Charles E. Flandrau

“ He looked me over with suspicion, and said: "No, I am an herb doctor." I felt that my fate was sealed for the night, and prepared to seek my couch on the softest plank I could find, between the two men who looked the warmest of the party. While thus preparing my toilette de nuit, in a state of mind bordering on desperation, I heard the jingling of sleigh-bells, and a team dash up to the door, from which debarked two men, each comfortably full, followed by hand-bags, blankets and a two-gallon demijohn. They said they had driven from Winona that day, and would stay all night. ”

“ I remember no man in the history of our country who equals him in the diversity and extent of his public services and office-holding. He was a general in the Mexican War, and for a long time enjoyed the unique reputation of being the only man who was ever shot through the lungs and survived. This, however, was not true. Many others, no doubt, underwent the same experience, and I remember a young Chippewa Indian who, while on a war party into the Sioux country, was wounded in exactly the same manner, and lived to a good old age as a very robust savage. ”

“ The Indians have lost their splendid freedom as lords of a continent, and are prisoners, cribbed upon narrow reservations. The magnificent herds of buffalo that ranged from the British possessions to Texas have disappeared from the face of the earth, and nothing remains but the white man bearing his burden, which is constantly being made more irksome. To those who have played both parts in the moving drama, there is much food for thought.
I devote so much space to Fort Snelling because it has always sustained the position of a pivotal center to Minnesota. ”

“ In all ages, and among all people who had progressed beyond absolute individualism and gained any kind of government or community interests, there must have been some kind of law to settle disputes and controversies, whether of a public or private nature, and I remember once, in the very early days of Minnesota, of witnessing a test which bore a close resemblance to a trial by jury, and involved an important question of individual character which would have been classified under our jurisprudence as an action of slander. ”

“ This was of small consequence, as the material of the regiment was probably the best ever collected into one body. It included companies of lumbermen, accustomed to camp life, and inured to hardships; men of splendid physique, experts with the axe; men who could make a road through a forest or swamp, build a bridge over a stream, run a steamboat, repair a railroad, or perform any of the duties that are thrust upon an army on the march and in the field. There are no men in the world so well equipped naturally and without special preparation for the life of a soldier as the American of the West. ”

“ We went up the Blue Earth, the Le Sueur, the Watonwan, and, in fact, visited all the country that was necessary to convince me that it was, by and large, a splendid agricultural region, and I decided so to report to my principals.
When I was about to leave for down the river, Garvie insisted that I should return and take up my abode at Traverse des Sioux. The proposition seemed too absurd to me to be seriously entertained, and I said: "I am destitute of funds, and how can a lawyer subsist where there are no people? How can I get a living?" ”

“ The first act necessary for initiation as a citizen of the republic was cutting off the long hair universally worn by the Sioux, and if any act could be taken as indicative of sincerity, this one seemed to be conclusive. It is quite as much of a sacrifice for an Indian to cut off his hair as it would be for a young lady in society possessed of a splendid suit of hair to cut it off short and appear at a grand ball with her head thus denuded. ”

“ The bold invasion of the robbers proved our courage; the storms and fires proved our generosity to the distressed, and taught us lessons in the wisdom of prevention. Minnesota has as much to be thankful for and as little to regret as any state in the West, and our troubles only prove that we have a very robust vitality, difficult to permanently impair. ”

“ The only thing to be feared is that some political party may gain control of the government of the nation, and either degrade its currency, involve it in disastrous complications and wars with other nations, or commit some similar folly which may reflectively or secondarily act injuriously on Minnesota as a member of the national family of states. Otherwise Minnesota can defy the vagaries of politics and politicians. ”

“ Garvie and I had gotten quietly settled in our shanty on the prairie, when one excessively cold night an Indian boy, about thirteen years of age, saw our light, and came to the door, giving us to understand that his people were encamped about four or five miles up the river, and that he was afraid to go any further lest he should freeze to death. He was mounted on a pony, had a pack of furs with him, and asked us to take him in for the night. ”

“ The experience of these good missionaries had taught them that civilization was the most potent auxiliary to religion, and, for the success of either, the other was a necessary aid and adjunct when dealing with these primitive people. So they set themselves to work to devise plans to instill into the Indians the elemental principles of government based on law. They organized a little state or community among them, through which they endeavored to prove to them the advantages of civilized rule through the agency of officers of their own choice and laws of their own making. ”

“ No old settler, however, who dates back of the fifties, ever calls it anything but "Prairie La Crosse." This place got its name from the fact that the Indians selected it as a favorite point at which to play their game, known to them as "Ta-kap-si-ka-pi," but called by the French, "La Crosse." Anyone who has been there, and is familiar with the prairie on which the city of La Crosse is built, will recognize at once its superior advantages for a game of ball of any kind. It is long, wide and level. This game has always been a great favorite with the Sioux Indians. ”

