Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix A Historic Resource Study of the Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway

Moving almost silently through the forest Little Crow approached the place where he had set one of his steel beaver traps. Through the morning mist the Mdewakanton Sioux leader saw that someone had preceded him to the site. The stranger lifted the trap, heavy with a fine, fresh beaver carcass, and was about to remove the valuable catch when he suddenly looked up to see Little Crow. With "a loaded rifle in his hands" Little Crow "stood maturely surveying him." The stranger was not a Sioux, or as Little Crow himself would have referred to his people, a Dakota. The man was dressed in the manner of the Chippewa. For two generations the Dakota and the Chippewa had been at war for control of the Upper Mississippi and St. Croix River valleys. This Chippewa had been caught not only deep in Dakota Territory, but also in the act of committing the worst type of thievery, robbing another hunter's trap. As an act of war and self-defense, Little Crow "would have been justified in killing him on the spot, and the thief looked for nothing else, on finding himself detected." [1]

"Take no alarm at my approach," said Little Crow. Instead of raising his rifle, the Dakota chief spoke gently. "I only come to present to you the trap of which I see you stand in need. You are entirely welcome to it." The wary Chippewa was further taken back when Little Crow held out his rifle. "Take my gun also, as I perceive you have none of your own." The chief capped this unlikely encounter by offering the stunned Chippewa a healthy piece of advice, "depart. . .to the land of your countrymen, but linger not here, lest some of my young men who are panting for the blood of their enemies, should discover your foot steps in our country, and fall on you." With that, Little Crow turned his back on the rearmed enemy and traced his steps back to his village.

The story of Little Crow's gesture was recorded by the United States Indian Agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in his narrative of an 1820 journey to the Upper Mississippi country. Schoolcraft included the story because it illustrated the contradictory perception held by European Americans of the Dakota people. Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike who had visited Little Crow's village in 1805 had described the Dakota as "the most warlike and independent nation of Indians within the boundaries of the United States, their every passion being subservient to that of war." Yet Schoolcraft also noted that they were "a brave, spirited, and generous people." Little Crow's gesture was magnanimous, but it also was an exercise of supreme self-confidence by a warrior whose mastery over his opponent did not depend upon his ownership of a mere firearm. Through his exaggerated generosity, Little Crow counted a notable coup. Through Little Crow's action the Chippewa thief was reduced in status from that of an invader, to that of a mere beggar. The encounter also underscores an important historical point. For the Dakota and the Chippewa, the most important event on the St. Croix between the mid-eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century, was not the expansion of the fur trade nor the arrival of European-American settlers, but a terrible and persistent intertribal war. It was the interests and actions of the Indians, not those of a handful of fur traders or Indian agents that shaped the early history of the valley. [2]

Figure 1. A Chippewa Family, c. 1821. Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada.

The Dakota and Their Neighbors

Dakota's ability as warriors, their generosity, and their pride as a nation were all defining characteristics of the first historic inhabitants of the St. Croix valley. The Dakota could afford to be generous because they occupied one of the largest and richest regions of the North American interior. The early French fur trader Nicholas Perrot called it "a happy land, on account of the great numbers of animals of all kinds that they have about them, and the grains, fruits, and roots which the soil there produces in abundance." The St. Croix was the northeastern border of a Dakota homeland that extended along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, from the mouth of the Wisconsin River on the south to the headwater lakes in the north, and along the Minnesota River westward to the Great Plains. Not just its vast extent made this homeland rich. The diversity of landscape at the disposal of the Dakota offered a cornucopia of resources to the nation's hunters and gatherers. The Dakota lands straddled the northern woodlands and transitional prairie ecosystems and were united by rich riverine corridors and pockmarked by countless lacustrine clusters. Only the long hard winters of north central America tempered the possibilities of an otherwise lavish and diverse environment. [3]

"Places are defined," observed historian Elliott West, "in part when people infuse them with imagination." The Upper Mississippi landscape found by European American explorers such as Pike and Schoolcraft was shaped by the choices made by its Dakota inhabitants. Other Indian peoples, such as the Shawnee or the Huron, would have looked upon the rich bottom lands along the Mississippi and envisioned fields of maize, or later white settlers saw commercial lumber in white pine thickly arrayed in ranks along the margins of the northern lakes. The Dakota, however, arranged their homeland as a grand hunting preserve. Like most Native American people's of the Upper Midwest the Sioux structured their lives around a seasonal subsistence cycle. In the case of the Mdewakantonwan this cycle was based on hunting, not the gardening of maize or beans that played an important role in the lives of the Algonkian Indians who dominated the Great Lakes region. Dakota men were hunters and warriors. Fittingly they approached hunting as they approached war, cooperating with other Dakota to overwhelm their prey yet always alert to the possibilities of individual recognition. [4]

The Dakota began their year amid the thousand lakes of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Large lakes of the St. Croix valley, such as Chisago, Pokegama, and Upper St. Croix became the sites of villages of one hundred or more deerskin lodges. Men were active throughout the winter hunting white-tailed deer. Generally able to structure their hunts to suit their palates, the Dakota hunters would alternate the taking of deer with the hunting of winter bears. In winter deer and elk were a bit too lean and therefore dry when cooked to suit the taste of the Dakota. Bear on the other hand were heavy with fat in the winter and when taken and rendered added savor to other meat. Women prepared meals and treated hides. During the late February and March days, when the winter sun formed a crust of ice upon the deep snowdrifts of the forest, the Dakota hunters stalked herds of elk. These graceful grazing animals favored the open prairies during most of the year but retreated to the fringes of the forest when winter was at its worst. Moving swiftly over the frozen snow with their snowshoes the Dakota could take large numbers of elk, as they broke through the surface snow and struggled in the drifts. [5]

The proud hunters were greeted with the cry "Kous! Kous!" as young boys saw the men return to the village burdened with heavy loads of meat. Soon every lodge was empty as the entire community, young and old, rushed out to honor the hunters. The shouts continued to rent the evening air until the men laid down the meat at the door of their lodges. A successful late winter elk hunt became the occasion for a great round of feasting among the Dakota lodges. A hunter established his status in part by forcing upon his guests more food than could be consumed. Eating to the point of nausea was the mark of a true Dakota. When elk hunting failed, as it occasionally did because of a lack of snow, the Dakota relied on fish taken in the adjacent lakes. Like true hunters the Dakota favored spearing fish to the use of nets or hooks, and if their efforts failed or yielded meager results, they accepted a shortage of food as a natural part of the season. Wild plants helped to bridge the rare seasons of want and the more common seasons of plenty. In 1767 Jonathan Carver witnessed the Dakota chewing the soft, inner fibers of "a shrub," perhaps the red willow, which he said tasted "not unlike the turnip." [6]

When the sap of the maple tree began to run, in March or April, the specter of a season of want disappeared. Women took the lead organizing the work of tapping maple trees, gathering sap, and boiling the liquid into sugar. Besides a few old men or boys who might help tend the fires, the sugar camps were composed entirely of women. Most of the men were off trapping or hunting waterfowl. Women united by kinship ties often came together to share the work and fun of making sugar. The sugar camp might be occupied for as long as a month and as many as one hundred trees could be tapped. The hardest part of the sugar making was the preparation of wooden troughs used for boiling. Although the bottoms of these hallowed logs were smeared with mud to retard their burning, exposure to the direct flames of the rendering fires meant that troughs had to be continuously replaced. Such work was well-rewarded when the finished sugar was gathered in birch bark containers and the women of the family held feasts in which bark pans of sugar were passed around for all to enjoy. Amid the laughter and stories that were shared, the women and children joined in jokes and dares. A frequent dare was to see who could drink the most of what one anthropologist called "a revolting concoction," liquid tallow. The tallow was used in small amounts to help process the sugar. Around the sugar campfire some women responded to their challengers by drinking cupfuls. Then everyone awaited the results on the winner, who often became sick or sleepy. [7]

In summer whole villages of Dakota took to their canoes and journeyed down the St. Croix to its junction with the Mississippi. Amid the hills and river terrace prairies just west of the great river roamed herds of buffalo. Before the Europeans came the buffalo ranged throughout the domain of the Dakota and more than any other reason accounted for the abundance that normally marked the life of the Mdewakantonwan Sioux. The Dakota held their summer buffalo hunts on both banks of the St. Croix. Bison ranged throughout western Wisconsin and small herds were even known to graze in the marshy pine barrens of the St. Croix's headwaters region. The most popular place to hunt the buffalo, however, was on the lower St. Croix and along the Upper Mississippi. In 1680, the missionary-explorer Father Louis Hennipen accompanied the members of a village of Mille Lacs Dakota on a buffalo hunt as far south as Lake Pepin, on the Mississippi. There they killed more than 120 bison. [8]

The summer buffalo hunt was a defining cultural experience for the Dakota of the St. Croix valley. The buffalo provide the means and the rationale for the Dakota community. In contrast to many of their Algonkian neighbors who lived much of the year in small groups of only several families, the Dakota lived in villages composed of hundreds of people. The village functioned as a unit, not as a congregation of individual hunters. This discipline was established by the requirements of the buffalo hunt. "They assemble at nightfall on the eve of their departure," the fur trader Nicholas Perrot observed, "and choose among their number the man whom they consider most capable of being the director of the expedition." This master of the hunt and his adjutants assigned each man his role in the coming endeavor, scout, shooter, or as a policeman enforcing tribal discipline. Unlike the popular image of a Sioux buffalo hunt, with hunters racing over the plains on horseback, shooting their prey, the Dakota approached the hunting grounds via birch bark canoes. Upon the receipt of reports from the scouts the leader would quietly dispatch the hunters, sometimes with the use of smoke signals, who would drive the herd toward its destroyers. Hennepin witnessed two hundred men converge on a buffalo herd from opposite slopes of a large hill. The two groups of hunters "shut in the buffalo whom they killed in great confusion." Sometimes the bison could be driven by means of prairie fires over a high riverbank and dispatched in that way. The traditional technique of the Dakota buffalo hunt was a group effort leading to a massive slaughter of game. The aftermath of such a hunt, the ground packed with bleeding animals in their death throes, might strike modern readers, as it did the nineteenth century artist Paul Kane as "more painful than pleasing," but such a sentiment would have been foreign to a hunting people like the Dakota. [9]

The excitement of the hunt slowly gave way to the drudgery of processing the harvest of meat and hides. In the disciplined structure of the Dakota buffalo camp much of this work fell to the women. Some were given the task of quartering and butchering the bison. Others may have been regarded as specialists preparing hides that would become blankets, clothing, and crucial to the Dakota's mobility -- tents. The most laborious task of the women was the drying of thousands of pounds of meat. This was done over slow burning fires with heat, smoke and sun joining to preserve thin strips of buffalo for up to a year. So important was this task that the prudent hunt leader never selected a kill site far removed from a large supply of firewood. It often took weeks to properly dry and store the meat of a single large kill. [10]

