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HISTORY OF ANOKA COUNTY 

and the Towns of Champlin and Dayton

in Hennepin County Minnesota

By Albert M. Goodrich

Minneapolis

Hennepin Publishing Col. 1905

Transcribed by MaryAlice Schwanke

CHAPTER II.

CARVER AND PIKE.

The Northwest was now opened to English explorers and traders. The treaty of peace was signed in 1763, and three years later Captain Jonathan Carver, a native of Connecticut, who had been in the provincial army, started on an exploring tour to the upper Mississippi. He followed the usual canoe route by way of Green Bay and the Fox river and thence by portage to the VI/isconsin river. A few miles above the junction of the Wisconsin river with the Mississippi the Indian tribe of Foxes had built a considerable town, to which the French had already given the name of Prairie du Chien.

From this place Carver proceeded up the Mississippi in a canoe. He was accompanied by a Canadian trader and a Mohawk Indian. November 17th, 1766, the party had reached St. Anthony falls. Carver says: “As the season was so advanced, and the weather extremely cold, I was not able to make so many observations on these parts as I otherwise should have done. It might however, perhaps, be necessary to observe, that in a little tour I made about the Falls, after travelling fourteen miles, by the side of the Mississippi, I came to a river nearly twenty yards wide, which ran from the north-east, called Rum river.”

 Carver undoubtedly translated the Chippeway name. It can hardly have been “called Rum river” by any others than the Indians, as Carver states that no one but himself and Hennepin had ever explored the Mississippi as far north as the mouth of the “St. Francis” river. The Chippeway name for the river is usually written Isko de Wabo, but the pronunciation as preserved by white settlers sounds more like Skoot-a-wau' boo, and its meaning is broader than Carver's translation would indicate, viz.: liquor; broth; or any beverage. However, Carver’s name has persistently stuck to the stream, notwithstanding some determined efforts to change it.

The weather being cold, Carver mistook a stream or lake some forty miles further north for the river which Hennepin had named St. Francis. He also says that he explored the St. Pierre [Minnesota] river to a distance of two hundred miles above its mouth.

Carver conceived a plan for some extensive trading operations. He expected to build a fort on Lake Pepin and thought he might be able to reach a branch of the Missouri river by following the Minnesota river to its source, and thence by portage get into the “Oregon” or some stream which flowed into the Pacific ocean. He went to England in search of financial assistance, but before the necessary funds could be raised the whole plan was overthrown by the news that a battle had been fought at Lexington and that the American colonies were ablaze with revolt.

In 1803 the province of Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France. That part of Minnesota west of the Mississippi river was a part of that province. President Jefferson determined to send an expedition up the Mississippi. The man selected for chief of the party was a young lieutenant named Zebulon M. Pike. September 21st, 1805, Pike had reached the present site of St. Paul. Two days later he had a conference with the Sioux, at their village near Mendota, and received from them a grant of a large tract of land for military purposes, including the present Fort Snelling reservation and extending above St. Anthony falls.

He then procured a barge from a trader on the Minnesota river. His men were two days dragging the barge around St. Anthony falls, but it was finally launched in the river above. September 30th he camped on Nicollet or Hennepin island, and preparations were made for a trip up the river. Many of the streams and lakes which he visited in the wilderness were already known by the names which they still hear. Pike makes no mention of Rum river on the upward trip, but October 4th he says he was opposite the mouth of Crow river, where he found a canoe cut to pieces withtomahawks and with paddles broken, and concluded that there had been a fight between Sioux and Chippeways.

Pike erected a block house near Swan river in what is now Morrison county, at which he left his barge and part of his baggage in charge of a sergeant and a squad of men. In December he pushed on with sleds to the Indian villages on the northern lakes.

