The grand feature hereabouts is, of course, the Mississippi River. Too
much can hardly be said of its grandeur, and of the beauty of this
portion of it (from Dunleith, and probably from Rock Island to this
place). St. Paul is a dozen miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, or
near the head of uninterrupted navigation on the main stream, about
two thousand miles from its mouth. There is not a "rip" below that,
and the river is almost as wide in the upper as the lower part of its
course. Steamers go up the Sauk Rapids, above the Falls, near a
hundred miles farther, and then you are fairly in the pine woods and
lumbering country. Thus it flows from the pine to the palm.
The lumber, as you know, is sawed chiefly at the Falls of St. Anthony
(what is not rafted in the log to ports far below), having given rise
to the towns of St. Anthony, Minneapolis, etc., etc. In coming up the
river from Dunleith, you meet with great rafts of sawed lumber and of
logs, twenty rods or more in length, by five or six wide, floating
down, all from the pine region above the Falls. An old Maine lumberer,
who has followed the same business here, tells me that the sources of
the Mississippi were comparatively free from rocks and rapids, making
easy work for them; but he thought that the timber was more knotty
here than in Maine.
It has chanced that about half the men whom I have spoken with in
Minnesota, whether travelers or settlers, were from Massachusetts.
After spending some three weeks in and about St. Paul, St. Anthony,
and Minneapolis, we made an excursion in a steamer, some three hundred
or more miles up the Minnesota (St. Peter's) River, to Redwood, or the
Lower Sioux Agency, in order to see the plains, and the Sioux, who
were to receive their annual payment there. This is eminently _the_
river of Minnesota (for she shares the Mississippi with Wisconsin),
and it is of incalculable value to her. It flows through a very
fertile country destined to be famous for its wheat; but it is a
remarkably winding stream, so that Redwood is only half as far from
its mouth by land as by water. There was not a straight reach a mile
in length as far as we went,--generally you could not see a quarter of
a mile of water, and the boat was steadily turning this way or that.
At the greater bends, as the Traverse des Sioux, some of the
passengers were landed, and walked across to be taken in on the other
side. Two or three times you could have thrown a stone across the
neck of the isthmus, while it was from one to three miles around it.
It was a very novel kind of navigation to me. The boat was perhaps the
largest that had been up so high, and the water was rather low (it had
been about fifteen feet higher). In making a short turn, we repeatedly
and designedly ran square into the steep and soft bank, taking in a
cart-load of earth,--this being more effectual than the rudder to
fetch us about again; or the deeper water was so narrow and close to
the shore, that we were obliged to run into and break down at least
fifty trees which overhung the water, when we did not cut them off,
repeatedly losing a part of our outworks, though the most exposed had
been taken in. I could pluck almost any plant on the bank from the
boat. We very frequently got aground, and then drew ourselves along
with a windlass and a cable fastened to a tree, or we swung round in
the current, and completely blocked up and blockaded the river, one
end of the boat resting on each shore. And yet we would haul ourselves
round again with the windlass and cable in an hour or two, though the
boat was about one hundred and sixty feet long, and drew some three
feet of water, or, often, water and sand. It was one consolation to
know that in such a case we were all the while damming the river, and
so raising it. We once ran fairly on to a concealed rock, with a shock
that aroused all the passengers, and rested there, and the mate went
below with a lamp, expecting to find a hole, but he did not. Snags and
sawyers were so common that I forgot to mention them. The sound of the
boat rumbling over one was the ordinary music. However, as long as
the boiler did not burst, we knew that no serious accident was likely
to happen. Yet this was a singularly navigable river, more so than the
Mississippi above the Falls, and it is owing to its very crookedness.
Ditch it straight, and it would not only be very swift, but soon run
out. It was from ten to fifteen rods wide near the mouth, and from
eight to ten or twelve at Redwood. Though the current was swift, I did
not see a "rip" on it, and only three or four rocks. For three months
in the year I am told that it can be navigated by small steamers about
twice as far as we went, or to its source in Big Stone Lake; and a
former Indian agent told me that at high water it was thought that
such a steamer might pass into the Red River.