A successful buffalo hunt provided the Dakota with security from want for the remainder of the year. Hunters continued to pursue game throughout the year, including buffalo. But the July hunt was purposely designed to produce not fresh meat for the moment, but an insurance policy for the rest of the year. The Mille Lacs Dakota with whom Hennepin lived in 1680 were particularly scrupulous to husband their harvest for the future. The Frenchman observed that "The women buucanned [dried] the meat in the sun, eating only the poorest, in order to carry the best to their villages, more than two hundred leagues from this great butchery." " So fundamental was this hunt to the prosperity of the Dakota that hunt leaders were given extraordinary powers to ensure that nothing or no one endangered the community endeavor. Hennepin encountered one group of Dakota celebrating an early buffalo hunt. They arrived ahead of the rest of the village and rather than wait, made a large killing on their own. The hunters of the main party were furious and destroyed the early arrival's lodges and took all of their meat. One of them explained to the priest "having gone to the buffalo-hunt before the rest, contrary to the maxims of the country, any one had the right to plunder them, because they put the buffaloes to flight before the arrival of the mass of the nation." [11]

In late summer the Dakota would return to the northern lakes. Men would hunt waterfowl and deer, while the women prepared for the vital harvest of wild rice. The rice harvest was second in importance to the buffalo for the prosperity of the Dakota. The Upper St. Croix country excelled as a habitat for the tall aquatic grass known as wild rice. Early French explorers, such as Nicholas Perrot, described the plant as "wild oats," which was actually more accurate because it is not a rice at all but an annual cereal grass. In later years the European-American fur traders labeled the St. Croix valley as the "Folle Avoine country," using the French words for wild rice to characterize the region. The dam on the St. Croix River at Gordon, Wisconsin destroyed one of the finest wild rice habitats in the region when it flooded the marshy shores of the natural river to create a large recreational lake known as the St. Croix Flowage. For generations before the dam Indian women relied on this rich stretch of river. Dakota women would sometimes seed lake or stream shores to increase their future harvests, but the majority of the wild rice crop grew naturally. Harvesting the crop so as to ensure its return the next year and processing it as a food source required considerable ingenuity and long hours of work. Women gathered the rice in a canoe in which they carefully shook the grain from the tops of the grass, often by means of a wooden stick, so as not to damage the plant. Once a canoe load was brought ashore. "The rice was then separated from the chaff by scorching it in a kettle," recalled an early Minnesota settler, "and then beating it in a mortar made by digging a circular hole in the ground and lining it with deer skin." [12]

Prior to the eighteenth century agriculture seems to have played a very small part in Dakota life. The amount of wild rice available in the homeland of the Mdewakanton Sioux assured a steady source of natural cereal. Small plots of corn were sometimes planted near village sites, but the amount was never enough for maize to serve as a sustaining element in their diet. Its role seems to have been as a source of diet variety. Similarly they would establish plots of tobacco near their villages. Most of what the Dakota desired was obtained by hunting or through the gathering of wild plants.

The final stage of the Dakota's annual subsistence cycle began in October or November, "the moon of the deer." For one or two moons the large villages would break up into smaller bands that would then cooperate in a communal hunt of white-tailed deer and occasionally elk or woodland caribou. Often they would employ tactics reminiscent of the buffalo hunt, coordinating the movement of large numbers of hunters to drive the deer toward designated shooters. Before the hunt ended in January, with a return to their large semi-permanent lakeside villages, the deer hunters often succeeded in bagging large numbers of deer. Samuel Pond, an early settler who knew the Sioux well, estimated that two Dakota bands combined to kill two thousand deer during the year. [13]

The abundance of food resources that was a manifest part of Dakota life in the St. Croix valley could give the impression, as historian Gary Anderson has observed, that their lives were "rather idyllic." But the abundance came at a cost. The toll was levied, in part, by the Dakota's frequent movement across the Upper Mississippi landscape. "They have no fixed abode," declared Pierre de Charlevoix somewhat erroneously, "but travel in great companies like the Tartars, never stopping in any place longer than they are detained by the chase." Early French geographers referred to the Dakota as the "wandering Sioux." Andre Penigault, who lived with them in 1700, described the Dakota as "toujours errante," always wandering. The French did not see that the abundance of Dakota life was based on their movement, the ability to exploit each segment of their varied homeland at its peak for hunting and gathering. Their large, semi-permanent lakeside villages were an exception to this movement, and it was while in residence in these villages that the Dakota were susceptible to a shortage of resources. Because these sites were occupied repeatedly over the years they suffered from a shortage of firewood and reduced game populations in their vicinity. It was the very young and especially the very old who bore the burden of the seasonal cycle. Those who could not keep up with the group risked the health and well being of the other family members. [14]

"Hunting is the principal occupation of the Indians," declared Jonathan Carver who lived among the Dakota during the 1760s. Typical of European observers he sneered at what he perceived as the "indolence peculiar to their nature," but did not see the contradiction when he described Dakota hunters as "active, persevering, and indefatigable." The fact was that successful hunting cultures such as the Dakota required considerable energy and sacrifice from their hunters. Bringing down an enraged buffalo or elk at close quarters with a compound bow was fraught with risk, as was the pursuit of game across a frozen boreal landscape. Dakota women also bore a heavy burden. On the move the burden was not merely metaphorical but might entail a pack and tumpline of well-over one hundred pounds.

The abundance of the Dakota excited the envy of their Indian neighbors and attracted the notice of the French. Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart, Sieur Des Groseillers, the first Europeans to penetrate the interior of northern Wisconsin, first encountered the Sioux during the winter of 1659. Unusual climatic conditions had ruined the winter hunts of the Menominee among whom the French were staying. After being forced to eat the dogs of the village starvation gradually consumed its inmates. As the horrible winter came to a close representatives of the Dakota arrived in the village. The eight well-fed Dakota men, each accompanied by two wives bearing baskets of wild rice, strongly impressed the haggard Europeans. Without hesitation they accepted the invitation of the Dakota to visit their lands. [15]

The Dakota demonstrated considerable forbearance, even generosity toward their Algonkian neighbors to the east. But like Little Crow's decision to spare the life of a Chippewa robbing his trap, the Dakota peoples' generosity was calculated. As early as 1650 the Dakota allowed remnants of the Huron, who had been driven from their homelands near Georgian Bay by Iroquois invaders, and a small group of their Ottawa allies to settle in Dakota Territory near Lake Pepin. The Dakota were at least in part motivated by the desire to obtain French trade goods from the two tribes that had been the backbone of the early western fur trade. But Sioux generosity seems to have been misinterpreted as a sign of weakness by the Huron and Ottawa who tried to drive the Dakota away from the Mississippi. This major miscalculation of Dakota capability and intent, led to the complete expulsion of the Huron and Ottawa from Dakota lands. For the next hundred years the Dakota were intermittently at war with eastern Algonquin the Iroquois had driven tribes, many of whom, like the Huron west. Traditional enemies such as the Cree to the north and the Illinois to the south continued to be the focus of annual Dakota war parties, but warfare with the Huron, Ottawa, and especially the Fox also became common. The Fox arrived in Wisconsin in the seventeenth century, driven from the Michigan peninsula by the Chippewa. Their arrival in what is now Wisconsin brought them into collision with the Eastern Sioux. Chippewa oral tradition holds that for a brief time the Fox actually occupied the upper Saint Croix valley and the region around Rice Lake, Wisconsin. The Dakota and the Chippewa began their relationship, which would later stain the waters of the Saint Croix with much blood, as allies against the Fox. In 1680, a joint Dakota-Chippewa war party, perhaps as many as eight hundred men, fell upon the Fox villages in east central Wisconsin. Only after suffering severe losses were the Fox able to repulse the attack. [16]

As the enemy of the Dakota's enemy, the Chippewa became neighbors with whom the Eastern Sioux shared hunting grounds, trade, and brides. The Chippewa originally entered the river and lake country of the Wisconsin border as Dakota guests, not as invaders. As allies the Chippewa were allowed to hunt and trap in the St. Croix and Chippewa River valleys. It was an alliance of two of the most numerous and expansionistic native peoples of the North American interior sealed with Fox blood and sustained by substantial and mutual benefits. The Dakota shared in the Chippewa's regular access to French trading goods. The Chippewa won access to lands rich in white-tailed deer, beaver, and wild rice. The Dakota secured metal tools and firearms to improve subsistence activities and their military efficiency. According to Chippewa oral tradition, the Dakota first encountered firearms when a Chippewa peace delegation arrived in a Sioux encampment on the St. Croix River. The incident ended badly when a proud Dakota warrior denied the power of a musket and dared the Chippewa to shoot at him. One fearful crack of the gun led to the death of the Dakota. This incident damaged the alliance. Nonetheless, relations were patched and early in the eighteenth century the Chippewa were allowed to establish a village in Dakota Territory, just south of the current national riverway, near Spooner, Wisconsin. [17]

Figure 2. "A Sketch of the Seat of the War Between the Chippewa and Sioux," by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Courtesy of the Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

French Fur Traders on the St. Croix

By the beginning of the eighteenth century regular access to firearms had become vital to the Dakota. French fur traders pushing up the Mississippi River had armed their traditional enemies in the Illinois country, while the coureurs de bois of the Great Lakes region had provided enemies to the east, such as the Fox, with muskets and powder. Those enemies and the remoteness of the Dakota lands frustrated the efforts of early French traders to establish themselves among the Eastern Sioux. The first European to enter the Dakota lands along the St. Croix was Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luth. In 1679 the explorer claimed the region for France, offered gifts to the eager Dakota. At the mouth of the St. Croix he secured the release of Father Louis Hennepin, a Recollet missionary whom they had taken prisoner on the Mississippi. Duluth made the first recorded passage of the Bois Brule–Saint Croix portage that allowed passage from Lake Superior to the Mississippi valley, a route he likely learned about from the Chippewa at La Pointe.

The name of the St. Croix River dates from this early period of French activity in the Upper Mississippi region. Hennepin tried to fix on it the name Riviere du Tombeau, or River of the Grave, after the Dakota buried a snakebite victim on its bank. That name did not take, nor did one that appeared on several early maps, Riviere de la Madeleine. Many stories concerning the name St. Croix link it to the early missionaries. One story of its evolution credits the name to French priests, who saw the shape of a holy cross in the river's right angle junction with the Mississippi. Another version attributed the name to a rock formation on the bank of the river in the Dalles that appeared to have the shape of a cross. Other than Hennepin, who tried to put a morbid name on the river, the only other early missionary to see the river was the Jesuit Gabriel Marest. He was a missionary to the Dakota and witness to Nicholas Perrot's vainglorious ceremony of "taking possession" of the region in 1689. In that ceremony Perrot claimed "in his Majesty's name" a vast track of land stretching westward from Green Bay, including "the rivers St. Croix and St. Peter, and other places more remote." The use of the name St. Croix at so early a date suggests the river may indeed have been named, like the St. Peter's River, by missionaries. The more widely accepted story of the origin of the name credits it to a French fur trader named St. Croix or Croix who allegedly was wrecked or drowned at the mouth of the river. This story dates from Benard de la Harpe's 1700 account of Pierre Charles Le Suer's journey a year earlier up the Mississippi to the Minnesota River valley. "He left on the east of the Mississippi, a great river," La Harpe wrote, "called St. Croix, because of Frenchman of that name was wrecked at its mouth." While the exact origin will never be known for sure, the name St. Croix is one of the earliest European places names in the upper Midwest region. [18]

Other missionaries and traders followed and a series of trading posts were temporarily established in the late 1600s and early 1700s along the Upper Mississippi or lower Minnesota rivers. Each venture, however, failed due to distance and the opposition of the Fox, who attacked posts and hindered resupply efforts. In 1695, Tiyoskate, a Dakota emissary to the Governor General of New France, with carefully staged tears in his eyes, implored, "All the nations had a father who afforded them protection; all of them have iron." He concluded by describing himself as a "bastard in quest of a father." Although the Governor was stirred to grandiloquently promise Tiyoskate the "iron" tools and weapons, Dakota trade contacts remained intermittent. All of which served to make the alliance with the Chippewa more important to the Dakota. [19]

