USA > Minnesota > Rice County > History of Rice County, including explorers and pioneers of Minnesota and outline history of the state of Minnesota > Part 50
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county can boast. Victories over a stubborn soil, turning a wild waste into fruitful fields and happy homes. Victories over ignorance and superstition best shown by the maintenance and prosperity of a free press and the public school. Victories over the selfishness of human nature in devoting so large a sbare of our worldly goods in the relief of suffering humanity at home and abroad, and above all it was a grand and glorious victory when the echoing of Sumter's guns found response in a thousand brave hearts ready to give their lives for their country. These are the victories which give assurance that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, can longest endure supported and defended by a peace-loving, gen- erous, and intelligent people."
THE RED MEN.
Anything authentic in relation to the race that occupied this land only a generation ago, is of ab- sorbing interest, especially to those who are now making their entrance upon the stage of active life, and this interest must continue to grow as time recedes and the period of their existence as the rude possessors of the land becomes more distant.
The question as to how these people lived, what they ate, how they cooked their food, how they made their clothes, how they fashioned their hunt- ing weapons and their fishing tackle, how they formed their residences, and in short, how they kept themselves and their children from perishing from off the face of the earth during those hard Minnesota winters, with the thermometer thirty or more degrees below zero, and blockading snows all around, is indeed a conundrum difficult to solve.
We do not forget their sparseness, and remember the abundance of game in the forest and streams, but to offset this advantage we reflect upon their indolence and improvidence. After a careful con- templation of the whole subject we are compelled to the conclusion that they were a decaying race, who had occupied this land, and, in a certain sense, preserved it for the use of the present civil- ization. The law of creation which begins with the simplest forms of life, is that the inferior must give place to the superior, as the conditions are favorable for its existence, and that the Indian race antedates the Caucasian in its origin, is evi- dent, for while the one, viewed as a whole, is in its senility, the other is just entering its teens, not having. yet reached its true manhood.
There were certain things that the red man readily absorbed when coming in contact with the white race. He seemed to take to the "firewater" in a spontaneous way, and very soon learned to use fire arms and hunting traps, and how to make maple sugar, and this seems to have been about the limit of their educational capacity. As to agriculture, the squaws, if the males could be persuaded to stop long enough in a place, would plant a little corn.
It is supposed that the French voyageurs who first encountered the Dakotas, which word is said to signify the "nation of the seven council fires," gave them the name of Sioux, so that in convers- ing about them in their presence, their suspicion would not be excited hy hearing their name pro- nounced. When the whites came here the Wau- pakuta band of this tribe occupied the present site of Main street. It is difficult to learn as to the exact number, but that there were several hun- dred there can be no doubt. The name of this tribe has been variously spelled by different writers, but there is no reason why there should be any redundant letters, or why it should not be spelled as near as it is pronounced as our imperfect alpha- bet will admit. In this case the "a" has the broad sound. This name should be preserved in some local way, and it is respectfully suggested at the risk of horrifying the whole community, that, as there is. a Faribault county, that the name of "Waupakuta" he given to the city itself! As an instance of the havoc made with Indian names, there is the Chippewa, a tribe which must have originated in northern New England and Canada, or perhaps Nova Scotia, and pushing west, north of the great lakes, finally encountered the Dakotas near the Mississippi River. Now this tribe called themselves the Ojibway, or Ud-jib- e-wa, which the English speaking race at once made into Chippewa. The Chippewas, who hardly reached this point, except on a predatory expedi- tion, had, among other things that the Dakotas did not, birch bark canoes, and in form and build they were exactly like those made in Old Town, near Bangor, to-day, by the Penobscot Indians. The Sioux had dugouts for canoes, and were lighter colored than the Chippewas, besides other striking differences.
