Old Fort Snelling Part 2

Without delay Colonel Snelling with four companies started down the river.[94] A few days after reaching Prairie du Chien, he was reenforced by troops brought up from St. Louis by Colonel Atkinson. It was thought necessary that Fort Snelling should be maintained during the critical period, and as it was short of provisions, Colonel Snelling was ordered back to his post with a supply of flour, and directed to procure boats which could be used in the pursuit of the Winnebagoes up the Wisconsin River. On the 16th of August Colonel Snelling arrived at his post, and on the following day Major Fowle started downstream with four other companies of the Fifth Infantry in two keel boats and nine mackinac boats, arriving at Fort Crawford on August 21st. The Indians, overawed by the rapidity of these military movements and the size of the force sent against them, immediately became peaceable. As a precaution, however, Major Fowle was kept at Fort Crawford, and the post was provisioned for a year.[95]

During the next twenty years the force maintained at Fort Snelling was small, and the garrison was occupied in routine tasks, the regulation of Indian affairs, and the fur trade. At the time of the Black Hawk War there was quiet about Fort Snelling, and Major Taliaferro offered his services and those of the Sioux warriors in the campaign against the Sacs and Foxes. But the government did not think it advisable to formally accept the proffered help, although a number of the Sioux did take part in pursuing the remnants of Sacs who succeeded in crossing the river.[96]

In June, 1848, the company of infantry stationed at Fort Snelling received an urgent call to come to Wabasha's Prairie--near Winona, Minnesota. The Winnebago Indians were being transferred from their former home in the Turkey Valley region in Iowa to a new reservation obtained for them from the Chippewas. But when the Prairie was reached, the Winnebagoes visited with Wabasha and he sold it to them for a home.

When Captain Seth Eastman arrived from Fort Snelling he was put in charge of the military forces which had been hastily brought together to force the Winnebagoes to continue their march. There were volunteers from Crawford County, Wisconsin, dragoons from Fort Atkinson, Iowa, and the infantry from Fort Snelling, besides sixty armed teamsters.

These military forces lay encamped, separated from the Indians by a slough. In the morning a deputation of Indians came to ask the meaning of the martial appearance of the whites when all _they_ desired was a council. This suggestion of a council was quickly a.s.sented to, but the Indians approached with such a rush and with such blood-curdling yells that the cannon were loaded and the soldiers stood ready to fire.

During the council the Winnebagoes refused to move until one small band gave in to the entreaties of the agent and were taken up to Fort Snelling. This was an opening wedge, for when the steamboat returned 1700 were ready to move. The total journey of three hundred and ten miles from the old to the new home occupied the time from June 8th to July 30th, 1848.[97]

By the next summer they were ready to return--anywhere, but especially to Wisconsin, their earliest home.[98] In July the whole tribe, stimulated by whiskey, started; but Governor Ramsey called on Colonel Loomis of Fort Snelling for aid, and a force under Captain Monroe proceeded to the north where their presence aided in quieting the disturbers. Again, on September 9th about a hundred had approached within sixteen miles of St. Paul, when Captain Page and forty men from Fort Snelling frightened them so much that they fled into the swamps and returned home quietly. Smaller parties were captured on the river and sent back under a military guard.[99] Not all the efforts, however, were successful. It was reported that one evening in November over a hundred red men floated down quietly under the very guns of Fort Snelling, and two weeks later the newspaper accounts tell of three hundred Winnebagoes in camp near the mouth of the Black River.[100] The need for a company of dragoons at Fort Snelling was imperative. The next summer it was obtained, and in 1851 this military force was described as being "an indispensable and invaluable auxiliary."[101] Not until 1855 was the Winnebago spirit of migration broken, and then only after a new reservation had been obtained for them at the mouth of the Blue Earth River.[102]

In his report of November 25, 1844, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs called attention to the fact that no longer was there any need of entertaining fears on account of the visits made by American Indians to the Canadian posts, as these pilgrimages were indulged in only by a few "worthless vagrants". But an evil of a different character was imminent.

Twice a year hundreds of Red River half-breeds--_bois brules_--left their homes on the British side of the international boundary to hunt buffalo on the American plains which bordered on the Missouri River.

