MINNESOTA WEST ANNEXED
The reader is asked to recall the cession by France, in 1762, of her
American territory west of the Mississippi to Spain. The French
population of Louisiana, resenting this arbitrary transfer, drove out
the Spanish governor who came in 1766, and organized for a free state
under French protection. In 1769 a Spanish fleet of twenty-four sail,
bringing an army of twenty-six hundred men and fifty cannon, under the
command of a forceful captain-general, securely established the power
of Spain. The laws of Castile, derived from the civil code of Rome,
were put in force, and they continue in force to the present day. By a
line about on the latitude of Memphis a province of Upper Louisiana was
set apart and placed under the control of a lieutenant-governor
residing at St. Louis. Minnesota West was of course a part of this
jurisdiction.
In the last years of the eighteenth century Napoleon Bonaparte was
absolute in France, although not yet crowned emperor. Among the schemes
with which his imagination was busied was one to establish another new
France on the western continent. Louisiana had been a costly dependency
for Spain, and it was only by a reluctant but timely concession of the
right of navigation and deposit that an armed descent of Americans from
the Ohio valley on New Orleans had been averted. That would have put an
end to Spanish rule. Spain willingly retroceded to France for a nominal
consideration, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, March 13, 1801.
Already Napoleon had formed a definite plan and begun preparations to
send 25,000 veteran soldiers to Louisiana, under convoy of a powerful
fleet. His secret could not be kept, and England made ready to attack
the expedition at sea. Napoleon had reason to expect that she would
descend on New Orleans herself, and take possession of the province.
While he was in this frame of mind the American minister, under
instructions, expressed the desire of his government to buy the city
and island of New Orleans and thus make the Mississippi the
international boundary to its mouth. To his surprise Napoleon offered
to sell the whole province, spite of his agreement with Spain never to
cede to any other power. The Louisiana purchase was consummated by
treaty April 30, 1803. Meantime the province had remained in the
possession of Spain, and it was not till November 30 that she turned
New Orleans over to the French. Twenty days later the United States
came into possession. The upper province of Louisiana was held but one
day by a French commissary, who on March 10, 1804, at St. Louis,
conveyed it to the United States. The cost to the government was three
and six tenths cents per acre.
The actual surrender of Upper Louisiana in 1804 added geographically
Minnesota West, included in that province, to Minnesota East, then part
of Crawford County, Indiana. The whole region was still occupied by
aborigines, and a generation was to pass before any of it became white
man’s country. Two great nations divided the territory: the Chippeways,
of Algonquin stock, occupying the north and east; the Sioux or Dakotas
the south and west. Both were immigrant from early eastern habitats,
the Chippeways moving north of the lakes (Lake Superior split the
stream), the Sioux south of the same. When first seen by white men, the
latter held the country about the sources of the Mississippi, the head
of Lake Superior, and to the St. Croix. The Chippeways were first to
obtain guns from the white man, and began at once to push the Sioux
before them. In Hennepin’s time (1680) the principal villages of the
Sioux were in the Mille Lacs region. By the close of the Revolutionary
War the Chippeways had driven them south of the Crow Wing and west of
the Mississippi, leaving them only a precarious hold on the margin of
their old hunting grounds. From their earliest encounters the two
nations had been unremitting foes. But for occasional truces they were
always at war; and this perennial feud did not cease till the
government in 1863 moved the Sioux beyond the Missouri, out of the
reach of the Chippeways. The two nations possessed in common the
well-known characteristics of the red man, physical, mental, and
social, but a difference of environment had established marked
peculiarities. The Chippeways were men of the forest and stream; their
women gathered wild rice, excellent for food. The Sioux, men of the
prairie, were the taller and more agile, but the Chippeways outmatched
them for strength and endurance.
Both peoples had already been profoundly affected by contact with white
men. If the missionary had not broken the power of the medicine-man and
converted them to the true faith, the trader had revolutionized their
whole manner of life. He had given the Indian the gun for his bow and
arrows, axes and knives of steel for those of stone, and the iron
kettle for the earthen pot. The Mackinaw blanket and the trader’s
strouds had replaced garments made from skins, and ornaments of shell
and feathers had given way to those of metal and glass.
