William Watts Folwell

“ Young growing trees went down along with those old and ripe for the axe. Within a few years it has become apparent to all who concern themselves, that the days of Minnesota lumbering in the old piratical fashion are numbered. Had a reasonable forest policy been established fifty years ago, permitting only the annual cutting of ripe trees and leaving the young to grow, a harvest of lumber might have been reaped in perpetuity. There are millions of acres of land in the state which are fit only for forest growth and will some day be so devoted. ”

“ The distinction fell on John Sargent Pillsbury, who had proved his capacity for public affairs by ten years’ service in the state senate and on the board of regents of the university. A successful business career, a reputation for inflexible integrity, a power to select from varied propositions the one which could be carried and worked, and a keen insight into human nature gave him an influence with legislatures and the people rarely equaled. ”

“ Why he should teach a religion of brotherhood, and still keep to himself his household stuff, his little store of food, and his domestic animals, was beyond the comprehension of savages accustomed to communistic life. A greater obstacle lay in the fact that the missionary had first to break down faith in an ancient religion, and the dominance of a body of medicine-men who maintained their cult by a ceremonial interwoven with the whole life and habits of the people. Not less obstructive was the example of most white men known to the Indians,—greedy, dissolute, and licentious. ”

“ The bonds would be bought up for a song by speculators who would subsidize newspapers, shout repudiation, and pound on the doors of the legislature till that body would be forced by their sheer importunity to satisfy them. But that legislature had come from an exasperated people who believed in their hearts that the railroad companies, and politicians in league with them, had deceived and cheated them. They had never promised, in fact, to pay those bonds, and the takers of them knew that, and were estopped from demanding redemption out of the pockets of the people. ”

“ Major-General Pope in a dispatch of September 28 probably voiced the sentiment of the great majority of the white people of the Northwest. “Make no treaty with the Indians,” he wrote Sibley; “the horrible massacre and outrages call for punishment beyond human power to inflict. It is my purpose to exterminate the Sioux, if I have the power to do so.” General Sibley was too humane and judicious to give serious regard to so insane a proposal. He had already appointed a committee of inquiry to ascertain what Indians under his guard had probably been guilty of murder and outrage. ”

“ If anything remained from the Indian’s pack it was very likely to be forthwith spent for the highly diluted whiskey of the trader. The Indian’s fondness for spirits and their effects was at least equal to the white man’s, and he had not become immune from immemorial indulgence. The resulting crime and misery are beyond description,—conception, almost. And the trader’s excuse was that the Indians would not trade if whiskey was not furnished, and that it was absurd for one to refuse it when all the rest were selling. Along with the white man came his epidemic diseases. ”

“ The exchange of the garrisons of regular troops at the forts for raw volunteers was to the Sioux a sign that the Great Father was in trouble, and the dispatch of raw men to help defend his country confirmed this view. Through the traders and half-breeds the Indians were kept informed of the repulses suffered by his warriors at Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, and elsewhere. Nowhere could gossip spread more speedily than in an Indian village, where gossip was the business of the braves when in camp. ”

“ THE ENGLISH DOMINION If the French failed to establish any permanent settlement in Minnesota, it was not wholly because their passion for trade discouraged home-building and cultivation; they had interests elsewhere in America more important than those of the northwest. La Salle’s proclamation of 1682 asserted dominion of the whole region drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries. For a time the Ohio was regarded as the main river and the upper Mississippi as an affluent. ”

“ Upon their arrival late at night a council of warriors was called. The high connections of the murderers did not relish the idea of turning them over to white man’s justice to suffer a death signally ignominious to Indians. There was but one alternative, to treat the killing of the afternoon as an act of war, and call the nation to arms. After an outburst of patriotic eloquence this course was resolved on, and as soon as the braves could arm and mount, they moved toward the agency under the lead of Shakopee, who was no lover of the whites. ”

“ THE SIOUX WAR It was not till Wednesday the 20th that Little Crow could muster and hold together a body of warriors sufficient to undertake regular warfare and carry out a well-laid plan to capture Fort Ridgely. He was aware, of course, that its little garrison had lost its commander and fully half of its men. He probably did not know of the arrival of two reinforcements: one, Sheehan’s detachment recalled by Captain Marsh before beginning his fatal march; the other, the party of recruits, enlisted at the agencies and taken by Agent Galbraith as far as St. Peter. ”

“ The American Fur Company had succeeded not merely to the business of the “old Northwest Company,” but to its quasi-political control. The chief factor at Mendota, and his subordinate traders at the more important trading places, exercised a control over the Indians and half-breeds which government officials, civil and military, vainly endeavored to win from them. The few whites in the region, aside from the garrison of the fort, were at the first traders’ employees; later a handful of missionaries acceded, and still later an advance guard of settlers, mostly lumbermen and Selkirk refugees. ”

“ No man less confident of the righteousness of his cause, nor less willing to fight a bitter opposition, could have built up a school for teachers which has served as model for many others in Minnesota and other states. The second state normal school was opened in Mankato in 1868; the third in St. Cloud in the next year.
The “wing and extension” of the great building planned for the territorial regents of the university in 1856, and built in that year and the next, stood empty for ten years, except that at different times private teachers were allowed to hold their classes in some of the rooms. ”

