History of Houston County, Including Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 46

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 547

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"We ask, further, that these savages, proved to be treacherous, unreliable, and dangerous beyond example, may be removed from close proximity to our settlements, to such distance and such isola- tion as shall make the people of this State safe from their future attacks."

DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE PEOPLE IN MINNESOTA.

The final decision of the President, on the 17th of December, 1862, ordering the execution of thir- ty-nine of the three hundred condemned murderers, disappointed the people of Minnesota. These thirty-nine were to be hung on Friday, the 26th of December.

It was not strange that the people of Minnesota were disappointed. How had New England looked upon her Indian captives in her early history ? Her history says:

"King Philip was hunted like a wild beast, his body quartered and set on poles, his head exposed as a trophy for twon'y years on a gibbet, in Plymouth, and one of his hands sent to Boston; then the ministers returned thanks, and one said that they had prayed a bullet into Philip's heart. In 1677, on a Sunday, in Marblehead, the women, as they came out of the meeting-house, fell upon two Indians that had been brought in as captives, and, in a very tumultuous way, murdered them, in revenge for the death of some fisbermen."

These Puritan ideas have greatly relaxed in the descendants of the primitive stock. But, as the sepulchers of the fathers are garnished by their children as an indorsement of their deeds, shall we not hope that those who have in this way given evidence of their paternity will find some pallia- tion for a people who have sinned in the similitude of their fathers?

On the 24th of December, at the request of the citizens of Mankato of a previous date, Colonel Miller, (Ex-Governor Stephen Miller, whose death at Worthington, Minn., took place in August, 1881), in order to secure the public peace, declared

martial law over all the territory within a circle of ten miles of the place of the intended execution.

On Monday, the 21st, the thirty-nine had been removed to apartments separate and distinct from the other Indians, and the death-warrant was made known to them through an interpreter-the Rev. Mr. Riggs, one of the Sioux missionaries. Through the interpreter, Colonel Miller addressed the pris- oners in substance, as follows:

" The commanding officer at this place has called to speak to you upon a very serious subject this afternoon. Your Great Father at Washington, after carefully reading what the witnesses have testified in your several trials, has come to the con- clusion that you have each been guilty of wantonly and wickedly murdering his white children; and, for this reason, he has directed that you each be hanged by the neck until you are dead, on next Friday, and that order will be carried into effect on that day at ten o'clock in the forenoon.

"Good ministers, both Catholic and Protestant, are here, from among whom each of you can se- lect your spiritual adviser, who will be permitted to commune with you constantly during the few days that you are yet to live."

Adjutant Arnold was then instructed to read to them in English the letter of President Lincoln, which, in substance, stated the number and names of those condemned for execution, which letter was also read by Rev. S. R. Riggs, in Dakota.

The Colonel further instructed Mr. Riggs to tell them that they had so sinned against their fellow- men that there is no hope of clemency except in the mercy of God through the merits of the Blessed Redeemer, and that he earnestly exhorted them to apply to Him as their only remaining source of consolation.

The number condemned was forty, but one died before the day fixed for the execution, and one, Henry Milord, a half breed, had his sentence com- muted to imprisonment for life in the penitentiary; so that thirty-eight only were hung.

On the 16th of February, 1863, the treaties be- fore that time existing between the United States and these annuity Indians were abrogated and an- nulled, and all lands and rights of occupancy within the State of Minnesota, and all annuities and claims then existing in favor of said Indians were declared forfeited to the United States.

These Indians, in the language of the act, had, in the year 1862, "made unprovoked aggression and most savage war upon the United States, and

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massacred a large number of men, women and children within the State of Minnesota;" and as in this war and massacre they had "destroyed and damaged a large amount of property, and thereby forfeited all just claims" to their "monies and an- nuities to the United States," the act provides that "two-thirds of the balance remaining unexpended" of their annuities for the fiscal year, not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars, and the further sum of one hundred thousand dollars, being two-thirds of the annuities becoming due, and payable during the next fiscal year, should be appropriated and paid over to three commissioners appointed by the President, to be by them apportioned among the heads of families, or their survivors, who .uffered damage by the depredations of said Indians, or the troops of the United States in the war against them, not exceeding the sum of two hundred dol- lars to any one family, nor more than actual dam- age sustained. All claims for damages were re- quired, by the act, to be presented at certain times, and according to the rules prescribed by the commissioners, who should hold their first ses- sion at St. Peter, in the State of Minnesota, on or before the first Monday of April, and make and return their finding, and all the papers re- lating thereto, on or before the first Monday in December, 1863.

The President appointed for this duty, and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the Hons. Albert S. White, of the State of Indiana, Eli R. Chase, of Wisconsin, and Cyrus Aldrich, of Minnesota.

