EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS
To discover the true source of any of the great rivers of the world,
that is, that one of all sources which measured along the axis of its
channel is farthest from its mouth, has ever been an alluring problem
to the exploring geographer. David Thompson, geographer of the
Northwest Company, in the course of a journey of exploration lasting a
year and extending to the Missouri River, on April 23, 1798, reached
Turtle Lake, four miles north of Lake Bemidji, and believed himself the
discoverer of the true source of the Mississippi. Lieutenant Pike was
confident that when on the 12th day of February, 1806, he reached the
upper Red Cedar (Cass) Lake he was at the “upper source of the
Mississippi.” These claims were either not known or not trusted, and a
series of expeditions to reach the “true source” of the Mississippi was
begun, soon after the military occupation in 1819. Lewis Cass, known
best in American history by his national employments as senator,
cabinet officer, and foreign minister, had cut such a figure as colonel
of an Ohio regiment and brigadier-general in the War of 1812 that the
President made him governor of the Territory of Michigan; an office
which he held for seventeen years. That territory in 1819 was extended
to the Mississippi River. Its governor was naturally curious to see
something of this immense addition to his jurisdiction and the great
river forming its western bound. He sought and obtained leave to
conduct an expedition. An engineer officer, Captain Douglass, was
ordered to join it, and Governor Cass employed Henry R. Schoolcraft, of
whom we are to hear later, as mineralogist at one dollar and a half a
day. Leaving Detroit late in May, 1820, with ten Indians and seven
soldiers, in three birch-bark canoes, Cass was at the American Fur
Company’s post at Fond du Lac (of Superior) on the 6th of July. He
ascended the St. Louis River and took the Savanna portage to Sandy
Lake. With a reduced party he pushed up stream through Lake
Winnebigoshish to that upper Red Cedar Lake which Pike had seen
fourteen years before. Assured that this was the true source of the
Mississippi, he ended his journey. Mr. Schoolcraft doubted, but he was
too polite to differ openly with his chief. Captain Douglass on his map
gave the lake the name “Cassina,” which, shorn of two superfluous
syllables, has remained in use. Mr. Schoolcraft wrote a narrative of
the expedition which is very pleasant reading. The return journey,
beginning July 22, was down the Mississippi to Prairie du Chien and
thence to Green Bay by the Fox-Wisconsin portage. At Fort Snelling the
party were feasted with fresh vegetables from the post garden. At the
Sioux agency, then on the Mendota side of the Minnesota, some chiefs of
the Sioux and Chippeways were got together in council and a reluctant
consent was obtained to cease from troubling one another. The high
contracting parties were content to gratify the white man, but they
understood the farcical nature of the convention. Governor Cass
reported the cost of the expedition at $6156.40-1/4.
It seems proper to interpolate here some account of the expedition
conducted by Major Stephen H. Long of the topographical engineers of
the army, in 1823, to the valleys of the Minnesota and Red rivers. Six
years before, that officer had made an uneventful journey to St.
Anthony’s Falls, of which he left a graphic and appreciative
description. His party, escorted by a detail of soldiers, left Fort
Snelling on July 9 with Joseph Renville as interpreter and guide. At
Traverse des Sioux, Long abandoned his canoes and set out overland by
the well-worn trail for Lake Traverse, where he was welcomed at the
headquarters of the Columbia Fur Company. On August 2 Long reached
Pembina, where he established a monument to mark a point astronomically
determined in the international boundary. His instructions had been to
strike east from Pembina and trace the boundary to the Lake of the
Woods. This he found to be impracticable. Putting his people into bark
canoes, he descended the Red River past Fort Garry to Lake Winnipeg,
traversed the south arm of that water, and ascended the Winnipeg River
to Rat Portage on the Lake of the Woods.
The homeward journey by the old Dawson route to Lake Superior, along
the north shore to the Sault Sainte Marie and thence by the lower lakes
and the Erie Canal, was rapidly made without notable incident.