The Sioux made French efforts to extend trade to them more difficult by refusing to forgo their wide-ranging military campaigns. With the firearms they were able to obtain the Dakota ravaged the Illinois country. In 1700, French officials encountered Piankashaw Indians in Illinois who were attacked by recent Dakota raids. They had been so devastated by this event that they were unwilling to risk retaliation. This aggressive approach to their southern frontier even extended to French traders moving north from Illinois, whom the Dakota routinely robbed, as they were regarded as allies of the Illini, Miami, or Piankashaw. This vigorous approach to war, together with the large number of warriors the Sioux were traditionally able to marshal for war inclined the French to refer to the Dakota as the "Iroquois of the West." [20]

But the power of the Dakota began to ebb in the early eighteenth century. As early as the seventeenth century the Sioux were divided into two distinct groups. In 1680, Father Louis Hennepin described one subdivision of the Sioux as the "Tinthonha (which means prairie-men)." Pierre Charles Le Sueur, who attempted to establish a trading post (just below the mouth of the St. Croix) among the Sioux in 1694, distinguished between the "Sioux of the West," who resided along the Minnesota River and the "Sioux of the East," who dwelled along the Upper Mississippi. During the late 1600s the western Sioux began to expand from the Upper Minnesota River, over the plains to the Upper Missouri River country. This historic migration would in the course of the next century bring the bulk of the Sioux from the forest to the grasslands. The birchbark canoe was gradually forsaken in favor of the horse, which the Sioux began obtaining by trade around 1707. Buffalo hunting went from being one part of the annual seasonal cycle, dictated by the arrival of bison herds along the Upper Mississippi, to the sustaining food source available year-round to hunting villages made mobile by the horse. [21]

Like all movements of peoples this one resulted from both a perception of opportunity and the dictates of necessity. As warriors the Sioux were engaged in conflict on all of their frontiers. Opponents to the north, south, and east were all as well or better armed than the Sioux. To the west, however, were Indian peoples whose trade contacts with European fur traders were inferior to those of the Sioux. Nor was the population size of the Upper Missouri peoples as formidable as Wisconsin, which became densely populated with Indians fleeing the Iroquois. Although the Sioux appear to have been largely successful in defending their large rich homeland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the soft frontier to the west drew aggressive Sioux warriors out on to the plains. Another factor was the opportunity to secure buffalo seemingly at will. The buffalo hunt was a defining cultural element among all the Sioux, their grand group experience. To build a lifestyle around it must have been alluring. Particularly because, hunting options in Minnesota may have declined at the critical time of the move on to the plains. In 1717 and 1718, French traders noted that animal populations south and west of Lake Superior declined due to an unknown disease. "All the elk were attacked by a sort of plague, and were found dead," according to one report. Indians who ate the flesh of the infected animals also died. There is evidence that by the 1730s even the eastern most Dakota, the Mdewakantons, were forced to substantially increase their reliance on buffalo hunting, perhaps due to a decline in the elk herds. If buffalo was becoming the dietary backbone of many Sioux, the movement on to the plains made economic sense. [22]

Figure 3. Items fashioned by Chippewa craftsmen from the northwoods environment. Neither the Chippewa nor the Dakota were dependent upon the fur trade for survival in the St. Croix valley. From Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's Travel Through the Norhtwestern Region of the United States, 1821.

The Origins of the Dakota-Chippewa War

As the Sioux nation as a whole expanded westward, the Dakota, manning as it were the eastern gateway to their lands, were placed in an untenable position. The Sioux in the west were no longer available for, nor interested in fighting battles against traditional enemies on the eastern border. As the Sioux frontier expanded dramatically to the west, the ability of the nation to maintain its control over the large and rich hunting grounds along the Upper Mississippi was necessarily compromised. For all their military prowess and impressive numbers the Sioux could not dominate both the northern plains and the Upper Mississippi valley, as the western bands moved to accomplish the former, the eastern Dakota were thrown into a desperate attempt to maintain the land of their fathers. New diseases introduced by the Europeans, especially smallpox and malaria, together with the accelerated pace of intertribal warfare also contributed to the decline of the eastern Dakota. Between 1680 and 1805 the number of Dakota in the Mississippi valley may have declined by as much as one-third. These factors, together with the migration of their western kinsmen made the Dakota vulnerable to the equally expansionistic Chippewa. [23]

The Chippewa pursued their own manifest destiny in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the ancient traditions of the tribe the Chippewa once inhabited lands near the Atlantic Ocean. Upon migrating to the Great Lakes region they split into three groups, the modern Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Chippewa. The latter group occupied a vast arc of lands stretching from the shores of Lake Erie to rivers and lakes west of Lake Superior. This vast homeland was much larger than even the domain of the Dakota, but it was much less diverse in its landforms and, therefore, less abundant in resources, notably lacking the sustaining herds of elk and buffalo. Fish from the Great Lakes filled the protein gap for the Chippewa, but they did not produce the residuals of leather and robes. Together with their Potawatomi and Ottawa cousins the Chippewa had been among the earliest interior tribes to become engaged with the fur trade. As traders and trappers they were always on the lookout for new peoples with which to exchange or new lands to trap. Through the seventeenth century the Dakota both provided the Chippewa with furs and made their hinterland available to pioneer Chippewa bands. This economic alliance became frayed when the Dakota were gradually able to obtain European weapons and goods directly from the French. In turn, the Dakota came to resent the Chippewa's middleman commerce with the Cree and Assiniboin, hereditary enemies of the Sioux. [24]

Violence between the Chippewa and the Dakota began slowly in the 1720s and escalated to a full, prolonged war in 1736. Conflict between the tribes forced the Dakota to abandon traditional wintering villages at Leech Lake and Mille Lacs, sites that were soon colonized by the Chippewa. In the oral tradition of the latter this process was rendered heroic by tales of an epic battle of three days that left the former Dakota villages littered with the bodies of the slain Dakota. More plausible was a calculated withdrawal closer to the increasingly more important buffalo herds along the Mississippi and away from regions exposed to both Chippewa and Cree attack. Far from being completely routed from the region, the Dakota continued to occupy a village on the Rum River (which drains Mille Lacs) for another generation. The bulk of the eastern Dakota, however, concentrated along the mainstream of the Mississippi River and the lower St. Croix. During the seventeenth century the Dakota did not use the St. Croix as intensively as they did the large headwaters lakes in north-central Minnesota. As a result it was in the 1700s a much more reliable source of game. Not surprisingly, control of the hunting grounds and rice marshes of the St. Croix were hotly contested by both sides in the war. [25]

The Dakota-Chippewa war was a tragedy for both peoples and a source of frustration to the Europeans who, during the 1700s, began to influence events in the Upper Mississippi region. Conflict made the already precarious existence of a frontier fur trader downright dangerous. Men supplying weapons to one side were naturally regarded as enemies by the other and were often dealt with violently. In 1741, following Chippewa attacks on two Dakota camps; the latter retaliated against French traders in Wisconsin. Warfare also hurt trapping, as Indian hunters were reluctant to stray far from their family's winter camps. In the more than a century and a quarter that the Chippewa and the Dakota were locked in warfare, European traders repeatedly tried to arrange truces. This desire for parlays on the part of the Europeans should not obscure the fact that fur traders sometimes, often unknowingly, encouraged hostilities between the Dakota and Chippewa. Traders based on the Upper Mississippi and dwelling with the Dakota naturally supported Sioux claims to the St. Croix while those based on Lake Superior and in Chippewa territory naturally desired their hunters to dominate as large an area as possible. Most of all traders wanted fur trapping to be pursued aggressively. During the early 1730s, when the conflict between the two tribes began to simmer, French fur traders exasperated the situation by encouraging Chippewa and Winnebagos to expand their trapping grounds along the Upper Mississippi. The fur traders did not think the Dakota were tapping anywhere near the full potential of their rich trapping grounds and impatiently encouraged interlopers to fill the perceived void. The entire history of the fur trade in the St. Croix valley took place under the cloud of a bloody, often internecine, war. [26]

The experience of Paul and Joseph Marin, French fur traders in the region from 1750 to 1754, reveals the relationship between war, peace, and trade. By bringing the Governor General of New France into partnership, Paul Marin, a veteran fur trader, was granted a lease to the fur trade of the Upper Mississippi. Marin's political connection initially assured that the vital access points to the region, Green Bay, which controlled the Fox-Wisconsin water route to the Mississippi, and La Pointe, which was critical to the Bois Brule-St. Croix route, were controlled by his friends. In fact his son Joseph was granted command of the La Pointe garrison. The elder Marin astutely cultivated Dakota leaders. Canoe loads of gifts were lavished on them and in turn they acted as trading liaisons, collecting furs from all of the hunters who had received goods in advance from Marin. The French extended their trade presence to most of the villages of the eastern Dakota and were rewarded with annual returns of 150,000 francs. Meanwhile, young Joseph Marin, based in Chippewa territory, worked to ease tensions between his trading partners and the Dakota. Eventually the father and son managed to work out a division of the disputed territory. On the St. Croix this led to the Dakota recognizing Chippewa rights to the valley from its headwaters to the mouth of the Snake River. When the Chippewa expressed a desire to trap along the Crow Wing River, a substantial tributary of the Mississippi roughly midway between Leech Lake and modern St. Paul, Joseph Marin negotiated a lease between the rival Indian nations. [27]

The tenure of the Marins demonstrates that properly managed the fur trade could have been a means to control the level of violence between the Chippewa and the Dakota. Yet the corrupt French colonial administration in Quebec had different priorities and would not long manage its western affairs in a consistent manner. Paul Marin's appointment to the Upper Mississippi had been made with the assurance he share the profits with the Marquis de la Jonquiere. That venal administrator assured that New France's western posts were under the direction of administrators friendly to Marin and sympathetic to the Dakota. A new governor general, however, would find profit in other arrangements. Therefore, in 1752 when the Marquis de la Duquesne succeeded to the Governor General's palace Paul and Joseph Marin lost their official protection. The command of the critical French post of La Pointe on Lake Superior passed to Louis-Joseph La Verendryes. This very capable frontier leader was in no mood to cooperate with the Marins. While they had been profiting mightily from the Dakota trade, La Verendrye and his equally talented father and brother had been denied any position in the western trade by Governor General Jonquiere. Far from being sympathetic to the Dakota, La Verendrye had every reason to resent them as a Sioux war party attacked and killed his brother and twenty-three other men at Lake-of-the-Woods in 1736. The La Verendryes were dedicated to expanding French influence west of the Great Lakes, which made them dependent upon a close relationship with the Chippewa and the Cree. The result of La Verendrye's appointment was a quick erosion of the truce and trust the Marins had succeeded in building. [28]

