Fillmore County, Minnesota - Chapter 20: Tkead of Pioneers in the Saint Cuoix Valley and Elsewheue, 1882

Chapter 20: Tkead of Pioneers in the Saint Cuoix Valley and Elsewheue

Oriinn of th« name Saint Croix - Du Luth, fint Kxplorcr - Frt'iicli Pust on the Si. Croix - Pitt, an early )iionevr - Rarly s«ttIon at Saint Croix Falls - First women there - Marine Settlement - Jo»eph R. Brown's town kite Saint Croix County ontanized - Propi IHors of Stillwater - A dead Nokt*) w>iman - Pir's Eye, oriu'in of name - Kisc of Saint Paul - Dr. Willianjson vcur**^ lir>t school te.itlu r fur Saint Pual - Desrri|>ti«in of first Rchool room - Siiint Cruix County r»-orgnnizcd - Bev^ W. T. Boutwell, nionecr clcri^ymaa.

The Saint Croix river, according to Le Sueur, named after a Frenchman who wtis drowned at its mouth, was one of the earliest throughfares from Lake Superior to the Mississippi. The first white man wiio directed canoes upon its waters was Du Luth, wlio had in 1679 explored Minnesota. He thus describes his tour in a letter, first publislied by IlaiTisse : " In June, 1680, not being Siitistied, with havmg made niy discovery by land, I took two canoes, with an Indian who was my in tenure ter, and four Frenchmen, to seek means to make it by water. Willi tliis view I entered a river which empties eight leagues from the extremity of Lake Superior, on the soutli side, where, after having cut some trees and broken about a hundred beaver dams, I reached the upper watera of the said river, and then I made a portage of half a league to reach a lake, tiio outlet of which fell into a very - fine river, which took me down into the Mississippi. There I learned from eight cabins of Na<louecioux that the Rev. Father Louis Hennepin, Recollect, now at the convent of Saint Germain, with two otlier Frenchmen had been robbed, and canied off as slaves for more than three hundred leagues by the Nadouecioux themselves."

He then relates how he left two Frenchmen with his goods, and went with his interpreter and two Frenchmen in a canoe down the Mississippi, and after two days and two nights, found Hennepin, Accault and Augelle. He told Hennepin that he must return with him through the country of the Fox tribe, and writes : " I preferred to retrace my steps, manifesting to them [the Sioux] tlic3 just iiidiguation I felt against them, rather than to remain after the violence they hud done

After this, the Saint Croix river becixme a chan nel for commerce, and Bellin writes, that before 17oo, tlie French had erected a fort forty leagues from its mouth and twenty from Lake Superior.

The pine ferests between the Saint Croix and Minnesota had been for several years a temptation to energetic men. As early as November, 1836, a Mr. Pitt went with a boat and a party (ff men to the Falls of Saint Croix to cut pine timber, with the consent of the Chippeways but the dissent of the United States authorities.

In 1837 while the treaty was being made by Commissioners Dodge and Smith at Fort Snelling, on one Sunday Franklin Steele, Dr. Fitch, Jeremiah Russell, arid a Mr. Maginnis left Fort Snelling for the Falls of Saint Croix in a birch bark canoe puddled by eight men, and reached that point about noon on Monday and commenced a log cabin. Steele and Ma^^innis remained here, while the others, dividing into two parties^ one under Fitch, and the other imder Russell, searched for pine land. The fii*st stopped at Sun Rise, while Russel went on to the Snake River. About the same time Robbinet and Jesse B. Taylor came to the Falls in the interest of B. F. Baker who had a stone trading house near Fort Snelling, since destroyed by fire. On tlie fifteenth of July, 1838, the Palmyra, Capt. Holland, arrived at the Fort, with the ofiicial notice of the ratification of the treaties ceding the lands between the Saint Croix and Mississippi.

