Old Fort Snelling, 1819-1858

by Marcus Lee Hansen

The lack of soldiers among them intensified the unruly spirit in the Winnebagoes. In June of the next year two keel boats, the “General Ashley” and the “O. H. Perry”, which were carrying supplies to Fort Snelling noticed an unfriendly feeling among the Sioux at Wabasha's village. Fifty warriors with their faces painted black and with black streaks on their blankets visited the “O. H. Perry”, but refused to shake hands. Apprehensive of danger on the return journey, Colonel Snelling furnished the crews with guns and cartridges before the descent was commenced.[91]

There soon arrived at Fort Snelling a letter from John Marsh, the sub-agent at Prairie du Chien. It stated that rumors were current that Prairie du Chien was to be attacked and that the Sioux and Winnebagoes threatened to kill Taliaferro “and any American that they can find at a distance from the Fort”. The letter closed with the request that steps be taken for the defense of Prairie du Chien.[92] No doubt preparations were commenced immediately; but they were hastened by news which soon came up the river. On June 26th the Winnebago chief, Red Bird, with three of his men had attacked a farm house near Prairie du Chien and obtained the scalp of a child. Returning to their village, they had seen the keel boats coming down the river. With their fighting blood up they attacked the “O. H. Perry”, and in a battle which lasted several hours they killed two of the crew and lost seven of their own warriors. The report of this attack, together with the murder near Prairie du Chien, spread consternation among the white men.[93]

Without delay Colonel Snelling with four companies started down the river.[94] A few days after reaching Prairie du Chien, he was reënforced by troops brought up from St. Louis by Colonel Atkinson. It was thought necessary that Fort Snelling should be maintained during the critical period, and as it was short of provisions, Colonel Snelling was ordered back to his post with a supply of flour, and directed to procure boats which could be used in the pursuit of the Winnebagoes up the Wisconsin River. On the 16th of August Colonel Snelling arrived at his post, and on the following day Major Fowle started downstream with four other companies of the Fifth Infantry in two keel boats and nine mackinac boats, arriving at Fort Crawford on August 21st. The Indians, overawed by the rapidity of these military movements and the size of the force sent against them, immediately became peaceable. As a precaution, however, Major Fowle was kept at Fort Crawford, and the post was provisioned for a year.[95]

During the next twenty years the force maintained at Fort Snelling was small, and the garrison was occupied in routine tasks, the regulation of Indian affairs, and the fur trade. At the time of the Black Hawk War there was quiet about Fort Snelling, and Major Taliaferro offered his services and those of the Sioux warriors in the campaign against the Sacs and Foxes. But the government did not think it advisable to formally accept the proffered help, although a number of the Sioux did take part in pursuing the remnants of Sacs who succeeded in crossing the river.[96]

In June, 1848, the company of infantry stationed at Fort Snelling received an urgent call to come to Wabasha's Prairie—near Winona, Minnesota. The Winnebago Indians were being transferred from their former home in the Turkey Valley region in Iowa to a new reservation obtained for them from the Chippewas. But when the Prairie was reached, the Winnebagoes visited with Wabasha and he sold it to them for a home. When Captain Seth Eastman arrived from Fort Snelling he was put in charge of the military forces which had been hastily brought together to force the Winnebagoes to continue their march. There were volunteers from Crawford County, Wisconsin, dragoons from Fort Atkinson, Iowa, and the infantry from Fort Snelling, besides sixty armed teamsters.

These military forces lay encamped, separated from the Indians by a slough. In the morning a deputation of Indians came to ask the meaning of the martial appearance of the whites when all they desired was a council. This suggestion of a council was quickly assented to, but the Indians approached with such a rush and with such blood-curdling yells that the cannon were loaded and the soldiers stood ready to fire. During the council the Winnebagoes refused to move until one small band gave in to the entreaties of the agent and were taken up to Fort Snelling. This was an opening wedge, for when the steamboat returned 1700 were ready to move. The total journey of three hundred and ten miles from the old to the new home occupied the time from June 8th to July 30th, 1848.[97]

By the next summer they were ready to return—anywhere, but especially to Wisconsin, their earliest home.[98] In July the whole tribe, stimulated by whiskey, started; but Governor Ramsey called on Colonel Loomis of Fort Snelling for aid, and a force under Captain Monroe proceeded to the north where their presence aided in quieting the disturbers. Again, on September 9th about a hundred had approached within sixteen miles of St. Paul, when Captain Page and forty men from Fort Snelling frightened them so much that they fled into the swamps and returned home quietly. Smaller parties were captured on the river and sent back under a military guard.[99] Not all the efforts, however, were successful. It was reported that one evening in November over a hundred red men floated down quietly under the very guns of Fort Snelling, and two weeks later the newspaper accounts tell of three hundred Winnebagoes in camp near the mouth of the Black River.[100] The need for a company of dragoons at Fort Snelling was imperative. The next summer it was obtained, and in 1851 this military force was described as being “an indispensable and invaluable auxiliary.”[101] Not until 1855 was the Winnebago spirit of migration broken, and then only after a new reservation had been obtained for them at the mouth of the Blue Earth River.[102]

In his report of November 25, 1844, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs called attention to the fact that no longer was there any need of entertaining fears on account of the visits made by American Indians to the Canadian posts, as these pilgrimages were indulged in only by a few “worthless vagrants”. But an evil of a different character was imminent. Twice a year hundreds of Red River half-breeds—bois brulés—left their homes on the British side of the international boundary to hunt buffalo on the American plains which bordered on the Missouri River. Here they came into contact with Indians who naturally resented this intrusion upon their hunting grounds. During the summer of 1844 a half-breed had been killed by a party of Yankton Sioux, and the invaders had retaliated by killing eight Sioux of another band. This so inflamed the Indians that they went upon the war path and without stopping to reason about the matter, they attacked a party of whites whom they met on Otter Tail Lake.[103]

To hunt the buffalo freely, even on foreign soil, seemed to the bois brulés to be their natural right. On the pemmican which they made from these buffaloes they depended for their winter's food. Five hundred and forty carts trailed out of Pembina on the summer hunt of 1820, and from year to year the number increased until in 1840 there were 1210 carts, accompanied by 1630 people. Nowhere else in the new world at least, was there such a hunting party. Thirteen hundred and seventy-five buffalo tongues were counted as the result of one day's hunt in 1840.[104] It was estimated that every year these Red River hunters killed twenty thousand buffaloes on American soil.[105]

In this there was a real grievance. Though small in itself the incident could easily develop into a war when there were other factors urging in the same direction.[106] The exact condition of affairs on the border was so confused that the United States made occasional military displays in order to impress the invaders and also to satisfy its own curiosity. The first of these expeditions occurred in 1845. Captain Edwin V. Sumner, then in command at Fort Atkinson, in the Iowa country, visited the Red River of the North during the summer of that year with Companies B and I of the First Regiment of Dragoons. But the difficulty was that while the invaders would promise to remain off American soil and would retire as soon as a military force appeared, yet no sooner would the troops depart than they would be back again on the hunting grounds.[107]