The first sign of trouble was when La Verendrye notified Joseph Marin that the former's La Pointe post trading area included the entire St. Croix River valley. La Verendrye intended to have complete control of the upper Mississippi region. In 1753, he dispatched several of his traders to establish a wintering post on the St. Croix near the Sunrise River. La Verendrye then intercepted and turned back agents Marin had sent up the Mississippi to Leach Lake to negotiate a peace between the Dakota and the Cree. This latter action spread panic among the Dakota, who saw it as a repudiation of French friendship and the prelude of new attacks by the Cree and the Chippewa. Bracing for war the Dakota abandoned their hunts and suffered through the winter of 1753, bereft of game for their lodges or furs for Marin. Dakota women and children "lived on nothing but roots all winter long," they complained to Joseph Marin. "That is why today we are worthy of pity." The Dakota further complained that the Chippewa were violating their earlier agreement to hunt along the Crow Wing River for a single year, even though "they know those territories belong to us." As a result of these outrages the Dakota chiefs told Marin "we cannot keep from you the fact that our young men are all beginning to mutter at seeing the Sauteux [Chippewa] so unreasonably trying to steal territories belonging to us." The young Dakota were wise to mutter because La Verendrye clearly had the upper hand over Marin. After 1754 Joseph Marin left the Upper Mississippi country and French commanders at La Pointe tilted their policy in favor of Chippewa expansion. [29]

For close to a decade the French and Indian War (1754-1760) and Pontiac's Rebellion (1763) interrupted the flow of trade goods into the St. Croix valley, and temporarily reduced the importance of the fur trade in lives of the area's embattled inhabitants. The Dakota-Chippewa conflict, however, continued. A large battle was fought near what may have been the headwaters of the St. Croix. The Chippewa suffered heavy losses in the engagement but the Dakota were forced to yield the field. The Dakota seem to have more than held their own throughout the 1750s and 1760s. When the first British observers entered the Upper Mississippi region in 1766 they found the Dakota disdainful of their enemies, whom they referred to as "slaves or dogs." Their lodges were well supplied with meat and feasting continued through the winter. On the other hand the Chippewa, still lacking access to buffalo and Elk, seem to have suffered from the temporary cessation of the fur trade. Alexander Henry, the first British merchant to reach them after the fall of New France, found famine stalking the Lake Superior Chippewa. "These people were almost naked, their trade having been interrupted, " he noted in his memoir. [30]

The late 1760s and early 1770s saw an intensification of the fighting between the Dakota and the Chippewa. Traders operating from La Pointe on Lake Superior likely encouraged the Chippewa to increase their fur returns by expanding their hunting in Dakota Territory. Sometime about 1770 one of the greatest battles of the long war was fought at the Dalles of the St. Croix. The best account of what occurred comes from Chippewa oral tradition recorded in 1885 by William Warren a Metis historian of Chippewa ancestry. According to his sources the campaign began at the instigation of the Fox Indians who ascended the Mississippi desirous of settling the score with the Chippewa, their hereditary enemies. The Dakota, former enemies of the Fox, were enlisted to make a joint attack. The combined war parties made their way by canoe up the St. Croix. On the portage trail around St. Croix Falls, the Dakota and Fox encountered a large Chippewa war party intent on raiding the Dakota villages along the lower river. The Chippewa had been smarting from numerous successful Dakota raids on isolated hunting camps along the St. Croix and Namekagon. Waubojeeg, a renown Lake Superior leader had gathered warriors from across northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He led his large war party up a branch of the Bad River portaging eight miles west to the sources of the Namekagon River. Waubojeeg directed the advance down stream cautiously, so when they reached St. Croix Falls his scouts informed him of the large enemy force ahead. Just before the fighting commenced the veteran Chippewa fighters pushed those going into battle for the first time into the river. There the novices washed off the black paint that had stigmatized them and they were allowed to join the warriors as equals. [31]

The two forces met in combat on the portage trail. Fighting between the Fox and the Chippewa marked the first phase of the battle. Allegedly the Fox had boasted that they would make short work of their enemies and requested the Dakota to remain aloof from the fighting. Confined by the ravines and rock outcroppings of the portage the fighting was heated and at close quarters. About midday the Chippewa gained the advantage and forced the Fox to flee. At the point of driving the latter into the raging river, the Chippewa were staggered by the sudden entrance of the Dakota into the battle. After several more hours of combat the Chippewa, most of their ammunition exhausted, broke and ran from the Dakota. Victory was at hand for the Sioux when a war party of Sandy Lake Chippewa suddenly made their appearance on the field. They had missed their rendezvous with Waubojeeg's main force and had hurried downriver, arriving at a crucial point in the contest. This reinforcement turned the tide of battle for the final time. The Dakota attack was broken and their warriors were sent into a headlong retreat. "Many were driven over the rocks into the boiling floods below, there to find a watery grave," Warren recounted. "Others, in attempting to jump into their narrow wooden canoes, were capsized into the rapids." The Chippewa and Dakota both suffered heavy losses, but it was the proud Fox who left the most dead amid the rocks and cervices of the battlefield. The victory secured for the Chippewa the control of the Upper St. Croix valley. An informal boundary was fixed between the Dakota and the Chippewa around the mouth of the Snake River. [32]

Figure 4. Little Crow's Village on the Mississippi near the mouth of the St. Croix. From Henry Lewis, Das illustrite Mississippithal (1848).

English Fur Traders on the St. Croix

The first English fur trader to penetrate the Lake Superior country was Alexander Henry. Henry's access to the remote frontier was made possible by his astute alliance with Jean Baptiste Cadotte. The latter was a key figure in bridging the end of the French regime and the era of British domination. Cadotte's family had long been involved in the western fur trade. He grew up in the Lake Superior country and married the daughter of a notable Chippewa chief. Cadotte had served as the last French governor of the fort at Sault Ste. Marie and earned the trust of the English conquerors by being one of the first French traders to embrace the new regime. When Jean Baptiste Cadotte retired from the trade, his son of the same name took his place. The latter played a lead role in reopening the fur trade of the Upper Mississippi valley. A second son, Michel Cadotte was active on the St. Croix and Chippewa rivers. In 1784 he operated a post on the Namekagon River, near the head of the portage to Lac Court Oreilles. Latter he established trading posts at Yellow Lake, Snake River, and Pokegama Lake. The key to the success of the Cadottes was their family relationship with notable Chippewa leaders. They consciously identified themselves with the expansion of the Chippewa into the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi valleys, advancing hand in hand with bands of hunters to exploit the bounty of Dakota hunting grounds. [33]

Archeologists have long puzzled over the identification of Michel Cadotte's 1784 trading post on the Namekagon River. In the early 1960s local historian Tony Wise conducted an archeological study of a site he thought was the trading post. Among the items found that supported that conclusion were the sideplate of a trade gun and a number of gunflints. Further study by National Park Service archeologists, however, revealed that the overwhelming majority of artifacts at the site date from the mid to late nineteenth century. It is possible that trappers or loggers reoccupied the Cadotte post site in the 1870s. The structural depressions at the site are mostly the remains of that latter occupancy and not remains that date to the British era of the fur trade frontier. [34]

While Alexander Henry did not venture far south of Lake Superior, Jonathon Carver, another young Englishman on the make, explored the Upper Mississippi frontier. Ostensibly Carver was a mapmaker sent with explorer James Tute, a Captain in the famed Roger's Rangers, to discover an inland route to the fabled Northwest Passage. Carver journeyed from Mackinac across Wisconsin and wintered among the Dakota villages of the Minnesota River valley. He was fascinated with the Dakota whom he described as "a very merry sociable people, full of mirth and good humor." He explored the Upper St. Croix valley by portaging from Lac Courte Oreilles to the Namekagon River near present day Hayward, Wisconsin. Carver descended the Namekagon, which he named "Tutes branch" to its junction with the main stream. James Goddard, the official secretary of the expedition, described the Namekagon as "a very pleasant country, and plenty of deer in it." Above the junction of the Namekagon and St. Croix Carver tried his hand at sturgeon fishing. "The manner of taking them is by watching them as they lie under the banks in a clear stream, and darting at them with a fish-spear; for they will not take a bait." Carver dubbed the St. Croix from the Namekagon to its source the "Coppermine Branch," due to the "abundance of copper" found along its banks. The region of the headwaters he laconically noted was known to the Chippewa as "the Moschettoe [mosquito] country, and I thought it most justly named; for, it being then their season, I never saw or felt so many of those insects in my life." More significantly for the future of the fur trade he noted that along the Upper St. Croix "rice grows in great plenty." Carver then followed the portage trail from Upper Lake St. Croix to the Bois Brule River and Lake Superior. [35]

Although his time in the St. Croix valley was brief Carver's legacy lingered longer in the form of a narrative Travels Through North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768. This widely read and frequently translated account of the Upper Mississippi region provided generations of readers with their first exposure to the region. Like so many would be explorers before and after, Carver mixed genuine observations with heavy doses of romantic fancy and self-promotion. Captain James Tute who actually directed the expedition goes all but unmentioned in the published narrative, creating the impression that Carver was the man in charge. His enthusiasm for the region was effusive. The Upper Mississippi region was "abounding with all the necessaries of life, that grow spontaneously; and with a little cultivation it might be made to produce even the luxuries of life." He did not simply note stands of maple trees but went on to predict that the "delightful groves" were present in "such amazing quantities" that they "would produce sugar sufficient for any number of inhabitants." If the principle purpose of Captain James Tute had been to evaluate the fur trade prospects of the region, the purpose of Carver's book, which he did not publish until 1778, was to promote Carver by giving the impression that he had single handedly opened up a utopia for future settlers. He went so far as to produce a map in which he divided the Upper Midwest into a series of "plantations or subordinate colonies" so that "future adventurers may readily, by referring to the map, chose a commodious and advantageous situation." With this map Carver also established symbolic mastery over the region, inviting his numerous readers in the decades that followed to project their dreams on to this open and free land. [36]

Carver included the bulk of the St. Croix valley in his "plantation No. 1," which included a great triangle of territory that reached as far northwest as Rainey Lake and to Sault Ste, Marie on the east. "The country within these lines," he observed, "from its situation is colder that any of the others; yet I am convinced that the air is much more temperate than those in provinces that lie in the same degree of latitude to the east of it." With this claim Carver anticipated the logic of virtually every land promoter to follow. Don't let the far northern position of the Saint Croix valley daunt settler's dreams of an agricultural future. Not only was the climate more temperate than what people knew in the east "the soil is excellent, and there is a great deal of land that is free from woods in the parts adjoining the Mississippi." Of course, if the settler preferred trees, Carver allowed that the "north-eastern borders" of the region were "well wooded." In addition to abundant rice and copper, settlers were also blessed with the presence of the "River Saint Croix, which runs through a great part of the southern side of it, enters the Mississippi just below the falls, and flows with so gentle a current, that it affords convenient navigation for boats." Carver was so impressed with the prospects for the region that he passed to his heirs a fraudulent document, which claimed the cession of a large tract of land. Allegedly the Dakota granted him twelve million acres of land, including a sizable portion of the St. Croix valley. Neither the British crown, the Eastern Sioux, nor latter the United States Congress saw fit to recognize the Carver Grant as valid. In 1817 two of the explorer's grandsons actually journeyed back to the Upper Mississippi wilderness to have Chippewa and Dakota elders substantiate the alleged grant. Not surprisingly they went home with no more land than when they set out. [37]