Here they came into contact with Indians who naturally resented this intrusion upon their hunting grounds. During the summer of 1844 a half-breed had been killed by a party of Yankton Sioux, and the invaders had retaliated by killing eight Sioux of another band. This so inflamed the Indians that they went upon the war path and without stopping to reason about the matter, they attacked a party of whites whom they met on Otter Tail Lake.[103]

To hunt the buffalo freely, even on foreign soil, seemed to the _bois brules_ to be their natural right. On the pemmican which they made from these buffaloes they depended for their winter's food. Five hundred and forty carts trailed out of Pembina on the summer hunt of 1820, and from year to year the number increased until in 1840 there were 1210 carts, accompanied by 1630 people. Nowhere else in the new world at least, was there such a hunting party. Thirteen hundred and seventy-five buffalo tongues were counted as the result of one day's hunt in 1840.[104] It was estimated that every year these Red River hunters killed twenty thousand buffaloes on American soil.[105]

In this there was a real grievance. Though small in itself the incident could easily develop into a war when there were other factors urging in the same direction.[106] The exact condition of affairs on the border was so confused that the United States made occasional military displays in order to impress the invaders and also to satisfy its own curiosity.

The first of these expeditions occurred in 1845. Captain Edwin V.

Sumner, then in command at Fort Atkinson, in the Iowa country, visited the Red River of the North during the summer of that year with Companies B and I of the First Regiment of Dragoons. But the difficulty was that while the invaders would promise to remain off American soil and would retire as soon as a military force appeared, yet no sooner would the troops depart than they would be back again on the hunting grounds.[107]

When complaints continued to come in the Adjutant General proposed to establish a post on the Red River. As a preliminary movement Brevet Major Samuel Woods, Captain of the Sixth Infantry located at Fort Snelling, was ordered to proceed with Company D of the dragoons to the border and make recommendations to the War Department in regard to a suitable site. On June 6, 1849, the start was made from Fort Snelling, and the weary march directed to the northwest over the swollen rivers and the marshy swamps with the mosquitoes a constant torment, until on August 1st the soldiers reached the collection of Indian lodges and the trading establishment that was known as Pembina. During the twenty-five days spent at this point observations were made of the topographical features of the land, the character of the Indians, and the pursuits of the half-breeds.

Major Woods urged the American Indians and half-breeds to prevent by force the invasions, promising that the United States would support them. But it would be useless, he reported, to build a fort at Pembina unless at least two hundred fifty men were stationed there. It would be better to concentrate a large force at Fort Snelling, from whence expeditions could be made into the Indian country in all directions as necessity might arise. The return to the fort occupied twenty-three and a half days, and on September 18th the total journey of almost a thousand miles was completed with the loss of only one horse and one mule.[108]

During the next few years conditions remained unchanged, and as the settlement of the Minnesota and Mississippi valleys was pus.h.i.+ng the Indian tribes farther to the westward, more and bitter conflicts with the half-breeds would be liable to occur. In order to give a final warning to the foreign hunters and to select a site for a post which could serve the double purpose of protecting the frontier settlements from the Indians and the Indians from the foreigners, Lieutenant Colonel C. F. Smith of the Tenth Infantry was ordered on June 9, 1856, to tour the region with Companies B and F. As far as the Goose River, in the North Dakota country, the route followed from Fort Snelling was practically the same as that of Major Woods; but instead of proceeding by the usual route northward to Pembina, a detour was made to Lake Mini-Waken (Devil's Lake). On the return the less travelled and more difficult road on the east side of the Red River was followed.

On August 19th the trail of the annual hunting party was crossed; but the nine hundred men, women, and children who had made the trip had returned to their homes three weeks before, and kept away from the military party. Since no warning could be given to them in person, a notice written in both English and French was circulated in Pembina and in the British settlements to the north. But the natives obtained sweet revenge when Colonel Smith attempted to buy from the farmers in the vicinity of the princ.i.p.al trading post--Fort Garry--a sufficient supply of oats for his troops. The half-breeds declined to bring the grain, giving as their excuse that they did not desire to trespa.s.s on American soil when warned to keep off.[109]

Not only to the north did the troops from Fort Snelling make expeditions. The wide range of its influence is ill.u.s.trated by the task which occupied the attention of its soldiers during the summer of 1850.

On August 8, 1849, Governor Ansel Briggs of Iowa forwarded to the Secretary of War a pet.i.tion, signed by over a hundred citizens of Iowa County, in which they complained of the presence of a great number of Indians who were destroying the timber, removing the section corners, and even demanding rent from some of the settlers--claiming that they owned the land on the Iowa River.[110]

To investigate conditions and to report upon what steps would be necessary to remove the cause of complaint, Brevet Major Samuel Woods, stationed at Fort Snelling, was ordered to proceed to the State of Iowa.

