USA > Minnesota > Wright County > History of Wright County, Minnesota > Part 8
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
determined to pay the expense out of the "small current appro- priations" fund of his office. Commissioner Brown, however, had no true idea of the value of the land he wished the govern- ment to seenre.
The proposed treaty of 1849 was never made. A call was issned to the Sionx to meet at Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, but when Commissioners Ramsey and Chambers reached those places, the Indians were engaged in other parts of the country hunting after game and wild riee.
At Mendota, however, a treaty was made with some of the chiefs of the Medawakanton and Wapakoota bands for the pur- chase of the Ilalf-Breed tract, which had been set aside July 15, 1830, for the Sioux mixed bloods. This treaty was forwarded to Washington but was not ratified by the senate. However, the agitation for the opening of Minnesota continued, and resulted in 1851 in the treaties now so familiar to all students of history.
Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. In the spring of 1851 President Fillmore appointed Governor Alexander Ramsey and Luke Lea as commissioners to open negotiations with the Indians for the purpose of opening to settlement what is now the greater part of Minnesota. The conference was held at Traverse des Sioux (now St. Peter), between the chiefs and head men of the Sisseton and Wahpeton, or Upper Bands, as they were called, and the two commissioners. The Indians were accompanied by their families, and many prominent pioneers were also present. The meeting was held under a brush arbor erected by Alexis Bailly, and one of the incidents of the procedings was the marriage of two mixed blood people, David Faribault and Naney Winona MeClure, the former the son of Jean Baptist Faribault, and the latter the daughter of Lieutenant James McClure. The treaty was signed July 22, 1851, and provided that the upper bands should cede to the United States all their land in lowa as well as their lands east of a line from the Red river to Lake Traverse and thence to the northwestern corner of lowa.
Treaty of Mendota. From July 29, 1851, to August 5, Mendota was the scene of the conference which opened Wright county and so large a portion of Minnesota to settlement. The chief's and head men of the lower bands were thoroughly familiar with the proceedings of the Indians and the representatives of the United States at Traverse des Sioux and all were on hand that bright August day, waiting for the negotiations to open at Men- dota. The first session was held in the warehouse of the fur company at that place, but the Indians found the atmosphere stifling, and not in accord with their usual method of outdoor eouneils, so the consideration of the treaty was taken up under a large brush arbor. erected by Alexis Bailly, on an elevated plain near the high prominence known as Pilot Knob. Dr. Thomas
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
Foster was secretary for Commissioners Lea and Ramsey; the interpreters were Alexander Faribault, Philander Prescott and Rev. G. H. Pond; the white witnesses were David Olmsted, W. C. Henderson, Alexis Bailly, Richard Chute, Henry Jackson, A. L. Carpenter, William H. Randall, A. S. II. White, II. L. Dousman, Fred C. Sibley, Martin McLeod, George N. Faribault and Joseph A. Wheelock.
At the opening of the first day's session the white commission- ers explained the objeet of the gathering. Wabasha, the head chief of the Medawakantons, made a speech in which he said that the Indians had not yet received the money due them under the treaty of 1837 and that they did not feel inelined to make any new agreements with the United States until the government had kept its former agreements and paid for the land already obtained. The commissioners explained to him that there was an agree- ment in the 1837 treaty that a portion of the money was to be paid them at the pleasure and discretion of the president, and that the president was withholding it. Colonel Lea said there would be no trouble about the money then dne the Indians if they would sign this new treaty. Governor Ramsey said that the president thought that the money due the Indians should be expended for the education of the Indian children. There was some further discussion, and then the council adjourned for the day.
The next day when the council opened, Wabasha, as head chief, rose and said that he would sit and listen that day and let the other chiefs talk. After a long silence Little Crow, whose band was at Kaposia, now South St. Paul, made a lengthy and eloquent speech, in which he reiterated Wabasha's demand that the money already due them be paid before they made any more treaties. There was then a long disenssion, but Little Crow declared that the Indians would talk about nothing else but the money already due them. The couneil then adjourned until it should be ealled by the Indians.
