USA > Minnesota > Renville County > The history of Renville County, Minnesota, Volume I > Part 9
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nesota, and to come into the U'nion on an equal footing with the original states, according to the federal constitution."
These boundaries were accepted without change and are the boundaries of the state at the present time. The state was ad- mitted May 11. 1858.
CHAPTER V.
EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS.
Grosseilliers and Radisson-Hennepin and Duluth-Le Sueur- Carver-Long, Keating and Beltrami-Pembina Refugees- Catlin-Nicollet and Fremont-Allen-The Missionaries- The Fur Traders-Chronology-Surveys.
The French explorers from the settlements in Canada and about the Great Lakes gradually began to penetrate toward Min- nesota. At various times traders, adventurers and priests disap- peared from these settlements. What deaths they met or what experiences they underwent will never be known. What places they visited in the wilderness of the upper Mississippi is Jost to human knowledge. With the seventeenth century, however. the area that is now Minnesota began to be known to the civil- ized world. But it was not until the closing months of that century that any recorded exploration was made of the Min- nesota river.
To understand Pierre Charles Le Sueur's trip up a portion of that river in the fall of 1700 it is necessary that a few of the earlier Mississippi river explorers should be considered.
Grosseiliers and Radisson. The meager accounts which these two explorers have left of their two expeditions which are supposed to have penetrated into Minnesota, are capable of more than one interpretation. Dr. Warren Upham believes that Gros- seilliers and Radisson, the first known white explorers of Minne- sota, entered it near the southeast corner, and proceeded up the Mississippi through Lake Pepin to Prairie Island, just above Red Wing. Here the French explorers and the Indians that ac- companied them, together with other Indians, spent the year 1655-1656. Thus when Cromwell ruled Great Britain and Ire- land, when the Puritan theocracy was at the height of its glory in New England, and when the great emigration of Cavaliers was still going on to Virginia, Minnesota saw its first white man -unless indeed the Scandinavians visited this region centuries before, as the Kensington Stone avers.
About New Years, 1660, if we may trust Radisson's narra- tion and its interpretation, our "two Frenchmen" are again in
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Minnesota. Traveling with a big band of Indians, they passed a severe January and February, with attendant famine, prob- ably (according to Prof. Winchell) at Knife lake, Kanabee coun- tv. According to Hon. J. V. Brower (in his monograph " Kathio, " 1901) the lake was ealled Knife lake and the Dakota tribe of this region the Knife tribe (Issanti) because early that spring deputations of Dakotas came to the encampment and here for the first time procured steel knives from the white men and from the Indian band that was with them. Until this time the Stone Age had ruled supreme in the realn of Renville, but now we may well suppose that within a short time many an enter- prising brave cherished as his most precious possession one of these magie knives that eut like a stroke of lightning. Very soon after meeting these Dakotas at Knife lake, Grosscilliers and Radisson went to the great Dakota village at Mille Lacs, and were there received with every mark of friendship and respect.
Now follows the story of a seven days' trip to the prairie home of the "nation of the Boefe" (buffalo), that is to say, the Dakotas living farther west and south. This story seems likely to be fiction, but if it is true, there is a fair chance that it was to the region between the Big Bend of the Mississippi river and the prairie region of the Minnesota valley. This was possibly the nearest and most accessible buffalo country from Mille Lacs. So it is possible that these two Frenchmen were the first white men to approach Renville county. But the supposition favored by Winchell is that they went due south. However that may be, it is certain that with Grosseilliers and Radisson the first glim- mer of European civilization reached Renville county.
Hennepin and Du Luth. Robert Cavelier, better known in history as the Sieur de la Salle, who had built a fort near Lake Peoria, Illinois, decided in February, 1680, to send from there an expedition up the Mississippi. For this task he selected three of his associates. Accordingly, on February 29, 1680, Father llen- nepin, with two companions, Pieard du Gay (Anthony Auguelle) and Michael Accault (also rendered d'Accault. Ako, d'Ako and Daean), the latter of whom was in military command of the party, set out in a canoe. They paddled down the Illinois to its month. where they were detained by floating ice in the Mis- sissippi until March 12. On the afternoon of April 11, while on their way up the Mississippi, they were met by a band of Sioux on the warpath against the Illinois and Miami nation. Being informed, however, that the Miamis had crossed the river and were beyond their reach, the Indians turned northward, taking the Frenchmen with them as captives. The journey up the river occupied nineteen days.
