USA > Minnesota > Wright County > History of Wright County, Minnesota > Part 6
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
the cavity had the appearance of having been filled with blankets or hides rolled closely, or possibly a body. It was so dark we could not examine as fully as we wished to do. We did not find the peculiar impervious layers in this mound .- E. E. Wood- worth."
On lots 3 and 4, N. W. 16, S. W. 14, see. 18, T. 121-27, at 48 feet above the lake, is a series of eighteen tumuli and one elon- gated mound. The line of extension of this series is away from the lake bluff, and the larger mounds are out of the line, the largest being 70 feet wide and 51% feet high. They begin at 60 feet from the lake bluff and 150 feet from the water. Surveyed July 2, 1887.
There is a solitary mound, 35 feet above the lake, 30 feet in diameter, at the center of the N. E. 14, see. 13, T. 121-28.
Pleasant Lake mound, a solitary tumulus, is at the center of the N. E. 14, see. 24, T. 121-28; 28 feet in diameter; 50 feet above the lake.
Clearwater River enclosure. This is on N. E. 14, S. E. 1/4, see. 11, T. 121-28, at 35 feet above the river and 250 feet from it. This enelosure is of an oblong shape, with an opening of five feet at the east end. The embankment is 12 feet wide and 11% feet high. A road passes across it. Its greatest dimension is 102 feet. Surveyed August 3, 1887.
Pulaski Lake mounds. Lot 3 of sec. S, T. 120-25. llere is a group of fourteen mounds, of which five are elongated north and south, parallel with the direction of the series in which they lie ; 30 feet above the lake. The largest eireular mound is in the series, 65 feet by 7 feet. There are distinctly two sizes of the elongated mounds, viz .: 18 feet (or 20 feet) by 26 feet (or 30 feet), and 30 feet (or 35 feet) by 40 feet (or 45 feet). Surveyed September 10, 1881.
"A party from Monticello dug through the largest of these mounds. Many skeletons, buried in a horizontal position, one above another, were found, but it appears that no implements nor manufactured articles of any kind were discovered."- Upham, Geol. Sur. Rep., Vol. ii, p. 263.
Silver Lake mounds. The group, as it now remains, comprises seven tumuli, although a number of others, probably about 12, have been plowed down. They are about 30 feet above the lake, on the S. E. 14, S. E. 14, see. 5, T. 121-26. The largest mounds are isolated, 74 feet in diameter, 31/5 feet high ; and 67 feet in diame- ter, 6 feet high. Serveyed Sept. 13, 1891.
There is another tumulus, which is flat-topped, and which prob- ably belong to the foregoing group, on the N. E. 1/4, S. E. 14, of the same seetion, about 20 feet above the lake. The top is 18 feet in diameter, and the base is 50 feet, 316 feet high. It is 130 feet from the brow of the bluff, which overlooks a meadow.
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
Mounds between Lakes Ramsey and Maple. On the N. W. 14, see. 8, T. 120-26, is a single tumulus, and the remains of five others belonging to the group can be diseerned. Possibly others have been destroyed. They are about 60 feet above the lake.
Mounds at Twin lakes (Silvia lake) on S. 1%, N. W. 14, sec. 27, T. 121-28. Here are 19 earthworks, including 4 elongated mounds and one flat-topped, the last being the largest and out of the line of the series. Its base is 60 feet and its top 24 feet in diameter, 51% feet high. The longest mound is 265 feet in length and 18 feet in width, 11/2 feet high. This group is 60 feet above the lake, from 20 to 45 feet from the brink of the bluff, and about 950 feet from the water's edge. Surveyed Aug. 4, 1887.
Group at Waverly lakes, lot 3, S. E. 1/4, N. W. 1/4, see. 32, T. 119-26. In this group of 11 mounds 3 are elongated, 20 feet wide, the longest being 150 feet long, and one has a curving spur- shaped enlargement. The largest (58 feet by 5 feet), has an ex- tension 21% feet high, 35 feet wide, and 31 feet long. When it was opened it was found to contain many human bones. Surveyed Sept. 17, 1881.
A solitary circular mound is on lot 6, N. 1%, S. W. 14, sec. 32. T. 119-26, in the woods, 90 feet from the lake and 20 feet above it : 35 feet in diameter, 21/2 feet high.
Fish lake mound, N. E. 1/4, sec. 13, T. 122-27. This mound is 55 feet in diameter, 7 feet high, and 50 feet above the lake. It has been excavated. Surveyed Nov. 13, 1886.