The next afternoon the Indians assembled at the council house and sent for the commissioners, but none of the red men would talk, and after going over the matter again the commissioners left, apparently in great anger.
There was then an interval of four days spent by the whites in preparing a treaty which would be acceptable to the Indians. In the meantime the Indians had become reconciled to a certain extent. Wabasha still opposed the new treaty, but many of the others favored it.
August 5, the eouneil again assembled. After the opening ceremony, the papers were spread out for the Indians to sign. "Who will sign first?" asked Governor Ramsey. Colonel Lea
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
indicated that Little Crow should be the first, but he smiled and shook his head.
Then Wabasha arose. He was the head chief of the Medawa- kantons and the one who should properly sign first. He said : "You have requested us to sign these papers and you have told these people standing around that it is for their benefit ; but I do not think so. In the treaty you have prepared you have said a lot about farmers, schools, physicians, traders and half-breeds who are to be paid out of our money. To all of these I am op- posed. You see these chiefs sitting around here. They-and some others who are dead-went to Washington some years ago and made a treaty in which the same things were said; but we were not benefited by them and I want them struck out of this one. We want nothing but eash for our lands. Another thing: You have named a place for our home, but it is a prairie country. I am a man used to the woods and do not like the prairie : per- haps some of those who are here will name a place we will all like better. Another thing: When I went to Washington to see our Great Father, he asked us for our land and we gave it to him, and he agreed to furnish us goods and provisions for twenty years. I wish to remain in this country until that time expires.
But Colonel Lee, knowing Wabasha's influence and recogniz- ing the truth of what he said made an indignant and severe reply to Wabasha. Ile declared that the chief was neither a friend of the white man nor the Indians, that he had been foolish in advis- ing the Indians to ask $6,000,000 for their land, that he had been deceitful in wishing that the Medawakantons should make a treaty of their own with the government instead of joining with the other tribes in making the treaty, and that the whites did not expeet to be able to make a treaty that would suit his views, for he was opposed to any kind of a treaty at that time.
Then there was another discussion in which the Indians en- deavored to secure acknowledgment for some papers by which they had given lands to certain individuals. The commissioners refused to consider this proposition. Then there was still another long diseussion, especially as to the location of the reservation. After speeches by several chiefs, Wabasha asked if the chiefs and second chiefs were to be distinguished from the warriors, or if they were to receive more money than the common Indians. Colonel Lee deelared that each chief ought to receive a medal and be provided with a good house. Wabasha then arose and turning his back to the commissioners spoke to the warriors. He told them that the young men among them had deelared that they would kill the first man that signed the treaty, but that they had at the same time secretly agreed among themselves to sell the land. One of the young Indians denied that there was any inten- tion of killing any of the chiefs. He acknowledged, however, that
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
the warriors had decided to sell the land and that they had a right to for the land belonged to them and not to the chiefs. Then there was another discussion.
Finally after a speech to the warriors Little Crow signed the treaty. To the general surprise of all, Wabasha was the next to sign. He affixed his mark. Then the other chiefs, head soldiers and principal warriors crowded about and affixed their marks, there being sixty-five Indian signatures in all.
At Mendota, as at Traverse des Sioux, when the treaty was coneluded, each Indian signer stepped to another table where lay another paper which he signed. This was called the traders' paper, and was an agreement to pay the "just debts," so called, of the Indians, including those present and absent, alive and dead, owing to the traders and the trading company. Some of the accounts were nearly thirty years old, and the Indians who had contracted them were dead, but the bands assumed the indebted- ness and agreed that it might be discharged out of the first money paid them. Wabasha had asked that an itemized bill be pre- sented, saying that he wished to know what he owed for each artiele purchased. The territory eeded by the two treaties was declared to be: "All their lands in the state of Iowa, and also all their lands in the territory of Minnesota lying east of the following line, to-wit: Beginning at the junetion of Buffalo river with the Red River of the North (about twelve miles north of Morehead, at Georgetown station, in Clay county) ; thence along the western bank of said Red river of the North, to the mouth of the Sioux Wood river; thence along the western shore of said Sioux Wood river to Lake Traverse; thenee along the western shore of said lake to the southern extremity thereof; thence, in a direct line, to the juneture of Kampeska lake with the Tehan-Ka-Sna-Duka, or Sioux river; thenee along the west- ern bank of said river to its point of interseetion with the north- ern line of the state of lowa, ineluding all islands in said rivers and lakes."
