It was in Minnesota, in 1862, that the terrible Indian uprising
occurred in which the Sioux, exasperated by the encroachments of the
whites, attacked the western frontier settlements in August, and in
less than two days massacred eight hundred people. The troops were
sent as soon as possible, attacked and defeated them in two battles,
and thirty-eight of the Indians were executed on one scaffold at
Mankato, on the Minnesota River southwest of Minneapolis, in December.
The State of Minnesota is said to contain fully ten thousand lakes of
all sizes, the largest being Red Lake in the northern wilderness,
having an area of three hundred and forty square miles. The surface of
the State rises into what is known as the Itascan plateau in the
northern central part at generally about seventeen hundred and fifty
feet elevation. From this plateau four rivers flow out in various
directions--the one on the Western Minnesota boundary, the Red River
of the North, draining the western slope towards Lake Winnipeg and
finally to Hudson Bay; the Rainy River, draining the northern slope
also through Lake Winnipeg to Hudson Bay; the St. Louis River, flowing
eastward to form the head of Lake Superior, and going thence to the
Atlantic; and the Mississippi River, flowing southward to seek the
Gulf of Mexico. Schoolcraft, the Indian ethnologist and explorer,
named this Itascan plateau, and the little lake in its heart, where
the Mississippi takes its rise, about two hundred miles
north-northwest of Minneapolis, though the roundabout course of the
river from its source to that city is a much longer distance, flowing
nearly a thousand miles. There was a good deal of discussion as to
whether this lake was really the head of the great river, as the lake
received several small streams, but Schoolcraft settled the dispute,
and named the lake Itasca, from a contraction of the Latin words
_veritas caput_, the "true head." Its elevation is about sixteen
hundred feet, being surrounded by pine-clad hills rising a hundred
feet higher. Out of Itasca Lake the "Father of Waters" flows with a
breadth of about twelve feet, and a depth ordinarily of less than two
feet. It goes at first northerly, and then makes a grand curve through
a long chain of lakes, describing a large semicircle to the eastward,
and finally southwest, before it becomes settled as to direction, and
takes its southeast course towards the Falls of St. Anthony, and
onward in its grand progress to the Gulf.