USA > Minnesota > Rice County > History of Rice and Steele counties, Minnesota, Vol. I > Part 3
USA > Minnesota > Steele County > History of Rice and Steele counties, Minnesota, Vol. I > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84
Following is a list of the mounds that I have found in Rice and Steele counties :
10
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
Rice County .- (1) In the township of Bridgewater, sec- tions 12, 13, 14, are 120 mounds. These mounds are strung along the east side of Cannon river south of Northfield. (2) Dundas, section 14, cast of town, 13. (3) South of Dundas at Thill- bar's place and adjoining land, 54. (+) Cannon City, section 4, south of river, 10. (5) Webster, sections 9, 6; sections 16, 17, 12; sections 29, 31, 6. (6) Between Stanton and the head- waters of Prairie creek and its tributaries, 577. (7) Wheeling, section 14, near Nerstrand, about 25.
Steele County .- (1) On the prairie eight miles south of Owatonna.
Closer investigation would doubtless reveal others, although there are large tracts of territory where none are found.
The western part of Rice county is strikingly poor in mounds. One might have expected the shores of Union lake, Circle, Fox, Shieldsville and other lakes to be dotted with mounds, but the observations made so far have not revealed any. A possible explanation of this fact may be that these lakes are minor ones, being a rough and hilly country which was originally heavily timbered and unsuitable for travel, and also rather far away from the more open valleys of the Minnesota and Cannon rivers. At Rice lake, Prairie lake, and Crystal lake, no mounds were ob- served. The distribution of the mounds seems to depend to a large extent on the topography of the country. The large out- wash plains with their tributary branches ramifying up to the moraine seem to be one factor. These facts are undoubtedly important in trying to explain the number, origin and distribu- tion of these earthheaps.
After examining so many similar mounds in many different places, and in view of the fact that so far there is no positive evidence at hand to tell us how these mounds came to be, it is perfectly proper to ask : How are these mounds made? Are they geological features of the country ? If so let the geologist explain them. Or have they been formed by plants or animals? If so, let the biologist explain them. If, for example, animals have made them either by their own efforts or by the help of natural agencies, then it may be that many of the highland knolls which are now counted and mapped as Indian mounds may prove to be of a similar origin.
A prolonged observation of these mounds in the various local- ities where they occur seems to justify the conclusion that by far the greater number, if not all of them, are Indian mounds. These mounds are either artificial or else they are not artificial. Either view has its difficulties in our present state of knowledge.
The following are some of the reasons which point to an artificial origin. The mounds are invariably sound and are
11
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
made of the same kind of soil as occurs on the land on which they are situated. Some people call them gopher hills, or ant- hills, or remnants of haystacks, or swells in the land marking the site of a buried boulder. As regards the view that the mounds are the remains of haystacks we may say, that haystacks leave no residual soil of this kind when hay is left to rot. The mounds are often located where hay was never stacked, for example, in woods. On one tract of land that was being cleared of its timber, some of the mounds located in the woods had trees growing on them. Nor do haystacks leave remains of soil with sand, gravel and pebbles in them. Nor do they occur in woods with old trees growing on them. Some of the mounds occur in places where, at least for a part of the year, it is very wet, where no farmer would stack hay, nor any gopher burrow. nor ants build their homes. It is true that ants are to be found in the lowlands, but the structures reared to mark the sites of their nest are never in these localities, more than a few inches over a foot in height. The width of the anthills is about one foot, and the flat truncated top usually slants in a southerly direction, facing the sun? Very likely such frail structures would, when deserted, disappear in a short time under the at- tack of the elements. In no instance were ants found living in the mounds.
That people call these mounds gopher hills is easily ex- plained by the fact that gophers occasionally burrow in mounds. Immediately the inference is drawn that the gophers built the whole mound. Closer observation shows that wherever burrow- ing animals are found inhabiting mounds, the mound loses its smooth, convex outline, and becomes roughened and warty in appearance on account of the small heaps of dirt thrown up by the animals. Hence we may readily see how, in the lapse of long centuries, some of the mounds may have been inhabited for a time by gophers and made rough on the exterior. This would account for the bossed surface, that some mounds have. Mounds can be found in localities so wet that it is doubtful if a gopher ever lived there. Gophers do not live in wet places any more than in woods. Again, we know that gophers abound in many places where no mounds whatever occur. Why, for example, does not the enormous number of gophers in Goodhue county build mounds on the high prairies, or along the whole lengths of a river course? Why do they not build intermediate mounds as well as mounds 20 to 40 feet across? I never met a man who knew of gophers building large mounds.
