History of Dakota County and the City of Hastings, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 32

Author: J. Fletcher Williams
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

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During the summer of 1848, the Indian mis- sionaries of the different tribes among the Sioux held their annual re-union at Kaposia. There were present besides Dr. Williamson and family, the Rev. S. R. Riggs and wife and three children, the Rev. Samuel W. Pond, Rev. Gideon H. Pond, Rev. M. N. Adams and wife, and Rev. John F. Aiton and wife, who had recently joined the mission. Besides these from the Indian country, were the two ladies, who had become teachers in the white settlements, Harriet E. Bishop of St. Paul, and Amanda Horsford of Stillwater. The Rev. Dr. Riggs alluding to this meeting wrote: "The toilers of fourteen years among the Dakotas, now shook bands with the first toilers among the white people."

In the year 1849, R. G. Murphy, Indian agent

at Fort Snelling, thus describes his visit to Ka- posia: "I went to Crow's village, but it was at a time when very few children were in attendance at Mr. Cook's school (the government teacher). Such as were present showed that they were learning to read, and one was writing. I find many girls in attendance at the American Board of Foreign Missions school, instructed by Miss Jane Williamson, and was so much pleased by the ability displayed by the instructress, and in- terested by the conduct of the children, that I must call particular attention to it.

"On entering the school with Mr. Prescott, the children became very much embarrassed from bashfulness, but the gentle kindness and skill of Miss Williamson soon restored order. Their usual recess shortly followed, during which time we visited the farmer, and had a talk with the chief and principal men. On our return we found the school arranged again, and the Indian children singing, assisted by several, Dr. Will- iamson and wife, Miss Williamson, Mrs. Aiton, Miss Pettijohn, a young lady well versed in mu- sic, and who appeared to be the leader on this occasion, and others. Messrs. Prescott and Cook joined, and I was quite delighted with the sing- ing, and much astonished to see such proficiency displayed by Indian girls so young.

"On the hymn being given out, they found the proper page, they read and sung sweetly, keeping excellent time, and appeared to have correct ears for music. They were all asked to read in their Indian books, and produced specimens of their work that would do credit to any girls of their age. Miss Williamson certainly deserves great praise for the toil and skill she has bestowed on these children; to them her kindness and tender- ness equal that of the most affectionate mother."

On the first Sunday in January, 1850, the First Presbyterian church of St. Paul, which had been organized in November, 1849, partook of the sacrament of the Lords' Supper. Dr. William- son, of the Kaposia mission assisted in the ser- vices and several Indian converts from the Ka- posia band were communicants.

In the month of April, a war party from Kapo- sia, under the leadership of a worthless Indian who had been confined in the guard house at Fort Snelling, the year before, for scalping his wife, proceeded against the Chippeways. Pushing up

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MAGIC LANTERN EXHIBITION AT KAPOSIA.

the valley of the Saint Croix, a few miles above Stillwater, marks of a keg and foot-prints in the snow showed that an Ojibway man and woman had been to some whisky trader, and were return- ing. Following the trail, the Sioux found, en- camped on Apple River, a tributary of the St. Croix, a lodge of the Ojibways. Waiting till daybreak of Wednesday, the second of April, the Sioux began to fire upon their unsuspecting foes, some of whom were emptying the contents of the whisky keg. The fifteen in the camp were all murdered and scalped with the exception of a little boy, who was held as a prisoner.

The next day the victors came to Stillwater, and danced the scalp dance in the presence of the white inhabitants, with the captive boy in the centre, occasionally shaking in his face the scarcely cold scalps of his relatives. The boy was then carried to Kaposia, and adopted by the chief.

At a conference at the residence of Governor Ramsey at St. Paul, held soon after, the boy was delivered up, and on being led out to the kitchen to receive food by a little son of the Gov- ernor, soon after deceased, cried bitterly, and seemed more alarmed at being left with the whites than while a captive among the Sioux.

Although the attack was justifiable according to the laws which prevail among Indians, Govern_ or Ramsey insisted that the leaders of the war party should be delivered up, and after much de- lay and many equivocations, the participators were delivered, and confined in the guard house at Fort Snelling.

