Minnesota, the North Star State

by William Watts Folwell

Colonel Snelling at once began the erection of a fort, which, however, was not ready for occupation till October, 1822. It was a wooden construction, for which the logs were cut on the Rum River. In 1821 a rude sawmill was built at “the Falls” which converted the logs into lumber. This was of course the first sawmill in Minnesota. Two years later a “run of buhrs” was put in, and a first flour mill established. Colonel Snelling named his work “Fort Saint Anthony,” but in 1824, upon recommendation of Major-General Winfield Scott, after a visit to the place, that name was changed to “Fort Snelling,” in recognition of the enterprise and efficiency of its builder.

The reader must not be allowed to fear that the government was trespassing on Indian ground when building Fort Snelling. Pike had bargained for the site in 1805, but the government for fourteen years neither took possession nor tendered payment. The Senate on ratifying the treaty filled the blank in article II by inserting $2000, and Congress in 1819 made an appropriation of that amount. In anticipation of the dispatch of a detachment of troops, Major Forsyth was ordered to transport $2000 worth of goods to the Sioux country and deliver them in payment for the lands ceded to Pike. It chanced that his boats arrived at Prairie du Chien in time to make the further ascent of the river in company with the command of Colonel Leavenworth. The payment was happily managed. On his way up river Major Forsyth called at the villages of Wabashaw, Red Wing, and Little Crow, and gave each of those chiefs a present of blankets, tobacco, powder, or other goods. On arrival at destination similar presents were made to five other chiefs, whose villages were not distant. In each case the major records that he had to give a little whiskey. The United States could afford such generosity.

A period of thirty years intervened between the arrival of Colonel Leavenworth’s battalion at Fort Snelling in 1819, and the establishment of the Territory of Minnesota. The events of the period are too slightly related to the subsequent history of the state to call for minute narration in the way of annals, and may preferably be grouped under a few heads for compendious treatment.

When Colonel Leavenworth was starting from Detroit, Michigan, he was intrusted by the governor of the Territory of Michigan with blank commissions for appointive county officers for Crawford County, included in that territory. This duty was performed at Prairie du Chien, and justice was established in Minnesota East. That region had previously been successively within the jurisdiction of the Northwest, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois territories. Minnesota West at the same time was part of Missouri Territory, and previous to 1812 had been in the Territory of Louisiana. There was, however, slight occasion for the exercise of civil or judicial functions in the upper Mississippi country.

The American Fur Company had succeeded not merely to the business of the “old Northwest Company,” but to its quasi-political control. The chief factor at Mendota, and his subordinate traders at the more important trading places, exercised a control over the Indians and half-breeds which government officials, civil and military, vainly endeavored to win from them. The few whites in the region, aside from the garrison of the fort, were at the first traders’ employees; later a handful of missionaries acceded, and still later an advance guard of settlers, mostly lumbermen and Selkirk refugees. The dominance of the fur company and its principal agents was in great part due, as already suggested, to a policy inherited from the Northwest Company of retaining in service the old French and half-breed voyageurs, and filling the clerical and managing places with young Americans of ability and enterprise. Such men would have been leaders anywhere. The chief factor at Mendota was the great man of the Sioux country; his colleague at Fond du Lac held a like relation in the country of the Chippeways. They furnished their licensed traders with their outfits, assigned them their respective districts, served as their bankers, and exercised over them an interested supervision. The fidelity of these subordinates was such as to form them into an effective combination, which after a few futile attempts at competition gave the American Fur Company a complete monopoly.

The one name to be brought forward as representative of the American Fur Company, and what was good in it, is that of Henry Hastings Sibley, who came to Mendota in November, 1834, as partner and chief factor. He had been preceded by other traders of inferior rank and consideration. Although but twenty-three years of age, he had already served an apprenticeship of five years at Mackinaw, the western headquarters of the Fur Company. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, where his parents, having removed from Sutton, Massachusetts, had settled before the close of the eighteenth century. The father, Judge Solomon Sibley, was a notable character in Michigan for a long lifetime. The boy received a good “academy” education, had two years of classical language study under private tuition, and pursued the study of law. This early training equipped him with a correct and graceful English style of expression, which in later life he was fond of practicing in manuscript of singular beauty. The boy’s heart was in the wilderness and on the wave. Tall, handsome of face, and lithe of limb, he early became expert with the rifle, the bridle, and the oar. So fleet and tireless was he on foot that the Sioux named him Wa-zi-o-ma-ni, Walker-in-the-pines. His grave and ceremonious manner was well calculated to gain the respect of the Indians, fond as they were of etiquette. Within two years after his arrival at his post he built and occupied a large stone house at Mendota, in which, especially after his marriage a few years later, he maintained a generous and elegant hospitality. The building still stands in a dilapidated condition. For many years Mr. Sibley, as justice of the peace, exercised jurisdiction over a territory of imperial extent, and was believed by his simple-minded clients, the voyageurs, to hold the power of life and death. As the trusted adviser of the Indian agent and the military commander, he steered them past many a difficult emergency.

With the extension of the Indian trade under the protection of a military garrison, it was to be expected that an Indian agency would be established at a point so prominent and convenient as Fort Snelling. As the first agent, Lieutenant Lawrence Taliaferro, of the Third United States Infantry, was personally selected by President Monroe. He was a member of a well-known Virginia family of Italian extraction, and had given evidence in the service of capacity and enterprise. His appointment was dated March 27, 1819. His age was twenty-five. For twenty years he held his position, at times against powerful opposition, ever a true friend of the Indian, a terror to illicit whiskey sellers, and never the tool of the American Fur Company.

It was the desire of the government to put an end to the ancient warfare between the two great tribes of Minnesota Indians. Pike in 1806 had induced some of their chiefs to smoke the calumet. In 1820 Governor Cass repeated the operation with the result of burning much good tobacco. Agent Taliaferro conceived a plan for keeping the peace between the Sioux and the Chippeways, which was to survey and stake out a partition line between their countries. In 1824, by permission of President Monroe, he took a delegation of Sioux, Chippeways, and Menominees to Washington, where an arrangement was made for a “grand convocation” of all the northwestern nations, to be held in the summer of 1825 at Prairie du Chien. That convocation was held, with many spectacular incidents, and a variety of adjustments were consummated. In particular it was agreed between the Sioux and Chippeway nations that their lands should be separated by a line to be drawn and marked by the white man’s science. That line, when tardily staked out ten years later, started from a point in the Red River of the North near Georgetown, passed east of Fergus Falls and west of Alexandria, crossed the Mississippi between St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids, and went on in a general southeast direction to the St. Croix, which it struck not far from Marine. The savages paid little respect to this air line, but went on with their accustomed raids. Within a year there was a bloody encounter in sight of the agent’s office. A single example of these savage frays may be given to illustrate their recurrence in series.

In April, 1838, a party of Sioux hunting in the valley of the Chippeway River (of Minnesota) left a party of three lodges in camp near Benson, Swift County. Hole-in-the-day, the Chippeway chief from Gull River, with nine followers, came upon this camp, and professing himself peaceable was hospitably treated. In the night following he and his men rose silently, and upon a given signal shot eleven of the Sioux to death. One woman and a wounded boy escaped.

In August of the same year Hole-in-the-day, with a small party, was at Fort Snelling. His arrival becoming known to neighboring Sioux, two or three relatives of the victims of the April slaughter waylaid him near the Baker trading-house, and opened fire. Hole-in-the-day escaped, but the warrior with whom he had changed clothes was killed.