USA > Mississippi > History of the upper Mississippi Valley, pt 1 > Part 37
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branches, no fruitage. It seems in its early infan- cy to put forth no branches, but is simply taking hold of the clements below on which its immer life and growth depends. As the system rises, the underlying hows of life come forth in the prin- ciples of invention, numfacturing, engraving, and designing, enriching every branch of intellectual and professional industry, and beautifying every field of human culture. These varied results are all in the law of growth in the organism of state schools carried on above the common schools to the University course. The higher the course the more beneficial the results to the industries of the world, whether those industries are intellectual or purely physical, eater only to the demands of wealth, or tend to subserve the modest demands of the humblest eitizen.
The only eritieism that ean reach the question now under consideration, is whether the graded organization tends to produce the results to which we have referred. The law relating to the division of labor has especially operated in the graded sys- tem of state schools. Under its operation, it is elaim- ed, by good judges, that eight years of school life, from five to twenty-one, has been saved to the pupils of the present generation, over those of the ungraded schools ante-dating the last fifty years. By the operation of this law, in one generation, the saving of time, on the enrollments of state schools in the graded systems of the northern states of the Ameri- ean Union, would be enormons. For the State of Minnesota alone on the enrollment of 180,000, the aggregale years of time saved would execed a million! The time saved on the enrollment of the schools of the different States, under the operation of this law would exceed over twenty million years!
'To the division of labor is due the wonderful facility with which modern business associations have laid their hands upon every branch of indus- trial pursuits, and bestowed upon the world the comforts of life. Introduced into our system of edneation it produces results as astonishing as the advent of the spiming Jemy in the manufacture of cloth. As the raw material from the cotton- field of the planter, passing, by gradation, through the unskilled hands of the ordinary laborer to the more perfect process of improved machinery, sseures additional valne in a constantly increasing ratio; so the graded system of intellectual eul- ture, from the Primary to the High School, and thenee to the University, udds increased Ister and value to the mental development, in a ratio
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HISTORY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
commensurate with the increased skill of the men- tal operator.
'The law of growth in state schools was clearly announced by Horace Mann, when he upplied to this system the law governing hydraulics, that no strenm could rise above its fountain. The com- mon school conkl not produce a scholarship above its own curriculum. The high school was a grade above, and as important in the State system as the elevated fountain head of the living stream. This law of growth makes the system at once the most natural, the most ceonomical, und certainly the most popular. These several elements might be illustrated, but the reader can easily imaging them at his leisure. As to the last, however, suffer an illustration. In Minnesota, for the school year ending August 21st, 1880, according to the report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, there were enrolled, one hundred and eighty thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight scholars in the state schools, while all others embracing kindergart- . ons, private schools, parochial schools, of all seets and all denominations, had an attendance nt the same time of only two thousand four hundred and twenty-eight; and to meet all possible omis- sions, if we allow double this umber, there is less than three per cent. of the enrollment in the state school. This ratio will be found to hold good, at least, throughout all the Northern States of the American Union. These state schools then, are not unpopular in comparison with the schools of a pri- vate and opposite character. Nor is it owing alto- gether to the important faet, that state schools are free, that they are more popujar than schools of an opposite character; for those state schools are a tax upon the property of the people, nud yet n tux most cheerfully borne, in conse- quence of their superior excellence and importance.
The state school, if not already, can be .so graded, that each scholar can have the advantage of superior special instruction far better adapted to the studies through which he desires to pass, than similar instruction can be had in ungraded schools of any character whatever. In this re- speet the State system is without a rival. It has the power to introduce such changes as may meet all the demands of the state and all the claims of the learner.
The state school knows no seot, no party, no privileged class, and no special favorites ; the high, the low, the rich, and the poor, the home and foreign-born, black or white, are all equal at this
altar. The child of the ruler and the ruled aro here equal. The son of the Governor, the wood- sawyer, and the hod-carrier, here meet on one level, and alike contend for ranks, and alike expect the honors due to superior meril, the reward of intellectual culture. But, aside from the republi. can character of the State school system, the sys- tem is a State necessity. Without the required state culture, under its control, the state inst cease to ex- ist ns an organism for the promotion of luiman hap- piness, or the protection of human rights, and its people, though ouce cultured and refined, must certainly return to barbarism and savage lite. There can be no compromise in the warfare against inherited ignorance. Under all governments tlie statute of limitations closes over the subject at twenty-one years; so that during the minority of the race, must this warfare be waged by the gov- ernment without trnce. No peace can ever be proclaimed in this war, until the child shall in- herit the inatured wisdom, instead of the primal ignorance of the ancestor.