During the century and a quarter which had elapsed since the visit of Du Luth there had been a considerable change in the location of the Indian tribes. In Du Luth’s time the Chippeways dwelt around the shores of Lake Superior and eastward. The northern lakes from Sandy lake and Mille Lacs to Leach and Cass lakes and probably to Red lake, were the home of the Sioux. North of them were the Assiniboines. The French traders who followed Groselliers and Du Luth on Lake Superior taught the Chippeways the use of the white man’s weapons, and when a sprinkling of the latter had procured guns, they fell on their Sioux neighbors and fiercely renewed that deadly feud which kept the two nations in almost constant war until the wave of white settlement swept between and around them and put an end to the conflict. Armed for the most part with the ancient bows and arrows, the Isantis and the other Sioux tribes in the region of the “thousand lakes” were unable to cope with the invaders, and retreated to the southward, and a considerable body of them are said to have established themselves on Rice creek in what is now the town of Fridley and thence eastward toward the St. Croix river. In what is now Centreville and Columbus and in Chisago, \Vashington and north Ramsey counties they found rice lakes similar to those in the region from which they had retreated.

The loss of the “thousand lake” region was a serious blow to the Dakota tribes. The importance of the rice lakes in the Indian economy was well expressed at a much later time by a Chippeway orator who was urged to sign an agreement for the removal of his tribe from one of the northern lakes to the White Earth reservation.

This lake, he said in substance, is our pantry. It supplies us with rice, and also with fish. It is the home of the ducks and the geese, which eat the rice which we are unable to gather. It is the home of the musk rats, which furnish us with furs, and, if meat is scarce, with food. And then dropping into a characteristic train of thought. he continued: “I shall not go to White Earth. Not unless the white men can move the lake down there. And if they should try that I am sure they would spill the water all out. I will never sign the agreement.”

At the time of Pike's visit the Mille Lacs region was all included in the Chippeway country. At a later period the Sioux passed still farther southward, occupying the valley of the Minnesota river. Pike found Sioux as far north as his block house near Swan river. Sioux would not have been likely to venture into that region in 1845. After the middle of the century Sioux were seldom found east of the Mississippi.

During the winter Pike had conferences with the Ohippeways, who promised to accede to his requests, one of which was that they should make peace with the Sioux. In the spring (1806) Pike started on his return tnip down the river. The principal trader on the Mississippi above St. Anthony falls at this time was Robert Dickson. April 10th Pike sailed past the mouth of Rum river at seven o’clock in the morning and an hour later found one of Colonel Dickson’s clerks with a band of six or seven lodges of Fol Avoins (a branch of the Chippeway tribe), who had passed the winter on Rum river.

In 1813 a colony sent out by Lord Selkirk and consisting at first mostly of Scotch immigrants, settled on Red river just north of the American boundary line. The Northwest Company, which at that time was the principal trading company in that region, became alarmed at the prospect of competition in the trade with the Indians, and made desperate attempts to break up the colony, When other means of getting rid of the new comers failed several of them were killed, and the rest so harried that they agreed to leave the country. But most of the colonists afterward returned, and were joined later by some Swiss immigrants who had been induced by Lord Selkirk’s agent to try their fortunes in the far west.

In 1818 the land east of the Mississippi and north of the new state of Illinois was included in the territory of Michigan, and in October of that year Governor Lewis Cass by proclamation fixed the boundaries of the immense county of Crawford, which contained a consid erable portion of the present states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The county seat was at Prairie du Chien, at which point there was a fort called Fort Crawford. The next year Colonel Leavenworth of the United States army was 'ordered to garrison Fort Crawford and then to proceed to the mouth of the St. Peters (Minnesota) river, and there construct a fort on the land secured from the Indians by Lieutenant Pike. The new fort was at first called Fort St. Anthony, but the name was after ward changed to Fort Snelling in honor of Colonel Snelling, who was for some years its commandant.

In 1821 soldiers from the temporary barracks near Mendota cut pine logs on Stanchfield brook about a mile above its mouth in the present county of Isanti, which were floated down the Rum and Mississippi rivers and over St. Anthony falls, and used in the construction of the buildings at the fort. About the same time a government mill was constructed on the west side of St. Anthony falls, but was not completed in time to assist in cutting the lumber for the fort. In 1823 this mill was fitted up with a run of stone for grinding corn and wheat.

