Minnesota. Folwell William Watts

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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