Chapter II
Indians, Dugouts, and Wolves
In that early day when my acquaintance with the Mississippi began, Indians were numerous. Their dugouts lay at the levee by the dozen, the hunters retailing the ducks and geese, or venison and bear meat, which had fallen to their guns, while the squaws peddled catfish and pickerel that had been ensnared on the hooks and lines of the women and children of the party.
Situated as Prescott was at the junction of the St. Croix with the Mississippi, its citizens were favored with visits both from the Chippewa, who hunted and fished along the former stream and its tributaries in Wisconsin, and the Sioux, who made the bottom lands on the Minnesota side of the river, between Hastings and Red Wing, their home and hunting ground. This was the boundary line which had existed for a hundred years or more; although the Sioux (or Dakota) laid claim to many thousand square miles of hunting grounds in Wisconsin, for which they actually received a million and a half dollars when they quit-claimed it to the United States. Their claim to any lands on the east side of the river had been disputed by the Chippewa from time out of mind; and these rival claims had occasionally been, as we have seen, referred to the only court of arbitration which the Indians recognized—that of the tomahawk and scalping knife.
As a boy I have spent many an hour searching in the sands at the foot of the bluffs below Prescott, for arrowheads, rusted remnants of knives and hatchets, and for the well-preserved brass nails with which the stocks and butts of old-time trade muskets were plentifully ornamented. Just how many years ago that battle had been fought, does not appear to be a matter of historical record. That it was fiercely contested, is abundantly proven by the great amount of wreckage of the fight which the white lads of Prescott recovered to be sold to tourists on the steamboats which touched at our levee. The Indians themselves had a tradition that it was a bloody fight. Taking the word of a Chippewa narrator, one was easily convinced that hundreds of Sioux bit the sand on that eventful day. If the narrator happened to belong across the river, one felt assured, after listening to his version, that the Chippewa met their Marathon on this battle plain. In any case the treasure trove indicated a very pretty fight, whichever party won the field.
Charlevoix, the French historian, relates that in 1689 Le Seuer established a fortified trading post on the west side of the Mississippi, about eight miles below the present site of Hastings. In speaking of this fort, he says:
"The island has a beautiful prairie, and the French of Canada have made it a centre of commerce for the western parts, and many pass the winter here, because it is a good country for hunting."
As a boy I have many a time visited the site of this ancient stronghold, and hobnobbed with the Indians then occupying the ground, descendants of those with whom the French fraternized two hundred years ago. At this point the islands are about four miles across from the main channel of the river; the islands being formed by Vermillion Slough, which heads at Hastings, reëntering the river about two and a half miles above Red Wing. Trudell Slough, which heads in the river about four miles below Prescott, joins Vermillion at the point at which was probably located Le Seuer's post. At the juncture of the two sloughs there was a beautiful little prairie of several acres. On the west, the bluffs rose several hundred feet to the level prairie which constitutes the upper bench. Just at this point there are three mounds rising fifty to seventy-five feet above the level of the prairie, and serving as a landmark for miles around. Whether they are of geological origin or the work of the Indians in their mound-building epoch, had not been determined in my day. There are other prominences of like character everywhere about, and it would seem that they were erected by the hand of man.
On the north, east, and south the islands afforded good hunting grounds for the French and their allies. In 1854 and later (I think even yet), the site of this ancient fort was occupied by a band of Sioux Indians of Red Wing's tribe, under the sub-chieftaincy of a French half-breed named Antoine Mouseau (Mo'-sho). In Neill's history of the settlement of St. Paul he mentions Louis Mouseau as one of the first settlers occupying, in 1839, a claim lying at the lower end of Dayton Bluff, about two miles down the river from the levee. This Antoine Mouseau, a man about forty in 1854, was probably a son of the St. Paul pioneer and of a squaw of Red Wing's band.
In the days when the white boys of Prescott made adventurous trips "down to Mo-sho's", the islands were still remarkably rich in game—deer, bear, wolves, 'coons, mink, muskrats, and other fur-bearing animals; and in spring and fall the extensive rice swamps literally swarmed with wild fowl. Two or three of the adventures which served to add spice to such visits as we made with the little red men of Mouseau's tribe, will serve to illustrate the sort of life which was led by all Prescott boys in those early days. They seemed to be a part of the life of the border, and were taken as a matter of course. Looking back from this distance, and from the civilization of to-day, it seems miraculous to me that all of those boys were not drowned or otherwise summarily disposed of. As a matter of fact none of them were drowned, and to the best of my knowledge none of them have as yet been hanged. Most of them went into the Union army in the War of Secession, and some of them are sleeping where the laurel and magnolia bend over their last resting places.