USA > Minnesota > Concise history of the state of Minnesota > Part 9
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Among other books prepared by the Ponds, William- son and Riggs, was a " Grammar and Dictionary of the Dakota Language, collected by members of the Dakota Mission; by Rev. S. R. Riggs, A. M. Under the patron- age of the Historical Society of Minnesota"; a quarto volume of about three hundred and fifty pages, and pub- lished by the Smithsonian Institution; also the Bible translated into Dakota, and published by the American Bible Society.
Steadily the number of Sioux missionaries increased, and in 1851, before the lands of the Dakotahis west of the Mississippi were ceded to the whites, they were dis- posed as follows by the Dakotah Presbytery.
Lac-qui-parle, Rev. S. R. Riggs, Rev. M. N. Adams, Missionaries, Jonas Pettijolin, Mrs. Fanny Pettijohn, Mrs. Mary Ann Riggs, Mrs. Mary A. M. Adams, Miss Sarah Rankin, Assistants.
Traverse des Sioux, Rev. Robert Hopkins, Mission- ary; Mrs. Agnes Hopkins, Alexander G. Huggins, Mrs. Lydia P. Huggins, Assistants.
Shakpay or Shokpay, Rev. Samuel W. Pond, Mis- sionary; Mrs. Sarah P. Pond, Assistant.
Oak Grove. Rev. Gideon H. Pond and wife.
Kaposia, Rev. Thomas Williamson, M. D., Mission- ary and Physician; Mrs. Margaret P. Williamson, Miss Jane S. Williamson, Assistants.
Red Wing, Rev. John F. Aiton, Rev. Joseph W. Han-
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TERRY KILLED BY THE SIOUX.
cock, Missionaries; Mrs. Nancy H. Aiton, Mrs. Hancock, Assistants.
The Rev. Daniel Gavin, the Swiss Presbyterian Mis- sionary, spent the winter of 1839 in Lac-qui-Parle and was afterward married to a niece of the Rev. J. D. Ste- vens, of the Lake Harriet Mission. Mr. Stevens became the farmer and teacher of the Wapashah band, and the first white man who lived where the city of Winona has been built. Another missionary from Switzerland, the Rev. Mr. Denton, married a Miss Skinner, formerly of the Mackinaw mission. During a portion of the year 1839 these Swiss missionaries lived with the American missionaries at camp Cold Water near Fort Snelling, but their chief field of labor was at Red Wing.
The zeal of Frederick Ayer for the mental and moral improvement of the Ojibways did not abate after the Pokeguma mission was abandoned, and during the winter of 1842-3 he visited Red Lake, and established a mis- sion. The next spring Mr. Spencer and E. F. Ely came and assisted the Indians in ploughing. In 1845, Mr. Bardwell arrived, and labored at Leech Lake, where for a time he acted as Indian Agent, and died there.
The first missionary to labor among the Ojibways and half-breeds, near Pembina, was the Rev. G. A. Belcourt of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a man of ener- gy, erected a saw-mill and established a school, but about the year 1859, he was withdrawn from the field.
In 1852, Elijah Terry an estimable member of the Baptist church in Saint Paul, devoted himself to mis- sionary work at Pembina, and while in the woods cut- ting logs for a school house, was killed by some roving Sioux.
The Rev. Mr. Spencer, of the Red Lake mission, was
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
at this time living at Pembina. Afterhe and his wife had retired for the night, a bullet was sent through the window, which resulted in the death of his wife. In a letter to a friend Mr. Spencer wrote: "What a scene for a husband and a father! Oh, the agony of that hour! I hardly know how I lived through the remainder of that night. Mrs. Spencer lived for nearly three hours, after she was shot, half the time in a state of anxious suffer- ing. She frequently called for water which I gave her from a sponge, and it was very gratifying. At times she. would remark, 'I feel so strangely.' At length
comprehending that she had not long to live, she engaged in ejaculatory prayer to her Savior. At one time she said, speaking of her child, Tell Anna to love her Savior'. Toward the close, she said 'I cannot die.' At first I did not know but it was unwillingness, but my mind was relieved by the prayer, 'O Jesus! if it is thy will, let me die, but grant me patience'. Towards her murderers I have had no feelings but those of pity and compassion."
In the year 1849, the Government opened a farm for the Ojibways at Gull Lake, and in 1852, the Rev. J. Lloyd Breck of the Protestant Episcopal branch of the church, established a mission there, and was succeeded by the Rev. E. S. Peake, but in a few years was it aban- doned. At White Earth Reservation the Protestant Episcopalians and Roman Catholics have missions.