On the afternoon of the 15th of May, there might have been seen hurrying through the streets of St. Paul, a number of naked braves of of the Kaposia band. A few hours before, the young and warlike chief of the Ojibways, Hole- in-the-Day, having hid his canoe in the gorge of the cave above St. Paul, with a few associates crossed the river, and attacked some Kaposia In- dians on the road to Mendota, and killed and scalped one. About sun-set the Sioux returned with the corpse of the murdered one, which they had in a box covered with a red blanket.

Young Hole-in-the-Day, after the surprise, hur- ried to the Ojibway country, and dividing the scalp of his foe into quarters, distributed it among his people.

On the receipt of the news of this sudden attack

in the suburbs of St. Paul, Governor Ramsey re- leased the Sioux confined for the Apple river slaughter, at Fort Snelling.

In the summer of 1851, the writer of this en- tered a teepee at Kaposia. A few logs were slowly burning in the middle, and the smoke as- cending through the opening. Upon one side of of the fire lay, upon a dirty blanket, a sick child about three years old. The mother, with a sad countenance, sat at his feet. In a corner of the same lodge was a young man about twenty-five years of age, entirely naked, except bis breech cloth, his uncombed hair flowing down his back, crying out most dolefully, and shaking with all his might a sacred rattle, made of a dried gourd. In a few moments he crawled on his hands and feet up to the sick child, and placing his mouth to the bare stomach of the patient began to suck the flesh. He was a conjuror or a medicine man. Anything that is mysterious the Sioux call wah- kawn. The early French traders called a con- juror or sacred man, "medecin " which in En- glish is doctor. A medicine man is therefore an Indian doctor. The Sioux believe that disease is caused by the spirit of a bird. or a beast, or a worm, or a fish, or some dead person taking pos- session of the body. The medicine man therefore strives to draw out this spirit.

The young man after he had sucked for some time, again began to howl, which is their praying, and then going into the corner picked up a dish and holding it close to his mouth, began to retch as if suffering from violent nausea.

Sometimes the howling and these distressed movements will be kept up for hours. If the medicine man thinks the patient convalescent, he orders guns to be fired to kill the spirit which has vexed the patient. No one can conjure unless they have been initiated in the sacred mysteries, and the confirming of authority upon a sacred man, is marked with much more form and solem- nity than the granting of diplomas to educated physicians.

A gentleman in St. Paul, who owned a good magic lantern, was asked by Dr. Williamson to come down one evening and exhibit its workings in his study. A white sheet was hung up and when the lamps were extinguished and moving pictures were thrown upon the sheets, especially one showing the evils of intemperance, and called

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HISTORY OF DAKOTA COUNTY.

"The cup of pleasure, the cup of death," the In- dians were quite nervous, and it seemed to be a relief, when the room was again lighted.

After the exhibition, Nabpayshnee, an Indian of good character, told the Doctor he would like to have some conversation with his St. Paul friend.

The Doctor acting as his interpreter he said: "To-night I think of my first visit to Washing- ton. I was very anxious to see the "Great Father," but when I saw him at the president's mansion, I was disappointed. He did not seem in dress or bearing different from other white men. But one night I and my companions saw a wonderful man. We were taken to a large hall, and he sat upon a platform. He threw up some pieces of money, and then told us to rise and shake our blankets, and the money dropped out. He also pulled ribbons out of his mouth, and swallowed knives. We never can forget that night or that man."

On the 9th of April, 1858, a war party from Kaposia ascended the St. Croix river valley and killed an Ojibway. The Ojibways for revenge arrived in the suburbs of lower St. Paul on the night of the 26th. Early the next day a band of Ojibway warriors naked and yelling passed through the busiest streets then in St. Paul. Just at that time, a well-known woman from Kaposia, "Old Bets," and her sister, as well as her brother, who had lost his leg in 1839 at the battle of Stillwater, stepped from their canoe at the foot of Jackson street. Peceiving their foes, they entered into a building which was known as .the old Pioneer newspaper office, and the Ojib- ways, discharging a volley from their guns, fatally wounded the sister of "Old Bets," and then re- tired.

Messengers were dispatched to Fort Snelling for the dragoons, who with Indian guides were soon in pursuit of the assailants. The next day the dragoons discovered them near the falls of St. Croix, and the Ojibways manifesting, as was sup- posed, an improper spirit, Magruder, the lieuten- ant in command, ordered the soldiers to fire, and an Ojibway was killed. His scalp was brought to St. Paul and daguerreotyped. The daguer- reotype was engraved, and appears in an article which in 1854 appeared in Graham's Magazine, then published in Philadelphia.

