Fifty Years In The Northwest
suppose that the soil of these barrens is necessarily poor. Many of
them have a black, sandy soil, capable of producing fine crops. In
most of them there is a dense undergrowth of blueberry bushes,
producing annually millions and millions of bushels of their small but
luscious fruit.
MURDERS.
Burnett county is not without the traditions of lawlessness and murder
that tarnish so many frontier settlements, and here, as elsewhere, the
primal cause of most of such crimes is whisky. Whisky maddens the
brain and nerves the arm of the assassin. Whisky hardens the heart and
blinds the eyes to what is right, and the sale of whisky on the
frontier, authorized or unauthorized, in nearly all cases the latter,
is the bartering of the human life for gold. The money received for it
is the price of blood, although in some instances the seller himself
may be the victim. It is whisky that does the work.
Jack Drake, a whisky seller at Wood Lake, whose outfit was supplied by
Samuels & Partridge, naturally of a quarrelsome disposition, was
especially so when under the influence of liquor. On one of these
occasions he was killed by a half-breed known as Robideau, and his
body was buried on the shores of Little Wood lake. Robideau was
imprisoned a short time at St. Croix Falls, but being carelessly
guarded, easily made his escape and was not heard of afterward. What
did it matter? It was only the result of a drunken row.
The body of a murdered stranger was found by a crew of men working on
Little Wood river, in the spring of 1843. He had left Superior City
with an Indian guide for St. Paul, and was not afterward seen alive.
His land warrants and watch, which had been taken from him, were
afterward recovered, and the Indian who had been his guide was
himself mysteriously assassinated the following spring.
GEEZHIC.--At Wood Lake, Burnett county, Wisconsin, lived in 1874 an
aged and blind Indian woman who calculated her pilgrimage on earth by
moons. All traces of her traditional beauty as an Indian maiden had
long since departed. Shriveled, decrepit, bent, she was the
impersonation of all that is unlovely and repulsive in age. Taciturn
and sullen, her mind lethargic and dull, she seemed but little more
than half alive, and could not easily be aroused to the comprehension
of passing events, or to the recognition of those around her. She must
have been very old. When aroused to consciousness, which was but
seldom, she would talk of things long past. A light would come into
her sightless eyes as she recounted the traditions, or described the
manners and customs of her people, and spoke with evident pride of
their ancient power and prowess when her people planted their tepees
on the shores of the "Shining Big Sea Water" (Lake Superior) and drove
their enemies, the Dakotahs, before them. Her people wore blankets
made from the skins of the moose; elk and buffalo, with caps from the
skins of the otter and beaver. There was then an abundance of "kego"
(fish) and "wash-kish" (deer). There were no pale faces then in all
the land to drive them from their tepees and take their hunting
grounds. Of course there had been occasional whites, hunters, trappers
and missionaries, but the formidable movements of the now dominant
race had not fairly commenced. Counting the years of her life on her
fingers, so many moons representing a year, she must have numbered a
score beyond a century, and she had consequently witnessed, before her
eyes were dimmed, the complete spoliation of her people's ancestral
domain.
The physical features of the country have undergone a change. The
towering pines have decayed or been leveled by the woodman's axe. Some
of the small lakes have receded, and tall grasses wave and willows
grow where once the "kego" sported in the clear blue waters. "The sun
drew the waters up into the heavens," but the old shores may still be
traced, by the fresh water shells that are crushed by the foot of the
explorer, and by the ineffaceable mark of the water breaking upon the
beach and undermining the rocky ledges.
A few Indians still linger on the old hunting grounds and about the
graves of their fathers, but as a race they are doomed, and the time
is not far distant when their only memorials will be the printed or
striped rocks that are found along the streams and lakes, and here and
there the sunken graves of the vanquished race.
THE FIRST MISSION.
In the autumn of the year 1833 the first mission was established in
the St. Croix valley, at the outlet of Yellow lake, in Burnett county.
This may be considered the first actual movement in opening the way
for white settlements in the St. Croix valley. The good and
indefatigable laborers, who came away into these western wilds, spent
many years in this valley endeavoring to improve the benighted
aborigines. Their labors were successful, until the bane of the human
family--alcoholic drinks--was introduced by the corrupt border
traders. Rev. Fred Ayer (since a resident of Belle Prairie, Minnesota,
and a member of the convention that framed our constitution), Mrs.