These considerations seem to warrant the conclusion that these mounds are not the accumulations of rotted grass, nor of gopher and ant diggings. Nor does there seem to be a natural
12
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
agency to which the making of so many mounds, so regularly alike, in such different localities, can be inferred. If it be sug- gested that they might have been formed by upturned roots of trees that were blown over, or by the drift material of swollen waters, or by springs, a number of questions can be raised at once to throw great improbability on such an origin of the mounds. While we may conceive of some mounds having been formed in this way in certain places, none of the suggested modes, nor a combination of them, will explain the mounds in these places. Why should not these agencies have formed mounds in vastly larger areas where we know there are springs. where winds overturn trees, where flooded streams form very numerous dift accumulations but not mounds? Nor are these mounds small dunes blown up by the wind. The character of the land is such as to preclude all possibility of their formation by the wind. Much of the ground is too wet to permit the drifting of soil; "blowouts" are absent from the vicinity ; some of the pebbles and rocks found in the mounds would require a terrific wind to transport them. Again, dunes built by the wind are not uniformly circular. Rather they are oblong, with the highest elevation, not in the middle, but towards one end. It were odd indeed that the wind should build such dunes in low places, or in woods, or in groups, or string them along creeks and not build them in places that are apparently much better adapted to wind-work. There are also other considerations which give color to the conclusion that the mounds were built by man, and that by the Indians. The shape of all the mounds is that of the ordinary round mound. In size they vary from fifteen to thirty feet across the top. Few exceed thirty feet. One mound measured fifteen paces, or about 45 feet across. In general, the height varies from one-half to two and one-half feet. A number exceed this and may form very conspicuous ob- jects on the meadow where the grass is burned away. A num- ber of mounds have circular depressions around them as if dirt had been removed thence. After a thaw, water may stand in the ring and make it very noticeable.
At first it seemed to me very probable that the mounds served as tenting places. The diameter and circumference of the mounds would suggest this, but the seeming absence of the action of fire does not support this view unless the Indians camp- ing there did not build fires. In other respects there is no reason why Indians might not have camped there. The creeks and sloughs furnished an abundance of water. Fuel in great abun- dance was near at hand. Beavers, mink, muskrat, and other game were undoubtedly present in the sloughs. In the nearby forest lived the deer in great numbers. Moose and elk were
13
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
also here. Farmers tell of having plowed up bones belonging to these animals. Of buffaloes there is scarcely a trace. The only buffalo relic observed was a partially decayed horn which I found near the mounds in the Greenvale slough. This may, however, have been accidentally left by passing parties. So far as observed, there is no wild rice within this region. Therefore Indians did not resort to this region to collect rice. There are, however, many evidences of the beaver's former presence in considerable numbers. Beaver dams occur in no small numbers in this region. The following figures will speak for themselves. They tell plainly of the great amount of work done. On section 21, Greenvale, is a dam 380 feet long and at present two and one-half feet high. People living near the place say that formerly it was six feet high but was lowered by scraping down. It pro- duced backwater to the distance of a mile and formed a lake half a mile wide. In Bridgewater are two dams measuring re- spectively 202 feet and 176 feet in length. Another dam seen is now four feet nine inches in height at the middle, but since the ends of the dam lie higher upon the hillsides, the former height of the dam must have been about eight feet. This seems to be proved by the big pit on the up stream side of the west wing of the dam whence dirt was removed in the construction of the dam. The number of dams occurring within a short distance is often not small. On Mr. Allen's farm, about two miles east of Union lake, begins a series of dams in the woods. Ten beaver dams in a good state of preservation occur within the distance of a mile. On section 33 in the northwest corner is a beaver lake bottom half a mile long, one-fourth of a mile wide. On section 30 Greenvale is the most massive dam noted. It is not so very long but is about six feet high and has a very massive base. The length of the dam is sixty-three paces, or 100 feet. Northwest of it are eight dams in rapid succession. each measuring from 120 to 150 feet in length. Beaver dams occur in Dakota, Rice, Steele, and Goodhinte counties. They are often accompanied by canals and slides, pits at the ends of the dam where dirt was taken for the dam. Even wood has been found where farmers cut the dams to let out the water from the pond. Other evidences might be mentioned such as the char- acter of the places where the dams occur. They occur in just such places where one might expect the instinct and sagacity of the beaver to place them. The steeper side of the dam faces the pond or up-stream side: the other side has a longer slope and acts as a buttress. Therefore these dams agree in many important characteristics with dams found at the present day which are known to be inhabited by beavers.