Cokato lake mounds, E. 1%, N. E. 14, see. 15, T. 119-28, at 200 yards from the shore of the lake and 40 feet above it. The largest here is 96 feet by 9 feet, 100 feet baek from the bluff, within the line of extension of the series. One mound is elongated 76 feet by 25 feet, 2 feet high.
Grimshaw Creek group, W. 1/2, N. W. 14, sec. 6, T. 118-25. consists of 7 tumuli, two of them being large, 60 feet by 3 feet and 56 feet by 8 feet, situated on a bluff overlooking a marsh. Surveyed Sept. 16, 1881.
According to the catalogue furnished by Mr. Lewis when it was turned over to Mr. Mitchell, the Lewis collection, now in the custody of the State Historical Society, contained, from Wright county, 5 grooved axes, 6 arrow and spear heads, 2 war-points. 1 grooved hammer, 1 eelt, 1 stone roller, 1 hoe, 1 scraper and 1 "ehipped implement."
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INDIAN CHIEF
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
CHAPTER IL.
INDIAN OCCUPANCY AND TREATIES.
The North American Indian-The Dakotas-Migrations-Occu- pancy of the Mille Lacs Region-The Ojibwas-The Ojibwa- Dakota Conflict-The Winnebagoes-The Sauks and Foxes- Indians in Wright County-Indian Treaties-Wright County Passes into the Possession of the Whites-Coming of the Win- nebagoes-Life of the Indian.
The archeology and anthropology of the American Indian is still in its infaney. But a few fundamental facts stand out in bold relief. We are told by scientists that man is of great an- tiquity in America: and that though the aborigines' blood is doubtless mixed with later arrivals in many localities and tribes, still, barring the Eskimo, the fundamental race characteristies are the same from Hudson Bay to Patagonia. Hence a common American aneestry of great antiquity must be predicated of the whole Indian race.
If an imaginary line is drawn east and west through the south- ern boundary of Virginia. then except for the northwest corner of British America, the Red Men in the territory north of this line and east of the Rocky mountains, including the larger part of the United States and British America, are and have been for centuries almost exclusively of just three linguistic stocks: Iro- quoian, Siouan, and Algonquin. The one reason for elassing these Indians into three ethnie stocks is that the vocabularies of their languages do not seem to have a common origin. Otherwise these Indians are so familiar physically and psychically that even an expert will at times find it hard to tell from appearance to which stock an individual belongs. These three stocks are in mental. moral, and physical endowment the peers of any American aborigines, though in culture they were far behind the Peruvians, Mexicans, and the nations in the southwestern United States. But their native enlture is not so insignificant as is the popular impression. Except the western bands who subsisted on the buffalo, they practiced agriculture : and in many, if not in most tribes, the products of the chase and fishing supplied less than half their sustenance ; their moccasins, tanned skin clothing. bows and arrows, canoes, pottery and personal ornaments evineed a great amount of skill and not a little artistic taste. Their houses were not always the conical tipi of bark or skins, but were often very durable and comparatively comfortable and construeted of" timber or earth or even stone.
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
The Dakotas. As to how these stocks eame originally into this territory, there is no certain knowledge but much uncertain speeulation. Here we shall be content to start with the relatively late and tolerably probable event of their living together, in the eastern part of the United States, some five centuries ago. Algon- quians lived on the Atlantic slope, the Iroquois perhaps south of Lake Erie and Ontario, and the Siouans in the upper Ohio valley. These Siouan peoples had possibly previously occupied the upper Mississippi region, but for some reason had left here. At any rate, a century or so before the arrival of Columbus, found them for the most part in the upper Ohio valley. What peoples, if any, were in the meantime living on the plains of the upper Mississippi is not definitely known. Of the Siouan peoples we are interested in the main division of the Sioux, more properly the Dakotas. Probably because of the pressure of the fierce and well organized Iroquois, the Sioux, perhaps about 1400 A. D., began slowly to descend the Ohio valley. Kentucky and the adjacent parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were certainly at that time a primitive man's paradise, and the anabasis begun under compulsion was enthusiastically continued from choice. They reached the con- fluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Probably here they first encountered the buffalo, or bison, in large numbers. The spirit of adventure and the pressure of an increasing population sent large bands up the Mississippi. When the Missouri was reached no doubt some followed that stream. Those who kept to the Mississippi were rewarded as they ascended the stream by coming into what was from the viewpoint of primitive man a richer coun- try. Coming up into Minnesota a forest region was encountered soon after passing through beautiful lake Pepin. Soon a "wakan," a spiritual mystery, blocked the way of the Dakota canoes. St. Anthony Falls, of which now scarce a remnant is left, thundered over its ledge among the leafy boskage of banks and islands. Slowly but surely up the stream pushed the Dakotas. Rum river was reached, and its friendly banks were doubtless for many seasons dotted with the Dakota's tipis. But when the hunter-explorer's eyes first rested on the wide expanse of Mille Laes, he rightly felt he had found a primitive paradise. M'de- wakan, the Spirit lake, the lake of spiritual spell, soon became the site of perhaps the largest permanent encampment or head- quarters of the Sioux. This with the Mississippi as their great waterway, Wright county must have become a famous hunting and fishing ground. Whether these Sioux, returning to what we believe to have been the home of their ancestors, found another people who had occupied the land during their long sojourn in the upper Ohio region, we do not know, though possibly there were scattering bands of Algonquin peoples here. These return- ing Sioux, it is believed, were the builders of all or nearly all of
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
the Wright county mounds, though some may have been built by their aneestors before they were expelled many centuries earlier. The Wright county mounds, though less in size and smaller in number, have the same interest as those found in Ohio, and which this same people are believed to have constructed.