To those who came from Wisconsin and had been familiar with the Chippewas, the Winnebagoes. or the Menomonees, the Wan-pa-ku-tas seemed
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more wild and less accustomed to the presence of the whites, the young, particularly, looked with stolen glances upon the new comers, with a cur- iosity mingled with apprehension. The first houses they would visit in squads, looking over everything and keeping this up all day long, seeming to be totally oblivious to the annoy- ance and disgust they occasioned. Colonel For- tier, an Indian trader who knew the red men per- fectly well, told the settlers to locate right in their midst and they would be perfectly safe, so long as they were not roughly treated, which proved to be true. Mr.Hulett had a lot of oxen that got into the corn that was planted by the Indians,and a party of visitors from Red Dog's band that were visiting here, said that these people and their oxen were trespassers, and should be shot, saying, that is the way our folks do, and so one of the oxen was laid low. Mr. Hulett then started to lay the case be- fore the Governor, and arriving there the Gover- nor acknowledged that the whites were trespassers, and said that he had authority to punish dep- redations. As he was about leaving, the chief, accompanied by Mr. Faribault, arrived, and the matter was settled by the payment of $125, with which he bought another yoke of oxen, and he had beef and a spare ox as a compensation for this outrage. This was the most serious, and in fact the only thing of the kind that ever happened.
On the 4th of February, 1874, an "Old Settlers' Association" was organized, several reunions were held, and early incidents recited which were most interesting and valuable in a historical point of view, and from the publication of these statements much reliable material for this work has been ob- tained; the statements of the pioneers are given substantially as they fell from their lips, and it is remarkable that the discrepancies which always exist in such cases are so slight.
FARIBAULT AND RICE COUNTY AS IT WAS IN THE EARLY SPRING OF 1858.
To give a very full and comprehensive idea of this region during the early years of its settle- ment, copious extracte from an article in the "Fari- bault Herald," from the facile pen of its editor, R. A. Mott, are here reproduced:
"Faribault -. The Valleys of the Cannon and Straight Rivers.
There are thousands of our eastern friends pro- posing to come west this spring, and the great question with them is, where shall we go? There
are many things desirable in seeking a new home: to find good land, good water, good timber, good health and to escape the privations of pioneer life, find good neighbors and get all these advan- tages at comparatively small cost. From our own observation in a number of the western States, and knowledge of the advantages offered by other sections, we are confident that no other part of the country presents so many inducements to settlers as Minnesota and our own Straight and Cannon River valleys. Our soil is a rich sandy loam, yielding the most abundant crops in turn for little care. The county is well watered by streams whose water is equal to the mountain brooks of New England, and wells are easily dug which fur- nish an abundance of pure water at a depth of from twelve to thirty feet.
The general surface of the country is rolling. The depth of the soil varies from two to four feet, and below that a yellowish loam, and at the depth of from six to ten feet considerable clay is usually found. Our river bottoms are not so fertile as the high prairie; they are more sandy with a gravelly subsoil. Beets, ruta-bagas, and onions sown broadcast and harrowed in, yield enormously. We have an abundance of excellent grass for hay.
Cattle and horses love it and do well on it. The cattle that run on our prairies are fat enough for excellent beef at any time during the summer.
Our county is, as they say of eastern advertised farms, "suitably divided into pasturing, mowing, tillage, and timber lots." We can safely chal- lenge the West to furnish a like section of the country where all these things are so abundant and so equally distributed. We have the best of timber for finishing houses, an abundance of but- ternut and black walnut; burnishing shows their beautiful, rich grain, which no painter can begin to rival. Butternut can be bought for from $18 to $20 per thousand, and black walnut from $20 to $30, and other lumber from $10 to $18. There are at least twenty saw-mills in the county, and a number of flouring mills in operation, and others being erected. Abundance of material for brick is found here, and we have in this town two brick- yards. There are excellent stone quarries, and abundance of lime.
We are not destitute of fruit. Cranberries are "thick as blackberries on the plain;" plums of the most delicious kinds are found in large groves covering acres; strawberries grow wild. and can
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easily be cultivated. Let any one coming bring a few vines in their trunk, and they soon can have a plentiful supply. Crab-apples, which make ex- cellent sauce and pies, are good baked, and make the very best of jelly, superior to any other, are to be had by the bushel for the picking. Goose- berries grow wild, and our streams are bordered with fine grapes, and the Isabella and Catawba are ripened fifty miles north of us.
