Minnesota. Folwell William Watts

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