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TREATY OF 1837.
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CHAPTER EIGHTH.
THE TREAD OF PIONEERS.
The year 1837 is an important one in the history of ' Minnesota, as steps were then taken for the permanent occupation by white men. Before this period there was no land except the military reservation, that was not claimed by the Indians. A few immigrants from Selkirk's settlement, and some discharged soldiers had ventured to build cabins and till the soil, near Fort Snelling, with- out authority.
Governor Dodge, of Wisconsin Territory, as United States commissioner, on the twenty-ninth of July, con- cluded a treaty with the Ojibways, by which they agreed to cede all the lands north of a line running from the junction of the Crow Wing and Mississippi rivers, to the north point of Lake St. Croix. The same year a dep- utation of Dakotahs proceeded to Washington, and in the month of September ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi. Before the treaties were duly ratified, the wilderness was visited by white men seeking for fertile lands or valuable pine forests. Early in August Frank- lin Steele, Dr. Fitch, Jeremialı Russell and a Mr. Ma- ginnis reached the Falls of St. Croix in a birch bark canoe, and began to erect a claim cabin.
Steele and Maginnis remained here, while the others divided into two parties, one under Fitch and the other under Russell, searched for pine land. The first
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. HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
stopped at Sun Rise, while Russell went on to Snake River. About the same time Robbinet and Jesse B: Taylor came to the Falls in the interest of B. F. Baker, who had a stone trading house near Fort Snelling, since destroyed by fire. On the fifteenth of July, 1838, the Palmyra, Captain Holland, arrived at the Fort, with the official notice of the ratification of the treaties ceding the lands between the Saint Croix and Mississippi.
She had on board C. A. Tuttle, L. W. Stratton and others, with the machinery for the projected mills of the Northwest Lumber Company at the Falls of Saint Croix, and reached that point on the seventeenth, the first steamboat to disturb the waters above Lake Saint Croix. The steamer Gypsy came to the Fort on the twenty-first of October, with goods for the Chippeways, and was chartered for four hundred and fifty dollars, to carry them up to the Falls of Saint Croix. In passing through the lake, the boat grounded near a projected town called Stambaughville, after S. C. Stambaugh, the sutler of the Fort. On the afternoon of the twenty- sixth the goods were landed, as stipulated.
The agent of the Improvement Company at the Falls was Washington Libby, who left in the fall of 1838, and was succeeded by Jeremiah Russell, Stratton acting as millwright in place of Calvin Tuttle. On the twelfth of December, Russell and Stratton walked down the river, cut the first tree, and built a cabin at Marine, and sold their claim.
The first women at the Falls of Saint Croix were a Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Sackett, and the daughter of a Mr. Young. During the winter of JS3S-9, Jeremiah Rus- sel married a daughter of a respectable and gentlemanly trader, Charles H. Oakes.
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PIONEERS OF ST. CROIX VALLEY.
Among the first preachers were the Rev. W. T. Bout- well and Mr. Seymour, of the Chippeway Mission at Pokeguma. The Rev. A. Brunson, of Prairie du Chien, who visited this region in 1838, wrote that at the mouth of Snake River he found Franklin Steele, with twenty- five or thirty men, cutting timber for a mill, and when he offered to preach, Mr. Steele gave a cordial assent. On the sixteenth of August, Mr. Steele, Livingston, and others, left the Falls of St. Croix in a barge, and went around to Fort Snelling.
The steamboat Fayette about the middle of May, 1839, landed sutlers' stores at Fort Snelling and then proceed- ed with several persons of intelligence to the Saint Croix River, who settled at Marine. The place was called after Marine in Madison County, Illinois, where the company, consisting of Burkleo, Walker, Judd, Hone and others, was formed to build a saw-mill in the St. Croix Valley. The mill at Marine commenced to saw lumber, on August 24, 1839, the first in Minnesota, beyond the military reservation.
Joseph R. Brown, who since 1838, had lived at Chan Wakan, on the west side of Grey Cloud Island, this year made a claim near the upper end of the city of Still- water, which he called Dakotah, and was the first to raft lumber down the Saint Croix, as well as the first to represent the citizens of the valley in the legislature of Wisconsin.
In 1839, Joseph Haskell and James S. Norris, who had assisted in the construction of a saw-mill at the Falls of St. Croix, not far from the site of the town of Afton, made claims, opened the first farms, and became useful and intelligent citizens.