On the twenty-fifth of September he left for Prairie du Chien, and arriving here set out for Fort Atkinson, thinking that probably the Winnebagoes were the Indians causing the trouble. But he discovered that many of them had just set out for the upper Mississippi, and those remaining behind were so few in number that they could cause little inconvenience to the frontier. From Fort Atkinson Major Woods pa.s.sed southward through Fayette, Buchanan, Linn, and Johnson counties to Iowa City. At this time the region traversed was spa.r.s.ely settled. For a hundred miles south of Fort Atkinson there were only two settlements--one, consisting of a few families, high upon the Volga River, and the other larger in numbers cl.u.s.tered about some mills on the Wapsipinicon River. About fifteen miles north of Marion the inhabitants became more numerous. Here were found Indians--Sacs and Foxes, Pottawattomies, and Winnebagoes--but they were not hostile and their presence caused no objection.

It was at Iowa City that Major Woods heard that the inhabitants on the Iowa, English, and Skunk Rivers had been making the loudest complaints.

Accordingly he started up the Iowa River to the vicinity of Marengo.

Here he learned that a few days before the settlers near the town, becoming tired of having Indians about them, armed themselves and by force broke up the Indian encampment. Only one lodge remained, that on the lands of a farmer who gave permission to three of the red men to live under his protection.

The total number of Indians, Major Woods reported, consisted of five or six hundred Sacs and Foxes, Pottawattomies, and Winnebagoes. Among these the Sacs and Foxes were the most numerous. They had by treaty sold their lands some years earlier and had been removed to the Missouri River; but they preferred their old home, and so had returned in straggling bands, sometimes going back to the Missouri to get their annuities. The Winnebagoes were those who had escaped when the tribe was being transferred to the new reservation north of Fort Snelling.

The complaints against these Indians were that they destroyed a great deal of timber, removed the surveyors' landmarks, killed the game, annoyed the settlers, and that when intoxicated they were an actual source of danger. Believing that these reasons were well founded, Major Woods advised that the Indians be removed as soon as possible.

Conditions did not demand a winter campaign, but preparations should be made for the removal during the early summer.[111]

In the early part of April of the next year it was known that two companies of infantry from Fort Snelling, and one company of dragoons from Fort Gaines had been detailed for this task.[112] On the twelfth of May the "Highland Mary" left Fort Snelling, having on board the infantry and cavalry and part of the equipment, while in tow was a barge full of horses and mules.[113] The soldiers were disembarked at Dubuque, whence they followed the trail to Iowa City, along which they "saw nothing except the ravages of California emigration." Proceeding to the vicinity of Marengo, a council was held with the Indians. But the latter marched into the council ten abreast carrying their war clubs and manifesting such a hostile disposition that it was impossible for Major Woods to accomplish anything.[114]

For a while it seemed that active military operations would be necessary. The Indians becoming convinced that this would be the result, and fearing that all the expenses of the campaign would be deducted from the annuities of the tribe, suggested to two men of the neighborhood--a Mr. Steen and a Mr. Greenly--that they would go back to their homes if these two men could be appointed their guides. When Mr. Steen and Mr. Greenly broached the subject to Major Woods he considered it thoughtfully, and finally an arrangement was made. For every Indian who left the Iowa River and was turned over to their agent west of the Missouri River, the government was to pay three dollars and fifty cents.

Five hundred dollars was to be advanced to pay for the provisions of the party. Upon June 6th a second council was held with the Indians, during which Major Woods impressed upon Chief Powes.h.i.+ek and his men the necessity of their returning and the advisability of their doing it peaceably.[115]

During the month of July the Indians started upon their journey. For several days they encamped near Fort Des Moines, and on July 16th seventy of the warriors, armed and painted, paraded on horseback through the streets of the town to the public square where for an hour they danced for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the two or three hundred interested spectators in the frontier town.[116]

These events made necessary a change in the plans of the troops. Company E of the Sixth Infantry remained at their camp on the Iowa River for some time, but upon the last day of July set out under the command of Major Woods for a site on the Des Moines River which had been chosen by the War Department as the location of a new military post. On August 23, 1850, the troops arrived at the designated place and began the erection of a fort which they named Fort Clarke in honor of Colonel Clarke the commanding officer of the Sixth Infantry. The name, however, was soon changed to Fort Dodge.

