USA > Minnesota > Wabasha County > History of Wabasha County : together with biographical matter, statistics, etc. : gathered from matter furnished by interviews with old settlers, county, township, and other records, and extracts from files of papers, pamphlets, and such other sources > Part 47
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657
PEPIN TOWNSHIP.
READ'S LANDING.
This is the name of a small village on the Minnesota side of the river just where Lake Pepin narrows into the usual channel of the Mississippi. It received its name about thirty-six years since from Charles R. Read, a man with a history, and who is still living just outside the corporate limits of the village, which was given the honors of a corporate existence twenty-one years after he set up his stakes and built his shanty just opposite the mouth of the Chippewa river. The location is a delightful one and most admirably adapted for the purposes of early Indian trade. Above it the river broadens out into the beautiful waters of Lake Pepin, around whose shores the natives were wont to gather, and associated with whose waters and rocks are some of the most plaintive legends of the northwest- ern tribes. Just across from it is the mouth of the Chippewa river, down whose current the fur-laden canoes came in early days, only to be followed in later years by the rafts of the Wisconsin lumber- men, each raft the tribute of a forest. The village occupies a nar- row strip along the river, at the base of the cliffs or bluffs which here rise, quite precipitous, almost from the rocky shore, leaving footing, however, for the business houses and dwellings of what was once the most thriving town on the upper river. Somewhere on the margin of the river, if tradition speaks correctly, just east of the old Richards warehouse, on ground now occupied by the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, Augus- tine Rocque, a Scotch-French-Canadian, built the first trading shanty ever erected in this region. Mention is made of earlier trading- posts along the shores of the lake, but nothing positive is known concerning them; and, well authenticated as are the facts of Rocque's occupancy of the present site of Read's Landing as a trad- ing-post for some fifteen or twenty years, nothing accurate can be learned as to the date of his coming or the time of his departure. This much we can ascertain : it was some time in the early part of the present century, during the first decade, that Augustine Rocque, leaving Prairie du Chien, located at the foot of Lake Pepin, and made that point the center of his trading for furs with the Indian tribes on both sides of the river. The Sioux, as they were then beginning to be known to the whites, brought their furs to the post established by Rocque, receiving goods in return. The Chippewas received their supplies from him and brought their furs to the tem-
39
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HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
porary post established by him at Chippewa Falls, and which he visited at regular intervals. Beyond this little is known of Augus- tine Rocque's operations under the direction of the traders at Prairie dn Chien. He continued at the foot of Pepin, so says his grand- son, Baptiste Roeque, of Wabasha, for some fifteen or twenty years, till the infirmities of old age necessitated his relinquishing the arduous labors of a fur-trader on the frontier, and he returned to Prairie du Chien, where he shortly afterward died, at which time he was supposed to be about ninety years of age. Augustine Roeque married a half-breed woman, and by her had four children two sons and two daughters. Of these sons, one, Augustine, followed his father's occupation on the banks of the Mississippi and its tribu- taries, becoming in time quite an influential trader, whose voice was respected in the councils of the Sioux and also of the Sae and Fox, to which latter tribe his wife belonged. The other son of the elder Augustine, name not definitely known but given as M'Kendie, was in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, and subsequently lost in the wilderness there, no trace of his fate having been learned by his people.
Augustine, Jr., when a young man, opened a trading-post at the mouth of La Rivière au Bœuf, or Beef river-the present mouth of the Beef slough, and continued in trade there for some time, when he removed his headquarters to the west side of the Mississippi below Minneiska, at a place known as Mount Vernon in the early history of this section. Augustine Roek extended his trading opera- tions up the Chippewa as far as the falls, and through southern Minnesota into Iowa, establishing posts along the Turkey and Cedar rivers. His trade had become quite extensive, when it was broken up by the Black Hawk war, and his interior posts abandoned. During this war Mrs. La Chapelle, a French-Sioux woman whose descendants are now living on the lot adjoining Baptiste Roeque, at Wabasha, was called upon to act as interpreter between the United States authorities under Gen. Dodge, and the Sioux chiefs. Baptiste, son of Augustine, was at that time a boy of ten or twelve years of age, and describes in a very graphic manner the conference between Gen. Dodge and Wahpashaw, in which the latter was completely won to the side of the whites, and took up arms against the Sac and Fox under Black Hawk. Not long after the conclusion of the Black Hawk war, probably about 1834 or 1835, Augustine Rocque removed from Mt. Vernon and established a
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PEPIN TOWNSHIP.
