USA > Minnesota > Wright County > History of Wright County, Minnesota > Part 7
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The Winnebago Indians actually ocenpied Wright county for a while, and had large villages in several localities. They made strenuous efforts to have the area along the northwest side of the Crow river in Wright county and westward assigned to them as a reservation. The Ho-tehun-graws, or Winnebagoes, belong to the Sionan family of aborigines. Champlain, although he never visited them, mentions them. Nicollet, who had been in his em- ploy, visited Green Bay about the year 1635, and an early Rela- tion mentions that he saw the Ouinipegous, a people ealled so, because they came from a distant sea, which some Freneh erron- eously ealled Pnants. Another writer speaking of these people says: "This people are called 'Les Puants' (The Stinkers) not because of any bad odor peenliar to them, but because they claim to have come from the shores of a far distant lake, towards the north, whose waters are salt. They call themselves the people 'de l'eau puants,' of the putrid or bad water." The Winne- bagoes were many times removed by the United States, first from central Wisconsin to Iowa, then from Iowa to Minnesota, and subsequently from Minnesota to the Missouri river. The story of their subsequent wanderings is beyond the limits of this work.
The Last Sioux Encampments. After the Winnebagoes were removed in 1855, the Sioux continued to roam through Wright county, hunting, fishing, trapping, making maple sugar, and gath- ering various fruits and berries. They established large tempor- ary villages at various places. Of their last villages in this county, George W. Florida, Secretary of the Wright County Old Settlers' Association, who as a boy was the playmate of the young Indians, has written the following :
In December, 1857, Little Crow's band of Sionx Indians camped on the edge of Rockford village on the ground now oecu- pied by the fifty feet embankment of the "Soo" line. In many ways this was an interesting experience, having this large en- campment of picturesque Indians, with their tribal enstoms, spending the winter only two village blocks from our house. We found them good neighbors at that time. The iee on the mill pond furnished good play grounds for the young Indians and the village boys. We were all equipped with moccasins and eould
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keep our l'eet on the jee as well as the natives. Our favorite games were Indian ball, and shinney, played by driving a ball on the ice, with shinney clubs, within bounds; the Indian boys against the Whites.
We would visit their camp and watch the pow-wows and dances with great interest. I think they were honest as a rule. Bishop Whipple, in speaking of the integrity of the Indians, said that he was visiting one of their most northern villages, and wished to go to a remote band, which he could reach only by canoe and walking. He felt anxious about leaving his vestments, robes and jewels, fearing they might be stolen. lle asked his Indian guide if it would be safe to leave them there. "Oh yes, Bishop," said his guide, "there is not a white man within one hundred miles of this place."
Clinton Crandall, superintendent of the Indian schools at Pierre, South Dakota, says he is acquainted with a number of Indian families who say that they were with Little Crow at Rock- ford in 1857. They have good farms and well educated and re- fined families. They say that they regret the outbreak of 1862. Catherine Cassidy, a teacher at the Sisseton Reservation, has talked with Indians who told her that they were in Rockford with Little Crow's band. She says that they are good citizens, and have educated families.
In September, 1858, the Indians were to go to their reserva- tion on the Minnesota river below the Redwood river, but Big Star, with his band of about ninety lingered in the vicinity of Buffalo. The white hunters were not willing to divide the game with them and took measures to remove them from Wright county. An order was seeured, and taken to them by J. M. Powers. Their camp was near the site of Chatham. The order limited the time to ten days. As they still remained at the end of this time, the hunters, ten in number, from Buffalo, Roekford and Greenwood, armed with rifles, marched to the Indian camp to enforce the order. They found the eamp broken up and the Indians moving west. The ultimatum of the hunters was that they should go through Hennepin eounty by crossing at Rockford. The braves were not in evidence when the hunters overtook the heavily laden squaws and ponies, and turned them back through Buffalo to Roekford. This town was reached just at sunset. During the afternoon, the braves, in war paint, carrying rifles, joined the band, marehing haughtily behind the train in front of the hunters. Crow river was the county line. When the middle of the bridge was reached the young braves stopped and fired their rifles, skip- ping the bullets on the water up and down the county line. The squaws and ponies were tired from carrying their heavy paeks, and all rested on the east bank. They made their eamp on Edgar creek, one-half mile south of the village, near the big temple
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mound built by the Mound Builders, and overlooking the river, at the mouth of the creek. Fearing retaliation for this humilia- tion, our mother sat up all night. The Indians did not forget, and in 1862, at the time of the outbreak, promised to burn the village. We had the deepest sympathy for them in being obliged to leave the blue lakes and beautiful woods of this county.