The lower bands were to receive $1,410,000, to be paid in the manner and form following: For settling debts and removing themselves to the new reservations, $220,000, one-half to the Medawakanton bands, and one-half to the single Wahpakoota band; for schools, mills and opening farms, $30,000. Of the principal of $1,410,000, the sum of $30,000 in cash was to be distributed among the two bands as soon as the treaty was ratified, and $28,000 was to be expended annually, under the president's direction, as follows : To a civilization fund, $12,000; to an educational fund, $6,000; for goods and provisions, $10,000. The balance of the principal, or $1,160,000, was to remain in trust with the United States at 5 per cent interest, to be paid annually to the Indians for fifty years, eommeneing July 1, 1852. The
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HISTORY OF WRIGIIT COUNTY
$58,000 annuity interest was to be expended as the first install- ment-$30,000 in cash, $12,000 for civilization, $6,000 for eduea- tion, and $10,000 for goods and provisions. The back ammities under the treaty of 1837 remaining unexpired were also to be paid annually. Their reservation was to extend from the mouth of the Yellow Medicine and llawk creek southeasterly to the mouth of Rock ereek, a traet twenty miles wide and about forty- five miles in length. The half-breeds of the Sioux were to receive in cash $150,000 in lieu of lands allowed them under the Prairie du Chien treaty of 1830, but which they had failed to claim.
The written copies of the Traverse des Sioux and the Mendota treaties, duly signed and attested, were forwarded to Washing- ton to be aeted upon by the senate at the ensuing session of con- gress. An unreasonably long delay resulted. Final action was not had until the following summer, when, on July 23, the senate ratified both treaties with important amendments. The provi- sions for reservations for both the upper and lower bands were strieken out, and substitutes adopted, agreeing to pay 10 cents an acre for both reservations, and authorizing the president, with the assent of the Indians, to cause to be set apart other reserva- tions, which were to be within the limits of the original great eession. The provision to pay $150,000 to the half-bloods of the lower bands was also strieken out. The treaties, with the changes, came back to the Indians for final ratifieation and agreement to the alterations. The chiefs of the lower bands at first objected very strenuously, but finally, on Saturday, September 4, 1852, at Governor Ramsey's residence in St. Paul, they signed the amended artieles, and the following Monday the chiefs and head men of the upper bands affixed their marks. As amended, the treaties were proclaimed by President Fillmore, February 24, 1853. The Indians were allowed to remain in their old villages, or, if they preferred, to occupy their reservations as originally designated, until the president selected their new homes. That selection was never made, and the original reservations were finally allowed them, Congress on July 31, 1854, having passed an act by which the original provisions remained in force. The removal of the lower Indians to their designated reservation began in 1853, but was intermittent, interrupted, and extended over a period of several years. The Indians went up in detachments, as they felt inclined. After living on the reservation for a time, some of them returned to their old hunting grounds, where they lived continuously for some time, visiting their reservation and ageney only at the time of the payment of their annuities. Finally, by the offer of cabins to live in, or other substantial inducements, nearly all of them were indneed to settle on the Redwood Re- serve, so that in 1862, at the time of the outbreak, less than twenty families of the Medawakantons and Wahpakootas were living off
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
their reservation. With the subsequent history of these Indians this volume will not treat in detail; the purpose of dealing with the Indians thus far in this chapter having been to show the various negotiations by which Wright and other counties came into the possession of the whites and were thus opened for settle- ment and development.
CIIAPTER IV.
GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY.
Early Claims of Title-Spain, France and England-Treaties and Agreements-The Louisiana Purchase-Indiana-Louisiana District-Louisiana Territory-Missouri Territory-North- west Territory-Illinois Territory-Michigan Territory-Wis- consin Territory-Iowa Territory-No Man's Land-Sibley in Congress-Minnesota Territory-Minnesota State.
The history of the early governmental jurisdiction of what is now central Minnesota is formulated with some difficulty, as, prior to the nineteenth century, the interior of the country was so little known and the maps upon which claims and grants were founded were so meager, as well as incorrect and unreliable, that descriptions of boundaries and locations as given in the early treaties are vague in the extreme, and very difficult of identifi- cation with present-day lines and locations.
The Hon. J. V. Brower, a scholarly authority upon this sub- ject, says ("The Mississippi River and Its Sources") : "Spain, by virtue of the discoveries of Columbus and others, confirmed to her by papal grant (that of Alexander VI, May 4, 1493), may be said to have been the first European owner of the entire valley of the Mississippi, but she never used this claim as a ground for taking formal possession of this part of her domains other than incidentally involved in De Soto's doings. The feeble objections which she made in the next two centuries after the discovery to other nations exploring and settling North America were suc- cessfully overcome by the force of accomplished facts. The name of Florida. now so limited in its application, was first applied by the Spaniards to the greater part of the eastern half of North America, commeneing at the Gulf of Mexico and proceeding north- ward indefinitely. This expansiveness of geographical view was paralleled later by the definition of a New France of still greater extent, which practically included all the continent.
"L'Escarbot, in his history of New France, written in 1617, says, in reference to this: 'Thus our Canada has for its limits on the west side all the lands as far as the sea called the Pacific,
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
on this side of the Tropie of Caneer; on the south the islands of the Atlantic sea in the direction of Cuba and the Spanish land; on the east the northern sea which bathes New France; and on the north the land said to be unknown, toward the iey sea as far as the aretie pole.'
"Judging also by the various grants to individuals, noble and otherwise, and 'companies,' which gave away the country in latitudinal strips extending from the Atlantie westward, the English were not far behind the Spaniards and French in this kind of effroutery. As English colonists never settled on the Mississippi in pursuance of such grants, and never performed any aets of authority there, such shadowy sovereignties may be disregarded here, in spite of the fact that it was considered neces- sary, many years later, for various states concerned to convey to the United States their more or less conflicting claims to ter- ritory which lay far to the westward of their own actual borders.
"Thus, in the most arbitrary manner, did the Mississippi river, though yet unknown, become the property, successively, of the Iberian, Ganlish and Anglo-Saxon races-of three peoples who, in later times, by diplomacy and force of arms, struggled for an actual occupancy. Practically, however, the upper Mississippi valley may be considered as having been in the first place Cana- dian soil. for it was Frenchmen from Canada who first visited if and traded with its varions native inhabitants. The further prosecution of his discoveries by La Salle, in 1682, extended Canada as a French possession to the Gulf of Mexico, though he did not use the name of Canada nor yet that of New France. He preferred to call the entire country watered by the Mississippi river and its tributaries, from its uttermost source to its mouth, by the new name he had already invented for the purpose-Loui- siana. The names of Canada and New France had been indiffer- ently used to express about the same extent of territory, but the name of Louisiana now came to supersede them in being applied to the conjectural regions of the West. Although La Salle has applied the latter expression to the entire valley of the Missis- sippi, it was not generally used in that sense after his time; the upper part of the region was called Canada, and the lower Loni- siana ; but the actual dividing line between the two provinces was not absolutely established, and their names and boundaries were variously indicated on published maps. Speaking generally, the Canada of the eighteenth century included the Great Lakes and the country drained by their tributaries ; the northern one-fourth of the present state of Illinois-that is, as much as lies north of the mouth of the Rock river; all the regions lying north of the northern watershed of the Missouri, and finally the valley of the upper Missouri itself." This would include Wright county.
But it is now necessary to go back two centuries previous
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
and consider the various explorations of the Mississippi upon which were based the elaims of the European monarchs. Pos- sibly the mouth of the Mississippi had been reached by Spaniards previous to 1541, possibly Hibernian missionaries as early as the middle of the sixth century, or Welch emigrants (Madoe), about 1170, discovered North America by way of the Gulf of Mexico, but historians give to Hernando de Soto and his band of adven- turers the credit of having been the first white men to actually view the Mississippi on its course through the interior of the continent and of being the first ones to actually traverse its waters. De Soto sighted the Mississippi in May, 1541, at the head of an expedition in search of gold and precious stones. In the following spring, weary, with hope long deferred, and worn out with his adventures, De Soto fell a vietim to disease and died May 21, 1541. His followers, greatly redueed in number by sickness, after wandering about in a vain searching, built three small vessels and descended to the mouth of the Mississippi, being the first white men to reach the outlet of that great river from the interior. However, they were too weary and diseour- aged to lay elaim to the country, and took no notes of the region through which they passed.
In 1554 James Cartier, a Frenchman, discovered the St. Law- renee, and explored it as far as the present site of Quebec. The next year he aseended the river to Mont Real, the lofty hill for which Montreal was named. Thereafter all the country drained by the St. Lawrence was claimed by the French. Many years later the King of France granted the "basin of the St. Lawrence and all the rivers flowing through it to the sea," to a company, whose leader was Champlain, the founder of Quebee, which be- came the capital of New France, whose then unexplored territory stretched westward to well within the boundaries of what is now Minnesota. In 1613-15 Champlain explored the Ottawa river, and the Georgian bay to Lake Huron, and missions were estab- lished in the Huron country. Missionaries and fur traders were the most active explorers of the new possessions. They followed the shores of the Great Lakes and then penetrated further and further into the wilderness. As they went they tried to make friends of the red men, established trading posts and raised the Christian eross. In 1641 Jogues and Raymbault, Jesuits, after a long and perilous voyage in frail canoes and bateaux, reached the Sault Ste. Marie, where they heard of a large river, the Mish- is-ip-e, flowing southward to the sea, and of a powerful Indian tribe dwelling near its headwaters. Stories of vast fertile plains, of numberless streams, of herds of buffalo, and of many people, in regions far to the west and south, roused missionaries and traders anew, and the voyages and trips of the explorers beeame more frequent.
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HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
In 1659-60 Radisson and Groseilliers, proceeding westward from Lake Superior, possibly entered what is now Minnesota. They spent some time in the "forty villages of the Dakotas," possibly in the vicinity of Mille Laes, and where, it has been con- tended, the first white men to set foot on the soil of this state. The contention that these adventurers spent a part of the years 1655-56 on Prairie Island, in the Mississippi just above Red Wing, is disputed by some historians, but still forms an interesting subject for study and conjecture.
Some writers also elaim that the Frenchman, Sieur Nicollet, who should not be confused with the Nicollet of a later date, reached the Mississippi in 1639.
Rene Menard, a Jesuit missionary, reached the Mississippi in 1661 by way of Wisconsin. This was twelve years prior to its discovery by Marquette and Joliet, and to Menard historians in general give the honor of the discovery of the upper waters of the great river. Menard ascended the Mississippi to the month of the Black river, Wisconsin, and was lost in a forest near the source of that stream while attempting to carry the gospel to the Hurons. Ilis sole companion "ealled him and sought him, but he made no reply and could not be found." Some years later his camp kettle, robe and prayer book were seen in the possession of the Indians.
In the summer of 1663 the intelligence of the fate of Menard reached Quebec, and on August 8, 1665, Father Claude Allouez, who had anxiously waited two years for the means of convey- ance, embarked for Lake Superior with a party of French traders and Indians. He visited the Minnesota shores of Lake Superior in the fall of 1665, established the Mission of the Holy Spirit at La Pointe, now in Wisconsin, and it is said "was the first to write 'Messipi,' the name of the great river of the Sioux country," as he heard it pronounced by the Chippewas, or rather as it sounded to his ears.
May 13, 1673, Jaques Marquette and Louis Joliet, the former a priest and the latter the commander of the expedition, set out with five assistants, and on June 17 of the same year reached the Mississippi at the present site of Prairie du Chien, thenee con- tinuing down the river as far as the mouth of the Illinois, which they ascended, subsequently reaching the lakes.
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