For many years the payment of annuities that had been promised the Sioux was an annual reminder of these treaties. It was necessary that each Indian receive his portion of the goods and money in person in order to prevent fraud. In the late summer of each year all the warriors of Red Wing's and Wabasha's villages would leave their homes for the fort. In the agency building the United States officers, with the roll of the Sioux nation before them, called the names of the individuals, who one by one stepped up, touched the pen of the secretary, received the money, and deposited it in the box of his band. Outside was the typical Indian group—squaws, children, dogs, and braves smoking their pipes and talking of past achievements. And in order that the Indians might always be conscious of the presence of the soldiers of the “Great Father”, the band of the fort played patriotic and thrilling airs.[497]
With the transfer of the Indians to reservations higher up on the Minnesota River the payment of these annuities became a task which could no longer be performed at the fort. But the guarding of the funds was a necessity. Captain James Monroe spent the latter half of the month of November, 1852, at Traverse des Sioux with one subaltern and forty-seven men of the dragoons and infantry, protecting the money from bandits and Indians. William T. Magruder was ordered on October 23, 1853, to proceed in command of a detachment of troops to escort the money being sent to Fort Ridgely; and exactly a year later, an officer and thirteen men were detailed to perform a similar task.[498]
XIII
CITIZENS AND SOLDIERS
“The frontier army post,” writes Professor F. J. Turner, “serving to protect the settlers from the Indians, has also acted as a wedge to open the Indian country, and has been a nucleus for settlement.”[499] When the Fifth Infantry built its cantonment on the Minnesota River there were no other habitations in the neighborhood. Traders yearly frequented the region and wintered on the banks of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, but their headquarters were located at Prairie du Chien. Immediately after the beginning of the military establishment, however, the movement mentioned by Professor Turner was initiated.
In the spring of 1820 J. B. Faribault came up with cattle for the garrison and decided to locate in the vicinity as a fur trader. On August 9th the Indians granted Pike's Island to his wife, Pelagi Faribault, who was the daughter of a Frenchman and a Sioux woman. Faribault immediately built houses upon the island, but high water washed them away. Thereupon he removed to the east side of the Mississippi. It is probably to this establishment that Beltrami referred in 1823 when he wrote that “there are no buildings round the fort, except three or four log-houses on the banks of the river, in which some subaltern agents of the Southwest Company live among the frogs.”[500] This position was also upon low land, and on April 21, 1826, when the ice began to move, Faribault's houses were carried away, while he and his family escaped in canoes.[501] After this second disaster Faribault's establishment was erected at Mendota, where Alexis Bailly had already located.[502] The growth of this village was very slow. But gradually old fur traders settled about it with their families; voyageurs, when not employed on the rivers, lounged about the trading house; and the agents and clerks of the American Fur Company had their permanent homes in the rude log cabins which were clustered about.
In the meantime a new element had been added to the surroundings of the fort. It was already three-quarters of a century since the traders had erected the first trading post upon the Red River of the North. The early French voyageurs had left a race of half-breeds, popularly called bois-brulés, who were the vassals of the two great companies. When their strength had been spent in the labors of hunting and trapping, they retired to the vicinity of some post—the largest of these settlements being Fort Garry, the germ of the modern city of Winnipeg, which as early as 1823 boasted of a population of about six hundred.[503]
But not all of these half-breeds were traders. Thomas Douglas, the fifth Lord Selkirk had secured from the Hudson's Bay Company the grant of an immense tract of land on the Red River, and in 1811 he began the colonization of the region with poor immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. But the knowledge of the internal troubles of the company put an end to the immigration from these two countries, and Lord Selkirk turned to Switzerland for new recruits. In 1821 a ship full of Swiss sailed for Fort York on Hudson's Bay, and late in the fall the party reached the Red River after a toilsome journey up the Nelson River and across Lake Winnipeg. Being artisans and city-dwellers they were unable to endure the rough agricultural labors in the bleak north. Cold, floods, grasshoppers, and uncongenial neighbors rendered the location unpleasant.[504]
Travellers from the south brought news of a better locality, and towards this place there soon began a movement which, while not great in any one year, was long continued. In 1821 five families made the journey to Fort Snelling, and their success inspired others. In 1823 thirteen families made the perilous journey of four hundred miles. From year to year, as families became discouraged they left the colony. Four hundred and eighty-nine persons had arrived at Fort Snelling up to 1835.[505]
The many hardships endured by these travellers, and their pitiful condition, appealed to the sympathy of the Americans,[506] and they were welcomed and aided by the officers at Fort Snelling. During their stay one party was granted the use of the old barracks at Camp Cold Water. Employment was given the men upon the reservation, and those who preferred to remain were allowed to settle upon the military grounds. Comparatively few, however, made their homes here, the greater number proceeding to Galena, Illinois, and Vevay, Indiana. On one occasion provisions for the down-river journey in government keel-boats were issued by Colonel Snelling.[507]