Fillmore County, Minnesota - Chapter 3: Indian Treaties, 1912

Successive Relinquishments by Which Fillmore County Came Into the Possession of the United States - First Visit to Washington - Prairie du Chien Treaty of 1825 - Prairie du Chien Treaty of 1830 - Corner of Fillmore Ceded as a Part of the Half- Breed Tract - Winnebago Treaty of 1832 - Winnebagoes Given Possession of the Southeast Corner of Fillmore County - - Later Relinquish Their Claim - Doty Treaty - Treaty of Traverse des Sioux - Treaty of Mendota - Fillmore County Passes from the Possession of the Indians.

From prehistoric days up to the time of the treaty signed at Mendota, August 5, 1851, ratified and amended by the United States senate, June 23, 1852, accepted with aniendments by the Indians, September 4 and 6, 1852, and proclaimed by President Fillmore, February 24, 1853, practically all the territory embraced in Fillmore county remained in the undisputed possession of the Indians, bemg claimed, at least since the coming of the explorers, as a hunting ground by the Sioux Indians, but also being visited by other redmen. Before this treaty, however, several agreements were made between the Indians of this vicinity and the United States government, regarding mutual relations and the ceding of lands.

Visit to Washington, In the spring of 1824 the first delegation of Sioux Indians went to Washington to see their '' Great Father,' the president. A delegation of Chippewas accompanied, and both were in charge of Major Taliaferro. Wahasha, then properly called Wa-pa-ha-sha, the head chief of the band at Winona; and Little Crow, head of the Kaposia band; and Wahnatah, were the principal members of the Sioux delegation. The object of the visit was to secure a convocation of all of the upper Mississippi Indians at Prairie du Chien to define the boundary line of the lands claimed by the separate tribes and to establish general and permanently friendly relations among them. The party went in keel boats from Fort Snelling to Prairie du Chien, and form there to Pittsburgh by steamboat, thence to Washington and other eastern cities by land.

to the Indians who ranged over what is now Fillmore county, in that it purported to fix certain boundaries. The treaty was participated in by the Chippewa, Sank (Sae) and Fox; Menominee, Iowa, Sioux, Winnebago; and a portion of the Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi tribes living on the Hlinois. The line between the Sioux and the confederated Sauks aud Foxes extended across a part of northern Iowa. It was declared in the treaty to run up the Upper Iowa (now the Oneota) river to its left fork, and up that fork to its source; thence crossing the Cedar river to the second or upper fork of the Des Moines, and in a direct line to the lower fork of the Calumet (Big Sioux) river, and down that river to the Missouri river.

N. Il. Winchell says: ''This may be understood to mean: Up the Oneota river to the vicinity of Taopi in Mower county, crossing the Cedar river a little south of Austin, and thence westward to Beaver creek in Murray county, near Curric, and thenee westward to the Big Sioux and down that river to the Missouri.

However, Charles C. Royee, in the Fighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (following the map which is numbered 112, in the Office of Indian Affairs at Washington, based on the survey by James Craig, completed in 1833), draws this line as follows: Up the Oneota river to Decorah, Iowa, thence south about seven miles, and thence southwestwardly through the villages of New Hampton and Clarion, and crossing the Des Moines at about the present location of Dakotah.

The boundary lines were certainly, in many respects, quite indefinite, and whether this was the trouble or not, in any event, it was but a few months after the treaty when it was evident that none of the signers were willing to be governed by the lines established - and hardly by any others. The first article of the treaty provided: ''There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between the Sioux and the Chippewas; between the Sioux and the confederated tribes of Saes and Foxes; and between the 'Ioways' and the Sioux.'' But this provision was more honored in the breach than the observance, and in a little time the tribes named were flying at one another's throats and engaged in their oldtime hostilities.

Second Treaty of Prairie du Chien, In 1830 the second treaty with the northwest Indian tribes was signed at Prairie du Chien. A few weeks previous to the convocation, which was begun July 15, a party of Wabasha's band of Sioux, and some Menominees, ambushed a party of Fox Indians some twelve or fifteen miles below Prairie du Chieu and killed eight of them, including a subchief called the Kettle.