“ The midsummer heat hatched these eggs, and the brood at once fell on the growing crops. In a few days not a spear was left over large areas, and the hoppers had grown wings. Taking wing as if by a common inspiration, they flew over into Blue Earth, Sibley, Nicollet, and Renville counties, where they repeated the devastation of the previous season. But the counties thus abandoned were again in many places infested by fresh swarms from the southwest. In all twenty-eight counties were visited in 1874. Upon an appeal from the governor a subscription was opened for the relief of stricken settlers. ”

“ EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS To discover the true source of any of the great rivers of the world, that is, that one of all sources which measured along the axis of its channel is farthest from its mouth, has ever been an alluring problem to the exploring geographer. David Thompson, geographer of the Northwest Company, in the course of a journey of exploration lasting a year and extending to the Missouri River, on April 23, 1798, reached Turtle Lake, four miles north of Lake Bemidji, and believed himself the discoverer of the true source of the Mississippi. ”

“ Early in the year 1908 the Supreme Court of the United States considered that the Circuit Court for the District of Minnesota had the right to punish the attorney-general of Minnesota for attempting, in disobedience of its process, to enforce a state law regulating railroad rates, held to be obnoxious to the national constitution. ”

“ Several men of the Fourth whose term of enlistment had expired shared in the battle, and of them some were numbered with the dead.
The gallant behavior of the men of the Fifth Minnesota and Colonel Hubbard’s instant perception of the proper line of action at Corinth on October 4, 1862, have already been related. It was the fortune of this command, together with the Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Minnesota Infantry regiments, to share in the glory of the battle which destroyed the Confederate power in the Mississippi valley. ”

“ Not railroads only but ships, mills, factories, mines, fisheries, farms had been built or bought with small sums of ready cash and large sums in mortgage notes. A huge cloud of debt rested over the land. Transactions were so rapid and enormous that bankers loaned out their swelling deposits with a reckless eagerness. One fine morning some conservative institution refused a new discount or declined to renew a customer’s paper. That customer could not pay his creditors, and those could not pay theirs. ”

“ The Pond brothers, foreseeing that this policy was premature, decided not to follow the tribes among whom they had labored to the reservations. Concentration of wild Indians averse to cultivation only gave opportunity for unceasing grumbling in council over the general rascality of the white man, the tyranny of the agent, the immorality of his employees, the extortions of the traders, and the imbecility of the missionaries, who worked for nothing.
In the buffalo season these Sioux swarmed out into the Missouri valley to make boot upon the still countless herds. ”

“ The framers of the “Morrill bill” of 1857-62, granting public lands for the endowment and support of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, could have had no expectation of any such use of the grant, and doubtless would have provided against devoting it to elementary education. The industrial education had yet to be invented for this country. But this school of agriculture is far better for the practical farmer than any college could be.
One department of the school of agriculture of the university has had no small part in working a great change in Minnesota agriculture. ”

“ They saw a thousand miles of railway as good as built, spreading population far and wide and carrying the produce of an empire to waiting markets.
It was a good fortune for the territory that the organic law gave it no power to run in debt. It was equally unfortunate that a corporation created by it could and did run in debt. In the same February of 1851 in which Delegate Sibley secured from Congress the reservation of the two townships of land to endow a university, the Minnesota legislature created the University of Minnesota, to be located at or near St. Anthony’s Falls. ”

“ Congress has the same right to build railroads as canals: hence, (2) the ownership or control of one or more double-track freight railways; (3) the improvement of our great natural water ways and their connection by canals; (4) particularly the improvement of four great channels at national expense. These were the Mississippi River itself, a route from the upper Mississippi by way of the great lakes, a route from the same river by way of the Ohio and Kanawha, and, last, a route from the Mississippi via the Tennessee; all to be pieced out either by canals or freight roads. ”

“ A beginning was made under the law in the year of its passage, but owing to an omission in an appropriation bill it was not put into full and effective operation till 1881. The results have fully equaled all reasonable expectations. The university, the high schools, and the common schools of Minnesota have been converted from a loose aggregation into a complete, harmonious, organized system. There is open to every child of the state a course of free school education from the kindergarten to the doctorate of philosophy. ”

“ In the spring of 1679 Duluth penetrated to the shores of Mille Lacs, and in a great Sioux village which he understood to be called “Kathio,” on July 2 he planted the king’s arms and took possession in the royal name. Duluth, therefore, was the first white man in Minnesota not ashamed to report and record the fact. In the same season he retraced his steps to the head of the lake, and passed down the north shore to Pigeon River, which forms part of the Canadian boundary. There, on the left bank of that river, he built a trading post, on the site afterwards occupied by Fort William. ”

“ If the Republicans were relieved from competition with a powerful opposition they found plenty of it between the factions which arose in their own camp. At the first, however, they were none too sure of carrying a sufficient number of election precincts and therefore felt justified in resorting to a procedure never anticipated by the framers of the state constitution. The legislature in the special session of September, 1862, by a statute duly approved, provided against the disfranchisement of those citizens who at the time of election should be absent in the military service. ”

“ A crowning example of this confidence has been given in the so-called “land grab” of 1871, whose consummation lacked only the approval of Governor Austin. But under this seeming of prosperity for the public and the people whose wealth was going into the railroads there was trouble brewing. Transportation did not come as cheap as the public was expecting from corporations, which had received from Congress public lands worth about $10,000 per mile at government prices, to aid them in building. ”