Ayer, with Miss Crooks (afterward Mrs. Boutwell) as teacher, arrived
at Yellow Lake Sept. 16, 1833. Miss Crooks opened her school on the
twenty-fourth, with eight scholars. This was evidently the first
school in the St. Croix valley. This mission was under the patronage
of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Thirty or
forty Indians came to the trading house, a mile from the mission, for
the purpose of obtaining ammunition and moccasins for making what is
called the fall hunt. During their visit at the traders', Mr. Ayer had
the opportunity of explaining the object of his mission--schooling
their children, and aiding them in agriculture, planting their
gardens, and furnishing them with seeds. To the objects of the mission
all listened with interest, but, as the chiefs were not present, no
reply was made to Mr. Ayer. After obtaining their supplies from the
traders, they dispersed for their fall hunt. The school in the
meantime progressed, and frequent opportunities occurred for giving
religious instructions to adults during the winter. In April some
twenty-five families encamped near the mission; many were interested
in the objects which the mission proposed. In the spring of 1834 four
families made gardens by the mission and schooled their children;
three of the families belonged to the influential in the band. One of
these, the chief who visited Washington during the administration of
Adams, was Gis-kil-a-way, or "Cat Ear."
The Indian mind is suspicious of the white man. Waiingas, "The Wolf,"
another chief of considerable note, was prejudicing the minds of his
friends against the whites. He openly declared that if the Indians
would join him, he would burn the mission house and drive the teachers
from his country. On one occasion a party of Indians, including this
hostile chief, passed the evening at Mr. Ayer's. The chief closed his
speech at midnight with these words: "The Indians are troubled in mind
about your staying here, and you must go--you shall go; not only I say
so, but all here present say so!" The next morning all the Indians
assembled. The trader, the late Dr. Borup, and his wife were present.
The Wolf and his party were determined to expel all the whites. The
friend of the white man, Cat Ear, took the floor and shaking hands
with Dr. Borup and Mr. Ayer, began a speech of half an hour's length.
Pointing to The Wolf and to two other chiefs sitting side by side, he
says: "I speak for them. Look at them. To them belong this land. Since
last evening we have considered this subject. We have changed our
minds. The Great Spirit made us all--made us red--you white. He gave
you your religion, manners and customs--he gave us ours. Before we saw
white man we dressed in skins and cooked with stones. You found our
land on the map and come--since then you have clothed and provided for
us. Why should we send you away? We only should be the sufferers--all
of us tell you to stay--again we say, stay. We do not wish you to go;
no, no--we say to you all, stay; you may plant and build, but the land
is ours. Our Great Father has sent you here--we are glad--we will tell
you why we fear the whites--we fear you will get our land away. If
this room were full of goods we would not exchange our lands for them.
This land is ours and our children's; it is all we have."
The mission at Yellow Lake had been in progress two years. Several
families had listened with glowing interest to religious instruction,
schooled their children, and cultivated gardens near the mission, when
Mr. Ayer visited the band of Indians at Pokegama. Here were some
thirty-five or forty families in the year 1835. The chief and two or
three families expressed to him a desire to settle down and school
their children. They requested him to come and bring all with him who
wished to come from Yellow Lake. The reasons that induced him to
Pokegama were, first, the means of subsistence were more abundant,
both for the Indians and the mission family--wild rice and fish in
particular; this being the case the Indians could be more stationary
and send their children to school. Second, the soil for agricultural
purposes was superior to that of Yellow Lake. As one of the leading
objects of the mission was to induce the Indians to settle down and
adopt habits of civilization, this object could be better attained at
this place than at Yellow Lake, where it was comparatively sterile and
sandy. A third object gained would be to locate in the midst of a
larger number of Indians, with whom we could come in more frequent
contact, and last, but not least, put the mission in a nearer point of
communication with St. Peter, from whence all the family necessaries
were obtained at that day. These reasons, together with the
solicitation of one of the chiefs, and his permission to build on his
land, and use his wood, water and fish, led Mr. Ayer, in the fall of
1835, to remove to Pokegama.
For the continued history of this mission the reader is referred to
the history of Pine county.
CHIPPEWAS OF WOOD LAKE.--A small band of Chippewas, as late as 1870,
lingered about Big Wood lake, unwilling to leave their old hunting
grounds. Though brought directly in contact with civilization, they
adopted its vices, otherwise remaining savages, taking no part in
cultivating the soil or educating their children, contented to live
and die in the old fashion of their race. They subsist, as far as
possible, by hunting and fishing, and are by no means above begging
when occasion may offer. They retain their annual dances and
festivals, at the occurrence of which other bands join them from a
distance. A dance with its accompanying feasts occupies generally
about ten days, and is conducted according to rigid formulas. These
dances are intended as representations of hunting, fishing or
fighting, and are honored accordingly. They are accompanied with music
upon rude instruments, and a weird chant in guttural and nasal tones,
which may be understood as a poetic recital of their deeds or
expression of their feelings. Their dead are buried in conspicuous
places. The graves are decorated with splints of timber. A pole with
rags and trinkets is planted near the graves. There is nothing that
can long mark their resting places or keep them from being desecrated
by the share of the plowman.
GRANTSBURG
Was founded by Canute Anderson, in 1865, in section 14, town 38, range
19. He built a flour and saw mill, the first in the county, a good
hotel, and opened a store. It became the centre of trade for the
county, prospered continuously, and now (in 1886) contains a good
court house, built at a cost of $7,000 (burned December, 1887), a