The duties of this board were so vigorously prosecuted, that, by the 1st of November following their appointment, some twenty thousand sheets of legal cap paper had been consumed in reducing to writing the testimony under the law requiring the commissioners to report the testimony in wri- ting, and proper decisions made requisite to the payment of the two hundred dollars to that class of sufferers designated by the act of Congress. Such dispatch in Government agents gives abund- ant evidence of national vigor and integrity.

It was, no doubt, the object of this act of Con- gress to make such an appropriation as would re- lieve the sufferings of those who had lost all pres- ent means of support, and for the further purpose of ascertaining the whole amount of claims for damages as a necessary prerequisite to future leg- islation. Regarded in this light, the act is one of wisdom and economy.

On the 21st of February following the annulling of the treaty with the Sioux above named, Con- gress passed "An act for the removal of the Win- nebago Indians, and the sale of their reservation in Minnesota for their benefit." The money aris- ing from the sale of their lands, after paving their indebtedness, is to be paid into the treasury of the United States, and expended, as the same is received, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, in necessary improvements upon their new reservation. The lands in the new reservation are to be allotted in severalty, not exceeding eighty acres to each head of a family, except to the chiefs, to whom larger allottments may be made, to be vested by patent in the Indian and his heirs, with- out the right of alienation.

These several acts of the General Government moderated to some extent the demand of the peo- ple for the execution of the condemned Sioux yet in the military prison at Mankato awaiting the final decision of the President. The removal of the Indians from the borders of Minnesota, and the opening up for settlement of over a million of acres of superior land, was a prospective ben- efit to the State of immense value, both in its do- mestic quiet and its rapid advancement in material wealth.

In pursuance of the acts of Congress, on the 22d of April, and for the purpose of carrying them into execution, the condemned Indians were first taken from the State, on board the steamboat Favorite, carried down the Mississippi, and con- fined at Davenport, in the State of Iowa, where they remained, with only such privileges as are allowed to convicts in the penitentiary.

On the 4th of May, A. D. 1863, at six o'clock in the afternoon, certain others of the Sioux Indians, squaws and pappooses, in all about seventeen hun- dred, left Fort Snelling, on board the steamboat Davenport, for their new reservation on the Upper Missouri, above Fort Randall, accompanied by a strong guard of soldiers, and attended by certain of the missionaries and employes, the whole being under the general direction of Superintendent Clark W. Thompson. By these two shipments, some two thousand Sioux had been taken from the State and removed far from the borders of Minne- sota. The expedition of 1863, fitted out against the scattered bands of the Sioux yet remaining on the borders of the State, or still further removed into the Dakota Territory, gave to the border set- tlements some assurance of protection and security

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HISTORY OF THIE SIOUX MASSACRE.

against any further disturbance from these partic- ular bands of Indians.

DEATH OF LITTLE CROW.

On Friday evening, July 3, 1863, Mr. Lampson and his son Chauncey, while traveling along the road, abont six miles north of Hutchinson, discov- ered two Indians in a little prairie opening in the woods, interspersed with clumps of bushes and vines and a few scattering poplars, picking berries. These two Indians were Little Crow and his son Wowinapa.

STATEMENT BY HIS SON.

"I am the son of Little Crow; my name is Wo- winapa; 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; two were boys and three were girls; the fifth wife had five children-three of them are dead, two are living; the sixth wife had three children; all of them are dead; the oldest was a boy, the other two were girls; the last four wives were sisters.

"Father went to St. Joseph last spring. When we were coming back he said he could not fight the 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 getting old, and wanted me to go with him to carry his bun- dles. He left his wives and his other children be- hind. 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 settle- ments. 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 lying 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 to the north of where father was 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 further down. I have not seen any of them sincs. 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 carried 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 ammunition 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 staid in one place three days, being so weak and hungry that I could go no further. I had picked up a cartridge 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 went on up the lake until the day I was captured, which was twenty-six days from the day my father was killed."

Here ends this wonderful episode in our contact with the Indian race in Minnesota. It commenced with Little Crow, in this instance, and it is proper that it should end with his inglorious life. With the best means for becoming an exponent of In- dian civilization on this continent, he has driven the missionaries from his people and become a standing example of the assertion: "Once an In- dian always an Indian."

Little Crow has indeed given emphasis to the aphorism of Ferdousi, "For that which is unclean by nature, thou cans't entertain no hope; no wash- ing will make the gypsy white."

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HISTORY OF HOUSTON COUNTY.

HISTORY

HOUSTON COUNTY.

CHAPTER XLIV.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION-POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS GEOLOGICAL FEATURES-PRE-HISTORIC.

Houston county is situated in the southeastern corner of the state of Minnesota, and has for neighbors, Winona county on the north, the Mis- sissippi, with Wisconsin beyond, on the east, Al- lamakee county in Iowa, on the south, and Fill- more county on the west.