Sauks and Foxes. The Sauks and the Foxes seem at one time to liave ranged the region of the Crow, Clearwater, Sauk and Watab rivers, and have left their names in such designations as Osakis, Osakis lake, Sauk river, Sauk Rapids and Sauk Centre. Possibly their period here was just before the Sioux left the Mille Lacs region, as there are traditional accounts of a battle in which the Chippewas defeated the Sioux and the Foxes combined, after which the Sioux never again attempted to live in the northern part of the state. Within historie times the Sauks and the Foxes lived south of Minnesota, and were bitter enemies of the Sioux, making many murderous attacks on their villages.
Another theory as to the existence of Sauks in this region was advanced by L. W. Collins in a paper read before the Stearns County Old Settlers' Association in 1897. He said in part :
"Five Sacs (Sauks), refugees from their own tribe on account of murder which they had committed, made their way up to what is now known as Osakis lake, and settled near the outlet, upon the east side. Three had wives of their own people, but the other two ultimately took wives of the Fond du Lac band of Chippewas. The men were great hunters and traded at the post of the Northwestern Fur Company, located on the lower Leaf lake, about six miles east of the eastern extremity of Otter Tail lake. This post was visited by bands of Sioux and Chippewas, and the traders were frequently entertained by deadly conflicts among their visitors. The Sac Indians were known to the Chip- pewas as O-zan-kees. On one of the excursions made by some of the pillager bands of Chippewas to the asylum of the O-zau- kees, it was found that all had been killed, supposedly by the Sioux." This story has the same flavor possessed by most of the tales told to the white questioners by the modern Indian. Even if it is true, the main body of the Sauks from whom these five are supposed to have fled might have been in this region. As to the location of the main band, Judge Collins' informant had no knowledge.
Summary. Possibly Eskimos once lived in Wright county, and followed the last retreating glacier northward. Possibly they were followed by peoples of the Siouan stock, who built a few of the mounds. The Siouan peoples were probably driven out by Algonquian peoples, and settled for the most part in the upper Ohio region. Some five hundred years ago, Siouan peoples returned to this region, possibly drove out such scattering Algon-
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
quian peoples as they found here, and built most of the mounds. These returning Sionan peoples, the Mound Builders, were prob- ably the ancestors of the Sioux (Dakota) Indians, whom Henne- pin found ranging the upper Mississippi region with headquarters at Mille Laes. After Hennepin's time, the Chippewas (Ojibways) drove the Sioux from Mille Laes, and they established villages further south. Wright county, which thus lay between the two nations, became a battleground. In the fifties, after the arrival of the white settlers in Minnesota, bands of Winnebagoes and of Sioux had villages in Wright county.
The Life of the Indian. Here may be the proper place to notice the great and sad change which has come over the life of the Indian since the far-off days of which we have spoken. The life of the red barbarian before he came in contact with civili- zation, and even later when he got no more from the whites than his gun, knife, kettle and blanket, was, though primitive, poor and coarse, still not mean and base. The Indian was healthy and sound in body and mind, and true and loyal to his standards of morality. To be sure, his standards were not our standards, and we often consider them erude and low; but as they were the best the Indian knew, his fidelity to his moral code is worthy of all honor.
But evil days came for the simple child of the forest, when as seum on the advancing frontier wave of civilization came the firewater, the vices and the diseases of civilized man. Neither his physical nor his spiritual organization is prepared to withstand these powerful evils of a stronger race, and the primitive red man has often, perhaps generally, been reduced to a pitiful parasite on the civilized community, infested with the diseases, the vermin and the vices of the white man and living in a degradation and squalor that only civilization can furnish.