The points of chief interest are, however, first, the large num-
14
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
ber of dams. This means long occupation by a goodly number of beavers. Hence it is possible that such men as Radisson and Groseilliers, if they ever were at Prairie Island for a number of years may have collected a considerable number of beaver skins that were hunted in the not far away parts of Minnesota. The last beaver seen in this part of the state, so far as I know, was the one found dead three years ago by Mr. Fröhlich on the Little Cannon near Cannon Falls. Mr. Fröhlich told me that he watched the last colony of beavers for a number of years but for some reason they disappeared. Poplar stumps gnawed off by the beavers in the last season of their work can still be found there. A layer of twigs across the bottoms of the Little Cannon on Mr. Fröhlich's farm, marks the site of the beaver's last attempt to build a dam in this locality. The beavers have now disappeared and become extinct in that part of the country unless it be truc, as someone told me, that there are still a few left in the Little Cannon a few miles below Sogn. They were either trapped or else killed by the clearing away of the timber which served as their food, or by the cutting of dams, or else they have migrated to other parts. Specimens of the last cutting and dam can be seen at the museum of the Historical Society. They are genuine, as I myself collected them. The former presence of the beaver is now marked not only by the results of their labor, such as ridges of earth, excavations, pits, canals, slides, silled lake bottoms, and other conspicuous effects on the topography of the country, but also, as I believe, partially at least by the mounds built by the departed Indians who camped in these regions in quest of game.
Another noteworthy fact in this connection is this, that the beaver pond bottoms are devoid of mounds. This shows that the mounds under discussion are not the remains of beaver huts, nor of muskrat houses. Many ponds are still inhabited by muskrats but no mounds occur near them, nor in countless other places where these animals live and have lived in all likeliness for centuries.
The watercourses were the natural avenues for Indians to follow. The east side of Cannon river is fairly lined with mounds from Northfield to within a few miles of Faribault. Closer ex- amination of the region beyond will probably reveal others be- tween there and Cannon lake, and farther on to Morristown lake. Evidences of an old trail still exist near Waterford on the east side of the river. Early settlers told me that an Indian trail from St. Paul to Faribault crossed the Cannon at Waterford. In that place the river was shallow. It is said that there was another trail from Red Wing to Faribault and passed the south- ern end of Prairie creek. I failed to find any remains of it. That
15
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
Indians camped occasionally in these regions in historic times is testified to by many settlers. Indians are known to have camped at Union lake, in Greenvale, near Dundas, near Dennison, and in many other places. As many as several hundred are known to have camped at one time east of Dundas. There is no reason to doubt that fancy, or some definite cause brought Indians to all parts of this country ; hence it is not at all unlikely that pre- historic Indians did the same thing. Our inability to find a con- clusive reason at present why Indians should camp or build mounds in these places is no proof that the mounds are not of Indians origin. Should closer study prove the mounds to be burial places, then they are witnesses both of the large number of Indians buried there, as well as of the much larger number of population which was not honored with a monument of earth.