The State School system, in our government, is from the necessity of the case, National. No state can enforce its system beyond the limits of its own territory. And unless the nation enforce its own uniform system, the conflict between jurisdictions could never be determined. No homogeneous system could ever be enforced. As the graded system of state schools has now reaelied the period in its history which corresponds to the colonial history of the national organization, it must here fail, as did the colonial system of government, to fully meet the demands of the people. And what was it, let us consider, that led the people in the organ- ization of the national government, " to form a more perfeet union?" Had it then become neces- sary to take this step, that " justice " might be established, domestic tranquility insured, the common defense made more efficient, the general welfare promoted, and the blessings of liberty, better secured to themselves and their posterity, that the fathers of the government should think it necessary to form n more perfect mion." Why the necessity of a more perfeet union? Were our fathers in fear of a domestic or foreign foe, that had manifested his power in their immediate pres- ence, threatening to jeopardize or destroy their domestic tranquility? Was this foe an hereditary enemy, who might at long intervals of time invade their territory, and endanger the liberties of this
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people? And for this reason did they demand a more perfeet union? And does not this reason now exist in still greater foree for the formation of a still more perfeet union in our system of state schools? Our fathers were moved by the most natural of all reasons, by this law of self-defense. They were attacked by a power too great to be snecessfully resisted in their colonial or morgan- ized state. The fear of a destruetion of the sev- cral colonies without a more perfect union drove them to this alternative. It was nion and the hope of freedom, against disunion and the fear of death, that cemented the national government. And this was an external organism, the temple in which the spirit of freedom should preside, and in which her worshippers should enjoy not only domestic but national tranquility. Now, should it he manifest to the world, that the soul and spirit, the very life of this temple, erected to free- dom, is similarly threatened, should not be the same cause that operated in the erection of the temple itself, operate in the protection of its sacred · fires, its soul and spirit? It would seem to require no admonition to move a nation in the direction of its highest hopes, the protection of its inner lite.
And what is this enemy, and where is the power. able to destroy both the temple and the spirit of freedom? And why should State Education take upon itself any advanced position other than its present independent organic elements? In the face of what enemy should it now be claimed we should attempt to change front, and "form a more perfeet union to insure domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare," to the end that we may the better seenre the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity ? That potent foe to our free institutions, to which we are now bronght face to face, is human ignorance, the natural hereditary foe to every form of enlightened free government. This hereditary enemy is now home- steaded upon our soil. This enemy, in the lan- guage of the declaration made by the colonies against their hereditary foe, this enemy to our government, has kept among us n standing army of illiterates, who can neither read nor write, but are armed with the ballot, more powerfut than the sword, ready to strike the most deadly blow at human freedom; he has ent off and almost entirely destroyed our trade between states of the same government; has imposed a tax pon ns withont our consent, most grievous to be borne; the tras quite abolished the free system of United States
laws in several of onr states; he has established, in many sections, arbitrary tribunals, exchiding the subject from the right of trial by jury, and enlarged the powers of his despotie rule, endan- gering the lives of praceable citizens; he has alienated government of one section, by deelaring the inhabitants, aliens and enemies to his supposed hereditary right; he has excited domestic insur- rections amongst ns; he has endeavored to destroy the peace and harmony of our people by bringing his despotie ignorance of our institutions into conflict with the freedom and purity of our elee- tions; he has raised up advocates to his canse who have openly declared that our system of State Edneation, on which our government rests, is a failure *; he has spared no age, no sex, no portion of our country, but has, with his ignominious minions, afflicted the North and the South, the East and the West, the rich and the poor, the black and the white; an enemy alike to the peo- ple of every section of the government, from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Louisi- ana. Such an inexorable enemy to government and the domestic tranquility of all good citizens deserves the opprobrinm dne only to the Prince of Darkness, against whom eternal war should be waged; and for the support of this declaration, with a firm relianes on the protection of Divine Providence, we should, as did our fathers, mutu- ally pledge to each other, ns citizens of the free states ot Amerien, our lives, our fortimes, and our saered honor.