had apprised of their coming. They were in canoes on the Mississip}i, and as they reached the lower end of Prairie du Pierreaux, they paddled up a narrow channel which ran near the eastern shore. At this point their concealed enemies opened fire. The Foxes returned to their village, bearing their dead, while the Sioux and Menominees went home and danced over their vietory. A few weeks provious the Foxes had killed some of Wabasha's band on the Red Cedar river in Iowa, a few miles southwest of Fillmore county, and the Sioux claimed that their part in the Prairie du Pierreaux was taken in retaliation for the Red Cedar affair. In June of the following year, a large number of Menominees were camped on an island in the Mississippi, less than half a mile from Fort Crawford and Prairie du Chien. One night they were all intoxicated - men, women and children - when two hours before daylight the Dubuque Foxes took dreadful reprisal for the killing of their brethren at Prairie du Pierreaux. Though but a small band, they erept into the Menominee encampment, fell upon the inmates, and in a few minutes put numbers of them to the gun, tomahawk and the sealping knife. Thirty Menominees were killed. When the entire Menominee band had been aroused, the Foxes, without having lost a man, retired, calling out in great exultation ihat the cowardly killing of their comrades at Prairie du Pierreaux had been avenged. -

Because of the Prairie du Pierreaux affair, the Foxes at first refused to be present at the second treaty of Prairie du Chien, but finally caine. Delegates were present from four bands of the Sioux, the Medawakantons, the Wapakootas, the Wahpatons and the Sissetons; and also from the Sacs (Sauks), the Foxes and Jowas, and even from the Omahas, Otoes and Missouris, the homes of the last three tribes being on the Missouri river. At this treaty the Indian tribes represented ceded all of the claims to the Jand in western Iowa, northwestern Missouri, and especially the country of the Des Moines river valley. The lower bands had a special article inserted in the treaty for the henefit of their half-blood relatives:

'The Sioux bands in council have earnestly solicited that they might have permission to bestow upon the half-breeds of their nation the tract of land within the following limits, to-wit: Beginning at a place called the Barn, below and near the village of the Red Wing chief, and running back fifteen miles; thence, in a parallel line, with Lake Pepin and the Mississippi river about thirty-two miles, to a point opposite Beef, or O'Boeuf, river, thenee fifteen miles to the Grand Encampment, opposite the river aforesaid, the United States agree io suffer said half-breeds to occupy said tract of country, they holding the same title, and in the same manner that other Indian titles are held.''

Certificates or ''scrip'' were issued to many half-breeds, and there was much speculation in them and litigation over them in subsequent years.

The Sioux also ceded to the United States a tract of land twenty miles wide. from the Mississippi to the Des Moines, north of the line defined in the Treaty of 1825 as the boundary between the Sioux on the north and the Saes and the Foxes on the south. The Saes and the Foxes also ceded a strip twenty miles wide south of this line, thus making a strip of land forty miles wide, which for many years was known as the Neutral Strip.

The northern boundary of this neutral strip, according to the survey by James Craig, completed in 1833, entered Fillmore eounty between sections 1 and 12, Preble township, crossed that township, then crossed a part of Amherst, Canton and Harmony townships, and left the county on the southern line of section 36 in Bristol township. The part of the county south of that line was in the Nentral Strip and the rest of the county im Sioux territory.

Treaty of Ft, Armstrong, Rock Island, 1832. This treaty was entered into between the United States and the Winnebago nation, by which the Winnebagoes gave up certain lands in Wiscosin, and in return received a grant to the eastern part of the Neutral Strip bounded on the west by the east fork of the Cedar river to its mouth, and for a short distance by the Cedar river itself. A part of this strip, as already stated, lay in the southeast corner of what is now Fillmore county. By a treaty signed at Washington in 1837, the Winnebagoes agreed to move, within eight months after November 1, 1837, to the portion of the Neutral Strip that had been granted to them. They further agreed that {he most eastern twenty miles of this strip along the Mississippi would be used by them only as a hunting ground and not for the establishment of permanent residences. By a treaty signed at Washington October 13, 1846, the Winnebagoes relinquished all claim to the Neutral Strip, and were granted lands near the Minnesota river.