She had on board C. A. Tuttle, L. W. Stratton and others, with the machinery for the projected mills of the Northwest Lumber Company at the Falls of Saint Croix, and reached that point on the seventeenth, the first steambor.i to disturb the waters above Lake Saint Croix. The steamer Gypsy came to the fort on the twenty-first of

October, with goods for the Chippeways, and was chartered for four hundred and fifty dollars, to carry them up to the Falls of Saint Croix. In passing through the lake, the boat grounded near a projected town called Stambaughville, after S. C. Stambaugh, the sutler at the fort. On the afternoon of the 26th, the goods were landed, as stipulated.

The agent of the Improvement Company at the fedls was Washington Libbey, who left in the fall of 1838, and was succeeded by Jeremiali Kussell, Stmtton acting as millwright in place of Calvin Tuttle. On the twelfth of December, Russell and Strattou walked down the river, cut the first tree and built a cabin at Marine, and sold their claim.

The first women at the Falls of Saint Croix were a Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Sackett, and the daughter of a Air. Young. During the winter of 1838-9, Jeremiah Russell married a daughter of a respectable and gentlemanly trader, ('harles H. Oakes.

Among the first preachers were the Rev. W. T. Boutwell and Mr. Seymour, of the Chippeway Mission at Pokeguma. The Rev. A. Bruuson, < f Prairie du Chien, who visited this region in 1838, wrote that at the mouth of Snake River he found Franklin Steele, with twenty-five or thirty men, cutting timber for a mill, and when he offered to preach Mr. Steele gave a cordial assent.

The steamboat Fayette about the middle of May, 1839, landed sutlers' stores at Fort Snelling and then proceeded with several persons of mtelligence to the Saint Croix river, who 83ttled at Marine.

The place was called after Marine in Madison county, Illinois, where the company, consisting of Judd, Hone and others, was formed to build d saw mill in the Saint Croix Valley. The mill at Marine commenced to saw lumber, on August 24, 1839, the first in Minnesota.

Joseph R. Brown, who since 1838, had fived at Chan Wakan, on the west side of Grey Cloud Island, this year made a claim near the upper end of the city of Stillw^ater, which he called Dahkotah, and was the first to raft lumber down the Saint Croix, as well as the first to represent the citizens of the valley in the legislature of Wisconsin.

Until the year 1841, the jurisdiction of Crawford county, Wisconsin, extended over the delta of country between the Saint Croix and Mississippi. Joseph R. Brown having been elected as representative of the county, in the territorial legislature of Wisconsin, succeeded in obtaining the passage of an act on November twentieth, 1841, organizing the county of Samt Croix, with Dahkotah designated as the county seat.

At the time prescribed for holding a court in the new county, it is said that the judge of the district arrived, and to his surprise, found a claim cabin occupied by a Frenchman. Speedily retreating, he never came again, and judicial proceedings for Saint Croix county ended for several years. Phineas Lawrence was the first sheriff of this county.

On the tenth of October, 1843, was commenced a settlement wliich has become the town of Stillwater. Tlie names of the proprietors were John McKusick from Maine, Calvin Leach from Vermont, Elam Greeley from Maine, and Elias McKean from Pennsylvania. They immediately commenced the erection of a sawmill.

John II. Fonda, elected on the tv\'enty-second of September, as coroner of Crawford county, Wisconsin, asserts that he was once notified that a dead body was Ijing in the w^ater opposite Pig's Eye slough, and immediately proceeded to the spot, and on taking it out, recognized it as the body of a negro woman belonging to a certain captain of the United States army then at Fort Crawford. The body was cruelly cut and bruised, but no one appearing to recognise it, a verdict of " Found dead," was rendered, and the corpse was buried. Soon after, it came to light that the woman was whipped to death, and thrown into the river during the night.