We have thus far considered the State School system in some of its organic elements, and the nature, tendency, and necessary union of these elements; first in states, and tinfly for the forma- tion of a more perfeet union, that they may be united in one national organization under the con- trol of one sovereign will. The mode in which these unorganized elements shall come into union and harmony with themselves, and constitute the true inner life and soul of the American Union, is left for the consideration of those whose special duty it is to devote their best energies to the pro- motion of the welfare of the Nation, and hy states- mmn-like forethought provide for the domestic, social, eivil, intellectual, and industrial progress of the rapidly accumulating millions who are soon to swarm upon the American Continent. We see truly that
*Richard Grunt White in North American Review.
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HISTORY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
" The rudiments of empire here Are plastie yet and warm; The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form!
" Each rude and jostling fragment soon Its filling place shall find The raw material of a state, Its musele and its mind."
But we must be allowed, in a word, to state the results which we hope to see accomplished, before the jostling fragments, which are yet plas- tie and warm shall have attained a temperament not easily fused and " rounded " into one home- geneous national system, rising in the several states from the kindergarten to the University, and from the State Universities through all orders of specialties demanded by the widening indus- tries and growing demands of a progressive age. And in this direction we cannot fail to see that the national government must so mould its intellect- ual systems, that the state and national curricula shall be uniform throughout the states and terri- tories, so that a class standing of every pupil, properly certified, shall be equally good for a like elass standing in every portion of the Government to whieli he may desire to remove. America will then be ready to celebrate her final in- dependence, the inalienble rights of American youth, as having n standing limited by law in her state and national systems of education, entitling them to rank everywhere with associates and com- peers on the same plain; when, in no case, shall these rights be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state or any authority thereof, on account of race, color, or previons condition of schohuship, secular or sectorinn, till the same shall forever find the most mmuple protection under the broad banner of NATIONAL and NATURAL rights, common alike to all, in the ever widening REPUB- LIC of LETTERS.
CHRONOLOGY. CHAPTER XLVI.
PRINCIPAL EVENTS CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED.
1659. Groselliers (Gro-zay-yay ) and Radisson visit Minnesota.
1661. Menard, a Jesuit missionary, ascends the Mississippi, according to Herrot, twelve years be- fore Marquette saw this river.
1665. Allouez, a Jesuit, visited the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior.
1679. Du Luth planted the arms of France, one hundred and twenty leagues beyond Mille Laes.
1680. Du Luth, the first to travel in a canoe from Lake Superior, by way of the St. Croix river, to the Mississippi. Descending the Missis- sippi, he writes to Signelay, in 1683: "I pro- eeeded in a canoe two days and two nights, and the next day, at ten o'clock in the morning," found Aceault, Augelle, and Father Hennepin, with a hunting party of Sioux. He writes: " The want of respect which they showed to the said Reverend Father provoked me, and this I showed them, telling them he was my brother, and I had him placed in my canoe to come with me into the villages of said Nadoneeioux." In Sep- tember, Du Luth and Hennepin were at the Falls of St. Anthony on their way to Mackinaw.
1683. Perrot and Le Sueur visit Lake Pepin. Perrot, with twenty men, builds a stockade at the base of a bluff, upon the east bank, just above the entrance of Lake Pepin.
1688. Perrot re-occupies the post on Lake Pepin.
1689. Perrot, at Green Bay, makes a formal record of taking possession of the Sioux country in the name of the king of France.
1693. Le Sueur nt the extremity of Lake Su- perior.
1694. Le Sueur builds a post, on a prairie island in the Mississippi, about nine miles below Hastings.
1695. Le Sneur brings the first Sioux chiefs who visited Cannda.
1700. Le Sueur ascends the Minnesota River. Fort L'Huillier built on a tributary of Blue Earth River.
1702. Fort L'Huillier abandoned.
1727. Fort Beauharnois, in the fall of this year, erected in sight of Maiden's Rock, Lake l'epin, by La Perriere du Boucher.
1728. Verendrye stationed nt Lnke Nepigon.
1731. Verendrye's sons rench Rainy Inke. Fort St. Pierre erected at Ruiny Lake.
1732. Fort St. Charles erected at the south- west corner of the Lake of the Woods.
1784. Fort Maurepas established ou Winnipeg River.
1736. Verendrye's son and others massaered by the Sionx on an isle in the Lake of the Woods.
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CHRONOLOGY.