The groups in the vicinity of Dennison probably indicated that somewhere a trail passed from Welch to Prairie creek. Thus the southern end of the Stanton flats served as a halting place. If a line be drawn from Welch, where the Red Wing mounds may be said to end, to Faribault, the line will pass through the large groups of mounds at Prairie creek, whereforc it is not unreasonable to think that the Indians may have had a shorter route in going from Red Wing to Faribault, than that presented by the meandering Cannon. A glance at the map of Minnesota will show this plainly and also this, that if a person wished to go from Red Wing to the buffalo plains of the Dakotas, it would be much shorter to go directly to Faribault and thence to Mankato instead of making the big detour against the Missis- sippi current to St. Paul and thence to Mankato. Between Welch and Randolph there are no mounds. If it were not for this gap, there would be a practically continuous chain of mounds from Red Wing to Faribault. If the Indians had habitually followed Prairie creck from its mouth to its source, we might have ex- pected to find mounds on the northern end of the flats. For some reason they are absent at that place also between Cannon Falls and Welch. The latter distance I walked with the express purpose of locating mounds for Mr. Brewer, but no mounds showed up until I discovered Fort Sweney at Welch. The only mound-like structure observed between Randolph and Welch were a few doubtful elevations south of Cannon Falls on the edge of the terrace on the west side of the Cannon.
I failed to locate mounds in the following places: Dakota county : Lakeville, Rosemount, Hampton, Douglass, Randolph, Marshan. Rice county : Forest, Hills, Erin, Morristown, Hal- cott, and Richland. Goodhuie county: Cannon Falls, Warsaw (which has only ten on the lowland bordering the Stanton flats), Leon and other townships. From Goodhue station to Dennison,
16
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
a distance of 20 miles, not a mound was seen, nor between Cannon Falls, Vasa, and Spring Creek, nor between Cannon Falls, and Sogn, on the Little Cannon. This valley does not seem to have been used as a highway by the Indians. If there are any mounds in that valley, they are not easily seen from the road. This valley was heavily timbered and less suitable for travel than the Stanton flats. A more thorough search in the above named places may reveal some mounds. The morainic area in Rice and Dakota counties appears to be strikingly de- ficient in mounds. Perhaps the rough and hilly country covered with the big Minnesota woods made it unfavorable as a highway for travel. The Minnesota valley west, and the Cannon east of the hills were much more suitable for trails. But why should not mounds have been formed in these localities by natural agencies or otherwise if the mounds under discussion were not built by Indians?
The distribution of the mounds seems to be governed by the river courses and their tributaries and by the wide open stretches of country. The absence of large mounds indicates that with Red Wing, Spring Creek, Cannon Junction, Welch, and other places along the Mississippi as headquarters the Indians resorted to the other localities for temporary purposes, possibly in their hunting trips to Iowa and Dakota. From Faribault they could strike south into Steele, Mower and Freeborn counties. These counties contain at least some mounds like those under discus- sion. In the morainic area in Iowa between Fertile and Forest City, Winnebago county, not a mound was seen.
Other roads passed over without noticing any mounds are: From Shieldville to Fox lake, to Circle lake, Union lake, Hazel- wood, Eidsvold, Rice lake, Prairie lake: from Wheatland to Millerburgh ; from Faribault to Warsaw and Morristown: be- tween Empire, Vermillion and Hastings; between Trout Brook. White Rock and Cannon Falls; between Kenyon, Prairieville. and Cannon City ; Dennison, Hague and Kenyon, also hundreds of miles of other roads. The absence of mounds in all these places seems to prove conclusively that the discussed mounds are not the result of natural forces, nor of animals, both of which operated on otherwise similar localities and failed to produce mounds. Some other explanation must be sought why the mounds are where they are and why they are absent from other similar places.
Since writing the above I met a lady whose father settled on the Greenvale meadow about 45 years ago. This man found a number of arrows in this mound dotted territory. These arrows are the only artificial Indian relics which I have seen as positive proof that the Indians were actually near the mounds.
17
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
The fact that much of the land is not plowed but is used for pasturage and hay meadows, makes the locating of village sites very difficult.