Wright county lies in the western half of what was the most glorious hunting region in the world. In a zone extending north- northwest we have a series of beautiful lakes. The most south- erly is the M'dewakan of the Dakotas, Mille Laes, some twenty miles long, then Gull, Peliean, and Whitefish lakes, each from eight to twelve miles long, magnifieent sheets of water, small only in eomparison with such giants as Leeeh lake, which comes next in the series. This body of water has as close neighbors, Cass, Winibigoshish, and Bemidji, lesser but still very large lakes. Con- tinning in the same direction, we come to Red lake, the largest body of fresh water entirely in the United States. Some eighty miles further north we find the largest lake of the series, the Lake of the Woods. This zone is two or three hundred miles long and was, and to a great extent yet is, a magnificent natural park and game preserve. Well watered and with every variety of surface, spangled with lakes and covered with forests of all kinds and combinations possible in this elimate, with here and there a prairie thrown in for good measure, this indeed was the land of Seek-no-Further for the Indian. Of this region Wright formed a part and a favored part.
In this empire of forest, lake and streams, the Dakotas learned to be forest dwellers. Let us pieture the life of the Dakotas in Wright as it was, say at the time when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth. The Dakota dressed in skins and furs, tanned and prepared by the squaws, and sewed with bone needle and sinew thread. Ile lived then in the Stone Age. His arrow heads, axes, knives and kelts were made of stone, preferably flint or quartz. Ilis house in summer was the familiar tipi, and sometimes this was all he had even in winter. But more substantial houses cf wood, stone and earth were not unknown. Sueh were often built for several families.
The social structure of the Dakotas was the primitive tribal one, but of the simplest variety. Though many Siouan tribes have an elaborate tribal system, as for example the Omaha, the Dakota lived in bands of the loosest deseription. Chieftainship devolved on him who eould grasp it, though in some cases, one dynasty maintained the chieftainship for several generations. Marriage was prohibited only within elose blood relationships. No totem system or true elan system obtained. War parties were made up by ambitious individuals very much the same as hunt- ing parties are among us. The word "Dakota" (variously spelled) means joined together in friendly compact, the Dakota
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
nation consisting of many tribes, between whom for the most part, a mutual forebearance, if not an active alliance, seems to have existed.
The religious cult and cosmic notions of the Dakotas were essentially the same as those of other primitive people. They explained all strange, mysterious, powerful, beneficent or malevo- lent beings, objects, or events, by assuming that a spirit lived and expressed himself in each of them. Every lake, waterfall, tree, animal, cloud or cliff that excited their wonder, admiration, fear or awe, was "wakan," a term that ean scarcely be translated by any one English word. It means mysterious, elfish, bewitched, spirit-possessed, having supernatural powers. These spirits-in- things were conceived half as personal and half as impersonal. Like all primitive men they believed that these spirits could be controlled by magic. Some spoken formula, some symbolie cere- mony, some charm or amulet was supposed to ward off evil influ- ences or even secure active co-operation of spirit powers.