“ A more heart-rending procession was never witnessed in America. Here was the population of one of the most flourishing towns in the state abandoning their homes and property, starting on a journey of thirty odd miles, through a hostile country, with a possibility of being massacred on the way, and no hope or prospect but the hospitality of strangers and ultimate beggary. The disposition of the guard was confided to Captain Cox. The march was successful; no Indians were encountered. We reached Crisp's farm, which was about half way between New Ulm and Mankato, about evening. ”

“ For many years there has been a growing sentiment in the United States that Spain was governing Cuba and her other West Indian colonies in an oppressive and unjust manner, and the desire to interfere in behalf of the Cuban people received a good deal of encouragement, and its general expression succeeded in creating very strained relations between Spain and the United States. It is a well known fact that the Spanish people, from the north line of Mexico to Cape Horn, as well as the inhabitants of the Spanish Islands, hate the Americans most heartily. ”

“ Every night the men would make a cheerful crackling fire of dry driftwood from the river, hobble the mules, and fall asleep for the night, leaving us to enjoy the soft summer air and brilliant moonlight, while discussing our future plans when possessed of the boundless wealth that only awaited the coming of Rose and the chief. ”

“ In the beginning of the settlement of the Minnesota valley, in the early fifties, a man named Tom Cowan located at Traverse des Sioux. His name will be at once recognized by all the old settlers. He was a Scotchman, and had been in business in Baltimore. Financial difficulties had driven him to the West, to begin life anew and grow up with the country. He was a very well read and companionable man, and exceedingly bright by nature, and at once became very popular with the people. His first venture was in the fur trade, but not knowing anything about it, his success was not brilliant. ”

“ There are absolutely no diseases indigenous to the state. The universally accepted truth of this fact is found in a saying, which used to be general among the old settlers, "that there is no excuse for anyone dying in Minnesota, and that only two men ever did die there, one of whom was hanged for killing the other."
The resources of Minnesota principally consist of the products of the farm, the mine, the dairy, the quarry and the forest, and its industries of a vast variety of manufactures of all kinds and characters, both great and small, the leading ones being flour and lumber ”

“ The inhabitants engaged in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, utterly unprepared for war, sprang to the front on the first indication of danger, and checked the advance of the savage enemy in his initial efforts. The importance of battles should never be measured by the number engaged, or the lists of killed and wounded, but by the consequences of their results. I think the repulse of the Indians at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm saved the State of Minnesota from a disaster the magnitude of which cannot be estimated. ”

“ While I cannot approve such methods in an election where the law and the necessities of civilization require the voter to be present, I cannot avoid the wish that we were all honest enough to make such a course possible as the one adopted by these simple border people. ”

“ Dreadful as this affliction was to almost everyone in the territory, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It compelled the people to abandon speculation, and seek honest labor in the cultivation of the soil and the development of the splendid resources that generous nature had bestowed upon the country. Farms were opened by the thousands, everybody went to work, and in ten or a dozen years, Minnesota had a surplus of forty millions of bushels of wheat with which to supply the hungry world. ”

“ Under the influence of this great rush of immigration it is very natural that the prevailing idea should be that lands would greatly increase in value in the near future, and everybody became a speculator. Towns and cities sprang into existence like mushrooms in a night. Scarcely anyone was to be seen without a town-site map in his hands, the advantages and beauties of which fictitious metropolis he was ready to present in the most eloquent terms. ”

“ You live in a beautiful home where the bleak winds never penetrate. Your hunger is always appeased with the choicest foods. Your heart is kept warm by all these blessings, and would bleed at the sight of distress among your red children. Father, we are poor and weak. We live far away in the cheerless north, in bark lodges. ”

“ My view of the question has always been that, when the court martial was organized, Colonel Sibley had no idea that more than twenty or twenty-five of the Indians would be convicted, which is partly inferrable from his dispatch to me, in which he said he had "apprehended sixteen supposed to have been connected with the late outrages." But when the matter assumed the proportions it did, and he found on his hands some three hundred men to kill, he was glad to shift the responsibility to higher authority. Any humane man would have been of the same mind. ”

“ We are often [12] cold and hungry. Father, what we ask is to you as nothing, while to us it is comfort and happiness. Give it to us, and when you stand upon your grand portico some bright winter night, and see the northern lights dancing in the heavens, it will be the thanks of your red children ascending to the Great Spirit for your goodness to them. ”

“ It is difficult to conceive of any other subject over which the state could assume jurisdiction, and the great number which are embraced already within its supervision would lead one who is not in touch with our state administration to believe that state paternalism dominated the business industries of the people; but nothing is further from the truth, and no state in the Union is freer from governmental interference in the ordinary channels of industry than Minnesota. ”

“ When the time arrived every Indian in the ring jumped to his feet and fired in the air, creating a tremendous fusilade, and as had been expected, the most frightful panic followed, and everyone thinking that a general massacre of the whites had begun, they scattered in all directions. Instantly the prisoner ran for the crowd, and an Indian can sprint like a deer. ”