trading-post on the margin of the river, just within the present limits of the city of Wabasha on the west, very nearly on the site of old Fort Perrot. Here he brought his family, consisting of four sons and four daughters, and this place became his home until the day of his death, about twenty-five years since. His body was buried at his own request on the bluff overlooking the river and town, that his spirit might have a free outlook over the scenes of his earlier career. As before said, he was a man of note among the tribes to which he was allied by blood and marriage. When Gen. Dodge, at the con- clusion of the Fort Snelling treaty with the Chippewas, July 29, 1837, requested the Indian agent to select a delegation of Sioux and proceed to Washington, Augustus Rocque accompanied the chiefs and, in con sort with Alexis Bailly, Joseph Laframboise, Francis Labathe, and others, represented the fur-traders' interests. During this visit the portraits of these representatives of the far west were taken, and that of Augustine Rocque now adorns the walls of the Indian gallery at the national capitol. The Rocque family, in the person of Augus- tine the elder, were the first to establish trade at what is now Read's Landing, and Augustine the younger was the first permanent settler at what is now Wabasha. All these settlements were for the pur- poses of trade and not as actual occupants of the land.
In 1840 one Hudson, an Englishman who had been living for some time at St. Peters (now Mendota), and had there married a woman of mixed blood, a daughter of Duncan Campbell, a licensed trader on the St. Croix, came to Reads and located there. As the husband of a half-breed woman, representing her rights, he laid claim to her share of the half-breed tract conveyed, in the treaty of 1830, by the M'Dewakantonwan Dahkotahs to their relatives of mixed blood. Hudson found himself without the means to build any considerable-sized house, and as the lumbering operations on the Chippewa were growing into importance, and it was desirable to establish some base of supplies on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Chippewa, a proposition was made to Hudson, by the lumber firm H. S. Allen, and accepted. In accordance with this arrange- ment Hudson proceeded to the lumber regions, after a short stay at Reads, and the following season returned with lumber for his ware- house, no doubt a moderate one, in which he conducted business until his death in 1845. Hudson's widow married Lewis Rocque, son of Augustine the younger, and thus the trading-post at the foot of Lake Pepin came again into the possession of the Rocque family
660
HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
after an interval of over a quarter a century. Matters were in this condition at Hudson's Landing, as it was then known, when Charles R. Read, who had occupied a post at Nelson's Landing, just across the Mississippi on the Wisconsin shore, came over into Minnesota, and occupied the vacant post. which he rented from Louis Roeque. Nelson's Landing, at the mouth of the Chippewa, on the Wisconsin shore, had been named from one Nelson, a trader, who some years previously had established a post there in connection with one Churchill, for purposes of trade with the Chippewas. This trading- post had been under the charge of Read for two or three years, when, in 1847, he abandoned the trade there and came over into Minnesota. This Read, the Charles R. Read from whom Read's Landing afterward derived its name, was an adventurous young
Englishinan, who at the early age of ten years crossed the seas with his brother's family and settled near the forks of the Chippewa river on the old Niagara peninsula. After some years spent in Canada, young Read left his brother's household and came over the
lines into the United States. He was at Cleveland, Ohio, when the
Canadian rebellion broke out in 1837, and the following year,
though only seventeen years of age, enlisted in the American army of invasion for the liberation and annexation of Canada. This army crossed the frontier near Windsor, opposite Detroit, and after rout- ing the Canadian militia and capturing the barracks at Amherstburg, were in turn routed by the British regulars under Gen. Erie, and
Read, with many others, made prisoner. His devil-may-care . appearance and youth won upon his captors, he was decently treated, and though tried and sentenced to be hung, was pardoned by the queen's clemency and returned to the United States in June, 1839. After five years' service in the American army in the Indian Indian character and habits that after stood him in good stead, Territory and Texas, where he formed an acquaintance with the
young Read found himself at St. Louis in the summer of 1844. From St. Louis he came up the river to the mouth of the Chip- pewa, taking service with Messrs. Churchill & Nelson, for the first year as cook, afterward in charge of their business at Nel- son's Landing, buying furs and trading with the Indians. In 1847, as before said, Mr. Read having secured permission from the United States authorities, crossed the river into Minnesota, rented the old Hudson warehouse from Lewis Rocque, and opened trade. From that date the place has been known as Read's Landing.