Intruders upon the military reservation, after the
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
treaty, increased. An officer wrote in April: "Since the middle of winter we have been completely inundated . with ardent spirits, and consequently the most beastly scenes of intoxication among the soldiers of this garrison and the Indians in its vicinity. The whisky is brought here by citizens who are pouring in upon us, and settling themselves on the opposite shore of the Mississippi"
In October, the Secretary of War required all persons living on the reservation, without authority, to be re- moved, and the next year the order was enforced.
Until the year 1841, the jurisdiction of Crawford county, Wisconsin, extended over the delta of country between the St. Croix and Mississippi. Joseph R. Brown having been elected as representative of the county in the territorial legislature of Wisconsin, suc- ceeded in obtaining the passage of an act on November twentieth, 1841, organizing the county of Saint Croix, with Dakotah designated as the county seat.
At the time prescribed for holding a court in the new county, it is said that the judge of the district arrived, and, to his surprise, found a claim cabin occupied by a Frenchman. Speedily retreating, he never came again, and judicial proceedings for St. Croix county ended for several years. Phineas Lawrence was the first sheriff of this county.
On the tenth of October, 1843, was commenced a set- tlement which has become the town of Stillwater. The names of the proprietors were John McKusick from Maine, Calvin Leach from Vermont, Elam Greeley from Maine, and Elias MeKean from Pennsylvania. They immediately commenced the erection of a saw-mill.
The year that the Dakotahs ceded their lands east of the Mississippi, a Canadian Frenchman by the name of
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EARLY SAINT PAUL SETTLERS.
Parrant, the ideal of an Indian whisky seller, erected a shanty in what is now the city of Saint Paul. Ignorant and overbearing, he loved money more than his own soul. Destitute of one eye, and the other resembling that of a pig, he was a good representative of Caliban, Some one writing from his groggery, designated it as "Pig's Eye." The reply to the letter was directed in good faith to "Pig's Eye."
In 1842, the late Henry Jackson, of Mahkato (now written Mankato, and mispronounced Mankayto), settled the same spot, and erected the first store on the height just above the lower landing. Roberts and Simpson followed, and opened small Indian trading shops. In 1846, the site of Saint Paul was chiefly occupied by a few shanties owned by "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort," who sold rum to the soldier and Indian. It was despised by all decent white men. and known to the Dakotahs by an expression in their tongue which means the place where they sell minne-wakan (supernatural water).
Franklin Steele, Norman W. Kittson and others, claimed lands at the Falls of Saint Anthony, and in the fall of 1847, a saw-mill was commenced.
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
CHAPTER NINTH.
STEPS TO SECURE ORGANIZANION AS A TERRITORY.
The first movement for an organized government in the valley of the upper Mississippi was in 1828, when a number of citizens in the vicinity of the lead mines of Illinois, memorialized Congress to form Huron Terri- tory, with Galena as its capital. The limits indicated were the British possessions for a northern boundary; the Red River of the North, Lac Traverse, Big Stone Lake, and a line to the Mississippi river, for a western boundary; a line from the Missouri easterly to the Mis- sissippi and from thence to the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, for the southern boundary: and a line through the center of Lake Michigan, across Michigan Territory, to Lake Superior. After due consideration it was deemed inexpedient to grant the request.
On the sixth of August, 1846, an act was passed by Congress authorizing the citizens of Wisconsin Terri- tory to frame a constitution and form a state government. The act fixed the Saint Louis river to the rapids, from thence down that river to its junction with the Missis- sippi, as the western boundary.
On the twenty-third of December, 1846, the delegate from Wisconsin, Morgan L. Martin, introduced a bill in Congress for the organization of a territory of Minne- sota. This bill made its western boundary the Sioux and Red River of the North. On the third of March,
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TERRITORIAL BOUNDARIES.
1847, permission was granted to Wisconsin to change her boundary, so that the western limit would proceed due south from the first rapids of the Saint Louis river, and fifteen miles east of the most easterly point of Lake Saint Croix, thence to the Mississippi.
A number in the constitutional convention of Wiscon- sin, were anxious that Rum River should be a part of her western boundary, while citizens of the valley of the Saint Croix were desirous that the Chippeway river should be the limit of Wisconsin. The citizens of Wis- consin Territory, in the valley of the Saint Croix, and about Fort Snelling, wished to be included in the pro- jected new territory, and on the twenty-eighth of March, 1848, a memorial signed by H. H. Sibley, Henry M. Rice, Franklin Steele, William R. Marshall, and others, was presented to Congress, remonstrating against the proposition before the convention to make Rum River a part of the boundary line of the contemplated state of Wisconsin.