While the Tute-Carver expedition was supposed to be directed to discover the Northwest Passage a large part of its real orientation was to probe the commercial opportunities of the Upper Mississippi frontier. In the 1760s only a geographic idiot would have spent weeks ascending the Chippewa River and the Upper St. Croix in search of the fabled water route to China. The fur trade was on the mind of many of the British who went west after the French and Indian War. One of those who left a record of their efforts was a cantankerous Connecticut Yankee named Peter Pond. He did not leave a description of the fur trade on the St. Croix itself, although he was active with the Dakota in the Upper Mississippi valley. Pond did describe the process by which merchants of English origin began to dominate the trade of the region because of their superior ability to obtain credit and merchandise as well as their ability to act in concert with British military forces and thereby pose as power brokers between tribes. Both Carver and Peter Pond attempted to negotiate a peace treaty between the Dakota and the Chippewa. Each was more successful in arranging a parlay, than a lasting peace. In 1775 Pond escorted a group of Dakota and Chippewa chiefs to Mackinac where an agreement was struck by which the Dakota agreed "Not Cross the Missacipey to the East Side, to Hunt on thare Nighbers Ground." That the Dakota would agree to recognize the Chippewa as masters of the area east of the Mississippi would have been a major concession and was likely the result of Pond's failure to obtain a delegation of the eastern most Dakota tribe, the Mdewakanton Sioux. A British military inspection of the region in 1778 led by Charles Gautier de Verville reported a large Mdewakanton village on the Upper St. Croix River. The village included a number of lodges of Winnebagoes, a people who shared the Dakota's antipathy of the Chippewa. Clearly the Mdewakanton had not abandoned the east bank of the Mississippi to the Chippewa. [38]

The arrival of the British regime along the Saint Croix signaled a change in the way the fur trade would be administered. The French system of leasing the right to control the trade in a large geographic area, while never able to keep all illegal Coureurs de bois out of business, did tend to greatly restrict the number of traders operating in any one area. Under the British and even more so under American administrations there was much less regulation of the fur trade and an ever-growing number of participants made their way west. More participants meant more competition and less concern on the part of many traders for the long term good of both the fur trade itself and the Indian trappers in particular. One of the early innovations of the British regime was the establishment of companies that pooled the resources and special skills of a group of fur traders. The Northwest Company, founded in 1779 was an attempt by Peter Pond and other fur traders to establish greater control over competition in their business. The Northwest Company, based in Montreal, exerted a considerable influence over the fur trade of the St. Croix River during the years between its creation and 1816. United under its control were many of the traders who had expanded the trade since the fall of New France, including Alexander Henry and Jean Baptiste Cadotte and his brother Michel Cadotte.

Independent fur traders operating out of Green Bay also wintered on the St. Croix during the last years of the eighteenth century. Augustin Grignon, a member of the fur trading clan that dominated the "La Baye" fur trade, operated a post in the valley in 1792. A year latter his operations there were directed by Jacques Porlier, who was beginning a long career in the fur trade. A Mackinac trader, Laurent Barth, also operated a trading post on the river that winter, building close enough to Porlier to allow frequent visits between the two. A lack of specific locational information in the historical record has frustrated the identification of these posts as historic sites. The Green Bay traders entered the valley accompanied by Menominee hunters. The Menominee had long hunted along the headwaters of the Chippewa River, taking advantage of beaver country less heavily trapped than their own homelands along Lake Michigan, but it was rare for them to venture into the St. Croix valley. These hunting expeditions included family groups and were usually undertaken only with the permission of the Dakota. [39]

Figure 5. Jonathan Carver's Map of the Upper Midwest Region, published in 1778.
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

A Social History of the Fur Trade in the St. Croix Valley

One of the enduring historical myths of the Upper Midwest is the heroic image of the fur trade explorer and his hardy voyageur companions. The myth rests on the very real role these men played establishing the first white businesses and settlements in the region and the romantic impulse of those who latter read the trader's memoirs and journals to try and imagine just what the Midwest looked like when all was wilderness. Fur traders did act as wilderness explorers but many aspects of their business were anything but heroic. It is vital to balance the picture of the fur trader as an explorer and pioneer with the less flattering portrait of the fur trader as a pusher of dangerous and addictive substances, a fomenter of intertribal and intratribal conflict, and as a participant in environmental degradation. Nor is it historically valid to dismiss their Indian trading partners as innocent victims. The fur trade brought the Indians products vital to life in the forests of the Upper Midwest: copper kettles, steel knives, firearms, and wool blankets. The fur trade was neither a European creation nor an Indian innovation but a social and economic process forged out of desire for a better life and all too human weaknesses. Fur traders, the Chippewa, and the Dakota of the St. Croix were joined together in a commerce that was at once alluring, enriching, dispiriting, and destructive.

Documenting the exact nature of the fur trade in the Wisconsin and Minnesota is complicated by the spotty nature of the surviving historical sources. While little can be said about the French era along the St. Croix, for example, there are other periods when the historical record opens up a window on the fur trade. One such time is the period between 1802 and 1805. George Nelson, a veteran Nor'Wester, produced a memoir of his first year as a fur trader, which he spent in the St. Croix Valley from 1802 to 1803. Michel Curot left a journal of his year as a fur trader in the region during the winter of 1803-1804. Finally, the much-studied journal of John Sayer documents the 1804-1805 trading season. All three men established posts in different parts of the St. Croix Valley: Nelson at Yellow Lake, Curot on the Yellow River, and Sayer on the Snake River near modern day Pine City, Minnesota. The period from 1803 to 1805 was a tense time for the fur traders because of a split in the ranks of the Nor'Westers. One of the most prominent members of the Northwest Company, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, along with several other partners, split with the established firm and formed the rival New Northwest Company. Known on the frontier as the X Y Company, the upstarts went head to head in competition with the Northwest Company, greatly expanding the demand for the fur and food produced by Indian hunters. [40]

Easily the most striking feature that emerges from a close reading of the 1802-1805 period is the importance of alcohol in the fur trade. The Northwest and XY companies hauled vast amounts of liquor over the portage between the Brule River and Upper Lake St. Croix. In 1803, Michel Curot reported to his superiors that the rival Northwest Company had brought in fifty-six kegs of high wine. This highly potent distilled beverage was akin to today's grain alcohol and like the latter had to be diluted before being consumed. Yet, even when broken down several times it remained very intoxicating. Archeologist Douglas Birk estimated that fifty kegs of high wine could be diluted into over one thousand gallons of liquor for trade. Added to this massive amount of alcohol was the much smaller volume of rum and high wine imported by Curot and the XY Company. Operating on a much smaller scale Curot had at least seven kegs of high wine at the start of the trading season and received an additional one in the spring. It is there for not unlikely that between them the fur traders had close to thirteen hundred gallons of liquor for the trading year. Fur Trader George Nelson estimated the Chippewa population of the area to be "not above fifty families" with "about 60, or 65 warriors." Even if one assumes a generous estimate of a two-to-one adult male-female relationship and a two-to-one children-adult ratio, the Chippewa in the region did not number more than four hundred people. This figure is consistent with the size of the St. Croix band in 1851 when American authorities proposed to move them west of the Mississippi River. In other words the fur traders in 1803 were stocked with enough alcohol to provide every adult Indian with more than seven gallons of high wine. [41]

While the years 1802-1805 may have been the high-water mark of the use of alcohol in the fur trade there is little doubt that spirits occupied a critical role in the trader's inventory both before and certainly afterward. Some Chippewa used alcohol in the same manner as most people today. The traders document tastings being offered to trappers coming to trade as a social prelude prior to conducting business or high wine being requested by Indians upon the death of a child as a consolation. But the ugly face of what may very well have been addiction also appears in the trader's journals. When sixteen-year-old fur trader George Nelson landed at the junction of the St. Croix and Yellow Rivers in 1802 he was greeted by a mob of young Indian men:

The Indians, the moment they saw us gave the whoop. They were all drunk, the N.W. Co. had a little before given liquor. They came rushing upon us like devils, dragged our Canoe to land, threw the lading ashore, ripped up the bale cloths, cut the cords & Sprinkled the goods about at a fine rate. Such noise, yelling & chattering! "Rum, Rum, what are you come to do here without rum?"

Only a year before on that very spot the Yellow Lake band and members of the Snake River band had suffered five dead, and six wounded when a drunken party led to a vicious knife fight. Nonetheless, the Chippewa refused to let the traders proceed until they assented to "make our presents of liquor also." The result was, according to Nelson, "singing, dancing & yelling, & fighting too." On January 4, 1804 John Sayer noted rather causally in his journal, "Indians still Drunk & Quarrelsome amongest themselves. 2 got Stabbd but not dangerous." Just over a week later he noted "this forenoon 2 Young Lads arrived from the Drunkards Lodge & report that the Indians were near Killing each other, at the same time requested a Small Keg of Rum which I refused them." [42]

As Nelson and Sayer's experience indicates the alcohol trade brutalized the Indians who then turned that behavior on the traders. A Chippewa he knew by the name of Le Grand Male frequently intimidated Michel Curot. On November 1, 1803 Le Grand Male arrived at Curot's door drunk from drink he had already procured at the nearby Northwest post and demanding more. Curot refused but Le Grand Male would not take "no" for an answer. "All The night it was the same Demand and the same reply," Curot reported. "I had much trouble with this savage. I received several Blows of his fist, one especially that made my upper Lip swell up." Two weeks earlier a group of Chippewa intent on a binge entered the Northwest Company post on the Snake River. They threatened to kill Joseph Reaume, the trader, tapped a barrel of pure rum, and "pillaged" the post for "ten days and ten nights." In January Curot again had problems when one of his assistants, Bazile David, refused to give rum to three Chippewa hunters who were spending the night at the post. Curot had already given them a small keg of undiluted high wine and the hunters were drunk. "A moment afterwards Le Jeune Razeur Like an enraged creature Struck David, saying to him, 'Dog, thou sayest that hast no Rum.'" The hunters then angrily left the post. They returned the next morning with a nine-gallon keg obtained from the Northwest Company and they demanded what rum remained at Curot's post. The trader anxious to match his competition and be rid of his troublesome guests acceded to the request. The abuse drunken hunters inflicted upon their own families went largely unrecorded. Although George Nelson noted one incident near the Brule Portage that provided an insight into what may have been all too common behavior. The traders had given rum to an Indian family with whom they had passed the night. The Indians drank through the night "very quietly & comfortably." Trouble came in the morning "when words ensued" and the son, a boy of sixteen or so years "fell upon this mother & beat her, striking with his fists & Kiicking her in the face & body!!!" Nelson's experienced companions dissuaded him from intervening, saying: "for if you do they will all three get upon you; besides it is among themselves–we dare not interfere." Shaken the young fur trader thought "Surely the curse of God will fall on these people." Little did he appreciate that he was that curse. [43]

How the St. Croix Chippewa viewed the traders and the impact of the fur trade on their lives and families can only be glimpsed at through the journals of the fur traders. Traders who came to establish posts along the St. Croix River did so at the sufferance of the Indians. While the posts were a convenience to the Chippewa, they seem to have adapted a proprietary attitude toward the goods the traders brought each fall. The Chippewa men who tore apart George Nelson's canoe's to find rum in 1802 were not humble supplicants awaiting a gift from the fur trader, rather they were men taking what they felt was their due. A year later when Michel Curot and his men came to blows with a group of hunters determined to have a keg of rum one of the Indians said "that it [the rum] all belonged to them, that in the Spring they would have some plus [beaver pelt]." George Nelson recorded in his reminiscences that Indians "would often. . .burst open the Shop door & take out what rum they pleased & compelled the people to mingle it to their taste." What traders regarded as begging or badgering by the Indians for something to drink was regarded by the Chippewa as merely giving them access to those things that were meant for them to begin with. [44]

