Meeker County, Minnesota - Chapter 1, 1877

Chapter 1

The region known as the " Big Prairie " west of the ''Big Woods" has been known to white set¬ tlers but 21 years, and yet the twilight of uncer¬ tainty has already thrown its shadows, and the night of forgetfulness seems about to descend and forever obscure many little incidents which, al¬ though in detail seem of little consequence, yet all go to make up a readable history of any commu¬ nity.

The Centennial year of our great Republic seems to open up an opportunity, which the Pres¬ ident of the United States recommended to our people to improve and place in permanent shape for preservation, the historical data of the various counties and towns of the Republic.

In a little while the venerable gentlemen who composed our first settlers will all be gathered to their fathers - "their children engrossed by the emp- " ty pleasures or insignificant transactions of the " present age (or in the greedy pursuit of the " almighty dollar,) will neglect to treasure up the "recollections of the past and posterity will search " in vain for memorials of the days of the Patri¬ archs" (Knickerbocker's History of New York.) Our history will be but a shadow, and the names of Ripley, Hall, Whitney, DeCoster, Campbell, Fitzgerald, Weymer, Salisbury, Dougherty, Atkin¬ son, VanNess, Mitchell, Dorman, Taylor, Evans, Skinner, Jewett, Kennedy, Stevens, Harvey, Pi¬ per, Caswell, Angier, Willis, Dart, Whitcomb, King, Greenleaf, Branham. Fitch, Ball, Hoyt, Gris¬ wold, Grayson, Stanton, Robson, Richards, Gorton, Wakefield, Heath,Warren, Willie, Kruger, Ralston, Schultz and a score of others will soon be enveloped in doubt and fiction, like those of " Romulus and Remus of Charlemagne. "

Prior to 1855 the country now embraced within the boundaries of Meeker and Kandiyohi counties, in the State of Minnesota, was occupied by those denizens of the forest known as the Sioux Indians. This is their old stamping ground. The Mississippi River was the dividing line between the Sioux and

Chippewas, and for centuries they are said to have nursed a deadly feud. The former heroes of this territory, the Sioux, were and still are, perhaps among the most powerful of the Indian tribes in the northwest. These, like all other tribes are gradually losing their prestige and compelled to leave their reservations granted at some prior pe¬ riod, in apparent good faith. Their fate is inevita¬ ble. The only practical law of what we call civilization is, that the inferior in prowe'ss, yield to the superior race. The doctrine is cruel and inhu¬ man, not to say " savage, " but unavoidable and im¬ perative. Crowd the Indian to the wall - wait a time for further decimation, then drive them into still narrower limits and so on, till the Indian canoe with its solitary occupant, disappears toward the setting sun, and is finally lost to sight and sense, and the life of one race, whose glory was to hunt and fish, gives place to another more powerful, but with as little regard to moral and intellectual attainment except so far as it is enforced by law falsely denominated the law of civilization. Sta¬ tistics of the Indian war in Meeker count}' alone will justify what' we say. The course and policy of the United States toward the Indian tribes, has ever resulted in peculation to the operators and death to the Indian, with no more prospect of civil ization or Christianization to-day, than one hundred years ago. Government might quite as well en¬ force the practice of the " Oneida Institute " on the American people, as to drive Christianity or civilization into the Indian in the manner it ha5 sought to do for more than a century past.

The war-like Sioux - driven to the Rocky Moun¬ tains, are compelled to make their last fight (and no insignificant one at that,) for tribal existence. - In just one hundred years after the Declaration of our National Independence, the Government is engaged in the expensive, perplexing and perilous effort to drive the last nail in the coffin of Ameri¬ can Pagan existence. It will ultimately succeed but at what cost time alone can determine.

We are beginning to realize the enormous con¬ tract we are pledged to fill. The strength, as well as the bravery of the Sioux, has been greatly mis¬ represented. They can certainly bring into the field 20,000 warriors, and twice as many troops will be required to thoroughly and quickly subdue them. With homes in the wilderness of the moun¬ tains and forests, strange to say they are better mounted Jfor this country and purpose than the United States' Army backed with 500 millions of annual revenue and 40 millions of people. They are equally well armed and superior shots. Finally, from the very nature of their individual style of fighting, they are magnificent skirmishers - the best in the world; and necessarily the deployed line must be most frequently used in Indian warfare.

To understand the extent of the Indian war the Government has upon its hands, it is necessary to have a correct knowledge of the position and pow¬ er of the hostile Sioux and their allies. In one of the late reports of the Commissioner of Indian af¬ fairs the location of the different agencies is giv¬ en, with the number and condition of the Indians on each reservation. The entire Indian population of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, is esti¬ mated at 295,084. In Dakota, Montana and Wyo¬ ming, there are nearly 70,000, divided as follows:

Dakota Agencies Montana

According to the estimates given in the same report, about sixty per cent, are women; this gives 27,000 warriors within the Indian Territory, which, considering the number of bands that have never settled at any of the reservations, is a low estimate of their strength. According to the same calcula¬ tion the Sioux and Cheyennes, now openly at war would be able to bring nearly 22,000 men into the field. From all accounts received from the seat of war, one fact seems clear, and it is that the estimate made as to the number of Indians actually on the war path and operating against the troops is below the real number.

Had the Indians been compelled, at an early day to adopt agriculture and stock raising for the chase - individualization of their property - submission to territorial government as wards of the nation - the sale of intoxicating drinks visited with the

Strange that a philosophy so false should have been pursued for a hundred years by the most en¬ lightened nation on earth, until annihilation be¬ comes absolutely necessary to close the scene.

When we were a boy, we caught a young gray fox before his eyes wei'e opened. We tamed him to the playfulness of a kitten, - but as he grew up a ''gray fox," he, one morning, took our fingers with the meat, and the result was - annihilation to the fox. Such is Indian history. Moral suasion is useless - there are hardly exceptions enough to es¬ tablish the rule.