At the end of the nineteen days, the party landed near the present site of St. Paul, and then continued by land five days
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until they reached the Mille Laes region. There Aquipaguetin, the chief who had previously been unfriendly to a certain extent, adopted Hennepin in place of the son he had lost. The other two Frenchmen were adopted by other families. After several months in the Mille Laes region, lennepin and Pickard were given per- mission in July, 1680, to go down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wisconsin, where they expected that La Salle would send them supplies.
On their southward journey, accompanied by a Sionx chief, Quasiconde (Wacoota) and a band of Indians, the Frenchmen descended the Rum river, and camped on an eminence opposite what is now the city of Anoka. Aecault was left as a hostage. Continuing down the river with the Indians, Hennepin and Pickard came to St. Anthony Falls, which Hennepin named in honor of his patron saint. On July 11, 1680, while hunting for the month of the Wisconsin river, the party was overtaken by Ilennepin's savage adopted father, Aquipagnetin, with ten war- riors. The two Frenehmen and the Indians then spent some time in the vicinity of Winona, hiding their meat near the mouth of the Chippewa, and then hunting on the prairies further down the river. the old men of the tribe watching on the river bluffs for enemies while the warriors killed buffaloes.
July 25, 1680, the party encountered Daniel Graysolon, Du Luth and five French soldiers. There is some doubt about the exact spot where this meeting took place, but it was probably near the southeast corner of Minnesota, or possibly a little Further south. After the meeting, the eight white men, accompanied by the Indians, went up the river. Dn Luth had been exploring the country of the Sioux and the Assiniboines, west of Lake Superior, For two years, and had secured the friendship of these very Indians who had captured Hennepin. Consequently, when he learned what had happened since he last saw them, he rebuked them for their treatment of the priest, saying that Hennepin was his brother. The party reached the Issanti villages (the Mille Laes region ) August 14, 1680. No mention is made of the route which they took.
Toward the end of September the Frenchmen left the Indians to return to the French settlements. A chart of the route was given them by Onasiconde, the great chief. The eight Frenchmen then set out. Hennepin gives the number as eight, though it would seem that the number was nine, For Hennepin and Pickard had met Du Imth with five soldiers, and when reaching the Issanti villages they must have been rejoined by Arcault, though pos- sibly the last named stayed with the Indians and pursued his explorations. The party passed down the Rum river in the fall of 1680, and started the descent of the Mississippi. After reach- ing the Wisconsin they went up that river to the portage, thence
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up the Fox river, thence to Green Bay, and thence to the settle- ments in Canada.
Aecault, one of Hennepin's companions, had been left with the Indians near the present site of Anoka, when Hennepin and Arguille took the memorable down-the-river trip on which they met Du Luth. Accault took many journeys with the Indians, even visiting the Itasea region, and it is not improbable that he may have been taken to the region which lies north of the upper Minnesota river and southwest of the Big Bend of the Missis- sippi river.
Le Sueur. From 1681 to 1699, Nicholas Perrot made ummer- ous trips to the country of the upper Mississippi river. Several of his posts were located in the vicinity of the lower end of Lake Pepin, which is an enlargement of the Mississippi river extending generally speaking from a short distance above Winona to a short distance below Red Wing. One of these expeditions was probably that of Charville and Pierre Charles Le Suenr, taken up the Mississippi above the Falls of St. Anthony, about 1690. They probably went as far as the outlet of Sandy Lake.
Le Sueur wrote an account of this trip to refute certain fieti- tions narrations by Mathieu Sagean. Of this, in his excellent and monumental work, "Minnesota in Three Centuries," in Vol. 1, pp. 253-4. Dr. Warren Upham says: "Brower and Hill come to the conclusion that on the Mississippi at the outlet of sandy lake, a village of Sioux doubtless then existed, as it has also been dur- ing the last century or longer the site of an Ojibway village. The estimates noted, that the distance traveled above the Falls of St. Anthony was about a hundred French leagues, and that an equal distance of the river's course still separated the voyageurs from its sources, agree very closely with the accurate measure- ments now made by exact surveys. if Le Sueur's journey ended at Sandy lake.