The white man took from the Indian all his primitive virtues, and gave him none of the virtues of the white man in return. Ile taught the red man all of the evils of civilization before he was advanced enough to accept its advantages, and tried to make him conform suddenly with those habits of life which with the white race has been the development of ages. Thus burdened with the white man's vices, his own natural mode of living sud- denly made impossible, driven here and there by the onrush of civilization, cheated and defrauded by traders and goverment officials alike, the Indian has degenerated until he is only a travesty on the noble kings of the forest who onee held sway in the upper Mississippi valley. But a change is now eoming with an awakened public conseienee. And the results are encour- aging. The census seems to indicate that the Indian is no longer a vanishing race. Steady and considerable progress is made in his civilization, and his physical condition is improving.
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
COMING OF THE WINNEBAGOES.
By various treaties, among which may be mentioned those of September 15, 1832, and November 1, 1837, the Winnebagoes relinquished their lands in Wisconsin, and agreed to remove to a reservation in a certain portion of the "neutral strip," in north- eastern lowa. The removal, in part, was accomplished. October 13. 1846, they signed a treaty agreeing to remove from lowa to Minnesota. In furtherance of this project the United States obtained land from the Chippewas immediately adjoining a part of the Sioux territory on the north. The land thus selected took in portions of Morrison, Todd and Stearns county, and generally speaking may be said to have been bounded by the Mississippi, Crow Wing, Long Prairie and Watab rivers. The traet became known as the Long Prairie reservation. The removal to this reservation was accomplished in 1848. There were many deser- tions from the main body of the tribe, and at Winona the Indians absolutely refused to go further. Bloodshed was narrowly averted. However, the danger passed, and by August 1, 1848, the main body of the Winnebagoes was encamped on the north bank of the Watab, within their new reservation. But there was still much dissatisfaction among them, and many more desertions. The seven years, 1848 to 1855, during which the Long Prairie reservation was supposed to be the home of the Winnebagoes, were filled with turmoil and discontent. The agency was located on Long Prairie river, forty miles from the Mississippi river. Only a few, however, located near the agency post. Many were scattered along the Mississippi, and some returned to Wisconsin and Iowa. Many roved about in Wisconsin, lowa and Minnesota with no settled abode.
The Sioux treaties of 1851 were no sooner negotiated than the Winnebagoes, aided by interested whites, endeavored to seeure a part of the land ceded. October 26, 1852, Governor Alexander Ramsey presented to the government a proposition from the Winnebagoes that they would relinquish their Long Prairie res- ervation, with which they were dissatisfied, if the government would grant them a tract of some 500,000 acres "lying immediately north of the Crow river," that is, on the west bank of the Mis- sissippi river, including much of Wright eounty. In case this was granted, all the scattered Winnebago bands agreed to settle in Wright county. Governor Willis A. Gorman, ex-offieio super- intendent of Indian affairs in Minnesota, reported in 1853 that by General J. E. Fletcher (who had come with the Winnebagoes from lowa) and himself, an exchange had been completed by which the Winnebagoes' new home on the Crow river (in Wright eounty) would yield them permanent satisfaetion. He reported, however, that there were some whites who objeeted to the ehange,
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as these whites desired to make bogus claims in Wright county and cut off the valuable timber with no intent of making their actual residence there. The ocenpaney by the Winnebagoes would prevent this profitable and dishonest humbering. Governor Gor- man in his report further states that the land north of the Crow river abounded in wild rice in abundance and was plentifully sup- plied with game. He also declared that except for strips along the Mississippi and a few prairies, the land now embraced in Wright county was fit only for the Indians, and not adapted to white settlement.
On September 8, 1853, only 300 of the original band of 2,500 Winnebagoes remained on the Long Prairie reservation. Although the government had not ratified the Gorman-Fletcher arrange- ment, many of the Winnebagoes had already moved to Wright county. The principal village was established on the shores of Buffalo lake, on the present site of the village of Buffalo, where as late as 1855, the cabins and tepees of the Winnebagoes covered a wide traet. Other important villages were in what are now Otsego and Rockford. There was inneh objection on the part of the whites to allowing the Indians to remain here, and it was proposed that the Winnebagoes be again removed to the south- ern branch of the Crow river, to include the Red Cedar Island lake, or even to a location still farther west. Finally, however, another location was selected for them. So, on February 27, 1855, another treaty was made with them, and that spring they removed to lands on the Blue Earth river. Owing to the panic eansed by the outbreak of the Sionx in 1862, Congress, by a special aet, without consulting them, in 1863, removed them from their fields to Minnesota to the Missouri river, and in the words of a missionary, "they were, like the Sioux, dumped in the desert, one hundred miles above Fort Randall."