661
PEPIN TOWNSHIP.
Thus after an interval of a quarter of a century the old trading- post of the elder Rocque began to be transmuted into a modern trading-post for whites and half-breeds, as well as natives. This change soon became more manifest and became distinctively a trade with the whites, but not without some opposition and at times the danger of sanguinary strife. The coming of Mr. Read to Minnesota soil, and his establishment of a trading-post for Indian traffic, was strongly opposed by Alexis Bailly, of Wabasha, who had been Indian trader at that point for some years, and was, by virtue of his early marriage relations with the Sionx chiefs, in condition to make his opposition felt.
When Mr. Read went to Fort Snelling to secure his license from the Indian agent at that point, he took steamer up the river. Wah- pashaw had secured a numerously signed remonstrance against Read's securing government license, and this remonstrance was forwarded by United States mail on the same steamer with Read. This boat only went to Stillwater, and Read carried the mail (a small one, which he put in his pocket) on foot to Fort Snelling, a distance of twenty-six miles. Read handed his mail to the Indian agent, Col. Bruce, and at the same time his request for license as an Indian trader. The colonel opened the letter of remonstrance in Read's presence, told him the nature of its contents, and how difficult it would be for him, as agent of Indian affairs there, to overlook the remonstrance. Fortunately for Read, he had a friend at conrt in the person of post sutler Frank Steele, and through his representa- tions and influence the license was granted, and Read returned to the landing. He was allowed to pursue his business one year only in peace, when the opposition to his trading took definite form, and the Indians, instigated thereto, began to give him trouble. One day in June, 1848, Read was sitting on a log which he had been sawing for shingles, when a strapping Indian came up and, seating himself on the log, told Read he (Read) would have to leave there at once, that the tract he was on belonged to the half-breeds, and that he had no business there, and if he did not go they would make him. For reply Read raised his hand and, giving the Indian a hard back-handed blow, knocked him off the log; at which the Indian took himself off, and Read says he was not seen in that vicinity for a year thereafter. One evening in the following Octo- ber, after supper, Read was sitting in his shanty, when he was sur- rounded by Little Crow, a chief of the Kaposia band of Sioux, with
662
HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
twelve of his braves. These Indians had been on a visit to Wahpa- shaw, and it is supposed were instigated by him to get Read out of the way. These, with one exception, were all on horseback, and members of Little Crow's band ; the Indian on foot was a member of Wahpashaw's band, and entering the cabin informed Read they had come to kill him, and clean him out. Read had learned . that promptness in dealing with an Indian is the only strategy, and seizing a chair he felled the Indian to the floor, and set one of the legs through his upper lip, tearing it out, and fonr teeth with it. The savage sprang to his feet with a yell, and darted through the door, the blood spurting from his mouth. Read's blood was up, and he dared another one of them to enter his cabin at peril of his life. In the meantime, William Campbell, an educated half-breed Sioux, and warm friend of Read's, came up, and being informed of the trouble, armed himself with an axe, and taking sides with Read stood in the doorway, and told Little Crow he could only get at Read over his dead body. The prospect was not inviting, and Little Crow drew off his band, leaving Read in peace, and no farther at- tempt to drive him away by force was resorted to. Upon the organi- zation of the territory, the following year, 1849, Gov. Ramsay was requested to remove Read, on the ground of his being the cause of all the Indian disturbances in that region, and also because, as was alleged, he was selling liquor to the Indians. The investigation was ordered, and after a careful examination the charges were dismissed. All that could be substantiated was that Read had sold an empty barrel, formerly containing whisky, to an Indian, who claimed that there was some whisky in the barrel at the time he purchased it. This was the last attempt to interfere with Read's trade at the land- ing ; the following year other persons came, and the life of a solitary trader ended for him.