Not all Chippewa embraced the fur trade with the same vigor nor did all become enamoured of high wines. George Nelson reported that one Chippewa leader admonished the traders "If you will persist to trade here, trade fairly as men & not wait till you think us too far drunk to perceive how you steal from us & insult our females." Others blamed the fur traders for the negative impact of alcohol on their lives. "You are the cause of this blood being shed by bringing poisoned rum to us," retorted one Indian after a drunken brawl. [45]

The drinking of the Chippewa must be viewed from the perspective of the high level of alcohol use in general on the frontier. The fur traders, although they seldom admitted it in their journals, which might be read by their superiors, often indulged in heavy drinking. Michel Curot noted in his journal that his rival John Sayer had an escalating drinking problem. "Since I have come into the fort I have noticed that Mr. Sayer is Very fond of Drink," wrote Curot, "there has been Scarcely a night, that he has not gone to bed Drunk." More scandalous to Curot than Sayer's habit of hiding pots of alcohol for himself about the post was the latter's willingness to drink the high wine prepared for Indian use. "I should Never have Believed that he would be fond enough thereof To Drink the Savage's Rum." Nor was Sayer selfish about sharing his drink with others. While his men labored to build the Northwest Company's Snake River post in 1804 Sayer noted in his journal that he "gave each a Dram morning & Evening & promised to do the same till our Buildings are Compleated provided the[y] exert themselves." Providing men engaged in heavy labor with alcoholic stimulants was standard practice in early nineteenth century business and in the armed forces. Nonetheless, Sayer was later dismissed from the Northwest Company, a decision that in part reflected his heavy use of alcohol. [46]

The presence of the fur traders in Chippewa territory, the heavy use of alcohol in their commerce, exasperated tensions that were already building among the St. Croix River bands. Compared with their Dakota rivals the Chippewa were highly individualistic. They lacked many of the rituals and shared experiences, such as the annual buffalo hunt, that made the Dakota a much more communal society. One of the reasons the Chippewa adapted much more readily to the new fur trade economy than the Dakota was their more fluid, independent social structure. Bands, even families, that simply acted for themselves with no restraints were able to adjust to the need to change geographic location or lifestyle much more rapidly than larger groups constrained by the need to form a consensus among many extended families. This flexibility and individualism were traits that had served the Chippewa well in the century and a half since the fur trade had begun. In fact these were traits that the Chippewa shared, although nowhere near to the same extent, with the growing number of Anglo-American settlers on the frontier. Nonetheless, as fur traders established more and more posts among the Chippewa and became a larger year round presence in their lives the bands became open to the interference and manipulation of the traders. [47]

One of the most divisive practices of the fur traders was the creation of chiefs. Traders attempted to elevate individual hunters status by giving them dress coats, flags, and other presents. They flattered themselves that if they treated this hunter as special he would be so regarded by other Indians in the community. Francious V. Malhiot, a Northwest Company trader in the Lac du Flambeau area made the following speech when he created a new chief:

Kinsman–The coat I have put on thee is sent by the Great Trader; by such coats he distinguishes the most highly considered persons of a tribe. The Flag is a true symbol of a Chief and thou must deem thyself honored by it. . .love the French as thou dost, watch over their preservation and enable them to make up packs of furs...As first chief of the place, thou must make every effort so that all the Savages may come and trade here in the Spring. . .

As Malhiot indicated the goal was to have this chief influence others to honor their debts at the trading post and not go to the competition. But far from picking the most admirable hunters (both from a Chippewa and a trader's perspective) men of the worst character were often selected by intimidated traders who hoped to end abusive behavior. In his memoir George Nelson described a group of frustrated traders who decided, "that by making a chief of the greatest scoundrel among them would perhaps have a good tendency." That was Malhiot's strategy in 1804 but it did not work. Similarly Le Grand Razeur, the Chippewa who attacked one of Michel Curot's men had earlier been made a chief. Worst of all chief making caused fissures among the Chippewa. Curot reported a stabbing among the Yellow Lake band during the winter of 1804. The "chief" refused to do anything to resolve the problem, "fearful on his own account." This caused Curot to reflect, "I believe that Band although Partly nephews and Brother in law [are] Jealous of whomever is made chief giving Preferment to any of them, Since each of them separately believes himself as Great a Man as an Other." [48]

The Chippewa often resented the practice of making phony chiefs. When John Sayer offered the coat and flag to the hunter Pichiquequi the latter responded angrily, even after Sayer tried to sweeten the offer with free rum. Pichiquequi "replied that he was not a chief and that Since he was thirsty he would go hunting either for a [fur] or a deer that he could trade for Rum, that he did not command any savages, that they were all Equal and [he and his people] would go where they liked to trade and that he himself would do the same."

A Chippewa hunter described in Nelson's memoir manifested this same spirit of independence. Following the formal presentation of the chief's uniform and flag the hunter turned to the fur traders with a look of "utmost contempt":

No doubt, you Frenchmen, you think yourselves wonderfully cunning: --no doubt you were very certain. . .. that my eyes would be blinded by the Dazzling stuff you have been Displaying here with so much ceremony before us? Undeceive yourselves. I am born free & independent. I despise those tokens of Slavery. I am not a Slave to wear oth[ers] clothing (livery). My old clothes satisfy me; & when they are worn out I know how to procure others.

Nelson was not present at the council when the traders attempted to elevate hunter to chief so the exact words he recorded must be regarded as narrative license. Nonetheless, the hunter's eloquent statement of autonomy and personal independence reflected sentiments that Nelson must have seen manifested many times in his long career of trading with the Chippewa. [49]

Another way in which the fur traders created fractures in Chippewa society was the practice of taking Indian women as brides. These liaisons created a family connection between a trader and the Indian trappers. The traders further benefited from a women's companionship and the help of someone skilled in contending with the north woods wilderness and fluent in the local language. In return her family received the assurance of the trader's material help, at least as long as he was stationed in their area. Most of these relationships were formed a la facon du pays, without legal contract according to the customs of the country. As a trader's wife an Indian women entered into a more pleasant, if more socially precarious, world. The amount of work expected of her, particularly the heavy work of portaging or moving camps, greatly decreased. On the other hand there was the prospect that her husband might abandon her after a few years. "She will not do for me or any Indian," complained a Chippewa who hoped to be rid of a lazy second wife, "[the] best way is to give her to the whites. With them she will have only snow-Shoes and maggacins to make, & with them she will have as much men as she desires. . .they take women, not for wives–but use them as Sluts–to satisfy the animal lust, & when they are satiated, they cast them off." This harsh statement taken from George Nelson's memoir reflected a bitter reality. Fur trader John Sayer spent the winter of 1804-1805 at the Snake River post with Obemau-unoqua, his Chippewa wife. They were married for at least ten years and she bore him two sons, yet there is only a single reference to her in Sayer's diary: "my Squaw brot about 4lbs [maple] Sugar." The daughter of a notable Chippewa leader, Obemau-unoqua was abandoned by her husband in 1805 when he retired to Canada and took a white wife. [50]

Some fur traders formed loving and stable relationships with their Indian wives. Joseph Duchene, usually known by the name "La Prairie," spent more than a half-century in the Saint Croix Valley with Pimeegee-shigo-qua, his Chippewa wife. Many of the employees of the Northwest Company and the X Y Company in the region also had Chippewa wives. Bazile David, who already had one spouse, tried to take "a Young girl 9 or 10 years old For his wife." His superior, Michel Curot, however intervened and "sent her back." David was instructed to "take another one, who is Larger." Gardant Smith, another of Curot's engages had a very independent minded Chippewa wife who took the position that since a man could have two wives she chose to have two husbands. She regularly left Smith for weeks or months at a time, returning with furs or meat she traded for on her own account. In the end two husbands were not enough for her. Two Chippewa men contending for her favors came to blows, leading to the fatal stabbing of one. The wives of the traders were fed from the rations of the post and although they received no pay, they performed significant work preparing food and tending to fires. They could also significantly increase their husband's salary by snaring small animals and dressing the skins. Indian women often assisted traders contrary to the wishes of Chippewa men. When a group of carousing Chippewa men plotted to kill George Nelson and his three companions it was two Indian widows, living in a tent nearby who warned the traders of the danger. [51]

The product of fur trade marriages, the Metis, or mixed-blooded offspring significantly influenced Chippewa society. The Metis were a significant portion of the population of the Upper Midwest. Historian Jacqueline Peterson estimated that by the late 1820s the Metis south and west of the Great Lakes numbered between 10,000 and 15,000. Some of the Metis were formally educated in the east, dressed and behaved like whites, and entered into fur trade society as clerks, or in the case of the women as wives of white traders. Those denied the opportunity for education worked in the lower levels of the fur trade or simply joined their mother's people, where most were accepted as equals. John Sayer seems to have devoted little attention to promoting the prospects of his mixed-blood sons Henry and John. It is possible that Henry was attached to the Snake River post in an informal manner. At one point Sayer, in his usual delicate style, refers to "Henries Squaw." Joseph Duchene, "La Prairie," was much more supportive of his Metis children and they played a significant role in his trading operations. One of the most successful trappers among the Snake River Band of Chippewa was an Indian known as "Chief Marin," who may have been the son of Joseph Marin, who was active in the fur trade during the French regime. The Metis were a people capable of moving in either the white or the Indian world. They frequently participated in the councils of the Chippewa, but their outlook was not always the same as their kinsmen and their interests could be quite different. In latter years this often played an important role in treaty negotiations with the United States government. [52]

Chippewa society remained dynamic and creative throughout the period of the fur trade. The new economic conditions fostered by the European-American traders within their society caused substantial material and cultural changes. Indian women, both Chippewa and Dakota, played a new and vital role in the fur trade economy. As men focused more of their attention on trapping fur bearing animals the women's work of preparing pelts became more important to the family economy. The critical role of this women's work to the fur trade may have been reflected in the rise of polygamous marriages, although the evidence on this point is only suggestive. Only very successful hunters were able to take more than one wife. Ethnologists have contended that polygamy was an example of boasting or conspicuous consumption. Yet the amount of work required to properly prepare hides was considerable and industrious hunters could not expand their trapping without having additional assistance preparing the furs. Domestic harmony was facilitated among polygamous households by the practice of taking the first wife's sister as a second, and on rare occasions, third spouse. Close contact with the fur traders made the lives of all Chippewa women more complex. Traditional tasks such as gathering wild rice became more important as trading posts required large amounts of rice to subsist through the winter. During the eighteenth century the amount of rice previously gathered for simple domestic use had to be augmented by rice gathered for commercial purposes. To meet this need it is likely that Chippewa women seeded large areas of lakeshore with rice to meet the growing demand. Indian women also took on new horticultural responsibilities. By the nineteenth century potato patches, raised from seeds obtained from the traders, became a fixture at village sites. Together with maize from traditional cornfields, potatoes became an important means of subsistence. Even the Dakota of the lower St. Croix, constricted by their war with the Chippewa from ranging as far as they had in the past, began to rely more on the farming of the Indian women. [53]