"Very probably Charleville, whose narration of a similar early expedition of a hundred leagues on the part of the Mississippi above these falls is preserved by Du Pratz in his 'History of Louisiana,' was a companion of Le Sueur, so that the two accounts relate to the same canoe trip. Charleville said that he was accom- panied by two Canadian Frenchmen and two Indians; and it is remarkable that Charleville, like Le Sueur, was a relative of the brothers Iberville and Bienville, who afterwards were governors of Louisiana." As in Le Sueur's description of the sources of the great river, Charleville also states that the Indians spoke of the Mississippi as having many sources.
In the spring of 1695 Le Sueur and his followers erected a trading post or fort on Isle Pelee, now Prairie Island, just above Red Wing. Early in the summer of 1695 he returned to Mon-
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
treal with some Indians, among whom was a Sionx chief named Tioseate, the latter being the first Sioux chief to visit Canada. Tioseate died while in Montreal.
In his journeys to the Northwest, Le Suenr received reports from the Indians which led him to believe that copper was to be found near the place where the Minnesota river turns from its southwest to its northeast course. Therefore he received a com- mission to examine this mine and obtain from it some ores. In April, 1700. he set out with a party of men from the lower Mis- sissippi settlements in a sailing and rowing vessel and two canoes. September 19 he reached the mouth of the Minnesota, and on the last day of the month, having reached the month of the Blue Earth river near the present site of the city of Mankato, he ascended that river about a league, and erected a fort which he named Fort L'Ilmillier, named for a prominent officer in the service of the King of France. A short distance from the fort they located their "mine." They spent the ensuing winter at this fort, and in the spring of 1701 Le Sueur started down the river with a part of his followers and with a load of green earth which he believed to be copper. In due time he reached the Gulf of Mexico. The party whom he had left at the garrison on the Blue Earth followed him down the river at a later date. The fact that seven French traders who had been stripped naked by the Sioux took refuge in Le Sneur's fort on the Blue Earth, and the further fact that those whom he left at the fort, encountered while going down the Mississippi a party of thirty-six Frenehmen from Canada at the mouth of the Wisconsin, shows that aside from the explorers recorded in history, various Frenchmen, now unknown, penetrated the upper Mississippi region from time to time even at that early day.
The data secured by Le Sueur were used in the preparation of a map of the Northwest country by William De L'isle, royal geographer of France, in 1703. Several of the larger and more important physical features of southwestern Minnesota were more or less accurately located. The Minnesota river appeared upon this map, being labeled R. St. Pierre, or Mini-Sota. Its course is somewhat accurately drawn. The Des Moines river also has a place on the map, being marked Des Moines, or Je Moingona R., and its source was definitely located. There is noth- ing in the writings of Le Sueur, however, to lead to the belief that he extended his exploration much farther up the Minnesota river than the mouth of the Blue Earth.
Lahontan. Early historians have endeavored to identify the "Long River" of Lahontan with the Minnesota river of the present day. In case this identification were correct then a Frenchman sighted the fair area of Renville county only three years after Hennepin made his memorable voyage up the Missis-
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sippi. Modern historians, however, entirely discredit the writings of this adventurer.
Baron de Lahontan is now regarded as the Baron Munchausen of America. His explorations and journeys to the upper Missis- sippi region were probably entirely fictitious and "Long River" merely a creation of his own imagination.
Lahontan was born in France in 1666, and as a soldier of the French empire came to America in 1683 as a boy of seventeen years. The next ten years he spent in various parts of Canada, and there doubtless heard the stories upon which he based his pretended journeys. In 1693 he deserted his post of duty in New Foundland and thereafter until his death, probably in 1715, he spent his life as an exile, homeless and friendless, in Holland, Demark, Spain, the German provinces and England.