The company of dragoons was occupied during August and September in making a tour of the western part of the State of Iowa, and it was not until October that the cavalry company and the other infantry company returned to their station at Fort Snelling.[117]

Occupation for the company of dragoons was furnished during the next summer when Governor Ramsey was sent to Pembina to draw up a treaty with the Pillager band of Chippewa Indians. On August 18, 1851, the party set out from Fort Snelling. Besides the Governor and a number of gentlemen who accompanied him, the party consisted of twenty-five dragoons, and eight French-Canadian and half-breed drivers who had charge of six baggage wagons and several light Red River carts. The march was very difficult and the dragoons were kept busy repairing the roads over the swamp lands and dragging with ropes the heavy wagons over the quickly made causeways. The treaty which was made after this difficult journey was not ratified by the Senate.[118]

The wonderful expansion of the Nation, which occurred in the latter half of the fifth decade of the century, turned all eyes toward the fertile valleys and the mountains of fabulous wealth on the Pacific Coast. Even before the acquisition of this territory some visionary minds had pictured it bound to the United States, if not by political ties, at least by bonds of steel.[119] The Oregon treaty of 1846 brought part of the coveted land under the jurisdiction of the United States, and the necessity of a railroad to the Pacific was soon realized. But sectional interests prevented agreement upon any certain route, and it was decided to survey the most promising and choose the one agreed upon by the engineers. Accordingly, the army appropriation bill of 1853 provided $150,000 for this purpose.[120]

Isaac I. Stevens, the newly appointed Governor of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, led the party which examined the country between the parallels of forty-seven and forty-nine degrees north lat.i.tude--called the Northern Pacific Survey. He left Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C, on May 9, 1853, and reached St. Paul on May 27th. According to his instructions he was authorized to call upon one sergeant, two corporals, one musician, and sixteen privates of Company D First Dragoons, who were still stationed at Fort Snelling.[121] Captain Gardiner, who had preceded his leader up the river, had selected the escort and collected the party on May 24th in Camp Pierce--a temporary encampment located three miles northwest of the fort.[122] Early in June camp was broken and the start for the far West was made, at first, over the Red River Trail, and then across the prairies to Fort Union, where on August 1st they were joined by others who had been sent up the Missouri with supplies. Fort Benton was reached on September 1st There they remained until the twelfth of the month when Lieutenant Saxton, leading a similar party eastward from Vancouver, arrived. Thus a survey from the Mississippi to the Pacific had been completed.[123]

On the journey the entire party had been divided into small groups, who conducted surveys and explorations in various directions. To each of these groups were detailed a few of the dragoons, who were in all respects an integral part of the expedition and not merely a guard for protection. Accordingly, no special mention of their work was made in the report.[124]

After thirty years, the distinction of being the most northwestern post in the upper Mississippi region was lost by Fort Snelling. Other military stations were erected, and thereafter many of its former activities were conducted from these stations on the extreme frontier.

Yet in everything contributed by these newer posts, the older had a part; accounts of them reveal their dependence on Fort Snelling, the parent post.

As early as 1844 the Secretary of War had reported that plans were being made to erect two new forts between Lake Superior and the River St.

Peter's.[125] But nothing was done at this time. By a treaty of October 13, 1846, the Winnebagoes living on the "Neutral Ground" in the Turkey River Valley of the Iowa country agreed to exchange this reservation for one "north of St. Peter's and west of the Mississippi Rivers".[126] By treaties in the following August, the Chippewas ceded to the government a tract lying south of the Crow Wing River and west of the Mississippi River, and north and east of the so-called Sioux-Chippewa boundary line.[127] This was the area agreed on by the government as being suitable for the Winnebagoes. In view of the reputation of unruliness possessed by this tribe, and the fact that they were to be placed between the warring tribes--the Sioux and the Chippewas--the establishment of a post on the reservation was thought desirable.

The transfer of the tribe took place during the summer of 1848; and in the same fall Brigadier General George M. Brooke of St. Louis, accompanied by a squadron of dragoons, chose a point opposite the Nokay River as a desirable location.[128] This company and a company of the Sixth Infantry from Fort Snelling were employed in building the fort, and when cold weather prevented further operations, they were withdrawn to Fort Snelling, where the winter was pa.s.sed.[129] In the spring the troops returned, and Fort Gaines--rechristened Fort Ripley--was occupied on the thirteenth of April, 1849.[130]

But this post alone was unable to keep the Winnebagoes in check. They celebrated the first fourth of July by attacking a frontier store and "causing one gentleman to escape _en dishabille_ to the woods, where he danced to the tune of the mosquitoes during some three days and nights."[131] Again and again reports of riotous revels and rumors of impending outbreaks caused help to be sent from Fort Snelling to a.s.sist the troops higher up the river.[132] In the spring of 1857 the fort was abandoned, but Indian disturbances during the summer caused a detachment to be sent from the older post. These troops remained at that point until in the summer of 1858 they were transferred to the newly founded Fort Abercrombie.[133]

The treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, concluded in 1851, concentrated the Sioux Indians on a long irregular reservation along the upper Minnesota River.[134] The Indians were not transferred until the summer of 1853, but in the fall of the previous year the need of a post among so many half civilized people, placed in a small territory, was obvious. Accordingly, Colonel Francis Lee, commandant at Fort Snelling, and Captain Dana of the quartermaster's department, escorted by a troop of dragoons, selected a suitable site on the north side of the Minnesota River, a dozen miles upstream from the town of New Ulm.