The Ojibways. By far the most numerous of the Indian stocks referred to is, and was, the Algonquin. It was probably peoples of the Algonquin stock who had driven the early Mound Builders from Minnesota, and occupied Minnesota during their absence. But for some time previous to the coming of Columbus, Algon- quins were living on the Atlantic slope. When the French came to Canada they found these Indians in possession of the St. Lawrence up to Lake Ontario, and of an indefinite region north of the Great Lakes. For centuries the Algonquin Indians worked their way westward, following the Great Lakes. Possibly they had previously worked their way eastward and in this westward migration were merely returning to the homes of their own ancestors, just as the Sioux Indians in coming up the Mississippi some five hundred years ago, probably likewise returned to the home of their own ancestors. In their westward migration, the vanguard of the Algonquin host was the large and gifted tribes known as the Chippewas or Ojibways. Many were the sanguin- ary confliets they had with the Iroquois, the "Nadowe," or "Adders," who possessed the south shore of Lake Erie and other regions. Farther west they came in contact with the Dakotas, whom they called the "Nadoweisiv" (the French wrote it Nadowessioux or Nadowaysionx, from the last syllable of which we have Sioux ) or "Little Adders, " and some other Indian tribes, both Siouan and Algonquian, like the Sauks, Foxes and Winneba- goes. Some three centuries ago we find them in full control of both the south and north shore of Lake Superior. This is a region rich in fur bearing animals, and very early in the seventeenth century the Indian hunter of the Great Lakes and the white fur trader discovered each other, and maintained ever afterwards a contin- nous trade relation. Firearms, the iron kettle, the knife and
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
hatchet of steel, and the blanket and calico were added from the white man's production to the red man's possessions.
Early in the eighteenth century, so scholars believe, the Ojib- ways were in possession of even the western shores of Lake Superior, and hunted as far west as the St. Louis river could serve them as a highway. The Dakotas were in possession of the wonderful lake-and-river region we have described. The highway of this region was the Mississippi. Where the Missis- sippi in its great swing eastward comes nearest to Lake Superior we find just east of the river a beautiful lake, called, from its sandy beach, Sandy lake. The Savanna river empties into this lake, and from this river to the East Savanna river which empties into the St. Louis river, is the portage between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes; and at Sandy lake, according to tradition, the two powerful tribes, the Dakota and the Ojibway, first met.
The Ojibway-Dakota Conflict. It was a case of, not love, but hate and war at first sight. Though the boundless forest could easily have supported them both, grasping human nature would not permit peace. Still, we must not imagine that the war was uninterrupted. Periods of peace, or rather truce, abounded. The two tribes often hunted and gathered rice together. They even intermarried. But whenever a member of one tribe injured or killed a person belonging to the other, the tribal feud law, com- mon among primitive peoples, and not extinet among the "moun- tain whites" of our own day and nation, demanded that the injured man's family and tribe take vengeance on the offender's kin. Thus two rival tribes found almost constant cause for war, as there was no lack of degenerate or eareless people whose deeds of violence or guile must be revenged, in addition to tribal jeal- ousy and rivalry over possession of hunting grounds.
The Ojibways, while perhaps not the match of the Dakota in skill, strength and eunning, were the stronger beeause in their eontaet with the whites they had obtained a plentiful supply of firearms and iron implements. Slowly but surely they expelled the Dakotas from the great hunting zone of northern Minnesota. The great Dakota village at Mille Laes fell into the hands of the Ojibway. J. V. Brower thinks the date was about 1750. All of the Mississippi region above Brainerd was in the hands of the Ojibways. Still they pressed southward. Stearns county, just north of Wright county, was for over a century in the frontier between the Dakotas and the Ojibways. An attempt was made by the treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1825 to stop the age-long feud between the Dakota and the Ojibway; and the United States. aeting as a friendly eoneiliating and arbitrating power, got the hostile tribes to agree to a division of their territory. This boun- dary line ran diagonally aeross Minnesota from the neighborhood
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
of Marine, a few miles south of Tailors Falls on the St. Croix, in an irregular line to Georgetown on the Red river, the general direction being northwest. The portion of the boundary between the Dakota and the Ojibway, extending from Chippewa river to Otter Tail lake, was surveyed in 1835 by S. A. Bean. The line enters Stearns county where the Watab empties into the Missis- sippi, and according to treaty, follows this stream to its souree; but by this surveyor, according to Winehell, in "The Aborigines of Minnesota," "the head of the Watab river was assumed to be a small lake located in the N. E. corner of T. 124 N., R. 30 W., which is in reality the head of a tributary to that stream, the actual main source of the river being a number of miles to the southwest." This lake ehosen by the surveyor must be one of the lakes near St. John's College, at Collegeville, in Stearns county. From here the line runs almost parallel with the Great Northern main line, diverging, however, slightly from it, so that the boundary erosses the western edge of the county some three or four miles from its northwest corner. North of this line we have Ojibway Stearns and south of it is Dakota Stearns. The Indians were never known to respeet this line to any appreciable extent, but in all its subsequent treaties with the Indians, the United States government religiously recognized this line as dividing the territorial rights of the "Sioux" and "Chippewa" "nations."