In 1703 at The Hague in Netherlands, Lahontan had narra- tives of his pretended travels published in three vohunes, written in his native French language. Later in the same year a revised edition of the work, entitled "New Voyages to North America," was issued in London. At present there are several other English and French editions. A translation was made into German in 1711 and into the language of Holland in 1739. In this publica- tion Lahontan pretended to have ascended the Mississippi river and to have discovered a tributary called "Long River" flowing into this river from the west. He gives in detail his many adven- tures on this " Long River." Before he was diseredited historians had many arguments as to whether Lahontan aseended the Root river or the Minnesota river, but we now know that he was never within many hundred miles of either.
Carver. During the next sixty-six years after Le Sueur vis- ited the Minnesota river country no white man was in South- western Minnesota, so far as we know. Then, in November, 1766, Jonathan Carver ascended the Minnesota. Carver was a Con- necticut Yankee and explored the upper Mississippi in the inter- ests of the British government.
Of his trip to this point Carver wrote: "On the twenty-fifth of November, 1766. I returned to my canoe, which I had left at the mouth of the River St. Pierre ( Minnesota ), and here I parted with regret from my young friend, the prince of the Winne- bagoes. The river being elear of ice by reason of its southern situation, I found nothing to obstruet my passage. On the twenty- eighth. being advanced about forty miles, I arrived at a small branch that fell into it from the north, to which, as it had no name that I could distinguish it by, I gave my own, and the reader will find it in the plan of my travels denominated Carver's river. About forty miles higher up I came to the forks of the Verd (Blue Earth) and Red Marble (Watonwan) rivers, which join at some little distance before they enter the St. Pierre.
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"The River St. Pierre at its junction with the Mississippi is about a hundred yards broad and continues that breadth nearly all the way I sailed upon it. It has a great depth of water and in some places rims very swiftly. About fifteen miles from its mouth are some rapids and much higher up are many others.
" I proceeded up this river about 200 miles, to the country of the Nadowessies (Sioux) of the plains, which lies a little above the fork formed by the Verd and Red Marble rivers just men- tioned, where a branch from the south (the Cottonwood) nearly joins the Messorie (Missouri river." (The sources of the Cot- tonwood river are near those of Rock river, the latter being a tributary of the Missouri.)
On the seventh of December he arrived at the most westerly limit of his travels, and as he could proceed no further that season. spent the winter. a period of seven months, among a band of Nadowessies (Sioux . eneamped near what is now New U'h. In his map he draws three tepees opposite the present city of New Ulm on the north side of the Minnesota river and makes the statement. "About here the Author winter' in 1766." In his hunting and exploration he ascended the Little Rock inow Mud creek) into Cairo and Wellington townships. He says he learned the Sioux language so as to converse with them intelligi- bly, and was treated by them with great hospitality. In the spring he returned to the mouth of the Minnesota.
His account of this is as follows: "I left the habitations of these hospitable Indians the latter end of April, 1767. but did not part from them For several days, as I was accompanied on my journey by near three hundred of them, among whom were many chiefs, to the month of the River St. Pierre. At this season these bands annually go to the great eave (now called Carver's cave) before mentioned, to hold a grand council with all the other bands, wherein they settle their operations for the ensuing year. At the same time they carry with them their dead for interment, bound up in buffalo skins."
As already stated, Carver hunted with the Indians over some of the great plains of Southwestern Minnesota which, "accord- ing to their (the Indians') account, are unbounded and probably terminate on the coast of the Pacific ocean.'
From information received from the Indians Carver made some wonderful deductions as to the physical features of the country. In his narrative of the trip he wrote: "By the accounts I received from the Indians I have reason to believe that the River St. Pierre (Minnesota) and the Messorie (Missouri), though they enter the Mississippi twelve hundred miles from each other, take their rise in the same neighborhood, and this within the space of a mile. The River St. Pierre's northern branch (that is, the main river) rises from a number of lakes (Big Stone lake)
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near the Shining mountains (the Coteau des Prairies), and it is from some of these also that a capital branch (Red River of the North) of the River Bourbon (Nelson river), which runs into Hudson's bay, has its sources. * *
# I have learned that the four most capital rivers of North America, viz., the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon (Nelson) and the Oregon (Columbia), or River of the West, have their sourees in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather farther west.