The Doty Treaty. The Doty treaty, made at Traverse des Sionx (St. Peter), in July, 1841, failed to be ratified by the United States senate. This treaty embodied a Utopian dream that a territory of Indians could be established, in which the redmen would reside on farms and in villages, living their lives after the style of the whites, having a constitutional form of government, with a legislature of their own people elected by themselves, the governor to be appointed by the president of the United States, much along the plan long followed with the Cherokees in what is now Oklahoma, except that it embodied for the Indians a much higher type of eitizenship than was found in Oklahoma. The

Indians were to be taught the aris of peace, to be paid annuities, and to be protected by the armies of the United States from their Indian enemies on the west. In return for these benefits to be eonferred upon the Indians, the United States was to reccive all the lands in what is now Minnesota, the Dakotas and northwestern Iowa. This ceded land was not to be opened to the settlement of the whites, and the plan was to have some of it reserved for Indian tribes from other parts of the country who should sell their lands to the United States, and who, in being moved here, were to emjoy all the privileges which had been so beautifully planned for the native Indians. But no one ean tell what would have been the result of this experiment, for the senate, for political reasons, refused to ratify the treaty, and it failed of going into eficct. This treaty was signed by the Sisseton, Wahpaton and Wahpakoota bands at Traverse des Sioux, July 31, 184], and by the Medwakanton hands at Mendota, August 11 of the same year.

Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. In the spring of 1851 President Fillmore appointed Governor Alexander Ramsey and Luke Lea as commissioners to open negotiations with the Indians for the purpose of opening to settlement what is uow the greater part of Minnesota. The conference was held at Traverse des Sioux (now St. Peter), between the chiefs and head men of the Sisseton and Wahpaton, or Upper Bands, as they were called, and the two commissioners. The Indians were accompanied by their families, and many prominent pioneers were also present. The meeting was held under a brush arbor erected by Alexis Bailly, and one of the incidents of the proceedings was the marriage of two mixed blood people, David Faribault and Nancy Winona McClure, the former the son of Jean Baptist Faribault, and the latter the daughter of Lieut. James McClure. The treaty was signed July 22, 1851, and provided that the upper bands should cede to the United States all their land in Iowa as well as their lands east of a line from the Red River to Lake Traverse and thence to the northwestern corner of Iowa.

Treaty of Mendota. From July 29, 1851, to August 5, Mendota was the scene of the conference which opened Fillmore and surrounding counties to white settlement. The chiefs and head men of the lower bands were thoroughly familiar with the proceedings of the Indians and the representatives of the United States at Traverse des Sioux and all were on hand that bright August day, waiting for the negotiations to open at Mendota. The first session was held in the warehouse of the Fnr Company at that place, but the Indians found the atmosphere stifling, and not in aecord with their usnal method of outdoor councils, so the consideration of the treaty was taken up under a large brush arbor, erected by Alexis Bailly, on an elevated plain near the high prominence known as Pilot Knob. Dr. Thomas Foster was secretary for Commissioners Lea and Ramsey; the interpreters were Alexander Faribault, Philander Prescott and Rev. G. H. Pond; the white witnesses were David Olmsted, W. C. Henderson, Alexis Bailly, Richard Chute, Henry Jackson, A. L. Carpenter, W. H. Randall, A. S. I. White, H. L. Dousman, Fred C. Sibley, Martin Mcleod, George N. Faribault and Joseph A. Wheelock. After much deliberation and many disagreements, the treaty was signed August 5, 1851. Little Crow was the first signer, To the treaty Little Crow signed his original name, Tah O-ya-te Doota, meaning His Red Nation. Wabasha was the next to sign, making his mark. Then the other chiefs, head soldiers and 'principal warriors crowded around to affix their marks. Im all, there were sixtyfive Indian signatures.

At Mendota, as at Traverse des Sioux, when the treaty was eoncluded, each Indian signer stepped to another table where lay another paper which he signed. This was called the traders' Paper, and was an agreement to pay the '"'just debts,'' so called, of the Indians, ineluding those present and absent, alive and dead, owing to the traders and the trading company. Some of the aecounts Were nearly thirty years old, and the Indians who had contracted them were dead, but the bands willingly assumed the indebtedness and agreed that it might be discharged out of the first money paid them. The territory ceded by the two treaties was declared to be: 'All their lands in the state of Towa, and also all their lands in the territory of Minnesota lying east of the following line, to-wit: Beginning at the junction of Buffalo river with the Red River of the North (ahout twelve miles north of Morehead, at Georgetown station, in Clay county), thence along the western bank of said Red River of the North, to the mouth of the Sioux Wood river; thence along the western bank of said Sioux Wood river to Lake Traverse; thence along ihe western shore of said lake to the southern extremity thereof; thence, in a direct line, to the juncture of Kampeska lake with the Tehan-Ka-Sna-Duka, or Sioux river; thence along the western bank of said river to its point of intersection with the northern line of the state of Iowa, including all islands in said rivers and lakes.''