Before the trader the Indian had hunted for subsistence, content when
he had supplied his family and dependents with food and clothing. The
trader made him a pot-hunter, killing mostly for the skins alone. Game
animals became scarce about the villages, and hunting expeditions had
to be made to distant grounds, where the enemies’ parties would be met
and fought. The Indian had become a vassal to the trader, who outfitted
him for the hunt, and at its end took his furs in payment at rates
little understood by the man who did not know that the white metal was
worth more than the red. If anything remained from the Indian’s pack it
was very likely to be forthwith spent for the highly diluted whiskey of
the trader. The Indian’s fondness for spirits and their effects was at
least equal to the white man’s, and he had not become immune from
immemorial indulgence. The resulting crime and misery are beyond
description,—conception, almost. And the trader’s excuse was that the
Indians would not trade if whiskey was not furnished, and that it was
absurd for one to refuse it when all the rest were selling. Along with
the white man came his epidemic diseases. Smallpox and measles
depopulated villages and almost extinguished tribes. A nameless
contagion was only less deadly. Unbridled commerce with the women
multiplied half-breeds, possessing frequently all of the vices and few
of the virtues of both races. The half-breed was always a misfit,
because he could assume by turns the character of white or red,
according to convenience and profit.
All the Minnesota Indians were clients of the Northwest Company, unless
where along the northern border the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company
were drawing off the trade by abundant whiskey. This competition at
length brought the two companies to open war.
Long before he became president, Jefferson was curious to unlock the
secret of the unknown west and learn the road to the Pacific. It was
not till the early winter of 1803, however, that he was able to
persuade Congress to make a small appropriation for a military
expedition of discovery, and then under color of “extending the
external commerce of the United States.” And more than a year passed
before the expedition of Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis May 4,
1804.
A similar expedition on a smaller scale left St. Louis in August, 1805,
to discover the source of the Mississippi. It was led by First
Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike of the First Infantry, a native of
New Jersey, then twenty-six years of age. “He was five feet eight
inches tall; eyes blue; hair light; abstemious, temperate, and
unremitting in duty.” If there could have been doubt of his fitness for
the enterprise, the sequel fully justified his selection. His
instructions were carefully drawn to keep him and his errand within
constitutional limits. The first entry of his journal reads, “Sailed
from my encampment, near St. Louis, at 4 o’clock, P. M., on Friday the
9th of August, 1805: with one sergeant, two corporals, and seventeen
privates, in a keel boat, 70 feet long, provisioned for four months.”
On the 21st of September Pike reached the mouth of the Minnesota, and
“encamped on the northeast point of the big island,” which still bears
his name. The next day Little Crow, grandfather of the chief of the
same name who led the outbreak of 1862, came with his band of one
hundred and fifty warriors. On the third day a council was held under
the shelter of the sails, on the beach. In his speech Pike let the
Indians know that their Great Father no longer lived beyond the great
salt water, and that the Canadian traders who tried to keep them in
ignorance of American independence were “bad birds”; that traders were
forbidden to sell rum, and the Indians ought to coöperate in preventing
them; and that the Sioux and Chippeways ought to live in peace
together. In particular he asked that they allow the United States to
select two tracts of land, one at the mouth of the St. Croix, the other
above the mouth of the Minnesota. On these the Great Father would
establish military posts, and public trading factories, where Indians
could get goods cheaper than from the traders.
The well-advised officer had already crossed the hands of the two head
chiefs. He closed his speech with a reference to their “father’s
tobacco and some other trifling things” as evidence of good will, and
promised some liquor “to clear their throats.” The chiefs saw no need
of their signing any paper, but did it to please the generous orator.
The “treaty” is a curiosity in diplomacy. The first article grants,
what the United States already possessed, “full sovereignty and power”
over two tracts of land: one of nine miles square at the mouth of the
St. Croix; the other “from below the confluence of the Mississippi and
St. Peter’s (Minnesota) up the Mississippi to include the Falls of St.
Anthony, extending nine miles on each side of the river.” Pike
estimated the area of the latter grant to be about one hundred thousand
acres and the value to be $200,000. The second article provides that
“the United States shall pay ... dollars.” The final article permits
the Sioux to retain the only right they could legally convey, that of
occupancy for hunting and their other accustomed uses.
Five days were passed at the Falls of St. Anthony, partly because of
the sickness of some of the men. Pike took measurements and made a map.