Professor William H. Keating of the University of Pennsylvania, who was
geologist of the expedition, published a narrative abounding in varied
and interesting knowledge. It will ever remain indispensable to the
historian of the period and region.
Major Long had been accompanied from Fort Snelling to Pembina by an
Italian gentleman of a romantic and enterprising nature, Giacomo
Constantino Beltrami by name. Little is known of his early life beyond
the facts that he had held military and civil appointments, and had,
for reasons not revealed, found it desirable to absent himself from
Italy. He came to America full of zeal to be the discoverer of the true
source of the Mississippi, and thus place himself in the company of
great Italian explorers. Agent Taliaferro came upon him in Pittsburg
and offered to further his ambition. They reached Fort Snelling on the
10th of May, 1823, by the steamboat Virginia, the first steam vessel to
reach that post. The crowd of wondering Indians gathered on the levee
were sufficiently impressed by the bulk of the white man’s fire canoe;
but the scream of her steam whistle, opportunely let out, sent them
scampering far off on the prairie.
When Beltrami at Pembina found Major Long pointing his canoes down the
Red River, he detached himself, and with a slender outfit and uncertain
guides struck out to the southeast, where he expected to find the
object of his journey. After a few days of hardship he reached the
south shore of Red Lake, and there he found a “bois-brulé” who guided
him up a tributary then called Bloody River. It is marked “Mud Creek”
on modern maps. A short portage brought him to a small, heart-shaped
lake, to which he gave the name “Lake Julia,” in memory of a deceased
friend. Here on the 28th of August he reports himself as resting at the
most southern source of the Red River and the most northern source of
the Mississippi. He found no visible outlet to his lakelet and fancied
that its seepage was indifferently the true source of the two rivers.
His dream fulfilled and his ambition satisfied, he made all possible
haste to Fort Snelling. He proceeded to New Orleans and in the next
year (1824) published in French his “Discovery of the Sources of the
Mississippi.” An English version appeared under the title “A Pilgrimage
in Europe and America.” Lake Julia is still on the map, lying some two
miles north of Turtle Lake, which David Thompson had charted
twenty-five years before. The Minnesota geologists found no connection
between it and Mississippi waters. It is noteworthy that Beltrami
placed on his map a “Lac la Biche” as the “western source of the
Mississippi,” which later explorers identified as approximately the
true source. This knowledge he may have obtained from the intelligent
guide, whom he praises highly, but whose name he neglected to report.
It has been mentioned that Henry R. Schoolcraft, mineralogist of Cass’s
expedition in 1820, was by no means satisfied that Cass Lake was the
true source of the great river. Appointed Indian agent of the
Chippeways, he resided for many years at the Sault Sainte Marie,
longing for another plunge into the wilderness of the upper
Mississippi. It was not until 1832 that the War Department, deferring
to Governor Cass, was content to give him leave, and then by
indirection only. The instructions given Mr. Schoolcraft were to
proceed to the country at the head of the Mississippi, to visit as many
Indians as circumstances might permit, to establish permanent peace
among them, to look after the Indian trade and in particular the
trespasses of Hudson’s Bay traders, to vaccinate Indians as many as
possible, and to gather statistics. He had no commission to explore. An
officer of the army, Lieutenant James Allen, with a small detachment of
soldiers, was ordered to be his escort. Traveling by way of Fond du Lac
and the Savanna portage, Schoolcraft’s party was at Cass Lake on July
10. The same day his guide Ozawindib (the Yellowhead) collected five
small canoes and made all needful preparations for the further journey,
which began the morning after. The Yellowhead led the party up to and
across Lake Bemidji, and from its southern limb up an east fork now
mapped as the Yellowhead River, to a lakelet at its head. A six-mile
portage to the west brought Schoolcraft, about two o’clock P. M., on
the 13th of July, to a body of transparent water, which his guide
assured him was the true source. In expectation of that moment the
ardent explorer had cogitated on a suitable name. The missionary
Boutwell, already mentioned, was a member of his party, having joined
it to spy out the land for evangelical work. When asked by Mr.
