued: "We will not disgrace the house of my Father; let the prisoners be taken into the enclosure."
As soon as this was done, the braves were called, and amid the crying of women the prisoners were disgraced by cutting into small pieces their blankets, leggings and breech cloths; then their hair was cut off, and finally they were humiliated by being flogged with long sticks.
In about a year, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1539, the old chief Hole-in-the-day again visited the fort with hundreds of Ojibways, and on the first of July they met the Dakotahs at the Falls of St. Anthony, and after smoking the pipe of peace, the majority of the Ojibways proceeded homeward; but some of the Pillager band passing over to Lake Harriet, secreted themselves until after sunrise on the second of July, when they
104
HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
surprised Meekah, a Dakotahı, on his way to hunt, and scalped him. .
Rev. J. D. Stevens, a Sioux missionary, hurried to the Fort with the intelligence. Immediately one hundred and fifty Dakotahis were on the war path, panting for vengeance and hurrying after the Ojibways, who had ascended the Mississippi, and the next day there was a fight at Rum River, and ninety of the latter were killed. Another party also went across the country to St. Croix River, and overtook a band of Ojibways in the ravine where the Penitentiary at Stillwater now stands, and killed twenty-one and wounded twenty-nine. After this the Dakotahs were afraid to live at Lake Harriet, and soon abandoned the place and encamped on the Minnesota River near Fort Snelling. The missionaries also removed to Baker's trading post, between the Fort and Minnehaha.
Whisky, during the year 1839, was freely introduced in the face of the law prohibiting it. The first boat of the season, the Ariel, came to the Fort on the fourteenth of April, and brought twenty barrels of whisky for Jo- seph R. Brown, and on the twenty-first of May, the Glaueus brought six barrels of liquor for David Fari- bault. On the thirtieth of June, some soldiers went to Joseph R. Brown's groggery, on the opposite side of the Mississippi, and that night forty-seven were in the guard-house for drunkenness. The demoralization then existing, led to a letter by Surgeon Emerson, on duty at the Fort, to the Surgeon General of the United States army, in which he writes:
"The whisky is brought here by citizens who are pouring in upon us, and settling themselves on the opposite shore of the Mississippi River, in defiance of
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105
WHISKY SELLERS.
our worthy commanding officer, Major J. Plympton, whose authority they set at naught. At this moment there is a citizen named Brown, once a soldier in the Fifth Infantry, who was discharged at this post, while Colonel Snelling commanded, and who has since been employed by the American Fur Company, actually building on the land marked out by the land officers as the reserve, and within gunshot distance of the Fort, a very expensive whisky shop."
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
CHAPTER SEVENTH.
EARLIEST MISSIONS AMONG THE OJIBWAYS AND DAKOTAHS OF MINNESOTA.
Shea, a devoted member of the Roman Catholic Church, in his History of American Catholic Missions, writes: "In 1680, Father Engalran was apparently alone at Green Bay and Pierson at Mackinaw. Of the other missions neither Le Clerq nor Hennepin, the Recollect writers of the West at this time, make any mention, or in any way allude to their existence." He also says that "Father Menard had projected a Sioux mission; Marquette, Allouez, Druilletes, all entertained hopes of realizing it, and had some intercourse with that nation, but none of them ever succeeded in establishing a mission."
Father Hennepin wrote: "Can it be possible that that pretended prodigious amount of savage converts could escape the sight of a multitude of French Canadians who travel every year? * * How comes it to pass that these churches, so devout and so numerous, should be invisible when I passed through so many countries and nations?"
After the American Fur Company was formed, the island of Mackinaw became the residence of the prin- cipal agent for the Northwest, Robert Stuart, a Scotch- man, and devoted Presbyterian.
107
MISSIONARIES COE AND STEVENS.
In the month of June, 1820, the Rev. Dr. Morse, father of the distinguished inventor of the telegraph, visited and preached at Mackinaw, and in consequence of statements published by him upon his return, a Pres- byterian Missionary Society in the State of New York sent a graduate of Union College, the Rev. W. M. Ferry, father of the late United States Senator from Michigan, to explore the field. In 1823, he had established a large boarding school, composed of children of various tribes, and here some were educated who became wives of men of intelligence and influence at the capital of Minnesota. After a few years, it was determined by the Mission Board to modify its plans, and in the place of a great central station, to send missionaries among the several tribes, to teach and to preach.
In pursuance of this policy, the Rev. Alvan Coe, and J. D. Stevens, a licentiate, who had been engaged in the Mackinaw Mission, made a tour of exploration, and arrived on September first, 1829, at Fort Snelling. In the journal of Major Lawrence Taliaferro, which is in possession of the Minnesota Historical Society, is the following entry: " The Rev. Mr. Coe and Stevens, reported to be on their way to this post, members of the Presbyterian Church, looking out for suitable places to make missionary establishments for the Sioux and Chip- peways, found schools, and instruet in the arts and agri- culture."
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