Old Fort Snelling

airie and wooded valleys that lay before him. As a captain in the colonial troops of Connecticut he had served his king faithfully in the late war with France; and now in the day

him that those wild lands would not always be t

Empire, from time immemorial has been gradually progressive towards the West, there is no doubt but that at some future period, mighty kingdoms will emerge from these wildernesses, a

here a few years later rose the white walls of Fort Snelling, did the nation which was to rule assert its power. The event was, indeed, epochal. It not only mark

nd Minnesota rivers to the plains of the Missouri. The history of this region is marked by several distinct periods: the coming of the French tra

n American for sixteen years, and although they looked over the river to land that had since 1783 belonged to their country, yet they had in fact taken possession of a foreign lan

Duluth. It is unnecessary to recite in detail the exploits of these Frenchmen and their successors.3 For a century the songs of unknown boatmen rose from the waters of the western rivers; unknown traders smoked in the lodges of Sioux and Chippewas; and hardy wanderers whose feats of discovery are unrecorded, leaving behind the Missouri River, saw from afar the wonders of the

merchants of Montreal, organized in 1784 as the North West Company, pushed westward from Green Bay and southward from Lake Winnipeg. This advance was continued until the opening years of the next century. Although on nominally Spanish territory, the tribe

ss: It is, however, understood, that the country on that river is inhabited by numerous tribes, who furnish great supplies of furs and peltry to the trade of another nation, carried on in a high latitude, through an infinite nu

ed: one to ascend the Mississippi under Zebulon M. Pike, and the other the Missouri under Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant Willi

gate the fur trade. Nor had they long to wait. On the 27th of November, seven British traders arrived from the North West Company's post on the Assiniboine River to barter with the river tribes. The next day, in council with the Mandan chiefs, the Americans warned the Indians not to receive medals or flags from the foreigners if they wished to be friends with the Great American Father. A

nd councils with the Indians revealed the extent of the commerce of the North West Company. He heard of permanent trading posts on the south side of Lake Superior and at the headwaters of the St. Croix River; and he saw at Lower Red Cedar Lake, Sandy Lake, and Leech Lake the rude stockades and log buildings which were called forts.10 These three posts were included in the

ere induced to give up their British medals and flags;14 and Hugh M'Gillis, agent of the company for the district, in response to Pike's letter of complaint, promised in the future to r

be pleased to obtain permission from the Indians who claim the ground, for the erection of military posts and trading-houses at the mouth of the river St. Pierre [the Minnesota River], the fa

m the high bluff lying between the Minnesota and the Mississippi rivers the course of both streams would be under the sweep of the guns. Sheer walls of stone rising from the Mis

s lands for military posts, and dwelt on the value of these posts to the Indians. To this the chiefs assented, receiving in return presents valued at $200 and sixty gallons of liquor. The terms of the treaty provided that the Sioux should cede to the U

tile feelings on the part of the Indians toward the Americans, and an official at Mackinac wrote on August 30, 1807, that this condition is principally to be attributed to the influence of foreigners trading in the country.18 Captain A. Gray, who was sent to inquire into the aid which the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company could furnish, reported to Sir George Prevost, commander of t

ur trade, which in turn could survive only if the free life of the hunt and the chase, which the Indians loved so well, was left them. But with the Americans were asso

o drive out both enemies-Indians and foreign traders alike. The news of the declaration of war reached the great rendezvous of the North West Company at Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior on the sixteenth of July, 1812, and the n

uisitioned. The morning of July 17th revealed the American fort surrounded by Indians and commanded by a cannon which had been dragged upon a height of land. Seeing the futility of resistance the garrison surrendered and marched out before noon. Of the total attacking force of 1021 there were Indians to the number of 715, of whom the British leader wrote, although these people's minds were much heated, yet as soon as they heard the Capi

General Hull wrote to Captain Heald in command at Fort Dearborn ordering the evacuation of that post. On the morning of August 15th, as the small garrison of fifty-five regulars and twelve militia were leaving the fort with their women and children, they wer

ame Dickson who had in 1802 received an American commission as a justice of the peace,25 and had later entertained Pike and his men with a supper and a dram, impressing the America

of 1814, Governor William Clark of Missouri Territory proceeded up the Mississippi and at Prairie du Chien built a stockade named Fort Shelby. It was garrisoned by about sixty men.31 News of this movement soon came to Mackinac, and prompted the British commandant to prepare a counter-expedition. On the seventeenth of July the force composed of five hundred

er of two posts and had participated in a massacre. British arms had be

hostilities.33 President Madison accordingly appointed William Clark, Ninian Edwards, and Auguste Chouteau as commissioners to enter into treaties of peace with the warring tribes of the upper Mississippi and the upper Missouri. Only with extreme d

y refused to attend, but also showed their contempt by continually harassing the frontier settlements during the time of the negotiations.35 This opposition, the commissioners reported, was due to the presence of a

t Drummond Island in Lake Huron, would be supplied. By June 19th of the next year four hundred Indians had arrived at the post-mainly Sioux. To sympathetic ears they reported that they feared that the Americans were planning their extinction, and a confederation was being formed to resist the building of American forts on the Indian lands. As late as 1825, of the four thousand Indi

rs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who made his first trip down the Ohio at this time (1818), remarked: I mingled in this crowd, and, while listening to the anticipations indulged in, it seemed to me that the war had not, in reality, been fought for free t

o, Ichabod: Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling benea

tlements. Indiana achieved statehood in 1816 and Illinois in 1818. Across the river in Missouri the population had grown fro

ge of active military operations against the Indians of the upper Mississippi.42 One agent suggested that three or four months' full feeding on meat and bread, even without ardent spirit, will bring on dis

cordingly, by an act of Congress of April 29, 1816, it was provided that licenses to trade with the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States shall not be granted to any but citizens of the United States, unless by the e

impossibility by declaring that the boundary should extend due west from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, there had existed a vagueness as to where the actual line should be drawn.46 In 1806 the British traders thought it would be run from the lake to the source of the river;47 and as late as 1818 Benjamin

to the one for the sake of the other.49 As early as 1805 Pike had promised the Indians, in council assembled, that the government intended to build a trading house at the mouth of the Minnesota River.50 The commissioners at Portage des Sioux, in 1815, had been instructed to inform the tribes that it is intended to establish strong posts very high up the Mississ

ding houses needed the protection and administrative arm of the military department in order to be effective. The forward movement of t