In the absence of any better explanation, we may tentatively accept the following conclusions: (1) These mounds belong to the provinces of archaeology. (2) The larger valleys and their watercourses have played a large role in the distribution of the mounds by attracting Indians more powerfully than did other localities. (3) Hence the distribution of the mounds in groups or strings along these water courses is such that the law of ar- rangement governing these is in perfect harmony with the law governing the general arrangement of mounds along the water- ways in other parts of the country where we know that Indians lived and built mounds. This law is a natural accommodation of the territory and material in a place where a mound building Indian. having once settled for some reason, wanted to build mounds. A glance at charts showing mounds will make this evident.
If these deductions are true, as they seem to be, then the key to unlock the problem of this peculiar type of mounds is this that these mounds are the products of human activity in prehis- torie times and present us with a new and unexpected phase in the mound builders choice of location for mounds. To a person accustomed to seeing large effigy mounds in Wisconsin, or other larger mounds along the Mississippi, it would naturally be a puzzle to find mounds in a location where his former ex- perience would not have prompted him to look for mounds. The unexpected may also turn up in the experience of the mound- hunter, and there is nothing unreasonable in thinking that these mounds are another link in the chain of Minnesota archeology throwing light on the life of the prehistoric builders. It merely shows that Indians built mounds also in other places than on high terraces and shores.
But should further study ever show that these mounds are not the work of wandering savages, then they ought to be ac- corded a place in that science whose province it will be to ex- plain them. So far I have utterly failed to find any adequate cause or principle mentioned in geology, biology, or physiog- raphy, which will explain all of these in all places. If these mounds were not built by Indians, then it may be that in any other mounds now reckoned as Indians mounds may also be explained by the action of some other agency.
CHAPTER II.
GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY.
Early Claims of Title-Spain, France and England-Treaties and Agreements-The Louisiana Purchase-Indiana-Louisiana District-Louisiana Territory-Missouri Territory-North- west Territory-Illinois Territory-Michigan Territory- Wisconsin Territory-Iowa Territory-No Man's Land- Sibley in Congress-Minnesota Territory-Minnesota State -Compiled from Manuscripts of Hon. F. M. Crosby.
The history of the early government of what is now southern Minnesota, is formulated with some difficulty, as, prior to the nineteenth century, the interior of the county was so little known, and the maps upon which claims and grants were founded were so meagre, as well as incorrect and unreliable, that descrip- tions of boundaries and locations as given in the early treaties are vague in the extreme, and very difficult of identification with present day lines and locations.
The Hon. J. V. Brower, a scholarly authority upon this sub- ject, says-("The Mississippi River and Its Sources") : "Spain, by virtue of the discoveries of Columbus and others, confirmed to her by papal grant (that of Alexander VI, May 4, 1493), may be said to have been the first European owner of the entire valley of the Mississippi, but she never took formal possession of this part of her domains other than that incidentally involved in De Soto's doings. The feeble objections which she made in the next two centuries after the discovery, to other nations ex- ploring and settling North America, were successfully overcome by the force of accomplished facts. The name of Florida, now so limited in its application, was first applied by the Spaniards to the greater part of the eastern half of North America, con- mencing at the Gulf of Mexico and proceeding northward indefi- nitely. This expansiveness of geographical view was paralleled later by the definition of a New France of still greater extent, which practically included all the continent.
"L'Escarbot, in his history of New France, written in 1617, says, in reference to this: 'Thus our Canada has for its limits on the west side the lands as far as the sca called the Pacific. on this side of the Tropic of Cancer: on the south the islands of the Atlantic sea in the direction of Cuba and the Spanish land ;
18
19
HISTORY OF RICE AND STEELE COUNTIES
on the east the northern sea which bathes New France; and on the north the land said to be unknown, toward the icy sea as far as the arctic pole.
"Judging also by the various grants to individuals, noble and otherwise, and 'companies,' which gave away the country in latitudinal strips extending from the Atlantic westward, the English were not far behind the Spaniards and French in this kind of effrontery. As English colonists never settled on the Mississippi in pursuance of such grants, and never performed any acts of authority there, such shadowy sovereignties may be disregarded here, in spite of the fact that it was considered neces- sary, many years later, for various states concerned to convey to the United States their rights to territory which they never owned or ruled over.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.