Schoolcraft the Latin for “true source,” the reverend gentleman could
only remember that the Latin for truth was _veritas_, and for head
_caput_; and he obligingly wrote the two words on a slip of paper. The
leader cut off the head of the former and the tail of the latter, and
joining the remaining syllables made the word “Itasca,” as beautiful an
Indian name as could be desired. On the island, bearing still his name,
Mr. Schoolcraft erected a flagstaff and flew the American colors.
Lieutenant Allen in his report uses the French name Lac la Biche, the
same communicated to Beltrami. How much attention the explorer gave to
gathering statistics, vaccinating Indians, pacifying the Indians, and
the like, may be inferred from the promptness with which he set out for
home the very same day, and the speed of his journey. Taking an unused
canoe route via Leech Lake and the headwaters of the Crow Wing, he was
at Fort Snelling on the 24th of July. Leaving his escort, without a
guide he hastened with all possible celerity by the St. Croix-Brulé
route to “the Sault.” In his report to the War Department, dated
December 3, 1832, he makes not the slightest reference to his excursion
from Cass Lake to Itasca. His published narrative, however, shows no
such gap. He had no orders to discover anything.
What fortune or misfortune brought the French astronomer, Jos. N.
Nicollet, to this country early in the thirties is not well known. Like
Beltrami, he had the fever for exploration and discovery. In the
midsummer of 1836 this gentleman went from Fort Snelling up to Leech
Lake, where he was sheltered by the missionary Boutwell. Here he found
guides who took him by a new route out of the west arm of Leech Lake to
Lake Itasca at the point reached by Schoolcraft. He made camp on
Schoolcraft’s Island and proceeded to take its latitude, longitude, and
height above sea. So far he was merely confirming the work of
Schoolcraft and Allen. Selecting the largest of three tributary inlets,
he traced it three miles through two lakelets to a third, from which he
found “the infant Mississippi flowing with a breadth of a foot and a
half, and a depth of one foot.” In the years 1889 and 1891 J. V.
Brower, commissioned by the Minnesota Historical Society and the
governor of Minnesota, devoted many months to a careful examination of
the region above (south of) Itasca Lake. The result was the
confirmation of Nicollet’s work, with a further discovery of an
“ultimate bowl” in the highlands (Hauteurs des Terres) from which
Nicollet’s lakes were fed. And then the long quest came to an end.
* * * * *
The first white settlers in Minnesota, or rather squatters, for the
region was not open to settlement for nearly twenty years after the
military occupation, came from an unexpected quarter. A Scotch
nobleman, the Earl of Selkirk, of a romantic turn, formed a scheme for
relieving congested European districts by planting colonies abroad, and
in Canada preferably to the United States. He bought of the Hudson’s
Bay Company a tract of something over 100,000 square miles, south and
west of Lake Winnipeg, and in 1812 sent over a small party of
Highlanders and a few Irish. Later additions were made to the colony,
among them two hundred Scotch in 1815. What with the persecutions of
the bois-brulés, of the Northwest Company, the destruction of crops by
rats, grasshoppers, early frosts, and high water, the colonists led a
stormy and precarious life for some years; but they survived. In 1821
came a party of one hundred and fifty or more Swiss clockmakers, wiled
from their homes by the seductive allurements of an ingenious agent.
When the deluded people reached Fort Douglass and Pembina they found
things far different from their expectations. Five families at once
took the trail for the American fort. Two years later thirteen more
families followed. In 1826, after a devouring flood in the Red River,
two hundred and forty-three persons, Swiss and others, left Pembina for
the south. In following years the migration continued, and by 1836
nearly five hundred had come over the border. The greater number of
them journeyed on to the French settlements down the river in Illinois
and Missouri, but many preferred to tarry on the Fort Snelling
reservation. The military gave them protection, allowed them to pasture
their cattle and cut grass on the bottoms, and to fence in and
cultivate considerable farms.