The county is about twenty-four miles square, and subdivided into seventeen townships, most of them corresponding with a township of govern- ment survey in form, and none of them varying widely in size. It has 334,120 acres of land.

The Mississippi, which flows along the east- ern line, has several sloughs winding through a swampy belt of varying width, which is broader near the southern boundary of the county.

The largest local river is the Root, which rises seventy-five miles or so west of the county, and runs in an easterly direction through the southern border of the northern tier of towns. Thompson's Creek, coming from the south, enters this river at Hokah, and the South Fork of Root River joins the main stream at Houston. From the north there are three good sized streams emptying into the Root River, the larger of which are Money Creek and Silver Creek. Diagonally across the northeastern corner of the county, in La Crescent township, runs Pine Creek finding an outlet in the Mississippi. Crooked Creek is in the second tier of towns above the Iowa state line, and running east enters the Mississippi. Six miles or so south of this stream is Winnebago Creek running in a like easterly di-

rection. While there are many mills on these streams, there are yet a large number of unim- proved water privileges awaiting the coming en- terprise which will create the necessity for their early occupancy. The portion of the county along the Mississippi and other rivers has a very rugged and somewhat forbidding appearance, with the irregular bluffs and oval hills with rock- capped summits. These, with alternating hills and valleys, extend back into the country several miles, and then gradually assume the form of a rolling prairie with considerable timber, and still further on in the interior it becomes, in many places, a level prairie. The soil in the valleys be- tween the hills is remarkably good for farming purposes, with numerous springs gushing out from the hillsides, but really the best farms are on the high lands which have been largely used for rais- ing wheat. A general view of the county in an agricultural point, would divide it in this way One-eighth of the county would be hills and bluffs, perhaps a little less than this estimate would be correct. About one-fourth would be timber, and the remaining portion would be adapted to the raising of all crops grown in a like latitude, inclu- ding stock raising.

The character of the soil in its average quality, is that rich, quick responding, warm sandy loam, peculiar to southern Minnesota, which first gave, and has sustained, the reputation of the farming lands of this region which produced, in years when wheat was the staple product of the soil, more than 1,500,000 bushels in the county in a single season.

RAILROADS-A road, a part of the great St. Louis

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HISTORY OF HOUSTON COUNTY.

and Minneapolis line, runs through the county north and south near the Mississippi River. An- other road runs in the valley of the Root River east and west, connecting with the Mississippi road at the river. The third railroad in the county is the "Caledonia and Mississippi," which, from the junction on the river, follows up the Crooked Creek in a northerly direction to Caledonia, the shire town, where it deflects toward the south, and passes through Spring Grove, and thence on to Preston, its present terminus. This line was un- dertaken by local enterprise and is of the standard narrow gauge. A complete description of these roads, which are now in the hands of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul company, will be found under the appropriate head.

POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS .- The county averages four townships square, but the divisions are such that on the river there are five of them, which gives the odd number of seventeen towns in the county. The first town on the northwest corner is Money Creek, which has an irregular southern boundary, with Root River and the Southern Min- nesota railroad near the line. The next town go- ing east is Houston, with a tongue of land extend- ing west between Money Creek and Yucatan, with the Root River and railroad a few miles from the southern boundary. Then comes Mound Prairie nearly evenly bisected between north and south by the railroad and river. The last of the northern tier is La Crescent, which lies north of Root River, and perhaps Hokah, between this and through which the Root River runs, should also be included in the first tier. The next tier of townships begin- ning on the west are Yucatan, Sheldon, Union, and Brownsville on the Mississippi.

In the next row we find Black Hammer, Cale- donia, the county seat, Mayville, and Crooked Creek. The southern towns, along the Iowa state line, are Spring Grove, with the Caledonia railroad running diagonally through it from northeast to southwest, Wilmington, Winnebago, and Jefferson. These towns are specifically treated under their re- spective names.

SURFACE FEATURES. *

The topography of Houston county is very similar to that of the eastern, and particularly that of the northeastern part of Fillmore county.