The thousands of acres of maple forest furnish us with sugar and syrup, equal to the best. 'The sugar cane was tried here last year, and succeeded admirably. In fact, every needful thing will grow here. Winter wheat succeeds well where tried, and our spring wheat is unsurpassed by any.
Game is abundant enough to pay for hunting. Our sharp-shooters get deer, and any one that can fire a gun can get prairie chickens enough with very little trouble. They are in large flocks through the fall and winter. Fish are so plenty and so large that the whole truth would sound like a "fish story." All through the winter any one could go up to our lakes, about four -miles, and get from forty to one hundred pounds in a day. Pickerel are frequently caught weighing from six to seventeen pounds each. There are a number of lakes, and all well stocked with the best of fish. In the spring and fall our lakes are covered with dncks and geese, and our woods during the season are alive with pigeons and partridges. Not much danger of starving.
In regard to the healthfulness of the country it might be enough to say the fever and ague, the curse of the West, is never found here. Probably a case never originated here, and thousands are cured by coming here. There is no State or Ter- ritory south of here that this can be said truth- fully of. The wonderful salubrity of the climate of Kansas, where there are thousands of New England- ers, with constitutions shattered by disease con- tracted on its prairies, pronounce it a humbug. Our climate is very dry. The most reliable statis- tics in regard to climate, health, or anything re- quiring a long series of accurate and impartial observation and records, are always found in the reports connected with the military service. From these reports, even did not the experience of every one here testify to it, abundant proof is furnished that Minnesota is the healthiest climate in the United States. The dryness of our atmosphere is especially favorable to persons inclined to lung complaints.
The average depth of water (rain and melted snow ) for a year during the last twenty years has been at Fort Snelling, forty miles from here, 25} inches; at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 44g inches, and Muscatine, Iowa, 443 inches. Yet the char- acter of our soil, our numerous lakes and heavy dews, prevent our crops from drying up, and we are not near so likely to suffer with drought as New England. The army register gives the force of the wind during the year as considerably less here than at any other station in the United States. The average depth of snow is light. The two winters previous to this last were severe, and the amount of snow large, but there was not as much snow, nor was the cold as unendurable, as in the Eastern States. This past winter has been the most delightful one it ever was our lot to ex- perience.
One most blessed thing in regard to us here is that we have good roads, and we are not forced to do penance for pleasant winter weather by drag- ging through mud three feet deep. Our transi- tion from winter to spring does not include a month or two months of mud so deep as to make the roads impassable. While in the States sontlı of us, and in the East, they are waiting for the ground to settle, we are sowing wheat and oats. This spring we sowed wheat the 20th of March. A great deal of land was sown the week commenc- ing the 22d of March, and from that time farm work has gone on rapidly. A summer shower does not render our roads and soil a mass of jelly for some days, but they quickly dry. The tem- perature of southern Minnesota, as given by the army register, is the same as central New York.
Faribault, the county seat of Rice county, situ- ated on the Straight River half a mile from its junction with the Cannon River, is a place that has grown within three years from half a dozen log huts to be a town of 2,500 inhabitants, and the center of a large trade. There are twenty-five dry goods and grocery stores, two drug stores, five hardware stores, two meat markets, three bakeries, a cracker factory, four large hotels, two steam saw-mills, one flouring mill, and two large ones being erected, three cabinet shops, a number of joiner shops, a planing mill, two shingle mills, sev- eral hanks, and printing office, and other things too numerous to mention.
The Congregational Society have a good church building, erected at a cost of $2,300. The Rev.
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L. Armsby is the minister. The want of religious and Sabbath privileges, so often feared by those coming west, can hardly be felt, while under the teachings of one combining the somewhat rare qualities of good preacher and good pastor. The Baptists and Methodists each have a church or- ganization and a minister. The Baptists have a building lot secured, and will probably proceed to build before long.
We have a number of excellent schools. We have during the winter a well sustained lyceum, and a library association and a reading room where all the leading papers and periodicals of the day are taken, including four British quarter- lys, Little's Living Age, &c. Institute lectures are delivered every fortnight through the winter by star lecturers found this side of the great river. We have an excellent brass band which furnishes fine music.