In 1820 Governor Cass set out with a party of about forty persons to make some explorations in the western part of his territory. He proceeded by boat to the west end of Lake Superior and thence by canoes to Sandy lake. July 21st the party reached a lake which was at that time supposed to be the source of the Mississippi, and which was named Cass lake in honor of the dis tinguished visitor. Descending the Mississippi, the 28th of July was spent in a buffalo hunt between Little Falls and Elk river.

THE BATTLE OF RUM RIVER.

In the spring of 1839 some eight hundred Chippeways assembled at Fort Snelling. Believing that they were to receive their annuities at that point, the men had brought their wives and children with them. Finding that the annuities were not forthcoming, they made preparations to return home. Meanwhile the Sioux living in the vicinity of the fort visited the Chippeway camp, and were hospitably received and invited to participate in the feasting, drinking and dancing going on, which invitation was accepted. July first the two tribes smoked the peace pipe and the Chippeways began their homeward journey, some ascending the Mississippi river and some going by way of the St. Croix. Among the Chippeways were two young men whose father had been murdered by some Sioux near the fort the previous year, and they took advantage of the opportunity to visit and weep over their father’s grave. The thoughts of their murdered parent kindled a desire for vengeance, and on the night of July 1st they placed themselves in ambush on a trail which led past Lake Harriet. Early the next morning they shot and scalped a Sioux known as “Badger.” The friends of the victim soon heard of the occurrence and brought the body home, wrapped in a blanket. Yeetkadootah, a relative of the dead man, removed the ornaments from the corpse, kissed it, and said he would die for it. His appeals for revenge roused the war spirit, and in a very short time he found himself at the head of a party eager for the fray, each member of which bound himself to take no captives, but to kill all whom his weapons might reach. The warriors crossed the Mississippi at Fort Snelling and followed the trail of one of the Chippeway bands up that river on the east side to Rum river, which they reached on the third day of July. The Chippeways were not expecting any trouble. They probably had not even heard of the murder, which had been committed after their departure from the fort. Their camp was pitched northwest of Round lake on ground now occupied by the farm upon which Andrew J. Smith lived many years.

Here, within sight of the mound which told of the people who had lived beside the beautiful lake centuries before, occurred one of the bloodiest battles that marks the long feud between the Sioux and Chippeway tribes. The fight took place before sunrise on the fourth of July, and the appearance of the ground when first seen by white men would seem to indicate that the Chippe ways were surprised in their sleep, and that many of them were butchered where they lay. Those who were able to grasp their weapons made a desperate resistance, but succumbed to overwhelming numbers. Yeetkadootah galloped on horseback to a wounded Chippeway and dismounted to take his scalp, but the injured warrior summoned all his remaining strength and succeeded in shooting the Sioux leader through the neck.

It is related that during the stay of the Chippeway band at Fort Snelling a young Sioux brave had been enamoured with a Chippeway maiden, and that in the midst of the battle he found his arm upraised to slay her to whom he had paid his devotions. She begged to be his captive, but he had taken an oath to take no captives. He pressed forward to avoid the harsh alter native, and in a moment the girl’s head was cleft by the tomahawk of one behind him. About ninety Chippeways were killed and wounded in this battle.

Daniel Stanchfield, the pioneer lumberman, accidentally discovered the battle field while exploring for a road up Rum river in September, 1847. The skeletons were somewhat blackened by prairie fires and most of them lay in little groups, where hand to hand encounters seem to have taken place. Mr. Stanchfield gathered forty or fifty skulls and piled them up in the form of a pyramid.

Silas C. Robbins went over the ground in the summer of 1856. Many blackened bones were still visible, and Mr. Robbins found one complete skeleton of a warrior with the head still resting upon the arm. Beside the skeleton lay the gun (an old flint lock) the charred remnant of a paddle, a knife, and the remains of a bead sack about a foot square, containing a bullet mold, a few three-cornered arrow heads, a pair of scissors, a big iron spoon and an extra flint for the gun. Mr. Robbins took the gun home, had it remodeled for percussion caps and the half burned stock renewed, and it did excellent service in after years.