The reports of the military, the open secrets of the American Fur
Company, the revelations of explorers, and later the correspondence of
missionaries, at length made the upper Mississippi valley known as a
land of promise. Travelers from Fort Snelling to “the head of the lake”
by the old St. Croix canoe route had disclosed the existence of
magnificent bodies of pine timber. A market for pine lumber had been
opened about the Galena and Dubuque lead mines and the prairie regions
abutting on the river. The voracious lumbermen of Wisconsin, mostly
emigrants from Maine, were fierce to get their axes into this pine. As
early as 1822 a sawmill had been built on the Chippeway River near
Menominee, and the stumpage bought of Wabashaw, chief of the lower
Sioux, for one thousand dollars a year in goods. But there was no white
man’s country in Minnesota, except the Fort Snelling tract bought by
Pike in 1805 and paid for in 1819, and that was not open to settlement,
unless by tolerance of the military. The time came for extending the
area of settlement and cultivation, and that was effected by two Indian
treaties made in 1837. By a treaty with the lower Sioux the United
States acquired all their lands east of the Mississippi up to the
Sioux-Chippeway partition line of 1825. The consideration was a half
million dollars; but two hundred thousand dollars went to the traders
and half-breeds in nearly equal sums. That was the price paid by the
government for the use of their influence with the Indians. The
Chippeways sold east of the Mississippi from the partition line up to
the line running a little north of east from the mouth of the Crow Wing
River. The delta between the Mississippi and the St. Croix up to the
Crow Wing line was thus opened to settlement on the ratification of the
treaties, on June 15, 1838. When the tidings of the ratification
reached Fort Snelling a month later, the grass did not grow under the
feet of waiting citizens, who had made notes of good locations. A claim
abutting on the Falls of St. Anthony, on the east bank, was staked out
before daylight of the following morning, and the falls of the St.
Croix were preëmpted before sunset, all in accordance with law and
custom.
The first collection of people in Minnesota, aside from the garrison of
Fort Snelling, was the little hamlet of Mendota, inhabited by French
half-breeds and their Indian wives and children. At times its numbers
were swelled by traders from outposts coming in to headquarters to
bring their furs and obtain supplies. Mendota is a French hamlet
to-day. The first American settlement was made at Marine, on the St.
Croix, early in 1839, where a sawmill was put into operation August 24.
In the year following, on a claim previously made, Joseph R. Brown laid
out the town site of Dakotah on land now forming a part of Stillwater.
This city was not laid out till 1843, when settlement was begun in full
confidence that Stillwater was to be the great city of the region. Its
progress for a few years seemed to justify that expectation. Later many
of its people migrated to the new towns on the Mississippi. In the year
of the treaties (1837) the officer commanding at Fort Snelling had a
survey made, to carve out of the Pike tract of nine by eighteen miles
the land to be held by the government for military use. The bounds
included practically all of Reserve Township of Ramsey County, the east
line passing through the “Seven Corners” of St. Paul. Because of
growing scarcity of timber, and alleged trespasses of the squatters,
Major Plympton in the spring of 1838 ordered all those settled on the
main reserve west of the Mississippi to move over to the east side. A
very few had sufficient foresight to place themselves beyond the
military lines,—among them one Pierre Parrant, a Canadian voyageur,
who, not waiting for the ratification, built a whiskey shanty near the
issue of the streamlet from Fountain Cave, in upper St. Paul, thus
becoming the first inhabitant of that city. The evicted Swiss mostly
settled on ground within easy reach of the fort, and there built their
cabins anew. They were, however, not long allowed that indulgence.