In 1849 Mr. Read built his new warehouse, a more commodious structure than the one previously occupied by him. This latter building stood where the postoffice now is, in the old Richards warehouse, built in 1855. In 1850 Mr. S. F. Richards, a native of Genesee county, New York, who had been at Prairie du Chien for some years, came to Read's Landing and opened trade with the Indians, also supplying the lumber camps np the Chippewa valley. Mr. Richards built his first store very near the corner of Water and Richards streets, as they now are, on the river side of Water and east of Richards. His capital was by no means small, and his trade
663
PEPIN TOWNSHIP.
was quite extensive. Some five years later he built his storeroom and warehouse on the northwest corner of Water and Richards streets. This was a three-story building as seen from the levee, two stories from the street in front, 25×60 feet, and in this Mr. Richards did a very large business for years. The following season Knapp, Stout & Co., one of the heavy lumber firms of the Chip- pewa valley, built their store and warerooms on the west of Richards', adjoining, and so business multiplied. Prior to this, in 1854, a hotel was built, and later the Bullard House was erected, which from 1859 to 1865 was known as the best hotel on the river. In 1863 the storage and commission house of Charles Nunn was estab- lished. Helmick & Warszawski followed, with others, until at the close of the war there was not a point on the Upper Mississippi river where so thriving a trade was carried on as at Read's Landing. The causes of its prosperity and decay are matters of some little interest, illustrating as they do the rise and fall of towns as business is diverted from or directed into certain channels.
The early lumbering operations on the Chippewa and its tribu- taries were carried on at a very manifest disadvantage. All supplies must necessarily reach them from below through the Mississippi river and the navigable waters of the Chippewa and its tributaries. This channel of communication was only open during certain seasons of the year, and when navigation closed the lumbermen in he pineries and at the mills were cut off from the outside world, to a very great extent. Mails had to be transported on voyageurs' shoulders or by pony express for hundreds of miles, and heavy freighting during that scason became quite too expensive as well as hazardous to be resorted to only in extremity. The lumber crews returning from their voyages down the Mississippi to the np-river steamers would land at the mouth of the Chippewa and wait for rafts to be made up for new trips. All the necessities of the trade required that at some point at the mouth of the Chippewa there should be a depot of sup- plies for the mill-owners and storekeepers in the woods and at the mills, commission houses and agencies to transact business between the lumber firms and the crews that floated logs down the river to their various places of consignment, and hotels and accommodations for the waiting crews. For many years this want was supplied by Read's Landing, and as the volume of the lumber trade along the Chippewa and its tributaries increased from year to year, the volume of the trade at Reads increased until its yearly aggregate was out of
664
HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
all proportion to the size of the place. It was the center of exchange for all matters connected with the lumber trade of western Wiscon- sin ; its one hand reaching up the Chippewa, clutching the innumer- able string of logs and lumber that issned from its streams and woods ; its other hand stretching down the Mississippi, directing the course of these rafts to their various points of destination and returning the proceeds, less commissions and wages, to the directing head. So long as Reads could maintain this position as the center of exchange, her prosperity was assured. For years her levee was one busy scene of activity so long as the unchilled current of the Mississippi went flowing toward the gulf; and in winter there was sufficient trade on sleds up the valley to at least keep the channels of trade opened and incite to new activity when the imprisoned waters should again go free. At this time it was no unusual thing to see from three hundred to four hundred raftmen at the landing waiting for the Chippewa floats to be made into rafts for them to navigate down the river, and the volume of freight discharged at the levee was simply enormous. It was in fact the Mississippi landing for all the supplies necessary to provision, clothe and equip the lumber camps and mills, and employés connected therewith.
The first sctback Reads received was on the completion of the Western Wisconsin railway to Eau Claire in 1870. By this opening of railway communication to the lumber camps and mills the neces- sity of Read's Landing as a center for supplies and distributing depot was abolished. Supplies came direct by rail to the very heart of the lumber district ; consignments of goods, mails, etc., were more readily made by rail than by water, with this added advantage : the communication was not closed by the incoming of winter, but remained open the year round. Less capital was accordingly locked up in transit, returns being made more readily and the accumulation of winter supplies being no longer indispensable. The commission and trading houses were the ones to feel this curtailment, but gen- eral business at Reads still continued good. The constant outgoing and incoming of her hundreds of raftsmen day by day created trade, and money was always in tree circulation. Reads was necessarily the headquarters of the rafting crews and their point of departure from the lumber camps in the logging season after navigation had closed for the year. Only the one arm of Reads' prosperity was thus ent off, the other, however, was soon to be crippled. The trade sustained by outfitting rafts, furnishing supplies of all kinds,
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PEPIN TOWNSHIP.
notably provisions and clothing for the men, was in itself sufficient to keep a good-sized town alive. But the slow process of floating rafts down the Mississippi became too tedious for the hasty, hurrying movements of western enterprise, and the idea of towing rafts down the river by steamer was soon mooted, discussed, scouted at, tried, and, proving a success, was finally adopted, became the rule, the number of raftsmen was decreased to one-third of the former army required to man the floating rafts, and the second chapter in the history of Read's Landing's decadence was ended.
