Houston County, Minnesota - Chapter 20: Tread of Pioneers in the Saint Croix Valley and Elsewhere, 1882

Chapter 20: Tread of Pioneers in the Saint Croix Valley and Elsewhere

Origin of the nam* Saint Croix - Du Lath, first Explorer- French Port on the St. Croix - Pitt, an early pioneer - Early settlers at Saint Croix Palls - First women there - Marine Settlement - Joseph K. Brown's town site - Saint Croix County organised - Proprietors of Stillwater - A dead Negro woman - Pig's lye, origin of name - Rise of Saint Paul - Dr. Williamson secures first school teacher for Saint Paul - Description of first school room - Saint Croix County re-organised - Bar. W. T. BoutweU, pioneer clergyman.

The Saint Croix river, according to Le Sueur, named after a Frenchman who was drowned at its mouth, was one of the earliest throughfares from Lake Superior to the Mississippi. The first white man who directed canoes upon its waters was Du Luth, who had in 1679 explored Minnesota. He thus describes his tour in a letter, first published by Harrisse : " In June, 1680, not being satisfied, with having made my discovery by land, I took two canoes, with an Indian who was my interpreter, and four Frenchmen, to seek means to make it by water. With this view I entered a river which empties eight leagues from the extremity of Lake Superior, on the south side, where, after having cut some trees and broken about a hundred beaver dams, I reached the upper waters of the said river, and then I made a portage of half a league to reach a lake, the outlet of which fell into a very fine river, which took me down into the Mississippi. There I learned from eight cabins of Nadouecioux that the Rev. Father Louis Hennepin, Recollect, now at the convent of Saint Germain, with two other Frenchmen had been robbed, and carried 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] the just indignation I felt against them, rather than to remain after the violence they had done

After this, the Saint Croix river became a channel for commerce, and Bellin writes, that before 1755, the French had erected a fort forty leagues from its mouth and twenty from Lake Superior.

The pine forests 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 of men to the Falls of Saint Croix to cut pine timber, with the consent of the Chippeways but the dissentof 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, and a Mr. Maginnis left Fort Snelling for the Falls of Saint Croix in a birch bark canoe paddled by eight men, and reached that point about noon on Monday aud commenced a log cabin. Steele and Maginnis remained here, while the others, dividing into two parties, one under Fitch, and the other under Russell, searched for pine land. The first 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 the fifteenth of July, 1838, the Palmyra, Capt. Holland, arrived at the Fort, with the official 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 steamboat to disturb the waters above Lake Saint Croix. The steamer Gypsy came to the fort on the twenty-first of

Women In The Valley Of The Saint Croix

October, with goods for the Chippeways, and 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 8. C. Stambaugh, the sutler *t the fort On the afternoon of the 26th, the goods were landed, as stipulated.

The agent of the Improvement Company at the falls was Washington Libbey, who left in the fall of 1888, and was succeeded by Jeremiah Russell, Btratton acting as millwright in place of Calvin TutUe. On the twelfth of December, Russell and Stratton 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 Mr. Young. During the winter of 1838-9, Jeremiah Russell married a daughter of a respectable and gentlemanly trader, Charles H. Oakes.

Among the first preachers were the Rev. W. T. Boutwell and Mr. Seymour, of the Chippeway Mission at Pokeguma. The Rev. A. Brunson, of 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 sutlers9 stores at Fort Snelling and then proceeded with several persons of intelligence to the Saint Croix river, who settled 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 a saw mill in the Saint Croix Valley. The mill at Marine commenced to saw lumber, on August 24, 1839, the first in Minnesota.

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 Saint 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 which has become the town of Stillwater. The 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 H. Fonda, elected on the twenty-second of September, as coroner of Crawford county, Wisconsin, asserts that he was once notified that a dead body was lying in the water 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,77 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 Caliban. Some one writing from his groggery designated it as u Pig's Eye." The reply to the letter was directed in good faith to 'i Pig's Eye "

Expl0Beb8 And Pioneebs 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 Saint Paul was chiefly occupied by a few shanties owned by "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort," who sold rum 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 minne-wakan [supernatural water].

The chief of the Kaposiaband in 1846, was shot by his own brother in a drunken revel, but surviving the wound, and apparently alarmed at the deterioration under the influence of the modern 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 his 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, corner of Saint Peter and Third street, and is thus described by the teacher :

-'The school was commenced in a little log hovel, covered with 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 corner, 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 McKusick ; 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, u Here is a little village sprung up like a gourd, but whether it is to perish as soon, God only knows."