As the value of furs, even deer hides, increased the use of these materials in Chippewa and Dakota domestic life declined. Buckskin which had been the principle material for both men's and women's outer garments was replaced by broadcloth, augmented in the winter by capotes and leggings made of woolen blankets. Indian women adapted to the new materials artfully, and by the late eighteenth century were producing warmer and more durable clothing than had been traditionally available. Long proud of their weaving skills, which produced mats made of cedarbark and swamp rushes, Chippewa women adapted to the availability of glass trade beads to produce new bolder embroidery. While the use of beads was new, the designs followed traditional floral patterns blending old and new. Older crafts such as the original dental pictograph art, which Chippewa women produced by biting on thin sheets of birchbark, continued in spite of the new products available and the new demands on women's time. [54]

The creative blending of old and new also marked the rise of the Midewiwin rites. The Midewiwin was a set of ceremonies performed by an organized hierarchy of priests to protect tribal traditions, cure the sick, and slay the evil. Some form of the Midewiwin evolved among most of the Indian tribes of the Upper Midwest. For the Chippewa the Midewiwin had both a nationalistic and religious function. Its ceremonies brought together Chippewa from all across the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi regions. William Warren, the part-Chippewa historian of the 1880s, described the Midewiwin as the occasion for an annual "a national gathering" when "the bonds which united one member to another were stronger." Although the evidence is by no means clear, the Midewiwin appears to have originated some time after the Chippewa first became involved in the fur trade and it may have been a cultural adaptation to the rise of individual wealth among Chippewa hunters. The community strains brought by geographic expansion were a further factor stimulating the growth of the medicine society. The Jesuit relations that provide such a thorough look at Algonquian society between 1640 and 1700 make no mention of the Midewiwin, which supports the thesis the society was of historic origin. Membership in the Mide society was selective and could be obtained only after long periods of instruction. After initiation a member then advanced through eight degrees or rankings, at each level learning more of tribal lore, healing remedies, and conjuring power. Midewiwin rituals were secret and instruction was only possible after a considerable exchange of material wealth, from the novice to the priest. The Midewiwin, which continues to this day, was a creative means of redistributing the new wealth created by the fur trade and warding off the threat posed by Christianity. [55]

Figure 6. The opening page of Michel Curot's 1803-1804 journal of his year as a fur trader in the St. Croix Valley. The original is in the National Archives of Canada.

The Ecological Impact of the Fur Trade

The landscape of the Upper St. Croix River was changed in subtle ways by the growth of the fur trade among the Chippewa and the Dakota. The presence of herds of elk and buffalo in the region declined dramatically as more hunters sought these large game animals with more effective weapons. There is evidence that in the seventeenth century buffalo roamed as far north as the Pine Barrens between the St. Croix and the Brule rivers. By 1820 elk and buffalo were both rare in the St. Croix valley. Schoolcraft claimed that the last time buffalo crossed to the east bank of the Mississippi was in 1820. Twelve years later traders reported that Dakota hunters in the Trempleleau River valley killed the last bison in Wisconsin. The elk, their numbers greatly reduced by hunting, survived longer. In 1854, when white settlers reported seeing several elk along the Sunrise River in Chisago County, Minnesota it was the cause of some excitement. The Dakota, when they were sole masters of the St. Croix valley, had regularly set wild fires to enhance elk and bison habitats. The small prairie openings thus created helped to sustain the grazing animals. The Chippewa were less aggressive in the use of fire as a tool of game management. As the fur trade grew and the Chippewa presence in the valley increased the herds of grazers disappeared and the prairie openings yielded to vegetation succession. Maple-basswood forests replaced many of these openings along the river. [56]

As elsewhere in the region beaver were the most relentlessly hunted species in the St. Croix country. While beaver existed throughout the watershed, the upper portions of the valley, especially the upper Namekagon and tributaries such as the Clam, Snake, Yellow, and Totogatic Rivers, were superb habitat. Nonetheless, the beaver population of the region was likely in severe decline as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. A drastic reduction in the beaver population of this stretch of the St. Croix and Namekagon valleys would have had a significant impact on the landscape. The beaver, more than any other creature save man, has the ability to consciously alter its environment. The industrious rodent does this in two ways, by impounding water to create beaver ponds and by felling trees for food.

The beaver builds dams across streams to create ponds that provide the beaver with a watery moat that keeps predators, such as the gray wolf or the wolverine, at bay. Beaver ponds render swift flowing streams into quiet, calm impoundments of water often an acre or more in size. In a northern hardwood forest like the St. Croix it would not be unusual to have numerous beaver dams on one very small forest stream. A study of beaver in Voyageurs National Park identified 2.5 beaver dams per kilometer of stream, with the result that well over half of the length of all streams was transformed into beaver ponds. The wetlands created by the beaver formed habitat for other important fur bearing animals as well. Muskrats and otters made their homes within the ponds. Mink and raccoons hunted frogs, turtles, and snakes around the margins of the pond. The edge effect of the wetland-forest interface fostered a diverse array of other animals as well, from waterfowl to deer and moose. The hydrologic effect of thousands of beaver ponds within the valley was to slow the flow of the tributary streams and moderate flooding along the entire valley. Ponds trapped sediment carried by streams, keeping nutrients in the forest, and filtering the water that was eventually discharged into the St. Croix. [57]

A beaver population of thousands within the St. Croix valley affected the forest as well as the river. The beaver is one of the most voracious browsing animals. Although moose, deer, and elk are normally seen as the major browsing species in the forests of the Upper Midwest, the beaver has much greater impact on forest vegetation. The difference with the beaver is that unlike the other grazing animals, its impact is restricted to areas within a hundred meters of water. Beaver tried to extend their range slightly by building canals, a foot or two wide, leading away from streams and into the woods. But this amazing behavior reinforces the fact of the beaver's aquatic nature. Yet, in spite of this limitation the beaver still manages to consume a vast amount of wood, leaf, and roots. A study of beaver at a single northeastern Minnesota pond revealed that each beaver felled 1,400 kilograms of woody biomass per year, substantially more than moose grazing in the same area. In fact the study concluded that the beaver colony harvested twice as much biomass as a herd of Serengeti ungulates. Not only was the beaver colony an intensive grazer it also was very selective, favoring certain tree species such as aspen and turning its nose up at alder or conifers. After several decades of beaver activity forests near their ponds were greatly changed, moving from aspen or paper birch dominated stands to a more diverse patchwork of shrubs and trees. [58]

Multiplied throughout the valley by the thousands of lodges and dams, the mini-environments created by the beaver encouraged diversity between both flora and fauna. Because of the beaver the St. Croix was clearer and less prone to flooding. The water table was higher and throughout the valley springs were more abundant. Trappers wrought havoc on the beaver landscape. Between 1800 and 1820 the beaver was all but wiped out along the St. Croix and other streams in the region. In 1800 fur traders reported a harvest of eight thousand beaver skins for the entire Dakota trading area, of which the St. Croix was only a small part. Yet by 1820 the beaver harvest for that same area was a paltry 760 pelts. [59]

The dramatically sudden over-trapping of the beaver brought changes to the valley, but only gradually. Beaver ponds endured long after the industrious rodents had been eliminated. It would have not been until the period after 1840 that the impact of the decline of the beaver would have been fully felt, but by this time a new group of dam builders was busy on the upper river. Loggers manipulated the water levels on the St. Croix and its tributaries in ways that would have impressed Castor canadensis, thus obscuring from the historical record the impact of the fur trade on the flow of the river. What is clear, however, is that the loss of beaver meant an end to unique pond habitats and the elimination of the forest's most voracious herbivore. "The features of the country have undergone a change," an early settler wrote of Burnett County. "The towering pines have decayed or been leveled by the woodsman's axe. Some small lakes have receded, and tall grasses wave and willows grow where once the ‘kego' [fish] sported in the clear blue waters." Some early settlers contended that the "sun drew the waters up into the heavens," and did not see the loss of the beaver a generation earlier as the cause. All they saw was the result, dry fields ringed by the bleached shells of freshwater mussels "and by the ineffaceable mark of the water breaking upon the beach and undermining the rocky ledges." [60]

Figure 7. Upper St. Croix and Namekagon Fur trade and Indian Sites
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

The American Fur Company Era

During first half of the nineteenth century competition between more and more fur traders for fewer and fewer furs threatened to make the figure of the fur trader an endangered species. This competition gave the Chippewa and the Dakota higher prices for their furs and a greater choice of goods for which to trade. It also reduced to the lowest common denominator of behavior an exchange that had persisted for well over one hundred years as a middle ground between Indians and Europeans. Family alliances between traders and hunters became less common as both sides operated with an eye for immediate returns, the trader in the form of quick profits, the Indians in form of alcohol. The rivalry between the Northwest Company and the X Y Company had been ruinous to both parties. To try preventing another outbreak of that type of trade war the Canadian based fur traders pooled their resources in the form of a new concern, which would have a monopoly on the fur trade south of the Great Lakes. First the Michilimackinac Company and later the Southwest Company were organized to control the fur trade of the Upper Midwest. The latter company is known to have operated a post on the St. Croix. Neither company succeeded long because increasingly the main competition came not from Canada but from the United States. In 1808 the American Fur Company was charted by the state of New York. Its founder, John Jacob Astor sought to dominate the fur trade in American territory the way the Northwest Company controlled the Canadian trade. After the War of 1812, when the authority of the United States government was firmly established in the region, Astor got his chance. [61]

As the Americans moved to assume the fur trade of the St. Croix they adopted the same tactic as the British a generation before. British traders like Alexander Henry formed partnerships with experienced French traders, such as Jean Baptiste Cadotte, Sr., to benefit from their superior connections with the Indians. Astor's American Fur Company followed the same pattern. Their choice to head the St. Croix trading area was Joseph Duchene, known to everyone in the region by his nickname, "La Prairie." He had been the Northwest Company's most experienced trader in the Folle Avoine. His son of the same name who became an interpreter joined him in the American Fur Company. William Morrison who had come to the region as a boy and had matured into an experienced trader, also left the Northwest Company and was rewarded by Astor with overall control of the Fond du Lac Department, a vast area that included the St. Croix, Chippewa, and Upper Mississippi valleys. The Cadotte family, long an aristocracy in the Lake Superior trade was among the first to make the move toward the Americans. In 1818 Michel Cadotte employed two young Americans to act as front men for his operations in the northwestern Wisconsin. Truman and Lyman Warren, the sons of a revolutionary war soldier, eventually married Cadotte's daughters. They gradually earned the trust and support of not only Cadotte, but of the family's Chippewa kinsmen. In 1822, Cadotte and the Warrens entered the American Fur Company as traders in the Fond du Lac Department. Also entering the firm were another generation of the Cadotte clan, Michel, Jr. who signed on as an interpreter, and Jean Baptiste the III, who joined as a boatman assigned to the St. Croix outfit. [62]

By winning the cooperation of the most experienced traders in the region the American Fur Company secured the bulk of the trade of the St. Croix valley. The principle trading posts within the valley continued to be among the Chippewa of the Snake River and in the Yellow Lake region. Under Astor's company the Chippewa in the valley continued to be supplied and directed from Lake Superior, which mandated a continuation of the virtual alliance between fur traders and the Chippewa bands of the Upper St. Croix. The Dakota villages along the lower river had no contact with those fur traders and they directed their furs toward merchants operating on the Minnesota or Upper Mississippi rivers. Among the traders to winter on the lower St. Croix and trade with the Dakota was Jean Baptiste Mayrand, a fur trader based in Prairie du Chien. Mayrand operated a St. Croix post during the winter of 1819-1820 and probably for a longer period. Mayrand, like Cadotte and Warren on the upper river, was attached to the American Fur Company. Between the efforts of these men the American Fur Company was in a position to secure the bulk of the furs from the St. Croix. [63]

Figure 8. Chippewa women gathering wild rice, painting by Seth Eastman, c. 1857. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries fur traders were dependent upon the Chippewa or Dakota to supply the bulk of their winter provisions.