Their number was reinforced by a few voyageurs, discharged soldiers,
and perhaps some other whites. Among the whites were a few who opened
grog-shops at which the custom of the soldiers was very welcome. These
places became so intolerable that the commandant begged the War
Department to require all squatters to get off the reservation. His
recommendation was adopted, and on the 6th of May, 1840, a deputy
United States marshal, supported by a detachment of soldiers, drove
them all over the lines and destroyed their cabins. What did they do
but reëstablish themselves just beyond the line, about Parrant’s claim?
French fashion, they grouped their cabins and formed a little French
village, the nucleus of the capital city of Minnesota. A memorial of
the evicted Swiss to Congress for indemnity for loss of improvements on
land they had been suffered to occupy and cultivate, and for the
destruction of their shelters, was ignored.
At all the trading stations of the American Fur Company there was a
group of employees and hangers-on. At Mendota, the headquarters, the
number was greater than elsewhere. In 1837 there were twenty-five such.
When in July, 1839, Bishop Loras of Dubuque made a visitation there, he
found one hundred and eighty-five Catholics gathered in to approach the
sacraments of the church. In May of the following year the Rev. Lucius
Galtier, sent up on an hour’s notice from Dubuque, reached Mendota to
begin a mission there. He naturally took under his care the Catholic
families just then getting themselves under cover on the hillsides
nearly opposite. November 1, 1841, he blessed a little log chapel the
people had built under his direction, and dedicated “the new basilica”
to St. Paul, “the apostle of the nations.” The name “St. Paul’s
landing,” for a time used, gave way to the more convenient St. Paul’s
and, later, to “St. Paul.” Père Galtier, however, remained at the more
considerable Mendota till called to other duty in 1844. Father Ravoux,
succeeding him, divided his time between the two hamlets till 1849.
Up to 1845 St. Paul was a straggling French village of some thirty
families, a floating population of voyageurs and workmen, to which two
or three independent traders had joined themselves. In the next years
Americans arrived in increasing numbers. In 1846 a post-office was
established, and in the year after a regular line of steamboats began
to ply down river in the season.
The city at the falls was later in getting its start. The lucky citizen
who preëmpted the land abreast of the falls on the left bank of the
Mississippi did not lay out his town site of St. Anthony’s Falls till
late in 1847. A sawmill built that year went into operation the next,
and the manufacture of lumber has since remained a leading industry. At
Pembina, in the extreme northwest corner of Minnesota, was an
aggregation of French half-breeds of some hundreds. The rural
population of the whole region well into the fifties was very sparse. A
few farms had been opened along the St. Croix in Washington County. The
principal part of the subsistence for man and beast was brought up from
below in steamboats.
When Iowa Territory was organized in 1838, Wisconsin Territory was
restricted on the west to the line of the Mississippi. Minnesota East
then formed part of Crawford County of the latter territory. In the
same year the governor of Wisconsin appointed as justice of the peace
for that county a man who was to play a conspicuous part in Minnesota
affairs. Joseph Renshaw Brown came to Minnesota as a drummer-boy of
fourteen with the Fifth Infantry in 1819. Honorably discharged from
that command some six or seven years later, he went into the Indian
trade at different posts, at some of which he opened farms. He
appreciated, as perhaps no other man in the region did so clearly, the
possibilities of the future, and was fitted by nature, education, and
experience to lead. In 1840 he was elected a member of the Wisconsin
territorial legislature from St. Croix County, a new jurisdiction
separated from Crawford County by a meridian through the mouth of the
Porcupine River, a small affluent of Lake Pepin. The county seat was of
course Mr. Brown’s town of Dakotah, already mentioned. There is reason
to surmise a disappointed expectation that this town might become the
capital of a state. In 1846 Congress passed an enabling act in the
usual form for the promotion of Wisconsin to statehood. About the same
time the Wisconsin delegate introduced a bill to establish the
Territory of Minnesota. It was understood that Mr. Sibley would be the
first governor and that Mr. Brown would not be neglected. The bill
passed the House and reached its third reading in the Senate, when it
was tabled on the suggestion of an eastern senator that the population
was far too scanty to warrant a territorial organization.