He found the depth of the fall to be sixteen and a half feet. The
portage on the east bank was two hundred and sixty rods. The navigation
of the river above proved so difficult that it was not till the 16th of
October that the party reached the mouth of the Swan River. It was the
expectation of his general and of Pike himself that the march to the
source of the Mississippi and back would certainly be finished before
the close of the season. By the time he was ready to leave the falls,
September 30, it was evident that the journey could not be accomplished
in any such period. Resolved to prosecute it, and not go back defeated,
he formed the plan to push on to the mouth of the Crow Wing, put his
stores and part of his men under cover, and go forward on foot to his
destination. On the way up river he had a foretaste of the hardships
which awaited him. As he says, he “literally performed the duties of
astronomer, surveyor, commanding officer, clerk, spy, and guide.”
Finding it impossible to force his boats through the rapids below
Little Falls, he selected a favorable site below the junction of the
Swan with the Mississippi (the spot has been clearly identified), where
he built, in the course of a week, two blockhouses, and in them
bestowed his baggage and provisions. Here he remained till December 10,
occupied with hunting, chopping out “peroques,” and building bob-sleds.
It took thirty-four days to reach Sandy Lake, where the party met with
generous hospitality at the post of the Northwest Company. A week was
passed here in which the men replaced their sleds with the traineaux de
glace, or toboggans, used by the voyageurs. On February 1 the leader,
marching in advance, reached the establishment of the Northwest Company
on the western margin of Leech Lake, and highly relished a “good dish
of coffee, biscuit, butter, and cheese for supper.” Pike had now
accomplished his voyage by reaching the main source of the Mississippi.
Seventeen days were passed here, including three devoted to an
excursion on snowshoes to Cass Lake, then known as Upper Red Cedar
Lake. He now believed himself to have reached the “upper source of the
Mississippi,” but wasted not a word of rhetoric on the achievement.
While resting at Leech Lake Lieutenant Pike wrote out for the eye of
Mr. Hugh McGillis, director of the Fond du Lac department of the
Northwest Company, there present, a formal demand that he should
smuggle no more British goods into the country, haul down the British
flag at all his posts, give no more flags or medals to Indians, and
hold no political intercourse with them. Mr. McGillis in a
communication equally formal promised to do all those things. Pike
estimated that the government was losing some $26,000 a year of unpaid
customs. The two functionaries parted with mutual expressions of
regard, and the genial lieutenant started off home with a cariole and
dog team worth $200 presented by the gracious factor. Before his
departure, however, he had his riflemen shoot down the English jack
flying over the post. The return journey, ending April 30, 1806, cannot
be followed. On the 10th of the month the expedition passed around the
Falls of St. Anthony, and the journal records, “The appearance of the
Falls was much more tremendous than when we ascended.” The ice was
floating all day. The leader congratulated himself on having
accomplished every wish, without the loss of a man. “Ours was the first
canoe,” he says, “that ever crossed this portage.” In that belief he
was content. Pike’s journal was not published till 1810, and it
included his account of an expedition to the sources of the Arkansas,
and an enforced tour in New Spain. It had but slight effect on the
authorities at Washington, and still less on the public. The War of
1812 was brewing and there was little concern about this remote
wilderness. The effect of Pike’s dramatic incursion, and his fine
speeches to the Sioux and Chippeways soon wore off, the British flag
went up over the old trading posts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the
Northwest Company resumed its accustomed control over the Indians. It
is not likely that many of their goods paid the duties at Mackinaw.
When the war broke out the British-American authorities used all
needful means in the way of presents and promises to hold the
attachment of the nations. Some of the principal agents of the
Northwest Company were actually commissioned in the British service and
collected considerable bodies of Indians and half-breeds for the
western operations. The news of the end of the war was slow in reaching
these allies, and it was not till May 24, 1815, that the British
captain commanding at Prairie du Chien, having received his orders,
hauled down his flag and marched away with his garrison for Green Bay
and Montreal. The treaty of Ghent had been concluded eight months and
some days before. A serious proposition made by the British
plenipotentiaries for negotiating that treaty proves that the British
had cherished the hope that they might retain the great Northwest under
their virtual dominion. The proposition was that the two powers should
agree that the territory north and west of the “Greenville line of
1795,” roughly a zigzag from Cleveland to Cincinnati, should remain as
a permanent barrier between their boundaries. Both parties were to be
prohibited from buying land of the Indians, who were thus to be left in
actual occupation. The British would continue to control their trade
and hold their accustomed allegiance. The American commissioners
refused of course to entertain the proposal.