In these raids of the two hostile tribes, the Mississippi was often the highway. Thus, about the time of the great French and Indian war, when the English and the French were fighting on three eon- tinents, the Ojibways and the Dakotas imitated their eivilized brethren as well as they could, but their slanghter was only a small affair in comparison. However, what they laeked in mag- nitude of slaughter they made up in feroeity and truly savage heartless eruelty.
Let us traee briefly one series of attacks. Some time near the middle of the eighteenth century a gay and powerful flotilla of Dakota canoes paddled up the river, and leaving it at the Crow Wing confluence, went to Leaeh lake and began a eireuit of murder of women and children in the populous communities of Ojibways living on the great initial loop of the Mississippi. The expedition ended disastrously for the assailants, however, for in the battle of Crow river they were routed by their adversaries. As a result, the Dakotas thought best to evacuate the Rum river country and move their villages farther south.
The belt of timber known as the Big Woods, extending south- west from the Mississippi about one hundred miles, and com- prising the greater part of what is now Wright county, was evi- dently, even in historie times, the seene of many a fierce confliet
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IIISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
between the Sioux and the Chippewas. The Chippewas from their territory to the northeast of this county would watch for the Sioux when the latter came here to hunt, fish and gather eranberries, and by sudden raids captured many a Sioux scalp. But the Sioux in turn would watch for the Chippewas at the Otsego, Clearwater and Monticello prairies, and wreak terrible vengeance. D. R. Farnham is responsible for the following :
"In attempting to eross the Mississippi river, just above the present village of Monticello, at the head of the island in the river, in the year 1820, a large party of raiding Chippewas were overtaken by the enfuriated Sioux, when they were about to eross the river, and many were killed, the band of Chippewas being nearly annihilated. The bones of the vietims of these Chippewa raiders are seattered through the timbers and on the edges of the prairie. The arrowheads and tomahawks are turned up by the plow in many places."
The Sioux or Dakotas of the Spirit lake, the M'dewakanton (commonly rendered Medawakanton) Sioux as they are called in history, had made canoe trips as far south as the Illinois country even in the days of their residence at Mille Laes. Con- sequently, after being driven from the Mille Laes region, and later foreed from the Rum river region, they were perfectly famil- iar with the desirable sites in southern Minnesota. Therefore these Medawakantons, with whom were probably mingled the Mantantons and other subsidiary bands, gradually established villages at various points from what is now Lake Calhoun in Hennepin county down the Mississippi nearly to the Iowa state line and up the Minnesota a considerable distance. Possibly in thus loeating their villages they drove the Iowas from around the region of the mouth of the Minnesota. This is not certain. Even when the Sioux were in the Mille Laes region they hunted in Wright county, and when the Lake Calhoun band took up its residenee in Hennepin county, Wright county was the seene of frequent journeys. Later the Lake Calhoun band moved to Oak Grove, eight miles up the Minnesota river from Ft. Snelling, but the region between the Crow and Clearwater rivers con- tinned to be a general hunting ground.
In the time of Hennepin the Mantanton Sioux territory seems to have extended from the Crow river northward, and it is likely that they, as well as their kinsman of the Medawakanton and subsidiary bands, hunted in this region, before the tribes became commingled.
So far as modern research has learned, Wright county con- tained no permanent Indian villages from the time when the aborigines ceased to build mounds up to the time that Minnesota was admitted as a territory. Its lakes and prairies and forests
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
were favorite hunting grounds, the Crow and Clearwater rivers were well-known water-paths, and the Mississippi was a great highway of war and of the chase, but no band made its head- quarters here permanently, until the coming of the Winnebagoes. The vicinity of Buffalo lake in particular in historie times was a famous camping ground of the Sionx where they came in sum- mer to fish and gather cranberries and in the winter to hunt deer. In still earlier times they came to hunt buffalo and catch beaver. Rockford was another favorite camping place.
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