During that summer, a passenger upon a steamboat could have seen on a scaffold on the bluffs in the rear of Kaposia, a square box cov- ered with a coarsely fringed red cloth. Above it was suspended a piece of the Ojibway's scalp whose death had brought his friends for vengeance to St. Paul. In this box was the sister of "Old Bets," who had died from the wound received in April. A scalp suspended over the corpse is sup- posed to be a contribution to the soul, and a great help in the country of the spirit-land.

"Old Bets" was the character of the village. Industrious and good-humored, she was for years known to every man, woman and child in St. Paul. Few kitchens did she enter without being invited to eat. Her broad face and high cheek bones appeared to great advantage in a photo- graph, and it has been frequently engraved as a typical Indian woman. A marble worker of St. Paul chiseled her face in stone, and in some of the stores to this day her plaster bust is seen. In 1873, she died at Mendota.

Tah-o-yah-tay-doo-tah (His Scarlet people), the so-called Little Crow of the massacre of 1862, was taught by the missionaries to write, and at the treaty of 1851, at Mendota, he was the first chief to sign, and the only one who could write.

While at Kaposia he had three wives who were sisters. His second wife he purchased of her father while he was drunk, and when she was but ten years of age. It is said that a friend often throws a blanket over a daughter and bears her to the lodge of her purchaser. The son-in-law frequently lives near his wife's parents, but at first he does not talk to them, nor does he look his mother-in-law in the face. Should the parents meet him they hide their faces.

Tah-o-yah-tay-doo-tah was a designing and en- ergetic man and never popular with his band. In 1850 his son, then a little boy, whose narrative is appended, was kept in Dr. Williamson's house at Kaposia, because his father feared that he would be poisoned. In June 1866 he presented himself at Fort Garry in Manitoba, dressed in a cloth coat with a velvet collar, a lady's shawl wrapped about his head and another used as a girdle. Sixty Sioux accompanied him, but his request for am- munition was denied by the British authorities. The next month he was in the vicinity of Hut- chinson in McLeod county.

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NARRATIVE OF LITTLE CROW'S SON.

On the 3d of July, near night, as a farmer named Lampson, with his son Chauncy, were traveling five or six miles north of this place, they saw two Indians picking berries who did not notice them. Mr. Lampson raising his gun and taking good aim, fired and wounded one. Chaun- cy Lampson and both Indians then fired at the same time, Mr. Lampson receiving a slight flesh wound and one of the Indians falling dead.

Chauncy Lampson hurried to Hutchinson, the father secreting himself, and during the night some cavalry visited the spot and found the dead Indian, who proved to be Tah-o-yah-tay-doo-tah, called by the whites Little Crow. The other Indian proved to be his son, who, when a mere child was under Dr. Williamson's roof at Kapo- sia.

Captain Burt of the Seventh Minnesota Regi- ment, captured this young man on the 28th of July, who gave to him the following narrative of his father's death.

" I am the son of Little Crow, my name is Wowinapa. I am sixteen years old; my father had two wives before he took my mother; the first one had one son ; the second one a son and daughter ; the third wife was my mother. After taking my mother, he put away the first two ; he had seven children by my mother, six are dead. I am the only one living now ; the fourth wife had four children born, do not know whether any died or not; the fifth wife had five children, three of them are dead, two are living ; sixth wife had three children, all of them are dead, the old- est was a boy, the other two were girls, the four wives were sisters.

"Father went to St. Joseph last spring. When we were coming back, he said he could not fight white men, but would go below, and steal horses from them, and give them to his children, so that they could be comfortable, and then he would go away off. Father also told me that he was get- ting old, and wanted me to go with him to carry his bundles. He left his wives and his other children behind. There were sixteen men and one squaw in the party that went below with us. We had no horses, but walked all the way down to the settlements.