On February 24, 1853, seven privates of Company D of the First Dragoons, and two sergeants and thirteen privates of the Sixth Infantry were sent to the location to begin the erection of the fort. In April the dragoons were ordered to return to Fort Snelling and Companies C and K of the Sixth Infantry went up the river under the command of Captain James Monroe and became part of the permanent garrison of newly-founded Fort Ridgely. One other company came up from Fort Dodge--the post in Iowa which was abandoned with this withdrawal.[135]

Colonel C. F. Smith, who led the expedition from Fort Snelling to the Red River during the summer of 1856, was instructed to recommend a site for a post. His choice of Graham's Point on the Red River was accepted; and here, in the fall of 1857, Colonel John J. Abercrombie constructed the fort which was named in his honor. Colonel Smith, writing from Fort Snelling, gave among his reasons for the choice of Graham's Point "the additional advantage of greater facility for receiving stores from the depot here".[136]

With the building of these posts, Fort Snelling lost much of its importance. The garrison was small and the fort was almost nothing more than a depot for supplying the more advanced forts with food, clothing, and ammunition.[137] With the decline of its military position, the idea became prevalent that some day it would be abandoned entirely, and the land thrown open to settlement.

The neighboring cities of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and St. Anthony were in the throes of real estate speculation. There were some who saw in Fort Snelling a site more advantageous than any of these. "It is a position which has attracted also a good deal of attention on account of its superior beauty of location, its agricultural advantages, and its more notable advantages for a town site", said Mr. Morrill during a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives. "Whatever witnesses in this case may have differed upon as to other matters, they nearly all agree that, as a point for a town site, it possesses superior advantages over any other in that part of the country."[138]

Successful efforts were made to secure this site. On June 6, 1857, Mr.

William King Heiskell, a commissioner appointed by the Secretary of War, sold to Mr. Franklin Steele, who was acting for himself and three others, the entire reservation for $90,000. The President approved the act on the second of July. Other parties who were interested in securing the site were not aware that the sale was to be made until everything had been accomplished.[139]

Immediately there arose the cry of graft: the Republicans saw in the transaction the corruption of the existing Democratic regime. A committee was appointed by the House of Representatives to investigate the matter, and the testimony which they took covers three hundred and seven pages. Some witnesses said that the post should have been retained for military purposes; others insisted that there was no such need. Some said that the site was admirable for a city; a few stated that it possessed no such advantages. Some said that it was necessary as a supply station for the upper posts; others insisted that these posts could be supplied more cheaply by a direct route.[140]

Bitter debates marked the consideration of the report. The objects, character, and ability of the witnesses were questioned. One member of the House said that "Fort Snelling is a very elegant appanage to very elegant gentlemen, who have a very elegant place for parade and show."[141] Another remarked that "the officers at Fort Snelling were opposed to the sale and it was natural that they should be. They had a beautiful place of residence, they had the most comfortable quarters, and a superabundance of stores for their subsistence. There they were living upon the fat of the land, without anything under G.o.d's heaven to do. Society was near at hand in a city populous, and furnis.h.i.+ng all the luxuries of life. They of course did not want to surrender such quarters and such comforts for the hards.h.i.+ps and trials of a frontier station."[142]

Finally, on June second the whole matter was laid on the table. On May 27, 1858, the troops had been withdrawn,[143] and on July 19, 1858, the quartermaster turned the buildings over to Mr. Steele. But with the opening of the Civil War Fort Snelling was used by the government as a training station, and after the war it was continued as a permanent post. Mr. Steele had been unable to pay the entire $90,000, and as he claimed rent at the rate of $2000 a month for the time it had been used by the government, the matter was again taken up. It was finally adjusted in an agreement whereby Mr. Steele retained the greater part of the land, and the government kept the buildings and 1521.20 acres surrounding the fort. Later some of the land was re-purchased from Mr.

Steele.[144]

The history of Old Fort Snelling closes with the removal of the troops in 1858. The story of its use during the Civil War, of the part it played during the Sioux ma.s.sacre of 1862, of its influence throughout the West during the years when the headquarters of the Department of Dakota were located within its walls, of the Officers' Training Camp established during the summer of 1917, lies outside the scope of this volume. The life of the new Fort Snelling revives the traditions of patriotism, loyalty, and sacrifice, which have centered about the post since that day in August, 1819, which witnessed its beginning.