1738. Fort La Reine on the Red River estab- lished.
1743. Verendrye's sons reach the Rocky Moun- tains.
1766. Jonathan Carver, on November 17th, reaches the F'alls of St. Anthony.
1794. Sandy Lake occupied by the North- west Company.
1802. William Morrison trades at Leach Lake.
1804. William Morrison trades at Elk Lake, now Itasea.
1805. Lientenant Z. M. Pike purchases the site since occupied by Fort Snelling.
1817. Earl of Selkirk passes through Minne- sota for Lake Winnipeg.
Major Stephen HI. Long, U. S. A., visits Falls of St. Anthony.
1818. Dakotalı war party under Black Dog attack Ojibways on the Pomme de Terre River.
1819. Col. Leavenworth arrives on the 24th of Angust, with troops at Mendota.
1820. J. B. Faribault brings up to Mendota, horses for Col. Leavenworth.
Laidlow, superintendent of farming for Earl Selkirk, passes from Pembina to Prairie du Chien to purchase seed wheat. Upon the 15th of April left Prairie dn Chien with Mackinaw boats and ascended the Minnesota to Big Stone Lake, where the boats were placed on rollers and dragged a short distance to Lake Traverse, and on the 3d of June, reached Pembina.
On the 5th of May, Col. Leavenworth estab)- lished summer quarters at Camp Coldwater, Hen- nepin county.
In July, Governor Cass, of Michigan, visits the enmp.
In August, Col. Snelling succeeds Leavenworth. September 20th, corner-stone laid under com- mand of Col. Snelling.
First white marriage in Minnesota, Lieutenant Green to daughter of Captain Gooding.
First white child born in Minnesota, daughter of Col. Snelling; died following year.
1821. Fort St. Anthony was sufficiently com- pleted to be ocenpied by troops.
Mill at St. Anthony Falls constructed for the use of garrison, under the supervision of Lieu- tenant MeCabe.
1822. Col. Dickson attempted to take a drove of enttle to Pembina.
1823. The lirst steamboat, the Virginia, on
May 10th, arrived at the mouth of the Minnesota river,
Mill stones for grinding flour sent to St. An- thony Falls.
Major Long, U. S. A., visits the northern bonnd- ary by way of the Minnesota and Red river.
Beltrami, the Italian traveler, explores the northernmost source of the Mississippi.
1824. General Winfield Scott inspects Fort St. Anthony, and at his suggestion the War De- partment changed the name to Fort Snelling.
1825. April 5th, steamboat Rufus Putnam reaches the Fort. May, steamboat Rufus Putnam arrives again and delivers freight at Land's End trading post on the Minnesota, abont a mile above the Fort.
1826. January 26th, first mail in five months received at the Fort.
Deep snow during February and March.
March 20th, snow from twelve to eightten inches. April 5th, snow-storm with flashes of lightning. April 10th, thermometer tour d grees above zero.
April 21st, iec began to move in the river at the Fort, and with twenty feet above low water mark.
May 2d, first steamboat of the season, the Law- rence, Captain Reeder, took a pleasure party to within three miles of the Falls of St. Anthony.
1826. Dakotahs kill an Ojibway near Fort
1827. Flat Month's party of Ojibways attacked at Fort Snelling, and Sioux delivered by Colonel Snelling to be killed by Ojibways, and their bodies thrown over the blnlf into the river.
General Gaines inspects Fort Snelling.
Troops of the Fifth Regiment relieved by those of the First.
1828. Colonel Snelling dies in Washington.
1829. Rev. Alvin Coe and J. D. Stevens, Pas- byterian missionaries, visit the Indians around Fort Snelling.
Major Taliaferro, Indian agent, establishes a farm for the benefit of the Indians at Lake Cal- honn, which he called Eatonville, after the seere- tary of war.
Winter, Spring and Summer very dry. One inch was the average monthly fall of rain or snow for ten months. Vegetation more backward than it had been for ten years.
1830. August 14th, a sentinel at Fort Snelling, just before daylight, discovered the Indian conneil house on fire. Wa-pa-sha's son-in-law was the incendiary.
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HISTORY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
1831. Angust 17th, an old trader, Rocque, and his son arrived at Fort Snelling from Prairie du Chien, having been twenty-six days on the journey. Under the influence of whisky or stupidity, they ascended the St. Croix by mistake, and were lost for fifteen days.
1832. Mny 12th, steamboat Versailles arrived at Fort Snelling.
June 16th, William Carr arrives from Missouri nt Fort Snelling, with a drove of cattle and horses.