In short, this river proved so very _long_ and navigable, that I was
reminded of the last letter or two in the voyage of the Baron la
Hontan (written near the end of the seventeenth century, I _think_),
in which he states, that, after reaching the Mississippi (by the
Illinois or Wisconsin), the limit of previous exploration westward, he
voyaged up it with his Indians, and at length turned up a great river
coming in from the west, which he called "La Rivière Longue;" and he
relates various improbable things about the country and its
inhabitants, so that this letter has been regarded as pure fiction,
or, more properly speaking, a lie. But I am somewhat inclined now to
reconsider the matter.
The Governor of Minnesota (Ramsay), the superintendent of Indian
affairs in this quarter, and the newly appointed Indian agent were on
board; also a German band from St. Paul, a small cannon for salutes,
and the money for the Indians (ay, and the gamblers, it was said, who
were to bring it back in another boat). There were about one hundred
passengers, chiefly from St. Paul, and more or less recently from the
northeastern States; also half a dozen young educated Englishmen.
Chancing to speak with one who sat next to me, when the voyage was
nearly half over, I found that he was the son of the Rev. Samuel
May,[103] and a classmate of yours, and had been looking for us at St.
Anthony.
The last of the little settlements on the river was New Ulm, about one
hundred miles this side of Redwood. It consists wholly of Germans. We
left them one hundred barrels of salt, which will be worth something
more when the water is lowest than at present.
Redwood is a mere locality,--scarcely an Indian village,--where there
is a store, and some houses have been built for them. We were now
fairly on the great plains, and looking south; and, after walking that
way three miles, could see no tree in that horizon. The buffalo were
said to be feeding within twenty-five or thirty miles.
A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their
ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter,
quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the
advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of
eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were
quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and
probably have reason to be so. This council was to be continued for
two or three days,--the payment to be made the second day; and another
payment to other bands a little higher up, on the Yellow Medicine (a
tributary of the Minnesota), a few days thereafter.
In the afternoon, the half-naked Indians performed a dance, at the
request of the Governor, for our amusement and their own benefit; and
then we took leave of them, and of the officials who had come to treat
with them.
Excuse these pencil marks, but my inkstand is _unscrewable_, and I can
only direct my letter at the bar. I could tell you more, and perhaps
more interesting things, if I had time. I am considerably better than
when I left home, but still far from well.
Our faces are already set toward home. Will you please let my sister
know that we shall _probably_ start for Milwaukee and Mackinaw in a
day or two (or as soon as we hear from home) _via_ Prairie du Chien,
and not La Crosse.
I am glad to hear that you have written Cholmondeley,[104] as it
relieves me of some _responsibility_.
* * * * *
The tour described in this long letter was the first and last that
Thoreau ever made west of the Mohawk Valley, though his friend
Channing had early visited the great prairies, and lived in log cabins
of Illinois, or sailed on the chain of great lakes, by which Thoreau
made a part of this journey. It was proposed that Channing should
accompany him this time, as he had in the tour through Lower Canada,
and along Cape Cod, as well as in the journeys through the Berkshire
and Catskill mountains, and down the Hudson; but some misunderstanding
or temporary inconvenience prevented. The actual comrade was young
Horace Mann, eldest son of the school-reformer and statesman of that
name,--a silent, earnest, devoted naturalist, who died early. The
place where his party met the Indians--only a few months before the
Minnesota massacre of 1862--was in the county of Redwood, in the
southwest of the State, where now is a thriving village of 1500
people, and no buffaloes within five hundred miles. Red Wing, whence
the letter was written, is below St. Paul, on the Mississippi, and was
even then a considerable town,--now a city of 7000 people. The Civil
War had lately begun, and the whole North was in the first flush of
its uprising in defense of the Union,--for which Thoreau, in spite of
his earlier defiance of government (for its alliance with slavery),
was as zealous as any soldier. He returned in July, little benefited
by the journey, of which he did not take his usual sufficiency of
notes, and to which there is little allusion in his books. Nor does it
seem that he visited on the way his correspondent since January,
1856,--C. H. Greene, of Rochester, Michigan, who had never seen him in
Concord. The opinion of Thoreau himself concerning this journey will
be found in his next letter to Daniel Ricketson.