During the winter of 1819-20 a deputation of these Scotchmen came all the way to Prairie du Chien on snowshoes for seed wheat, a distance of a thousand miles, and on the fifteenth day of April, 1820, left for the colony in three Mackinaw boats, carrying three hundred bushels of wheat, one hundred bushels of oats, and thirty bushels of peas. Being stopped by ice in Lake Pepin, they planted a May pole and celebrated May day on the ice. They reached home by way of the Minnesota river, with a short portage to Lake Traverse, the boats being moved on rollers, and thence down the Red River to Pembina, where they arrived in safety on the third day of June. This trip cost Lord Selkirk about six thousand dollars.
Nothing daunted by the terrible sufferings of his colonists, and the immense expense attendant upon his enterprise, in 1820 he engaged Capt. R. May, who was a citizen of Berne, in Switzerland, but in the British service, to visit Switzerland and get recruits for his colony. The captain made the most exaggerated representations of the advantages to be gained by emigrating to the colony, and induced many Swiss to leave their happy and peaceful homes to try their fortunes in the distant, dangerous and inhospitable regions of Lake Winnipeg. They knew nothing of the hardships in store for them, and were the least adapted to encounter them of any people in the world, as they were mechanics, whose business had been the delicate work of making watches and clocks. They arrived in 1821, and from year to year, after undergoing hardships that might have appalled the hardiest pioneer, their spirits drooped, they pined for home, and left for the south. At one time a party of two hundred and forty-three of them departed for the United States, and found homes at different points on the banks of the Mississippi.
Before the eastern wave of immigration had ascended above Prairie du Chien, many Swiss had opened farms at and near St. Paul, and became the first actual settlers of the country. Mr. Stevens, in an address on the early history of Hennepin county, says that they were driven from their homes in 1836 and 1837 by the military at Fort Snelling, and is very severe on the autocratic conduct of the officers of the fort, saying that the commanding officers were lords of the North, and the subordinates were princes. I have no doubt they did not underrate their authority, but I think Mr. Stevens must refer to the removals that were made of settlers on the military reservation of which I have before spoken.
The subject of the Selkirk colony cannot fail to interest the reader, as it was the first attempt to introduce into the great Northwest settlers for the purposes of peaceful agriculture, everybody else who had preceded them having been connected with the half-savage business of the Indian trade; and the reason I have dwelt so long upon the subject is, because these people, on their second emigration, furnished Minnesota with her first settlers, and curiously enough, they came from the north.
Abraham Perry was one of these Swiss refugees from the Selkirk settlement. With his wife and two children, he first settled at Fort Snelling, then at St. Paul, and finally at Lake Johanna. His son Charles, who came with him, has, while I am writing, on the twenty-ninth day of July, 1899, just celebrated his golden wedding at the old homestead, at Lake Johanna, where they have ever since lived. They were married by the Right Reverend A. Ravoux, who is still living in St. Paul. Charles Perry is the only survivor of that ill-fated band of Selkirkers.
GEORGE CATLIN.
In 1835 George Catlin, an artist of merit, visited Minnesota, and made many sketches and portraits of Indians. His published statements after his departure about his adventures elicited much adverse criticism from the old settlers.