"Father and I were picking red berries near Scattered Lake at the time he was shot. It was near night. He was hit the first time in the side,

just above the hip. His gun and mine, were ly- ing on the ground. He took up my gun and fired it first, and then fired his own. He was shot the second time when he was firing his own gun. The ball struck the stock of his gun, and then hit him in the side near the shoulder. This was the shot that killed him. He told me that he was killed, and asked me for water, which I gave him. He died immediately after. When I heard the first shot fired, I laid down, and the man did not see me before father was killed. A short time before father was killed, an Indian named Hiuka, who married the daughter of my father's second wife, came to him. He had a horse with him, also a gray colored coat that he had taken from a man that he had killed. He gave the coat to father, telling him he might need it when it rained, as he had no coat with him. Hiuka said he had a horse now, and was going back to the Indian country.

"The Indians that went down with us separated. Eight of them, and the squaw, went north; the other eight went farther down. I have not seen any of them since. After father was killed, I took both guns and the ammunition, and started to go to Devil's Lake, where I expected to find some of my friends. When I got to Beaver Creek, I saw the tracks of two Indians, and at Standing Buffalo's village, saw where the eight Indians that had gone north had crossed. I car- ried both guns as far as the Sheyenne river, where I. saw two men. I was scared, and threw my gun and the ammunition down. After that I traveled only in the night, and as I had no am- munition to kill anything to eat, I had not . strength enough to travel fast. I went on until I arrived near Devil's Lake, when I stayed in one place three days, being so weak and hungry that I could go no farther. I had picked up a cart- ridge near Big Stone Lake, which I still had with me, and loaded father's gun with it, cutting the ball into slugs. With this charge, I shot a wolf, ate some of it, which gave me strength to travel, and I went on up the lake, until the day I was captured, which was twenty-six days from the day my father was killed."

The scalp of Tah-o-yah-tay-doo-tah was pre- served, and is now in possession of the Minne- sota Historical Society.

A history of Dakota county would not be com-

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HISTORY OF DAKOTA COUNTY.

plete without a biographical notice of the mis- sionary who dwelt so long with the Kaposia band.

Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, M. D., was born in March, 1800, in South Carolina. His grand- father was also named Thomas, whose wife was Ann Newton, a distant relative of the great phi- losopher, Sir Isaac Newton. The father of this missionary was the Rev. William Williamson, who after being with General Gates in the South Carolina expedition, during the war for indepen- dence, entered and graduated at Hampden-Syd- ney College. When the subject of this sketch was born, his father was pastor of a church at Fair Forest, South Carolina. In order that he might free his slaves, in 1805 the Rev. William Williamson moved to Ohio, and in 1826 his son Thomas graduated at Jefferson College, Canons- burg, Pennsylvania. In 1824, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Yale College. In 1827, he married Margaret, the daughter of Colonel James Poage, of Ripley, Ohio. In the spring of 1833, he gave up the practice of medi- cine and began to study theology, and after spending some time at Lane Seminary near Cin- cinnati, he was licensed to preach in 1834, by the presbytery of Chillicothe.

In May, 1835, as has been stated in chapter twenty he commenced his missionary labors for the Sioux. After the treaties of 1851, he went to the Sioux reservation and established a mis- sion at Pay-zhe-hoo-tah-zee (Yellow Medicine) where he remained until 1862, when with others he was obliged to flee from the attack of the savages.

After the Dahkotahs were imprisoned at Dav- enport, Iowa, he devoted himself to their welfare. In the summer of 1866, he went to visit the Sioux in Nebraska, where his son, the Rev. John P. Williamson, who had become in his boyhood a member of the mission church, at Kaposia, suc- ceeded his father in laboring for the Sioux.

After this Dr. Williamson made an annual visit to the Missions, but passed most of his time at his residence, near Traverse des Sioux in com- pleting with others the translation of the Bible into the Dahkotah language.

He was a man of great endurance, and fond of research, of solidity rather than brilliancy. A few weeks before his death he was in St. Paul and walked one night about a mile with Hon.

Alexander Ramsey, and the writer of this sketch, to a meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society, and did not appear fatigued.

Rev. Dr. S. R. Riggs writes: "On my way up to the land of the Dakotas, in the middle of May [1879] I stopped over a day with my old friend. He was very feeble, but still able to walk out, and sit up a good part of the day. Of this visit I made this memorandum: 'He is now in his eightieth year and is really quite feeble. He has been hoping that as the warm weather comes on, he may rally as he has done in former years. But his feeling seems to be, that as the great work of giving the Bible to the Dakotas was completed, there was not much left for him to do here. He remarked that he had, during the last forty-four years, built several houses; one at Lac-qui-parle, one at Kaposia, one at Yellow Medicine, and one near St. Peter. The two on the Upper Minne- sota had fallen to pieces or been destroyed, and the others were looking old, and would not re- main long after he was gone. But the build- ing up of human souls that he had been permit- ted to work for, and which, by the grace of God, he had seen coming up into a new life, through the influence of the Word, and the power of the Holy Ghost, he confidently believed would re- main.'"