On the twenty-ninth of May, 184S, the act to admit Wisconsin, changed the boundary line to the present, and as first defined in the enabling act of 1846. After the bill of Mr. Martin was introduced into the House of Representatives in 1846 it was referred to the Commit- tee on Territories, of which Mr. Douglas was chairman. On the twentieth of January, 1847, he reported in favor of the proposed territory with the name of Itasca. On the seventeenth of February, before the bill passed the house, a discussion arose in relation to the proposed name. Mr. Winthrop of Massachusetts proposed Chip- pewa as a substitute, alleging that this tribe was the principal in the proposed territory. Mr. J. Thompson of Mississippi disliked all Indian names, and hoped the
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
territory would be called Jackson. Mr. Houston of Delaware thought that there ought to be one territory named after the "Father of his country," and proposed Washington. All of the names proposed were rejected, and the name in the original bill inserted. On the last day of the session, March third, the bill was called up in the Senate and laid on the table.
When Wisconsin became a state the query arose whether the old territorial government did not continue in force west of the St. Croix river. The first meeting on the subject of claiming territorial privileges was held in the building at Saint Paul, known as Jackson's store, near the corner of Bench and Jackson streets on the bluff. This meeting was held in July, and a con- vention was proposed to consider their position. The first public meeting was held at Stillwater on the fourth of August, and Messrs. Steele and Sibley were the only per- sons present from the west side of the Mississippi. This meeting issued a call for a general convention to take steps to secure an early territorial organization, to assemble on the twenty-sixth of the month at the same place. Sixty-two delegates answered the call, and among those present, were J. W. Bass, A. Larpenteur, and oth- ers from Saint Paul. To the convention a letter was presented from Mr. Catlin, who claimed to be acting governor, giving his opinion that the Wisconsin territo- rial organization was still in force. The meeting also appointed Mr. Sibley to visit Washington and represent their views; but the Hon. John H. Tweedy having resign- ed his office of delegate to Congress on the eighteenth of September, 1848, Mr. Catlin, who had made Stillwater a temporary residence, on the ninth of October issued a pro- - clamation ordering a special election at Stillwater on
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TERRITORIAL DELEGATE IN WASHINGTON.
the thirtieth, to fill vacancy occasioned by the resignation. At this election Henry H. Sibley was elected as dele- gate of the citizens of the remaining portion of Wiscon- sin Territory. His credentials were presented to the House of Representatives, and the committee to whom the matter was referred presented a majority and minor- ity report; but the resolution introduced by the major- ity passed and Mr. Sibley took his seat as a delegate from Wisconsin Territory on the fifteenth of January, 1849.
Mr. H. M. Rice, and other gentlemen, visited Wash- ington during the winter, and, uniting with Mr. Sibley, used all their energies to obtain the organization of a new territory. -
Mr. Sibley, in an interesting communication to the Minnesota Historical Society, writes: "When my cre- dentials as delegate were presented by Hon. James Wilson, of New Hampshire, to the House of Represen- tatives, there was some curiosity manifested among the members, to see what kind of a person had been elected to represent the distant and wild territory claiming rep- resentation in Congress. I was told by a New England member with whom I became subsequently quite inti- mate, that there was some disappointment when I made my appearance, for it was expected that the delegate from this remote region would make his debut, if not in full Indian costume, at least, with some peculiarities of dress and manners, characteristic of the rude and semi- civilized people who had sent him to the Capitol."
The territory of Minnesota was named after the larg- est tributary of the Mississippi within its limits. The Sioux call the Missouri, Minneshoshay, muddy water. but the stream after which this region is named, Minne-
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
sota. Some say that Sota means clear; others, turbid; Schoolcraft, bluish green. Nicollet wrote, "The adject- ive Sotah is of difficult translation. The Canadians translated it by a pretty equivalent word, brouille, per- haps more properly rendered into English by blear. I have entered upon this explanation because the word really means neither clear nor turbid, as some authors have asserted, its true meaning being found in the Sioux expression Ishtah-sotah, blear-eyed." From the fact that the word signifies neither blue nor white, but the peculiar appearance of the sky at certain times, by some, Minnesota has been defined to mean the sky-tinted water, which is certainly poetic, and the late Rev. Gid- eon H. Pond thought quite correct.
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TERRITORY OF MINNESOTA.
CHAPTER TENTH.
UNDER A TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT.
On the third of March, 1819, the bill was passed by Congress for organizing the Territory of Minnesota, whose boundary ou the west extended to the Missouri River. At this time the region was little more than a wilderness. The west bank of the Mississippi, from the Iowa line to Lake Itasca, was unceded by the Indians.