The year that the Dahkotahs ceded their lands east of the Mississippi, a Canadian Frenchman by the name of Parrant, the ideal of an Indian whisky seller, erected a shanty in what is now the city of Saint Paul. Ignorant and overbearing he loved money more than his own soul. Destitute of one eye, and the other resembling that of a pig, he was a good representative of Cahban. Some one writing from his groggery designated it as " Pig's Eye." The reply to the letter was directed in good faith to" Pig's Eye"

Explorebs And Pioneers Of Minnesota

" Edmund Brisette, a clerkly Frenchman for those days, who lives, or did live a little while ago, on Lake Harriet, was one day seated at a table in Parrant's cabin, with pen and paper about to write a letter for Parrant (for Parrant, like Charlemagre, could not write) to a friend of the latter in Canada. The question of geography puzzled Brissette at the outset of the epistle; where should he date a letter from a place without a name ? He looked up inquiringly to Parrant, and met the dead, cold glare of the Pig's Eye fixed upon him, with an irresistible suggestiveness that was inspiration to Brisette."

In 1842, the late Henry Jackson, of Mahkahto, settled at the same spot, and erected the first store on the height just above the lower landing, Roberts and Simpson followed, and opened small Indian trading shops. In 1846, the site of Sahit Paul was chiefly occupied by a few shanties owned by "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort," who sold nun to the soldier and Indian. It was despised by all decent white men, and known to the Dahkotahs by an expression in their tongue which means, the place where they sell miime-wakan [supemavUral water].

The chief of the Kaposiaband in 1846, was shot by his own brother in a dnmken revel, but surviving the wound, and apparently alarmed at the deterioration under the influence of the modem harpies at Saint Paul, went to Mr. Bruce, Indian Agent, at Fort Snelling, and requested a missionary. The Indian Agent in his report to government, says :

" The chief of the Little Crow's band, who resides below this place (Fort Snelling) about nine miles, in the immediate neighbourhood of the whiskey dealers, has requested to have a school established at liis village. He says they are determined to reform, and for the future, will try to do better. I wrote to Doctor Williamson soon after the request was made, desiring him to take charge of the school. He has had charge of the mission school at Lac qui Parle for some years ; is well qualified, and is an excellent physician."

practices, he felt a kindly interest in the whites of Pig's Eye, which place was now beginning to be called, after a little log chapel which had been erected at the suggestion of Rev. L. Galtier, and called Saint Paul's. Though a missionary among the Dahkotahs, he was the first to take steps to promote the education of the whites and halfbreeds of Minnesota. In the year 1847, he wrote to ex-Governor Slade, President of the National Popular Education Society, in relation to the condition of what has subsequently become the capital of the state.

In accordance with his request. Miss H. E. Bishop came to his mission-house at Kaposia, and, after a short time, was introduced by him to the citizens of Saint Paul. The first schoolhouse in Minnesota besides those connected with the Indian missions, stood near the site of the old Brick Presbyterian church, comer of Saint Peter and Third street, and is thus described by the teacher :

-'The school was commenced in a little log hovel, covered vnth bark, and chinked with mud, previously used as a blacksmith shop. On three sides of the interior of this humble log cabin, pegs were driven into the logs, upon which boards were laid for seats. Another seat was made by placing one end of a plank between the cracks of the logs, and the other upon a chair. This was for visitors. A rickety cross-legged table in the centre, and a hen's nest in one comer, completed the furniture."

Saint Croix county, in the year 1847, was detached from Crawford county, Wisconsin, and reorganized for judicial purposes, and Stillwater made the county seat. In the month of June the United States District Court held its session in the store-room of Mr. John McKiisick ; Judge Charles Dunn presiding. A large number of lumbermen had been attracted by the pineries in the upper portion of the valley of Saint Croix, and Stillwater was looked upon as the center of the lumbering interest.

The Rev. Mr. Boutwell, feeling that he could be more useful, left the Ojibways, and took up his residence near Stillwater, preaching to the lumbermen at the Falls of Saint Croix, Marine Mills, Stillwater, and Cottage Grove. In a letter speaking of Stillwater, he says, " Here is a little village spmng up like a gourd, but whether it is to perish as soon, God only knows."