The lower hands were to receive $1,410,000, to be paid in the manner and form following: For settling debts and removing themselves to the new reservations, $220,000, one-half to the Medawakanton bands, and one-half to the single Wahpakoota band; for schools, mills and opening farms, $30,000, Of the principal of $1,410,000, the sum of $30,000 in cash was to be distributed among the two bands as soon as the treaty was ratified, and $28,000 was to be expended annually, under the president's direction, as follows: To a civilization fund, $12,000; to an educational fund, 46,000; for goods and provisions, $10,000. The balance of the principal, or $1,160,000, was to remain in trust with the United States at 5 per cent interest, to be paid annually to the Indians for fifiy years, commencing July 1, 1852. The $58,000 annuity interest was to be expended as the first installment - +30,000 in eash, $12,000 for civilization, 46,000 for edueation, and $10,000 for goods and provisions. The back annuities under the treaty of 1837 remaining unexpired were also to be paid annually. Their reservation was to extend from the mouth of the Yellow Medicine and Hawk ereek southeasterly to the mouth of Rock ereek, a tract twenty miles wide and about forty-five miles in length. The half-breeds of the Sioux were to receive in cash $150,000 in lien of Jands allowed them under the Prairie du Chien treaty of 1830, but whieh they had failed to claim.

he written copies of the Traverse des Sioux and the Mendota treaties, duly signed and attested, were forwarded to Washington to he acted upon by the senate at the ensuing session of congress. An unreasonably long delay resulted. Final action was not had until the following summer, when, on July 23, the senate ratified both treaties with important amendments. The provisions for reservations for both the upper and lower bands were stricken out, and snbstitutes adopted, agreeing to pay 10 cents an acre for both reservations, and authorizing the president, with the assent of the Indians, to cause to he set apart other reservations, which were to be within the limits of the original great cession. The provision to pay $150,000 to the half-bloods of the lower bands was also stricken out. The treaties, with the changes, eame back to the Indians for final ratification and agreement to the alterations. The chiefs of the lower bands at first objected very strennously, but finally, on Saturday, September 4, 1852. at Governor Ramsey's residence in St. Paul they signed the amended articles, and the followmg Monday the chiefs and head men of the upper bands affixed their marks. As amended, the treaties were proclaimed by President Fillmore, February 24, 1853. The Indians were allowed to remain in their old villages, or, if they preferred, to occupy their reservations as originally designated, until the president selected their new homes. That selection was never mide, and the original reservations were finally allowed them. The removal of the lower Indians to their designated reservation began in 1853, but was intermittent, interrupted, and extended over a period of several years. The Indians went up in detachments, as they felt inclined. After ving on the reservation for a time, some of them returned to their old hunting grounds, where they lived continuously for some time, visiting their reser- yation and agency only at the time of the payment of their annuities. Finally, by the offer of cabins to live in, or other substantial inducements, nearly all of them were induced to settle on ithe Redwood Reserve, so that in 1862, at the time of the outbreak, less than twenty families of the Medawakantons and Wahpakootas were living off their reservation. With the subsequent history of these Indians this volume will not deal in detail; the purpose of treating with the Indians thus far in this chapter having been to show the various negotiations by which Fillmore county and the surrounding territory came into the possession of the whites and was thus opened for settlement and development.

It should be stated in this connection that the Medawakanton Sioux, generally speaking, had their villages along the west banks of the Mississippi, within the present limits of the state of Minnesota, while the Wahpakoota Sioux had their headquarters around the headwaters of the Blue Earth and Cannon rivers, both within easy marching distanee of their hunting grounds in Fillmore county.

Summary. The territory that is now Fillmore county may, generally speaking, be said to have remained in the possession of the Sioux from some time before the days of the early explorers until the proclamation of the treaty of Mendota, February 24, 1853. It was practically under the domain of Wabasha's band of the Medewakanton Sioux, but was visited at various times by the Chippewas and the Winnebagoes from the eastern side of the Minnesota river, by the Saes and Foxes who lived to the southward, and by the Iowas who lived to the westward.

The southeast corner of Fillmore county was ceded to the United States by the Sioux, in 1830, and became a part of the Neutral Strip. As a part of the eastern portion of the Neutral Strip, the southeast corner of the county was ceded to the Winnebagoes in 1832, and they agreed to move thereon. The Winnebagoes relinquished their rights in 1846. They were moved onto this strip in 1840, and moved away im 1848. The land was opened to settlement in 1849.