"This shows that these parts are the highest lands of North America ; and it is an instance not to be paralleled on the other three-quarters of the globe, that four rivers of such magnitude should take their rise together and each, after running separate courses, discharge their waters into different oceans at the dis- tance of 2,000 miles from their source."
Of the country through which he traveled Carver wrote: "The River St. Pierre, which runs through the territory of the Nadowessies, flows through a most delightful country. abound- ing with all the necessaries of life that grow spontaneously, and with a little cultivation it might be made to produce even the Inxuries of life. Wild rice grows here in great abundance : and every part is filled with trees bending under their loads of fruit, such as plums, grapes and apples; the meadows are covered with hops and many sorts of vegetables; whilst the ground is stored with useful roots, with angelica, spikenard and ground nuts as large as hens' eggs. At a little distance from the sides of the river are eminences from which you have views that cannot be exceeded by even the most beautiful of those I have already deseribed. Amidst these are delightful groves and such amazing quantities of maples that they would produce sugar sufficient for any number of inhabitants."
Ft. Snelling Established. With the establishment of Ft. Snell- ing, the area of Renville county became more widely known, as the soldiers, traders and visitors there made many trips up the river past the county.
February 10, 1819, the Fifth Regiment United States Infantry was ordered to concentrate at Detroit preparatory to a trip which was to result in the maintaining of a post at the mouth of the St. Peter's (now Minnesota) river. After establishing various garrisons at different places, the troops started up the river from Prairie du Chien, Sunday, August 8, 1819. The troops num- bered ninety-eight, rank and file. They were accompanied by twenty hired boatmen. There were fourteen keel boats for the troops, two large boats for stores, and a barge for Lient .- Col. Harry Leavenworth, the commander, and Maj. Thomas Forsyth, the Indian agent. This expedition established at Mendota the
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IHISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
military post now moved across the river and now known as Ft. Snelling.
May 10. 1823, the "Virginia, " the first steamboat to navigate the upper Mississippi, arrived at Ft. Snelling, and thus what is now Renville county was placed in still eloser communication with the outside world. On board, among others, were Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro and James Constance Beltrami, the Italian explorer.
Long, Keating, Beltrami. Undoubtedly white men, engaged in trade with the natives or trapping and hunting for the fur companies or for themselves, visited that part of south-central Minnesota which is now designated Renville county in the early part of the nineteenth century. But such men left few records of their operations, and our information concerning the exploration of the country is obtained almost wholly from expeditions sent out by the government.
An early visitor to south-central Minnesota was Major Stephen H. Long. Long did not traverse Renville county, for near the present site of New Ulm the party crossed the Minnesota river and followed its southern shore.
In accordance with orders from the War Department, an expe- dition under the command of Major Long, with a corps of seien- tists for observations of the geographie features, geology. zoology and botany of the Northwest, traversed the area of Minnesota in 1823, passing from Ft. Snelling up the Minnesota valley, down the valley of the Red river to Lake Winnipeg, thence up the Winnipeg river to the Lake of the Woods, and thener eastward along the international boundary and partly in Canada to bake Superior. Prof. William II. Keating, of the University of Penn- sylvania. was the geologist and historian of this expedition. One of its members or its guest in the travel from the fort to Pembina was Costantino Beltrami, a political exile from Italy. but, becom- ing offended, he left the expedition at Pembina and returned to the fort by the way of Red lake and the most northern sources of the Mississippi, traveling alone or with Indian companions.
The boat party entered the mouth of the Minnesota river, then called the St. Peter, late in the night of July 2, and a stay of a week was made there. for rest and to visit the Falls of St. Anthony.
Provided by Colonel Snelling at the fort with a new and more efficient escort of twenty-one soldiers, with Joseph Renville as their Dakota interpreter, and with Joseph Snelling, a son of the colonel, as assistant guide and interpreter, the expedition set forward on July 9 up the Minnesota valley. A part traveled on horseback, including Say and Colhoun, while the others, incluid- ing Long, Keating, Seymour and Renville went in four canoes, which also carried the bulk of their stores and provisions. It was planned that the land and river parties "should, as far as
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