INDIAN TREATIES.
From prehistorie days up to the time of the treaty signed at Mendota, August 5, 1851, ratified and amended by the United States Senate, June 23, 1852, and proclaimed by President Millard Fillmore February 24, 1853, the land now embraced in Wright county remained in the nominal possession of the Indians. Before this treaty, however, several agreements were made between the Indians of this vieinity and the United States government, re- garding mutual relations and the eeding of lands. The first of these was the treaty with Pike in 1805, by which land at the mouths of the Minnesota and St. Croix rivers was ceded to the government for military purposes.
Visit to Washington. In 1816, the War of 1812 having been brought to a close, the Indians of this vicinity made peace with the United States and signed treaties placing the Sioux of this
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
neighborhood "in all things and in every respect on the same foot- ing upon which they stood before the late war." Perpetual peace was promised, and it was agreed that "every injury or act of hostility committed by one or the other of the contracting par- ties against the other shall be mutually forgiven and forgotten." The tribes recognized the absolute authority of the United States. After Ft. Snelling was established, the officers at various times engineered peace paets between various tribes, but these were usually quickly broken.
In the spring of 1824 the first delegation of Sioux Indians went to Washington to see their "Great Father," the president. A delegation of Chippewas accompanied, and both were in charge of Major Lawrence Taliaferro. Wabasha, then properly called Wa-pa-ha-sha or Wah-pah-hah-sha, the head chief of the band at Winona; and Little Crow, head of the Kaposia band; and Wah- natah, were the principal members of the Sioux delegation. When the delegation had gone as far as Prairie du Chien, Wabasha and Wahnatah, who had been influeneed by traders, desired to turn back, but Little Crow persuaded them to continue. The object of the visit was to secure a convocation of all of the upper Missis- sippi Indians at Prairie du Chien, to define the boundary line of the lands claimed by the separate tribes and to establish general and permanently friendly relations among them. The party made the trip in keel boats from Fort Snelling to Prairie du Chien, and from there to Pittsburgh by steamboat, thence to Washington and other eastern cities by land.
Prairie du Chien Treaty of 1825. This treaty, signed August 19, was of importance to the Indians who ranged Wright county in that it fixed certain general boundaries, and confirmed the faet that the present county lay entirely in Sioux territory. The treaty was participated in by the Chippewa, Sauk (Sae) and Fox ; Menominee, Towa, Sioux, Winnebago; and a portion of the Ot- tawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi tribes living on the Illinois.
The line between the Sioux and the confederated Sauks and Foxes extended aeross a part of northern Iowa. It was deelared in the treaty to run up the Upper Iowa (now the Oneota) river to its left fork, and up that fork to its source : thenee crossing the Cedar river to the second or upper fork of the Des Moines, and in a direct line to the lower fork of the Calumet (Big Sioux) river, and down that river to the Missouri river. On both sides of this line extended a traet which came to be known as the "Neutral Strip," into which the Winnebagoes were later moved as a buffer between the Sioux and their enemies to the south.
The eastern boundary of the Sioux territory was to commence on the east bank of the Mississippi river opposite the mouth of the "Toway" river, running back to the bluffs and along the bluff's to the Bad Axe river, thence to the mouth of the Black
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
river, and thence to half a day's march, below the falls of the Chippewa. East of this line, generally speaking, was the Winne- bago country, though the Menominee country lay about Green Bay, Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee river, and the Menomin- ees claimed as far west as the Black river. The Chippewa country was to be to the north of the Winnebagoes and Menominees, and east of the northern line of the Sioux country, the line between the Chippewa and the Sioux beginning at a point a half a day's march below the falls of the Chippewa, thenee to the Red Cedar river immediately below the falls, thence to a point on the St. Croix river, a day's paddle above the lake at the mouth of that river, and thence northwestward across the present state of Minnesota. The line crossed the Mississippi at the month of the Watab river just above St. Cloud. Thus both sides of the Missis- sippi during its course along Wright county were included in Sioux territory.
