History of Stearns County, Minnesota, Volume I, Part 6

Author: Mitchell, William Bell, 1843-
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : H. S. Cooper
Number of Pages: 964

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But the tide of civilization was setting hitherward slowly but irresistibly. At the time our story closes, 1849, the Indian trader, the trapper and the hunter had discovered and taken possession of the realm of Stearns, and the agricultural pioneer was ready to transform the region in a decade.

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

CHAPTER IV.

CHANGES IN SOVEREIGNTY.

European Monarchs Who Have Ruled Over Stearns County-State and County Affiliations-In the Columbian Empire of Spain-In French Louisiana- Again Spanish-Once More French-Under the Stars and Stripes-By P. M. Magnusson.

In the Columbian Empire of Spain. Stearns, all Minnesota, the whole of the United States, yes, all of the Western Hemisphere, was included in the truly imperial domains claimed by the crown (or rather crowns) of Spain by virtue of the discovery of Columbus. As the then inhabitants of Stearns and the government of Spain were mutually sublimely unconscious of each other, a mere mention of the theoretic sovereignty will suffice.

In French Louisiana. The world has never known any more intrepid and indefatigable explorers and pioneers than the French. When La Salle on April 9, 1682, at the mouth of the Mississippi took possession for the King of France of all the territory drained by the great river, Stearns passed tech- nically from the sovereignty of his Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain, into the realm of his Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV, King of France. Stearns was now part of Louisiana, as this vast Mississippi region was called in honor of the king. To be sure, the French had already claimed this land under the proclamation of Sieur de St. Lusson in 1671 at Sault de St. Marie, since there he claimed for the king not only the region drained by the Great Lakes, but also "all the countries * adjacent thereto bonnded by the * seas, north, west, and south." As Stearns does not drain into the Great Lakes, it comes under this last clause. But this is rather too sweeping a claim even to be considered valid by the easy customs of that day. The French did more, however, than merely take formal possession of it after discovery. At once, with an energy that is astonishing, they took actual possession of these vast regions and entered into the life of their newly acquired subjects. As traders, as explorers, as missionaries, as settlers, they radiated their influence through the vast wilderness from one end to the other. Unfortunately for them, their number was altogether inadequate for making French civilization permanent. But even the wild hunter in Stearns soon felt the influence of the French. He found a market for his furs, had a steel knife, and the boom of the flintlock was heard in the land.

Hence the modern inhabitants of Stearns may extract all the nurture for pride that we can from the fact that we may connt le Grand Monarque, Louis XIV, and Louis XV, "the well beloved," as sovereigns of Stearns.

Again Spanish. In 1762, after just one hundred years of formal posses- sion, France ceded all of her territory west of the Mississippi by a secret treaty to Spain. This was probably a precaution to keep it out of the hands of the English, who were then victorious in the war known to us as the "French and Indian War" and in European history as the "Seven Years' War." The next

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

year France ceded practically all of her territory east of the Mississippi to England. Hence Stearns became Spanish while right across the river, Benton and Sherburne became English. The Mississippi river became an international boundary, and divided the territories of His Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain, from His Britannic Majesty, Defender of the Faith. The main part of St. Cloud stands on territory twice Spanish and twice French, while East St. Cloud is located on what was once British soil after having been a part of the dominion of France and earlier of Spain. The Spanish monarchs of Stearns were Charles III and Charles IV, while across the river ruled George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland.

However, while the political sovereignty was Spanish, what little civilizing influences and white man's products came to Stearns were, as before, French, whether it was blankets, gunpowder, whiskey or Christianity. These things came, to be sure, mostly from British territory and had the British stamp of origin, but the traders were the same as before, or their sons, hence French or French halfbreeds.

Slowly, however, British capital and enterprise began to penetrate Minne- sota, the eastern part of which was the 'ultima thule" of British North America. The British fur trader came and after a while these traders in 1787 formed the Northwest Company. Though Stearns was never British soil, its fur trade went to the British.

Meanwhile, by the treaty of Paris of 1783, the territory east of the Mississippi was ceded by Great Britain to the United States. Thus in St. Cloud we are in the original United States when on the east side of the river. This territory was claimed by the state of Virginia until it was ceded by that state and became a part of the Northwest Territory in 1787. This territory was established by the Congress under the Confederation out of land ceded by several of the states. It was bounded by the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, Pennsylvania, the Great Lakes, and the British dominions.

Very little effect did these mighty political mutations have on the life of the Stearnites of those days. East of the river, Virginia succeeded Great Britain as the rightful wielder of the police power, and Virginia was followed by the Northwest Territory; the Continental Congress, or to use the less common but correct designation, the Congress of the Confederation, followed George III as chief executive, and Congress was succeeded by Washington and John Adams, but it is safe to say that of all this the Dakota and Ojibway inhabitants of Stearns knew nothing. They themselves were engaged in an internecine war over this very territory and they would doubtless have been very much surprised to hear that the land was lost to both of them.

The British, in spite of treaties, kept possession of the fur trade practically unmolested till the day of young Lieutenant Pike. Hence, as far as the dusky Stearnite was concerned, the only change in his "foreign relations" during the forty years following the cession to Spain (1762) was that when he went to Sandy Lake or Prairie du Chien to sell his pelts, buy his powder and lead, and get his annual spree on firewater, he found towards the end of the period a greater and greater sprinkling of British traders among the familiar French. Thus he found a Warren among the Cadottes and he may have chanced upon

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

Captain Jonathan Carver or one of the Ponds. But even at the end of the period the "coureur de bois" were on the whole as French as their name and as Indian as their complexion-that of "bois brule."

Once More French. By the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, March 13, 1801, Stearns together with the rest of Spanish Louisiana became once more French. Since 1762 great changes had taken place in France. The monarchy was overturned, the king and queen executed, and France transformed into a radical republic by the great revolution. Now the revolution had spent itself, the rule of the visionary and the lawyer was over, and the dominion of the Man on Horseback had come. Napoleon, at once the free choice of a free people and an absolute ruler, sat in France in the seat of the mighty and ruled as First Consul nominally, but really as the absolute sovereign of France.

American writers, naturally getting their knowledge mostly through the English language, and hence from English historians, have pretty generally adopted the English prejudice against Napoleon. It is quite natural, I had almost said proper, for an Englishman to be prejudiced against Napoleon. He was the arch enemy of England. But for Americans to follow blindly the historical prejudices of the English just because they read more English than anything else, does not show much critical acumen or breadth of mind. One of their superstitions is that Napoleon "by thinly veiled military coercion" made himself master of France. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Napoleon was the idol of the French masses from the day he proved to them his great military genius until his death. This is shown clearly by his return from Elba. Without any military power he landed on French soil. A thor- oughly organized government had all the resources of France at its command, and still he won France without striking a blow. If any government ever governed "by the consent of those governed" it was that of the First Consul Bonaparte and Emperor Napoleon. So great, so dear a place had he in the hearts of the French people that a generation after his death his nephew was the practically unanimous choice of the French people for emperor, almost exclusively because of the love and admiration for his great uncle. It is true that the theorizers and the doctrinaires believed in the revolution and the republic, but they were a small minority, as we say in mathematics, a negligible quantity.

It is well to remember that the French Revolution was engineered and "put through" by a very few fanatical theorists with the help of the Paris mob; and that never for a day even had the republic been favored by the French millions. Not until the eighteen-eighties was there a truly "stay-so" republican majority in France.

Far from having his whole career planned when he started his Italian campaign, as so many historians seem to take for granted, Napoleon, like the rest of us, had many plans that failed. It scarcely admits of a doubt that his personal aim with his Egyptian campaign was to outrival Alexander and found a mighty oriental empire into which, like Alexander, he then was to introduce Europcan civilization. That dream was doomed to speedy disil- lusion ; but he snatched victory from defeat and made himself First Consul of France. But even Napoleon could scarcely have dared to hope in 1799 that

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

it would be possible to transform revolutionary France into an empire and an empire that was to dominate Europe. So he made haste and acquired from Spain territory for an American empire. Louisiana together with Haiti and perhaps all the rest of the West Indies would, when developed, have made a splendid empire. Nor need we suppose that he intended to stop with this territory. The western hemisphere had limitless possibilities for territorial expansion. But here again he met failure. The Haitian revolution, led by Touissant L'Overture, the Negro Washington, was finally quelled by the French, but it was a bad beginning for empire-building. Besides, he began to see possibilities looming up in Europe far outshining his American dream. Therefore, with that swift certainty in execution which marked his genius, he reversed his plans and when the American envoys asked for New Orleans, he sold them the whole magnificent empire of Louisiana.

During the Spanish period Stearns had belonged to Upper Louisiana and had been governed by a lieutenant governor residing in St. Louis. Napoleon sold Louisiana before he took possession of it, so our connection with the Napoleonic autocracy is reasonably slim. For one day only, March 10, 1804, did a representative of Napoleon's government exercise sovereignment over Upper Louisiana at St. Louis, and that only in order to turn over the country formally to the United States.

Under the Stars and Stripes. Finally the sovereignty over Stearns had been settled and settled right and to stay. Stearns was now in the American territory of Louisiana. In 1805 Stearns became a part of the new territory of Missouri, which included approximately what had been Upper Louisiana with the Spaniards. From 1820, when Missouri was admitted to the Union as a state, to 1834 Stearns and all territory north of Missouri and west of the great river was without any organized government. It was the Indians' country, supposed to be valueless for civilization. In 1834 as a makeshift to provide for the needs of the pioneers that in spite of sage advice from the wiseacres who knew that the great American desert began just across the river, still persisted in settling there and raising bumper crops, this territory was annexed for governmental purposes to the territory organized east of the river, Michigan. Then Stearns was in Crawford county, Michigan. In 1836 Stearns became a part of Crawford county, Wisconsin. In 1838 Stearns came into the territory of Iowa. When Iowa in 1846 was admitted as a state into the Union, a bill was introduced to organize the territory north of Iowa. The names Chippewa, Jackson, and Itasca were suggested together with Minesota and Minnesota as the name of the new territory. We should remember with thankful admiration the good taste of the Fathers in finally choosing our present beautiful name-Minnesota. This year the bill failed, however, of passage, because Congress quite naturally considered it unnecessary to erect a territorial government for a country that did not contain over 600 white inhabitants.

But two years later a bill was introduced for organizing the territory of Minnesota. Its western boundary was the Missouri river, so it was almost twice as large in territory as the state is today. Early in 1849 the bill was passed and in the spring of the same year our first territorial government was

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

organized under Governor Ramsey. In the census taken that year by the territorial government, they were able by careful search and counting the 317 soldiers at Fort Snelling to record 4,780 inhabitants in Minnesota.

It certainly would be hard to find, even in the most historic corners of Europe, a piece of territory with a political history having more varied muta- tions of sovereignty than our county of Stearns. Denoting this territory by the pronoun we, it may be said that we have been twice Spanish, twice French, and as Americans we have been in Louisiana, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa before we bore the name of Minnesota. For a long time we were a mark or "palatinate" country, being situated on an international boundary. Where I sit now in the city of St. Cloud on the west side of the river, I can look out of the window and see land across the Mississippi which was English or United States when we were French or Spanish, and which as American territory has been Virginia, the Northwest Territory, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Before and partly contemporaneously with the white man's rule there were on both sides of the river the Indian dominions stretching back in an illimitable vista into the unknown past. Of this history we know only the tradition of a few generations back, of the rivalry of the mighty Indian tribes, the Dakota and the Ojibway.

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CHAPTER V.

INDIAN TREATIES.

Treatment of the Indian-Treaty of 1785-Dakota Treaty of 1837-Chippewa Treaty of 1847-Treaty of Traverse de Sioux-Treaty of Mendota-Other Indian Treaties-Reign of the Red Men Ends and the County of Stearns Is Opened to Settlement-By P. M. Magnusson.

It is fashionable to be very much scandalized and to stand pharisaically aghast at the unconscionable way in which the Indian has been treated by our government. For the record shows that from the purchase of Manhattan island to our day, the Indian has been induced to sell lands of imperial value for sums that in comparison are beggarly. But this criticism shows to what ridiculous lengths an abstract theory may lead the uncritical.

True, the Indian, sold lands now worth a hundred dollars per acre, or even per front foot, for a fraction of a cent per acre; but consider first how much the land was worth to the Indian. Is it not the white man and his civilization that have given the land its present value ? And what title did the Indian have to the land ? Why should the Indian be considered the owner of the land just because he occupied it first? One would judge that by the highest ethical standards the superior civilization has the right to the land.

But our government wisely and liberally decided to pay the Indian for his land, and always to secure his formal consent to its occupation by the whites. Millions of dollars have been paid to the Indians for the land on

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

which they scalped each other, and it is safe to say that if the Indians had used wisely what our government has paid them, every man, woman and child of the race would today be well-to-do.

But, unfortunately, while the theory of our government has been wise and liberal, its execution, while liberal, has been far from wise. The Indian has been treated as a contractual equal, and the simple child of nature has been given fortunes which he could not care for. Many are the stories of how the day after an apportionment had been received by the Indians, one could see elegant carriages, furniture fit for a palace, and even pianos moving into the wilderness accompanied by their dusky owners on the way to their teepees. And this was the relatively innocent way in which they parted with their fortune. Much, perhaps most, was spent for firewater, or under its influence gambled away. Incompetent and dishonest Indian agents also cheated the Indian and allowed him to be cheated by traders and speculators.

But during the last quarter of the nineteenth century our Indian service and our methods of dealing with the Indian have been thoroughly reformed, and today the United States of America can safely challenge the world to show a more honest, efficient, and liberal treatment of a primitive race than the one we accord the American aborigines.

Treaty of 1785. The first treaty of the United States with the Indians that even remotely refers to the territory of Stearns was the treaty of "peace" which the United States concluded at the above date at Fort McIntosh on the Ohio river with the "Wyandott, Delaware, Chippewa, and Ottawa Nations of Indians." As to that date the Ojibway, or Chippewa, held the northern part of Stearns, we may say that this territory was at least theoretically affected.

Dakota Treaty of 1837. In that year Agent Taliafero with a delegation of Sioux (Dakota) chiefs went to Washington and here with Joel R. Poinsett, Secretary of War, who had been appointed commissioner for that purpose, the Indians concluded a treaty ceding all the Dakota lands on the east side of the Mississippi and all islands in the stream. The Dakota rights were supposed to extend up to Watab. The consideration amounted to $396,000, and in addi- tion annuities for twenty years amounting annually to $15,000. The only part of Stearns county affected are some islands in the Mississippi.

Chippewa Treaty of Fond du Lac of Superior, 1847. By this treaty the Ojibway's portion of Stearns was ceded to the United States. Parts of Morrison and Todd were also included in this session. For this the Indians got $34,000 within six months of ratification, and an annuity of $1,000 per annum for forty-six years. No provision was made in this treaty for the exclusion of intoxicating liquors.

Treaty of Traverse de Sioux, 1851. At this time the red man in theory yet possessed all the land west of the great river and south of the Chippewa boundary in Minnesota. A few years before, the whites had considered this land worthless for civilization, but now they had sufficiently discovered their very great mistake. The Northern pioneers were clamorous for a chance to build civilized communities on these fertile acres. But the slaveholding South held the balance of political power in the nation at the time, and the South was not anxious for another state sure to be opposed to slavery. But finally

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

the pressure became too great and President Fillmore in the spring of 1851 appointed Governor Ramsey and Luke Lee, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to arrange for a cession of this territory. The two upper tribes of the Dakotas lived in the upper part of the Minnesota (or St. Peter) river basin, that is, from Lake Traverse to Traverse de Sioux, the present St. Peter. The com- missioners met with these tribes, the Wahpetons and Sissetons, at Traverse de Sioux and after a month's deliberation and waiting the treaty was finally drawn up and signed, ceding the immense territory of half Minnesota and thousands of acres in Iowa and South Dakota. It must be said, however, that the Indians had not the slightest claim to two-thirds of this territory.

Treaty of Mendota, 1851. The two "Lower" Dakota tribes, the Wapekuta and M'dewakanton tribes, were met at Mendota, near St. Paul, and after many long and wordy conferences in which the wily wisdom and primitive sagacity of the barbarian was finally outmatched by the bland and canny diplomacy of civilization, the end desired by the white man was finally achieved. By these two treaties the red man parted with the remainder of Minnesota, except the reservations. Included therein was the Dakota part of Stearns county. The considerations promised the Indian in these two treaties in 1851 amounted to several millions of dollars. Only a very little of this was ever paid, for after the horrible Indian massacre of 1863, which was perpetrated by these very Indians, Congress annulled the treaty.

Other Indian Treaties. Having discussed them previously in the text, we do not here repeat anything about the earlier French treaties and proclama- tions to the Indians. For the same reason we shall only mention again the treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1825 in which Minnesota and Stearns were divided between the Dakota and Ojibway tribes; and the treaty at Washington with the Winnebagos in 1848 when they received the reservation between the Watab and Crow Wing rivers.

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

CHAPTER VI.

DAWN OF CIVILIZATION.

Sudden Transformation by Which the Arts of the White Took the Place of Centuries of Aboriginal Life-Stearns County's Share in the Evolution of Society-Completing Dr. P. M. Magnusson's Chapters on "The Realm of Stearns County Before Minnesota Was Minnesota."

Here endeth the ancient history of Stearns. As we have noted, all but the last century of the unnumbered aeons of the past are shrouded in the gloom of unrecorded barbarism. Lying as it does, west of the Mississippi, Stearns was a full generation behind adjacent lands on the east side of the river in the white man's exploration and occupation.

In the seventeenth century the white man's knife, hatchet, kettle, and gun began to replace the utensils and weapons of the Stone Age, and the blanket appeared with the skin and fur; but yet for two centuries the savage roamed uncontrolled.

In the chancellories of Europe, the territory of Stearns, with other American lands, was repeatedly transferred on parchment from one dominion and majesty to another, but as far as this teritory was concerned, it was a game of trading "sight unseen." Little effect it had upon the savage who continued to hunt and scalp as before. Even the trader recognized these political ehanges but tardily if at all. These two centuries of twilight eame suddenly to an end. Almost with the swiftness of a tropical sunrise, civiliza- tion arrived and flooded this region with the light of the white man's eulture. A few years near the middle of the nineteenth century saw this transformation. The Indian hunter, his teepee, the sealp dance, the trading post vanished and in half a generation there appeared the eultivated acres, the farmsteads, the railroads, the schools, and the churches of civilization.

The suddenness of the transformation is well indieated by the fact that it was not until 1847 that a white man could legally acquire title to any part of Stearns' soil, exeept possibly to some islands in the Mississippi; and not until 1851, two years after a territorial government was organized, was the southern and greater part of Stearns opened to civilization; and yet less than half a dozen years later the white man's eivilization had taken possession with a complete set of flourishing institutions, schools, churches, newspaper, county, town, and village government, business houses and farms; and in the great struggle for national union which came in the next decade, Stearns did the share both intellectually and physically of a mature as well as a patriotic community.

Thus with befitting suddenness the day of doom came to the epie of the dusky raee in Stearns, and began the drama of the paleface. The day of the Indian, the trader and the explorer were over. Antiquity, the ancient raee and the aneient ways were at an end. In 1849, where this chapter of the story

HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

ends, Stearns, still a land of savages in the newly created Territory of Minnesota, faced the sudden morning of civilization with its larger problems, grander struggles, and nobler blessings.

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History of Stearns County, Minnesota, Volume I, Part 6

Author: Mitchell, William Bell, 1843- Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago : H. S. Cooper Number of Pages: 964

Author: Mitchell, William Bell, 1843-
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : H. S. Cooper
Number of Pages: 964