The credit of towing the first lumber raft down the Mississippi belongs to Capt. Si. Bradley, of Stillwater, who successfully accom- plished the generally considered impossible feat in the Minnie Will, in 1866. A patent was applied for, denied, and little by little the towing by steamer became general, until floating down the Mis- sissippi was practically abandoned. Still there was an immense business centering at Read's Landing. All the rafts that went down the Father of Waters, whether of timber or of logs, and the number was legion, came down the Chippewa in strings, to be made into rafts at the mouth of that stream, and when so coupled, to be towed to southern lumber mills and yards. This business of coupling "strings " into rafts was very extensive, and hundreds of men found employment at this work, whose trade and the supply of whose daily wants kept business still healthily alive at Read's Landing. But even this source of revenue was denied her after a time, and all logs were destined to forsake the main channel of the Chippewa and find an outlet into the Mississippi through the southern mouth, usually known as Beef Slough.
The Chippewa river forks some twenty miles above its entrance into the Mississippi at Read's Landing, and one branch of this delta follows the east range of bluffs till it enters into the Mississippi about twelve miles below Reads Landing ; the other and more direct chan- nel of the Chippewa follows the foot of the west line of bluffs and empties into the big river opposite Reads. The first-named channel, from its forking from the main Chippewa stream to its entrance into the Mississippi, is a succession of lagoons, or sloughs, opening one into the other with innumerable islands and sluggish channels, cover- ing the whole flat surface between the foot of the bluffs and the open channel of the Mississippi. Through these sloughs the logs are now brought ; miles of booms stretch their parallel lengths through these sluggish waters ; crews of men are stationed at intervals to receive
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HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
the logs, assort them, trail each owner's logs into strings and deliver them at the mouth of the slough, to be coupled into rafts and taken down the river. This immense business, aggregating from 400,000,000 feet to 500,000,000 feet annually, within a few years has been entirely transferred from the upper to the lower mouth of the Chippewa, and the trade it created and fed was deserted from Read's Landing to Alma in Wisconsin and Wabasha in this county. Thus was the third chapter in the financial decrease of Reads written, and its monuments are the unoccupied piles of brick and mortar, where business no longer flourishes, but all is silent, deserted, and going to dry rot. The finishing stroke was given to the trade of the landing by the completion of the Chippewa Valley railroad to Wabasha in 1882. By this construction all the real profits of Chip- pewa valley trade, so far as it benefits Minnesota merchants, is reaped at Wabasha, the rail carrying all crews and their kits direct from the mouth of the Chippewa to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls, leaving scarcely any gleanings of trade for the merchants of Read's Landing, who find each year less prospect of returning prosperity.
VILLAGE OF READS.
It was during the season of Reads' greatest prosperity, before the opening of the railway to Eau Claire, that the incorporation of the village was deemed advisable by the inhabitants of the little big trading and freighting post, and steps accordingly taken to accom- plish that object. This incorporation was effected under an act of the state legislature approved March 5, 1868, and the election to fill the various offices created by said act was held on the second day of the following month, April 2, 1868. The officers to be elected were five trustees, one clerk, one treasurer, one marshal, one justice of the peace and one assessor. The judges of election were : Messrs. J. Saner, C. R. Read and Wm. B. Haines ; the clerks were : P. B. Cline and Claude R. Haines. The highest num- ber of votes cast was for the office of trustee, ninety-seven being polled. The successful candidates were-trustees : F. S. Richards, D. W. Wilson, Joe Dieterich, Jacob Sauer, Christ. Neihardt ; clerk, Joseph Warszawski ; treasurer, B. Brass ; marshall, Wm. F. Clock ; justice of the peace, Wm. B. Haines ; assessor, Chas. Hornbogen. The officers-elect met on the 20th of the month (April) and organized, with S. F. Richards as president of the board of trustees, for the ensuing year. The bonds of the various officers
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