Henry R. Schoolcraft explores the sources of the Mississippi.
1833. Rev. W. T. Bontwell establishes a mis- sion among the Ojibways at Leech Lake.
E. F. Ely opens a mission school for Ojibways at Aitkin's trading post, Sandy Lake.
1834. May. Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond arrive at Lake Calhoun as missionaries among the Sionx.
November. Henry H. Sibley arrives at Men- dota as agent of Fur Company.
1835. May. Rev. T. S. Williamson and J D. Stevens arrive as Sioux missionaries, with Alex- ander G. Huggins as lay-assistant.
.
June. Presbyterian Church at Fort Snelling organized.
July 31st. A Red River train arrives at Fort Snelling with fifty or sixty head of cattle, and about twenty-five horses.
Major J. L. Bean surveys the Sioux and Chip- peway boundary line under treaty of 1825, as tar as Otter Tail Lake.
November. Col. S. C. Stambaugh arrives; is sutler at Fort Snelling.
1836. May 6th, "Missouri Fulton," first steam- boat, arrives at Fort Snelling.
May 29th. " Frontier," Capt. Harris, arrivos.
June 1st. " Palmyra " arrives.
July 2d. " Saint Peters" arrives with J. N. Nicollet as passenger.
July 30th. Sacs and Foxes kill twenty-four Winnebagoes on Root River.
1837. Rev. Stephen R. Riggs and wife join Lake Harriet Mission. .
Rev. A. Brunson and David King establish Kaposia Mission.
Commissioners Dodge and Smith at Fort Snel- ling make a treaty with the Chippeways to ecde lands oust of the Mississippi.
Franklin Steele and others make claims at Falls of St. Croix und St. Anthony.
September 29th. Sioux chiefs at Washington sign a treaty.
November 10th. Steamboat Rolla arrives at Fort Snelling with the Sions on their return from Washington.
December 12th. Jeremiah Russell and L. W. Stratton make the first elaim at Marine, in St. Croix valley.
1838. April, Hole-in-the-Day and party kill thirteen of the Lac-qui-parle Sionx. Martin Me- Leod from Pembina after twenty-eight days of ex- posure to snow, reaches Lake Traverse.
May 25th, steamboat Burlington arrives at Fort Snelling with J. N. Nicollet and J. C. Fremont on a scientific expedition.
June 14th, Maryatt, the British novelist, Frank- lin Steele and others rode from the Fort to view Falls of St. Anthony.
July 15th, steamboat Palmyra arrives at Fort Snelling with an official notice of the ratification of treaty. Men arrived to develop the St. Croix Valley.
August 2d, Hole-in-the-Dny encamped with a party of Chippeways near Fort Snelling, and was attacked by Sioux from Mud Lake, and one killed and another wounded.
August 27th, steamboat Ariel arrives with eom- missioners Pease and Ewing to examine half-breed elaims.
September 30th, steamboat Ariel makes the first trip up the St. Croix river.
October 26th, steamboat Gypsy first to arrive at Falls of St. Croix with annuity goods for the Chippeways. In passing through Lake St. Croix grounded near the town site laid out by S. C. Stambangh, and called Stambanghville.
1839. April 14th, the first steamboat at Fort Snelling, the Ariel, Capt. Lyon.
Henry M. Rice arrives at Fort Snelling.
May 2d, Rev. E. G. Gear, of the Protestant Episcopal church, recently appointed chaplain, ar- rived at Fort Snelling in the steamboat Gypsy.
May 12th, steamboat Fayette arrives on the St. Croix, having been at Fort Snelling, with members of Marine Mill Company.
May 21st, the Glaneus, Capt. Atchison, arrives at Fort Snelling.
June 1st, the Pennsylvania, Capt. Stone, arrives at Fort Snelling.
June 5th, the Ghanens arrives again.
June 6th, the Ariel arrives agnin.
June 12th, nt Lake Harriet mission, Rev. D.
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CHRONOLOGY.
Gavin, Swiss missionary among the Sioux at Red Wing, was married to Cordelia Stevens, teacher at Lake Ihrriet mission.
June 25th, steamboat "Knickerbocker," arrived at Fort Snelling.
June 26th, steamboat Ariel, on third trip.
June 27th, a train of Red River carts, under Mr. Sinclair, with emigrants, who encamped near the fort. ,
July 2d, Chippeways kill a Sionx of Lake Cal- honn band.
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