At 2 o'clock in the morning of the 24th of June, 1879, he departed this life, to await the resurrection of the last day.

The first meeting of the Commissioners of Dakota county was held at Kaposia on July 4th, 1853, at the house of Rev. John F. Aiton formerly one of the Presbyterian missionaries. He was Clerk of the Board and Deputy Register of Deeds, and Justice of the Peace in the early days of the white settlements. Sylvester M. Cook, who had been a teacher for the Indians, was chosen sur- veyor, and A. Robertson, who had been farmer for the Indians, was made Register of Deeds.

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PRE-HISTORIC PEOPLE.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

PRE- HISTORIC EVIDENCES-MOUNDS- INDIAN INHABITANTS AND VILLAGES-GAME OF BALL -WARFARE-RESIDENT INDIANS.

The discovery and settlement of a country are most interesting events, and the explorer and the pioneer are equally deserving of the honors of history. They have, in the past, caused two worlds to exist, where there was but one before, and have introduced the choicer fruitages of civil- ization, to lands burdened with barbarism and languishing under a savage night.

Hence, from Innachus and Columbus to John Smith, from the Argonauts to the Pilgrims, their names, so far as they were preserved, have been familiar, and song, no less than story, has con- spired to perpetuate the memory of their achieve- ments. The better instincts and sentiments, both moral and intellectual, of every race, are at- tracted to a study of the past. They are impelled not only by a desire to know the situation, condi- tion and habits of life, of the ancestors or the predecessors of that race, but also by a desire to know the names of its benefactors, to follow out the course and development of all that is best in its civilization, and to learn new lessons for its future. Hence, the stories of Jamestown and Plymouth have been committed to the memory of almost every American, for generations, and in an age of vast mechanical progress, and of an unparallelled material prosperity-such teachings have borne their fruits. Through them, the citizens of a later day have learned new lessons of endeavor, have been interested in the possi- bilities of heroic endurance and educated to new values of religion, intelligence and virtue.

Nor will it be long before an account of the early settlers and pioneers of Minnesota, will serve a similar purpose. They will leave to their posterity, not only the splendid heritage of a land, rescued by them from the hand of sav- agery, and replete with privileges and opportuni- ties, not existing in their day, but they will leave also an example, more lasting than marble and more valuable than gold.

Some account of these men and women, in Da- kota county, it is the purpose of this work to pre- serve. Many of them have already passed away, and it has been thought expedient to improve whatever of opportunity may remain, for gather- ing a chronicle from the lips of those living, as- sisted by such written record as has been made.

The task, not an easy one, is lightened by the reflection, that although the execution of it may now seem humble and meager, the simplest facts here recorded, will grow in interest and value, with the passage of time.

PRE-HISTORIC EVIDENCES AND TRADITIONS.

Who the first people were that inhabited what is now Dakota county, whence they came and whither they went, is a mystery, as yet unsolved. Many theories have been advanced and much speculation indulged in. Actual investigation has not been so active. Simply enough has been determined, to justify the statement that they were superior in mechanical skill and general in- telligence, to the Indians. Proofs of that skill have been discovered in the copper mines of Lake Superior, while implements indicating a considerable degree of intelligent design, have been found at Prairie du Chien, in the mounds on Dayton's Bluff, at St. Paul, and at other places, in the vicinity of this county. Whether these " Mound Builders " were related to the Peruvians of South America, to the noble and poetic Aztecs as well as to those Indian tribes, the remains of whose devastated cities have been found in Cen- tral America, no one can tell. The latter races were at all events as much superior to them as they were the superior, judging by their relics, of the Indians who succeeded them. All is perhaps best described as conjecture, although there are some sure evidences as stated above, which ought not to be disregarded.

" All is gone-

All save the piles of earth that hold their bones-

The platforms where they worshipped un- known Gods-

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History of Dakota County and the City of Hastings, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 32

Author: J. Fletcher Williams Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: J. Fletcher Williams
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: