USA > Minnesota > Renville County > The history of Renville County, Minnesota, Volume I > Part 7
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The consideration to the upper bands was the reservation twenty miles wide-ten miles on each side of the Minnesota- and extending from the western boundary to the month of the Yellow Medicine and Hawk creek, and $1.665,000, payable as follows: To enable them to settle their affairs and comply with their present just engagements, and to enable them to remove to their new reservation and subsist themselves for the first year, $275,000. To be expended under the direction of the President, in the erection and establishment of manual labor schools, mills and blacksmith shops, opening farms, etc .. $30,000. The balance ($1,360,000 ; to remain in trust with the United States and five per cent interest thereon, or $68,000 to be paid annually for fifty years from Ily 1, 1852. This annuity was to be paid as follows: In cash, $40,000: for general agricultural improvement and civili- zation fund, $12,000; for goods and provisions, $10,000, and for education, $6,000.
The written copies of the Traverse des Sioux and the Mendota treaties, only signed and attested, were forwarded to Washing- ton to be acted 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 June 23, the Senate ratified both treaties with important amendments. The provi- sions for reservations for both the upper and lower bands were stricken ont, and substitutes adopted, agreeing to pay 10 cents an acre for both reservations, and authorizing the President, with the assent of the Indians, to eanse to be set apart other reserva- tions, which were to be within the limits of the original great cession. The provision to pay $150,000 to the half-bloods of the lower bands was also stricken ent. The treaties, with the changes. came back to the Indians for final ratification 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 articles, 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 okl 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 aet by which the original provisions remained in force.
The Ramsey Investigation of 1853. During the greater part of the year 1853 publie attention in Minnesota and elsewhere in the country was directed to an official investigation of the con-
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duet of ex-Governor Ramsey in connection with the payment to the representative of the traders of money to which the Indians supposed themselves entitled under the treaties of 1851. The Indians protested against paying any of their money in discharge of their debts to the traders. They had at both treaties signed a paper providing for the payment of these debts, but subse- quently claimed that the nature of the "traders' paper" they had signed was misrepresented to them as merely another copy of the treaty.
At Traverse des Sioux the Indians' protest against paying the traders took the form of menace and violence on the part of Chief Red Iron and his band, and quiet was secured only by the soldiers present through the seizing and imprisoning of Red Iron. But Governor Ramsey was firm in his purpose that the traders should be paid. At Traverse des Sioux he paid a representative of the traders $210,000 which, he said, "paid $431,735.78 of Indian indebtedness :" at Mendota he paid a representative of the traders $70,000, which, he said, "according to the traders' books of account paid $129,885.10 of indebtedness."
In December, 1852, charges of conspiracy with H. H. Sibley. Franklin Steele and others to defraud the Indians; that he had made unlawful use of the public funds by depositing them in a private bank and exchanging government gold for the bills of that bank ; that he had been guilty of tyrannical conduct toward the Indians in connection with the payment of the sums due them, were made against Governor Ramsey. The authors of the charges were Madison Sweetzer, of 'Traverse des Sioux, and Colonel D. A. Robertson, of St. Paul. Sweetzer was a trader, who had rather recently located at Traverse des Sioux and was con- neeted with a rival company to that of pierre Choteau, Ir .. & Company, the corporation to which Sibley, Steele and the others charged with conspiracy belonged. Colonel Robertson was the editor of the Minnesota Democrat, which was the organ of the faction controlled by HI. M. Rice, then the opponent of Sibley and Ramsey.
The allegations against Governor Ramsey were, that he had paid the traders various sums of money without the right to do so, and that for so doing he had been paid by the beneficiaries, and thus, in effect, had been bribed to violate the law and his duty.
At the request of Mr. Sibley, then the delegate in Congress. Senator Gwin of California secured the passage of a Senate reso- lution (April 5, 1853.) ordering the investigation of the charges against the ex-governor. At the same time the governor's accounts as paymaster under the treaties were held up until the investigation should be concluded. President Pierce appointed Richard M. Young, of Ohio. and Governor Willis A. Gorman, of
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Minnesota, commissioners to investigate, during which testimony was given by Madison Sweetzer, Dr. Charles Wolf Borup and Joseph A. Sire.
The investigation and the taking of testimony began at St. Paul July 6. and was concluded October 7. 1853. A large number of witnesses were examined-whites, Indians and mixed bloods. Some of the most prominent citizens of the Territory testified- Sibley, Brown, MeLeod, Steele, Forbes and Alexander Faribault, the traders: Reverends Riggs and Williamson, of the mission- aries ; Dr. Thomas Foster, Captain W. B. Dodd, Henry Jackson and David Olmsted, of the citizens: Wabasha, Little Crow, Wacouta, Red Iron, Grey Iron, Shakopee, the Star and Cloud Man, of the Indians : Captain James Monroe, of the army; Indian Agent Nathaniel MeLean, and many others.
Commissioner Young made an official report of the investiga- tion to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which bears date December 20, 1853. This report criticised, the conduet of Gov- ernor Ramsey in depositing the government funds in a private bank and in paying out large amounts in bills and drafts on that bank to beneficiaries under the treaty. It also contained some strictures on various other features of the governor's conduct. It did not, however, find him guilty of conspiring with the traders, nor of being paid by the traders for the part he took in bringing about the signing of the treaties. February 24, 1854, Senator James Cooper, of Pennsylvania, a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, presented a report to the effect that Governor Ramsey had been acquitted by the committee of all impropriety of conduct, and that one of the complainants. Colonel D. A. Robertson, had retraeted his charges. The resolution was con- sidered by unanimous consent and the committee discharged.
As a matter of fact, the guilt, if guilt there was, was shared by all. The whites desired that Minnesota be opened to settle- ment, the traders demanded vast sums for the goods which they had already soll to the Indians on credit, the only way the Indians could be persuaded to sign the treaties was through the influence of the traders, and the traders would not consent to serve unless the Indians were compelled to sign the "traders' paper." Probably the Indians had no idea what they were doing when they signed the paper, and even of the treaty which they knowingly signed they had no adequate conception, and the white men who negotiated it were well aware that if the Indians realized the truth about what they were doing they would never sign even the treaty, to say nothing of the "traders' paper." It was not a crime of individuals, it was merely one of the steps by which one race through guile, trickery and force of numbers and superiority of war equipment was supplanting another and more primitive people.
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Treaty of 1858. June 19, 1858, the government made a treaty with certain selected chiefs and braves of the Medawakanton, Wahpakoota, Sisseton and Wahpaton bands of Sioux for the cession of their reservation, ten miles in width, on the north side of the Minnesota, and extending from the west line of the State to Little Rock creek, four miles east of Fort Ridgely. The area purchased amounted to about 8,000,000 acres, and the price to be paid was subsequently (but not until June 27, 1860) fixed by the Senate at thirty cents an acre. The Indians agreed that, in the aggregate for the four bands, the sum of $140,000 might be taken from the purchase price to pay their debts owing to the traders, or, as the treaty expressed it, "to satisfy their just debts and obligations."
The influx of white settlers into the country of the Minnesota valley, where were some of the finest lands in the State, had been very large after the Indian title to the greater part of the country had been extinguished. The magnificent domain com- prising a great part of what are now the southern portions of Renville, Chippewa, Swift and Big Stone counties was looked upon with covetous eyes by the homeseekers. The waves of immigration beat against the legal barrier which surrounded this fine fertile expanse, and there was a great elamor that the bar- riers be removed. "The country is too good for the Indian," said the whites. The Indians themselves had not to any con- siderable extent occupied the north half of their reservation. Their villages and nearly all of their tepees-except about Big Stone lake-were situated in the south half. But a majority of the Indians, owing to their previous experiences, were opposed to selling any portion of their reserve. Some of the head chiefs and the headmen, however, were willing to sell the north side strip if they could get a good price for it. Major Joseph R. Brown. then the Sioux agent, consulted with them and at last a number of them agreed to accompany him to Washington to make a treaty. Not all of the sub-chiefs nor all of the head-men could be induced to go; some of them were opposed to the sale of the land, and others were afraid of the results of a hostile public sentiment. If required all of Major Brown's great influenee with the Sioux to effect the important negotiations. The Indians went to Washington in something like imposing array. Major Brown gave high silk hats and other articles of the white man's adornment to those who would wear them, and there accompanied the party a retinne of whites and mixed bloods from Minnesota. A. J. Campbell (commonly called "Joe" Campbell) was the official interpreter, but assisting him was the shrewd old Scotchman, Andrew Robertson, and his mixed blood son, Thomas A. Robertson. Other members of the party were:
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Nathaniel R. Brown, John Dowling, Charlie Crawford and James R. Roche.
On behalf of the United States the treaty was signed by Charles E. Mix, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Sisseton and Wahpaton Indians who signed it were these:
Sissetons and Wahpatons-Chiefs, Red Iron, Searlet Plume, and Extends His Train. Headmen : Stumpy Horn, The Planter, Walks on Iron, Paul Mah-zah-koo-te-Mane. JJohm Other Day. and Strong Voiced Pipe.
The small number of dignitaries named assumed to act for the entire Sioux of Minnesota. It is not a matter of surprise that there was dissatisfaction among the bands on account of the limited list of their representatives on so important an occasion.
After the treaty had been signed the Indians were sumptu- ously entertained, given broadcloth suits, high hats, and patent leather shoes to wear, and had a grand good time, all at the ex- pense of the Government. They were photographed and taken to the theatres. and allowed to return home by way of Balti- more, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. When they re- turned to Minnesota their tales of the magnificence and strength of the whites were listened to by their people with interest and in some measure reconciled them to what had been done.
The opening of the "north ten-mile strip." as the land was called, was of great benefit to the development of Minnesota, at least for a time. Settlers eame in considerable numbers and the country was improving rapidly when the Civil War inter- rupted the peaceful course of events. Then in 1862 came the Sioux Outbreak and all of the civilization on the ten-mile strip was pushed off by a great wave of blood and fire.
Agencies and Forts. The reservations as outlined in the treaties, embraced a tract of land twenty miles wide, ten miles on each side of the Minnesota, extending from the mouth of the Little Rock (Mud ereek) westward to Lake Traverse. The di- viding line between the Upper and Lower reservations was a line drawn north and south through the mouth of Hawk Creek. Thus Renville county for a ten mile strip along the Minnesota was in the Lower reservation, except for a strip west of lawk Creek.
The removal of the Indians to their reservations was inter- mittent, interrupted and extended over a period of several years.
With the establishment of the new Indian reserve and the removal of the Indians thereto, came the necessity of a new military post in Minnesota. The concentration of so many In- dians upon an area really small in comparison with the country a part of which they had openpied, and all of which they claimed to own, rendered the situation important and worthy of atten- tion. A military post was necessary to preserve order should
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the Indians become dissatisfied. There were to be two Indian agencies for the Indians on the reservation. The Upper agency, for the Sissetons and Wahpatons, was established near the month of the Yellow Medieine and the Lower, for the Medawanton and Wahpakoota bands, was placed about six miles east of the month of the Redwood. Both agencies were on the south bank of the Minnesota river.
The matter of the new military post was called to the atten- tion of C. M. Conrad, then Secretary of War, and General Win- field Seott, then commanding the regular army, by Delegate Henry H. Sibley.
General Scott coneurred in Sibley's recommendation, and the Secretary of War approved it, and issued the necessary or- der. In the fall of 1852 Captain Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, then of the quartermaster's department, and Colonel Francis Lee, then in command at Fort Snelling, were ordered to select a suitable site for the new fort, "on the St. Peter's river. above the mouth of the Blue Earth."
In the latter part of November, with an escort of dragoons from Fort Snelimg and after a three days' march in the snow, the officers reached Laframboise's trading post, at the Little Rock. Five miles above the Rock, on the erest of the high bluff on the north side of the Minnesota, the site was fixed.
The new post was named Fort Ridgely, in honor of Major Randolph Ridgely, a gallant officer of the regular army from Maryland, who died of injuries received at the battle of Monterey.
When Fort Ridgely was established Fort Riley, Kansas, was ordered built. At the same time Fort Dodge, lowa, and Fort Scott, Kansas, were ordered discontinued and broken up.
Fort Ridgely took the place of Fort Dodge, and Fort Riley was substituted for Fort Scott. The first garrison at Ridgely was composed of Companies C and K of the Sixth Infantry, and the first commander was Captain James Monroe, of Company . K. Companies ( and K went up on the steamboat West Newton from Fort Snelling. but later were joined by Company E. which marched across the country from Fort Dodge, and arrived in June. 1853, when work on the buildings was begun. When Com- pany E arrived its captain, Brevet Major Samuel Woods, previ- ously well identified with Minnesota history took command by virtue of his rank. The work of constructing the fort was in charge of Captain Dana. The further history of Fort Ridgely is found elsewhere in this work.
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CHAPTER IN.
CLAIM OF TITLE.
Spain-France-England-United States-Louisiana Purchase- Louisiana District of Indiana-Louisiana Territory-Missouri Territory-Michigan Territory-Wisconsin Territory-Iowa Territory-Minnesota Territory-Minnesota State.
The history of the early governmental jurisdiction of the valley of the Minnesota river 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 unre- liable, that descriptions of boundaries and locations as given in the early treaties are vague in the extreme, and very difficult of identification with present-day lines and locations.
The Hon. J. V. Brower, a scholarly authority upon this sub- jeet, 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 ob- jections which she made in the next two centuries after the discovery to other nations exploring and settling North America were successfully 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, commencing at the Gulf of Mexico and pro- ceeding northward indefinitely. This expansiveness of geograph- ical view was paralleled later by the definition of a New France of still greater extent, which practically included all the conti- nent.
"L'Esearbet, 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. on this side of the Tropie of Cancer: on the south the islands of the Atlantic sea in the direction of Cuba and the Spanish land ; on the east and the northern sea which bathes New France : and on the north the land said to be unknown, toward the icy sea as far as the arctic 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 Atlantic westward, the
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English were not far behind the Spaniards and French in this kind of effrontery. 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 neers- 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 peo- ples who. in later times, by diplomacy and force of arms, strug- gled for an actual occupancy. Practically, however, the upper Mississippi valley may be considered as having been in the first place Canadian soil, for it was Frenchmen from Canada who first visited it and traded with its various 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-Louisiana. The names of Canada and New France had been indifferently 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. Al- though La Salle has applied the latter expression to the entire valley of the Mississippi, it was not generally used in that sense after his time: the upper part of the region was called Canada, and the lower Louisiana; but the actual dividing line between the two provinces was not absolutely established, and their names and boundaries were varionsly indicated on published maps. Speaking generally, the Canada of the eighteenth cen- tury 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 month 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 Renville county.
But it is now necessary to go back two centuries previous and consider the various explorations of the Mississippi upon which were based the claims 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 Welsh emigrants (Madoc), about 1170, discovered North America by way of the Gulf of Mexico, but historians gave to Fernando de Soto and his band of
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adventurers 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 victim to disease and died May 21, 1541. His followers, greatly reduced 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 ontlet of that great river from the interior. However, they were too weary and discour- aged to lay claim 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 ascended 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 cross. 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 became more frequent.
In 1659-60 Radisson and Grosseilliers, 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 Lacs, and were, 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,
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is disputed by some historians, but still forms an interesting subject for study and conjecture.
Some writers also claim that the Frenchman, Sieur Nicollet, who should not be confused with the Nicollet of a later date, reached the Mississippi in 1639.
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