At Wapashah was a trading post in charge of Alexis Bailly, and here also resided the ancient voyageur, of fourscore years, A. Rocque.
At the foot of Lake Pepin was a store house kept by Mr. F. S. Richards. On the west shore of the lake lived the eccentric Wells, whose wife was a bois brule, a daughter of the deceased trader, Duncan Graham.
The two unfinished buildings of stone, on the beauti- ful bank opposite the renowned Maiden's Rock, and the surrounding skin lodges of his wife's relatives and friends, presented a rude but picturesque scene. Above the lake was a cluster of bark wigwams, the Dakotah village of Raymneecha, now Red Wing, at which was a Presbyterian mission house.
The next settlement was Kaposia, also an Indian village, and the residence of a Presbyterian missionary, the Rev. T. S. Williamson, M. D. On the east side of the Mississippi, the first settlement at the mouth of the St. Croix, was Point Douglas, then, as now, a small hamlet.
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
At Red Rock, the site of a former Methodist mission station, there were a few farmers. Saint Paul was just emerging from a collection of Indian whisky shops and birch-roofed cabins of half-breed voyageurs. Here and there a frame tenement was erected, and under the aus- pices of Hon. H. M. Rice, who had obtained an interest in the town, some warehouses were constructed, and the foundations of the American House, a frame hotel which stood at Third and Exchange street, were laid. In 1849, the population had increased to two hundred and fifty or three hundred inhabitants, for rumors had gone abroad that it might be mentioned, in the act creating the ter- ritory, as the capital of Minnesota. More than a month after the adjournment of Congress, just at eve, on the ninth of April, amid terrific peals of thunder and tor- rents of rain, the weekly steam packet, the first to force its way through the icy barrier of Lake Pepin, rounded the rocky point whistling loud and long, as if the bearer of glad tidings. Before she was safely moored to the landing the shouts of the excited villagers were heard announcing that there was a Territory of Minnesota, and that Saint Paul was the seat of government.
Every successive steamboat arrival poured out, on the landing, men big with hope, and anxious to do something to mould the future of the new state.
Nine days after the news of the existence of the ter- ritory of Minnesota was received, there arrived James M. Goodhne with press, type, and printing apparatus. A graduate of Amherst College, and a lawyer by pro- fession, he wielded a sharp pen, and wrote editorials, which, more than anything else, perhaps, induced immi- gration. One of the counties properly bears his name.
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137
ARRIVAL OF GOV. RAMSEY.
On the twenty-eighth of April, he issued from his press the first number of the Pioneer. .
On the twenty-seventh of May, Alexander Ramsey, the Governor, and family, arrived at Saint Paul, but owing to the crowded state of public houses, immediately proceeded in the steamer to the establishment of the Fur Company, known as Mendota, at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi, and became the guest of the Hon. H. H. Sibley.
On the first of June, Governor Ramsey, by proclama- tion, declared the territory duly organized with the fol- lowing officers: Alexander Ramsey, of Pennsylvania, Governor; C. K. Smith, of Ohio, Secretary; A. Good- rich, of Tennessee, Chief Justice; D. Cooper, of Penn- sylvania, and B. B. Meeker, of Kentuckey, Associate Judges; Joshua L. Taylor, Marshal; H. L. Moss, attor- . ney of the United States.
On the eleventh of June, a second proclamation was issued, dividing the territory into three temporary judic- ial districts. The first comprised the county of St. Croix; the county of La Pointe and the region north and west of the Mississippi, and north of the Minnesota and of a line running due west from the head waters of the Minnesota to the Missouri river, constituted the second; and the country west of the Mississippi and south of the Minnesota, formed the third district. Judge Goodrich was assigned to the first, Meeker to the second, and Cooper to the third. A court was ordered to be held at Stillwater on the second Monday, at the Falls of St. An- thony on the third, and at Mendota on the fourth Mon- day of August.
Until the twenty-sixth of June, Governor Ramsey and family had been guests of Hon. H. H. Sibley, at Men-
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HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.
dota. On the afternoon of that day they arrived at St. Paul, in a birch-bark canoe, and became permanent resi- dents at the capital. The house first occupied as a guber- natorial mansion, was a small frame building that stood on Third, between Robert and Jackson streets, for- merly known as the New England House.
A few days after, the Hon. H. M. Rice and family moved from Mendota to St. Paul, and occupied the house he had erected on St. Anthony street, near the corner of Market.
On the first of July, a land office was established at Stillwater, and A. Van Vorhes, after a few wee s, be- came the register.
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