Taken all together it is produced by the same causes. The strata cover the same geological horizons, at least the same as the non-drift-covered portions of Fillmore county. It varies from un- dulating to rough and hilly. The surface of the rock was gorged by numerous canons, each with its tributary gorges, prior to the spreading of the loam. These gorges are not so narrow as in much of the western and central parts of Fillmore county, but are of the same character as those in the Shakopee and St. Croix areas-broader and smoother, allowing the loam, when deposited, to enter their deepest recesses and to spread itself evenly over the whole. While the loam itself be- comes thicker and more clayey toward the Missis- sippi River, it has so effectually and so deeply covered the whole country that generally a rolling or undulating surface has resulted which is almost free from the peculiar sink-holes so common in the Trenton area, but is characterized by deep, wide valleys, and long ridges. The bluffs that enclose the valleys are sometimes tillable, or at least turfed over from top to bottom. They are of all heights from the more shallow depression suffi- cient for ready drainage, to valley lines over five hundred feet deep. The whole of Root River valley, which is in the St. Croix sandstone, is over five hundred feet in depth, with limestone capping the bluffs. Some of its tributary valleys are equally deep and wide, but the smaller tributary valleys become shallow and more rocky as the gorges ascend in the Lower Magnesian-the whole system making a series of deep valleys along the river, and of alternating vales and ridges at greater distance from the main valley. The county is nowhere destitute of excellent natural drainage. There are very few of the characteris- tic sink-holes of Trenton, that formation having but a small superficies in the county, and that not within the reach of important drainage causes which were capable of producing the pre-glacial gorges. Within the Shakopee area have been seen three or four similar sink-holes, but they differ from the Trenton sink-holes in being more plainly a part of continuous ravines, and in being broader in com- parison to their depth.

If the valleys excavated by drainage were filled up, the county would be very nearly flat, the highest part being in the southwestern corner, in the area of the Trenton limestone. The great di- versity of surface that appears arises entirely from

*The following geological extracts are taken from the report of N. H. Winchell, State Geologist.

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GEOLOGICAL.

the effect of erosion by streams and atmospheric forces, on the rocks, which consists of alternating sandstones and limestones. This effect would be still greater, or rather would be still more apparent, were it not that the loess loam, which is very thick in this part of the State, tones down, with its over- spreading canopy, the roughness which the rocky surface really possesses, leaving it actually one of an undulating or rolling character except along the immediate river bluffs, where the rocks fre- quently appear in craggy bluffs, and cause preci- pitous or steep hillsides. The valleys excavated by the streams are remarkable and instructive. Not only have the larger streams cut out gorges of enormous depth in the rocky floors on which they run, but every little creek and tributary runs in a gorge which shows the same rock-sculpture. Even the freshet creeks, and the rivulets born after every summer shower, dry entirely the greater part of the year, find their way to the main valleys through rock-bound, canon-like valleys. This makes the county present the usual characters of southern latitudes where the northern drift sheet has not been spread. There is nothing more evi- dent than that these valleys antedate the great ice age. In other portions of the northwest where the drift does prevail, larger streams than those found in Houston county have generally worn their channels only through the drift sheet. The Mississippi River itself, above the Falls of St. Anthony, has no rocky bluffs. It very rarely even strikes the rock. It is occupied still in dis- solving and removing the materials of the dritt which covers that portion of the State. It would require a great many inter-glacial periods, or pre- glacial periods, to 'excavate it as deeply as the same valley is wrought in the southeastern por- tion of the State. In the limestone areas the val- leys are narrow and more generally rock-bound; they widen out so as to enclose good farm lands on the bottoms in the sandstone areas. This dis- tinction, however, is less evident than in Fillmore county, where the St. Peter sandstone plays a more important part in bringing about the present topo- graphy. It! is, however, well illustrated in the upper portion of many of the tributaries of Root River. [ In descending one of these valleys from the upland, the first descent is very rocky and very impracticable. This is caused at first by the cut through the Shakopee limestone. The Jordan sandstone that ' underlies the Shakopee

sometimes relieves this ruggedness a little, but its thickness is so small compared to that of the whole Lower Magnesian that it is barely observable in this way. Through the underlying St. Lawrence limestone the descent is also rough, and the valley narrow, with little or no arable land in the valley. On reaching the horizon of the top of the St. Croix sandstone, the change introduced into the aspect of the valley is very noticeable. It widens, the rock is seen exposed in a nearly continuous escarp- ment along the tops of the now more distant bluffs, the descent is easy, the stream flows with a winding course, and is perhaps fringed with a small shrubby growth, the lower slopes of the bluffs on either side are turf-covered, and finally a rich alluvial soil, spreading out over the bottoms show here and there a spot that has been cleared and cultivated. This character then extends "to, and follows the whole course of Root River to its mouth, the valley constantly increasing in width and showing a terraced condition, where ancient floods or periods of high water have stood, and whence, after vast accumulations of alluvium, have retired, reducing the river at last to its pres- ent insignificant dimensions. This is the general character of the valley tributary to Root River, but this succession of changes can be seen with- in Houston county, only in 'hose tributary valleys on the south side of Root River. Those on the north side enter on the St. Croix sandstone before reaching Houston. The best agricultural portion of the county is in the centre and south west quar- ter. The valleys throughout the county are gener- ally wooded, and in the eastern part of the county a great deal of the upland is also wooded. Taken altogether the county may be denominated rolling, broken and hilly, though there are also some fine prairies that are simply undulating. All the farms are well drained naturally.

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History of Houston County, Including Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 46

Author: Edward D. Neill Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Number of Pages: 547

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 547