The boundary lines were certainly, in many respects, quite indefinite, and whether this was the trouble or not, in any event, it was but a few months after the treaty when it was evident that none of the signers were willing to be governed by the lines estab- lished, and hardly by any others. The first article of the treaty provided: "There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between the Sioux and the Chippewas; between the Sioux and the con- federated tribes of Saes and Foxes; and between the 'oways' and the Sionx." But this provision was more honored in the breach than the observance, and in a little time the tribes named were flying at one another's throats and engaged in their old- time hostilities.
Sioux Treaty of 1837. The second Treaty of Prairie du Chien, signed in 1830, and the Wabasha Treaty of 1836, were not impor- tant to Wright county, but were steps toward the final cession of the territory including this county. The treaty of 1837, however, ceded to the United States the islands lying in and along Wright county in the Mississippi, and also the land across the Missis- sippi river from Wright county. Thus civilization was gradually approaching.
In the spring of 1837, Agent Lawrence Taliaferro was in- strueted to organize an authoritative and reliable delegation of Medawakanton Sioux to proceed to Washington and make a treaty ceding all the lands claimed by them east of the west bank of the Mississippi. These lands were a strip on the east side of the Mississippi, varying in width from the mouth of the Bad Axe to the mouth of the Watab, and also the islands in the river. A delegation of about twenty Sioux chiefs and head men aceord- ingly went to Washington, accompanied by various white men then living in the Northwest, and signed the treaty. The Sioux were to receive goods, and an annuity of goods and moneys. Cer-
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tain moneys were also to be expended by the government for civilization, that is for the support of a physician, farmers and blacksmiths, and for the purchase of medicines, agrienltural im- plements, mechanics' tools, cattle and other goods. A part of the payment was to be withheld and expended at the discretion of the President of the United States. Certain annuities were to be paid for twenty years.
The Doty Treaty. The Doty Treaty, made at Traverse des Sioux (St. Peter), in July, 1841, failed to be ratified by the United States Senate. This treaty embodied a Utopian dream that a territory of Indians could be established, in which the redmen would reside on farms and in villages, living their lives after the style of the whites, having a constitutional form of government, with a legislature of their own people elected by themselves, the governor to be appointed by the president of the United States, much along the plan long followed with the Cherokees in what is now Oklahoma, except that it embodied for the Indians a much higher type of citizenship than was found in Oklahoma. The Indians were to be taught the arts of peace, to be paid annuities, and to be protected by the armies of the United States from their Indian enemies on the west. In return for these benefits to be conferred upon the Indians, the United States was to receive all the lands in what is now Minnesota, the Dakotas and northwestern Iowa. This ceded land was not to be opened to the settlement of the whites, and the plan was to have some of it reserved for Indian tribes from other parts of the country who should sell their lands to the United States, and who, in being moved here, were to enjoy all the privileges which had been so beautifully planned for the native Indians. But no one can tell what would have been the result of this experiment, for the senate, for political reasons, refused to ratify the treaty, and it failed of going into effect. This treaty was signed by the Sisseton, Wahpeton and Wahpa- koota bands at Traverse des Sioux, July 31, 1841, and by the Medawakanton bands at Mendota, August 11 of the same year.
Preliminaries to Final Session. After Minnesota was admit- ted as a territory the necessity of obtaining from the Indians the title to the land was apparent. The first territorial legisla- ture, at the recommendation of Governor Alexander Ramsey, presented a petition to Congress in October, 1849, asking that measures be taken toward that end. But the government had already made efforts in the same direction. In June, 1849, Orlando Brown, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, had addressed an official letter on the subject to Thomas Ewing, then United States secre- tary of the interior. Secretary Ewing appointed Governor Ram- sey and John Chambers, the latter of whom had been territorial governor of lowa, to conduct the negotiations. As Congress failed to make an appropriation for the purpose, Commissioner Brown
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