Many eastern persons think our stores can be only little shanties with a few hundred dollars worth of goods in them. To correct that impres- sion one would only need walk through our streets and see the goods displayed in the glass fronts of the stores. Two sales of entire hardware stocks have recently been made here, and the inventory of one footed up over $14,000. The other was large, and in addition, the purchaser is bringing in a new stock of $8,000. The other hardware stores are very large. The dry goods and grocer- ies are in due proportion, we suppose.
Faribault is the natural center of trade for a very large country. It is now the most important inland place in southern Minnesota, and bids fair to be without a rival. Some idea of our central position may be gathered from the fact that there are nine different mail routes centering in Fari- bault. Another significant fact is that Congress, in the land grant of 4,500,000 acres to Minnesota railroads, made one condition of the grant that Faribault should be made a point in the north and south railroad, and our Legislature in a loan of State credit, based on these lands, requires that work shall be commenced here at the same time as anywhere else on the road. We want the road, and shall have it.
We are not alone in the belief that there is a bright future before us; every impartial observer, and even those prejudiced and interested against us, can but admit it. With our railroad will
come other wants, and the supply will come too. Let those who would reap come early.
We want now a plow factory and an establish- ment for the manufacture of general agricultural implements. Our plows are wrought cast-steel. The number sold is very large and price high. and doubtless the making of them here would be a profitable business. A machine shop and small foundry would do well here. Now all our mills must go from fifty to eighty miles to get the smallest break repaired. If we had conveniences here there are probably thirty or forty mills that would come here for such work. Power for such a shop might be rented of oue of our steam mills.
We want a cooper's shop; not one is in the county.
Every year thousands of hides are sent off at from two and a half to three cents per pound, and the leather, at a high price, brought back, and the same hair that was carried away on them, comes back at eighty cents a bushel for plastering. An abundance of bark for tanning is in our woods, and no one who understands the business could find a better place to go into it than here.
Of carpenter and joiners we have a fair supply, but blacksmith work is very high, and more good blacksmiths might do well.
Every manufactured article is brought up from below, and the large amount of money carried away for these things would largely pay for the establishment of the shops above mentioned, and the demand for all is constantly increasing.
This present time is the best there has ever been, and is the best there will be, to come here. Capitalists desirous of investing money can buy property now for one-half what they can when our railroad is commenced. Many borrowed money to pre-empt their farms, and now are ready to sell for the want of the means to pay.
The pioneering is over. We have good schools, good society, a county unsurpassed in healthful- ness-yes, unequaled, a good soil, well timbered and watered, and farms to be bought cheaper than one could come here three years ago and pay gov- ernment price and live until now, and put the im- provement on them.
Come, and we think your own observation will satisfy you that of all western States, Minnesota is the one.
Leave the river at Hastings, and come to the Cannon River valley, and see if it is not all it is represented to be, and more too."
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CHAPTER XLVII.
COUNTY ORGANIZATION-TERRITORIAL POLITICS- - COUNTY GOVERMENT-COUNTY FINANCES - RICE COUNTY IN THE STATE GOVERNMENT-CENSUS AND OTHER STATISTICS.
After the treaty of March, 1853, by which the Sioux vacated their lands for settlement, the Ter- ritorial Legislature divided Dakota county and made quite a number of new ones, including Rice, but, as the United States surveyors had not yet run the lines, the description of boundaries could only be indicated by natural objects, and it so happened that three counties cornered at the junction of the Straight and Cannon Rivers. This would indeed seem to be a discouraging circum- stance in connection with the establishment of a county seat here in Faribault, but our pioneers had views of their own, and while many would have considered that the obstacles in the way of se- curing a readjustment of county lines were too for- midable to be overcome, they never for a moment abandoned their firm determination to make this the capital of the county. Besides, it is a matter of history that in the carving out of the State lines, on the admission of the State into the Union, a serious attempt was made to so arrange it as to bring this point so near the center of the new commonwealth as to make it available as the cap- ital of the State itself. Thus it stood, with Rice, Dakota, and Goodhue counties cornering here, until the fall of 1854, when, as the territory to the sonth was rapidly filling up, it became cer- tain that the next legislature would rearrange the counties all through southern Minnesota. While everything was being done to make this a business center, the political aspect of affairs was carefully scrutinized and it was at once determined that it was imperative to have a good strong clear-headed man who would be master of the situation as a representative in the legislature from this district, and Mr. Faribault, who was always quick to see what should be done, and as prompt to act, opened a correspondence with H. H. Sibley, urging him to be a candidate for the position, and insisting that in the fight over the county's boundaries, which was certain to be a bitter one and the con- test for county seats most distressing --- to the de- feated ones -- he was the man to represent the inter- ests of this section. Mr. Sibley replied that he would admit that his knowledge of the country might be of use to the settlers if elected to the
position, and intimated that there would be oppo sition to him in the Minnesota valley, but, if nom inated in the convention to be held, he could be elected. So the voters held a caucus at Mr. Fari- bault's house and appointed Alexander Faribault, N. Paquin, William Dunn, James Wells, Jonathan Morris, E. J. Crump, and Walter Morris as dele- gates to the convention soon to be held at Shak- opee. Feeling that they might not all attend, Mr. Hulett wrote a resolution instructing the delegates to vote for Mr. Sibley, and authorizing them to cast the full vote of the delegation. Mr. Dunn, of Cannon City, who with all the others, was in favor of Mr. Sibley, arose, and with imperial dig- nity positively declined to be instructed, insisting that he and the others knew enough to go to the convention and do their duty. James Wells also opposed the resolution, and notwithstanding Mr. Hulett urged its necessity in case of a contingency, which actually happened, and that its passage implied no disrespect to the delegation, it was voted down. In due time the convention met, two of the delegates were not there, and the result of the first ballot was a tie between Mr. Sibley and a gentlemau up the Minnesota River; so the dele- gation then asked for the privilege of casting the entire vote for Mr. Sibley, but to this objection was successfully made, as they had not been so instructed by their constituents. But Mr. Wells, who was well up in party methods, was equal to the emergency and retrieved his mistake in sec- onding Mr. Dunn's objection to Mr. Hulett's res- olution, by finding a man in whose palm a ten dollar gold piece exactly fitted, and the next bal- lot placed Mr. Sibley in nomintion.
General Sibley was duly elected, and succeeded in making the county lines conform to the wishes of his Faribault friends, and the law, establishing the county substantially as it is to-day, contained a provision that the legal voters could at any gen- eral election organize the county, provided that there were at least fifty votes cast for county com- missioners, and empowering the first county board to permanently establish the county seat. With this condition of things the people of Faribault were content, as the place was fast filling up.
During the summer of 1854, however, a town had been laid out three miles northeast of the vil- lage of Faribault by the Messrs. Sears, and given the name of Cannon City, and town lots were rap- idly selling at their office in the "City Hotel."
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From representations made to Willis A. Gorman, the county had been organized by the appoint- ment of provisional commissioners, and the estab- lishment of Cannon City as the county seat. The citizens of Faribault, knowing it to be without the warrant of authority, treated the whole thing as a nullity, and at the next general election proceeded to vindicate their rights by organizing the county under the provisions of the territorial law.
There were three voting precincts, one at Fari- bault, one at Cannon City, and the other at Mor- ristown. Mr. Morris had first located at Fari- bault, but not securing such an interest as he desired, transferred himself and his retinne to Morristown. He was a man of native ability who had been a Campbellite preacher, but wholly un- educated as to letters, although he would read chapters from the New Testament, from memory perhaps, holding the book upside down. He evi- dently held the balance of power as between Fari- bault and Cannon City, and it became imperative in the interests of the future county seat, that a compromise should be made with him, which was effected by the preparation of a ticket for county officers, with the lion's share of candidates from Morristown. But the most difficult feat in this arrangement was to suppress the aspirations of a numerous horde in Faribault, who could not be led to believe that they were not exactly adapted for these opening positione. They were, however, finally induced to forego the gratification of their ambition to a more convenient season. The ticket for this combination was headed by C. Ide for Representative in the Legislature; F. W. Frink, Frank Pettitts, and Mr. Storer as the Board of Supervisors; Charles Wood for Sheriff; Isaac Ham- mond for Treasurer.
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