Dakota-Chippewa Relations During the American Era

While the fur trade continued unaffected by political change among the European-Americans, the conflict between the Indians likewise continued on its bloody course. The boundary between the Dakota and the Chippewa, which had gradually settled on the areas between the Snake River and St. Croix Falls, divided the valley into a northern zone oriented to Lake Superior and a southern zone looking to the Mississippi. This division, which first occurred during the fur trade, would long mark the history of the St. Croix and would effect the development of transportation, agriculture, and the tourist industry along the river. The division endured in part because the warring parties' territories were separated along an environmental fault line, a vegetative transitional zone between the rich soils and prairie openings to the south and the mixed coniferous forests to the north. Within the transition zone deciduous forests dominated, although the landscape was a mosaic of marshes, savannahs, and forests, all in all a fine range in which to stalk deer or gather wild rice, berries, and maple sugar. Indeed it was the attractiveness of the region from a subsistence point-of-view that kept both the Dakota and Chippewa in abrasive contact within the zone. [64]

While the bountiful landscape of the St. Croix tended to draw the Dakota and Chippewa into conflict, Indian political structure did little to moderate conflict. The highly individualistic Chippewa lacked formal mechanisms to broker and enforce adherence to a boundary line. Bands acted in the manner they saw fit. Dakota leaders, while exercising somewhat more centralized authority, also had a problem achieving individual compliance. Warfare was an established feature of each society. It was a vital theater of action in which individual young men could establish status in their community. Recognition as a successful hunter or a brave warrior was all the more important because for both the Chippewa and the Dakota, unlike European-American society, it was not accumulated wealth or inherited position that conferred status but individual accomplishment. Young men looked forward to war and were always difficult for elders to control. The ominous warning of a Dakota chief to Joseph Marin in 1754 "we cannot keep from you the fact that our young men are all beginning to mutter" was a frequent prelude to war. George Nelson reported a fellow fur trader's complaint to the Chippewa: "it is the young men who are too ardent. . .they are afraid of being looked at as cowards if they have not a Scalp to shew & contrary to the advice of the old & experienced, & to the great injury of all, they make a descent upon their enemies & plunge both nations into war!" Peace for either community was often at the mercy of individual ambition or family obligation. One of the defining features of both Chippewa and Dakota life, tremendous individual autonomy balanced by community responsibility encouraged the continuation of the conflict. Family members, after a period of mourning, had the right, some would say obligation, to avenge the dead. This was not something that was subject to interference by political leaders. Revenge was the most persistent reasons for war parties to embark on the river each spring. Every fallen family member that was avenged called forth a retaliatory raid by the enemy, a dreary, deadly cycle. [65]

For every epic battle, like that at St. Croix Falls, where warriors fought warriors in desperate battles, long remembered around winter campfires, there were hundreds of wretched ambushes leaving a child or elder murdered in the brush. Brief periods of peace, brokered by hunters anxious to utilize the rich borderland region, sometimes resulted in Dakota-Chippewa intermarriages. More so than at any other point of contact between the Dakota and the Chippewa a considerable exchange of kinsmen occurred along the St. Croix. To live in the lodges of the enemy was to occupy a precarious position, yet custom dictated that men live with their wives' family. William Warren related the fate of one St. Croix Chippewa dwelling with the Dakota. At a war dance an over-excited Dakota warrior fired an arrow into the Chippewa, who previously had been accepted as a member of the tribe, so as to "let out the hated Ojibway blood which flowed in his veins." This recklessly act led the wounded Chippewa to later seek vengeance by leading a war party against the village in which he had formerly lived. Over time the number of people in the St. Croix valley that were of mixed Dakota and Chippewa ancestry became quite large. This sometimes led to poignant encounters. One of the leaders of the Rice Lake Chippewa during the early nineteenth century was Omigaundib, whose father had lived for a time among the Dakota. When he later returned to the Chippewa and became chief of his band he left behind a Dakota family. His Dakota sons latter became leaders of their village. For his lifetime there was peace between the Rice Lake Chippewa and the chief's Dakota kinsmen. Even after the peace eroded the sons of a common father avoided participating in raids against each other. Omigaundib, nonetheless, was drawn into the war. A Dakota war party proceeded to Rice Lake and killed three children playing on the shore. One of the dead was Omigaundib's daughter. Rather than call for a war party and vengeance, Omigaundib placed his slain child in a canoe, covered her body in the black paint of mourning and proceeded down the St. Croix to the Dakota villages at Point Douglas. His arrival there cut short the celebration of a successful war party. His arrival, quiet and dignified, made clear he had come not as an enemy chief but as a kinsman. The scalp of the little girl, proudly being paraded among the lodges was suddenly transformed from a trophy to a cause of lamentation. With tears in their eyes the Dakota pressed Omigaundib to accept gifts to cover his tragic loss. "I have not come amongst you, my relatives to be treated with so much honor and deference," he said. "I have come that you may treat me as you have treated my child, that I may follow him [her] to the land of the spirits." In the end a young Dakota girl was presented to Omigaundib to return with him to Rice Lake. [66]

While those of mixed Dakota and Chippewa heritage were the most vulnerable when fighting broke out, their kinship ties allowed them to function, as Omigaundib did, as conciliators. "The occasional short terms of peace which have occurred between the two tribes," William Warren noted "have generally been first brought about by the mixed bloods of either tribe who could approach one another with greater confidence than those entirely unconnected by blood." Because of these ties the St. Croix Chippewa were much less active in organizing war parties against the Dakota than their tribesmen who lived along the Chippewa River. In 1818 the United States Indian agent in the region reported that eight Chippewa from the upper St. Croix actually went so far as to warn the Dakota downstream of the approach of a large Chippewa war party. Armed with this information the Dakota "were preparing to give them a warm reception," the agent concluded. Such incidents were rare. On most occasions the St. Croix Chippewa were powerless to stop war parties directed downstream, even though such attacks opened them up to retaliation. The Dakota, particularly the Mdewakanton chief Little Crow, also were open to peace overtures. During the winter of 1801-1802 a Dakota war party captured the Northwest Company trader known as La Prairie. They treated him well and presented him with a "Pipe of Peace" and a tomahawk to give to the Yellow Lake Chippewa. "Let them chuse, & decide whether they will accept the Pipe & Smoke with us as friends, or take the tomahawk," the Dakota leader told La Prairie. "We are ready for either, but we would rather have them be our friends." Unfortunately, La Prairie, who clearly should have known better, repeated the Dakota message verbatim but kept the peace pipe for himself. With only the tomahawk before them the Chippewa decide the Dakota message was intended as an insult and answered it with a war party. [67]

The Dakota made frequent forays into the Chippewa lands along the St. Croix. In addition to the hunting the Mdewakanton often entered the valley in the fall to harvest the region's abundant wild rice. Perhaps in appreciation of how precarious an undertaking this was Chief Little Crow's band often demonstrated restraint against enemies who fell into their hands. While death or capture was the usual punishment for a warrior caught alone in the forest by his enemies, Little Crow's people sometimes contented themselves with merely breaking the guns of the Chippewa. But the Mdwewakanton also were determined to maintain access to their traditional lands and often-made demonstrations of their ability to project war parties throughout the St. Croix valley. These ventures did not always end in violence. Often when they discovered Chippewa trap lines they merely broke the traps, thereby providing a warning that the hunter risked the wrath of the Dakota. [68]

Like all wars difficult to bring to a conclusion the conflict continued not merely because of blood feud and misunderstanding, but because the Chippewa and the Dakota were locked in a territorial struggle more closely linked to each side's survival as a people than most wars in recorded history. Little Crow, the Dakota chief who had participated in numerous peace conferences and was the author of numerous personal attempts to conciliate, nonetheless understood that war made rational sense. "He observed that a peace could easily be made," American Indian agent Thomas Forsyth reported in 1819, "but said it is better for us [Dakota] to carry on the war in the way we do than to make peace, because, he added, we lose a man or two in the course of a year, and we kill as many of the enemy during the same time; and if we were to make peace, the Chippewas would over-run all the country lying between the Mississippi and Lake Superior." Little Crow and the Dakota basically faced the question "should we give up such an extensive country to another nation to save the lives of a man or two annually." The Dakota response was similar to that taken by the United States throughout its history, land is worth blood. Thomas Forsyth ended his report by noting, "I found the Indian's reason so good that I said no more on the subject to him." [69]

While the Chippewa and the Dakota were locked in "a war for land," the United States government gradually established its political hegemony over the Upper Midwest region. The American flag first flew over St. Croix waters in 1805 when Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike led an expedition of twenty soldiers into the Upper Mississippi region. His purpose was to make it clear to British fur traders that the region was under American control. The Dakota drew a different conclusion from Pike's visit. At a time when the number of Dakota's available to continue the war against the Chippewa was becoming lower due to western migration, it is probable that Little Crow viewed the Americans as potential allies. Anxious to secure regular access to American trade goods, something the Northwest Company provided to the Chippewa, Little Crow agreed to the cession of two tracts of land for future American forts. One tract, at the mouth of the Minnesota River became Fort Snelling, the principle United States military base in the region. The second tract Pike deemed strategic was the mouth of the St. Croix. In exchange for this territory the Dakota received a mere two hundred dollars worth of trade goods and a small amount of liquor. It is likely that Little Crow viewed this transaction as down payment on future military help from the Americans. He scarcely anticipated that the negotiation with Pike had set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the defeat of his grandson and namesake in 1862 by the very soldiers Little Crow the elder viewed as allies. [70]

Pike also attempted to mediate the conflict between the Dakota and the Chippewa. Although he reported boastfully to President Thomas Jefferson that he had brought about peace, the best he was able to do was halt the progress of a single Dakota war party, and receive Little Crow's promise to try and restrain his young men. When the Americans strengthened their hold over the region after the War of 1812, they intruded themselves more aggressively into the long simmering war. In 1820, Lewis Cass, the governor of the Michigan Territory, which then included Wisconsin and part of Minnesota, attempted to broker a peace between the Dakota and the Chippewa. Unfortunately Cass managed to bring with him only 150 Chippewa, and these mostly from Sandy Lake. The small number of Dakota present was described as manifesting "indifference" to the prospect of a treaty. Cass managed to have the few chiefs present assent to a peace as "lasting as the sun," but Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the future Indian agent, who was a member of the Cass expedition, remained justly skeptical. He recognized that the conflict was based on "a dispute respecting the limits of their territories, and favorite hunting grounds, but if so, nothing was agreed upon in the present instance to obviate the original causes of enmity." Schoolcraft concluded, "Whether the peace will prove a permanent one, may be doubted." [71]

The Cass expedition set in motion a series of virtually annual convocations between the Chippewa and the Dakota organized by the Americans at Fort Snelling. Established in 1820, Fort Snelling was the northern most military establishment in the United States. The fort served as neutral ground where the Chippewa and Dakota could usually meet in security under the supervision of the United States Indian Agent, Lawrence Talliaferro. A proud, intelligent Virginian, Talliaferro worked tirelessly to reduce the intertribal warfare. He also established strong ties with the Dakota by taking as his wife the daughter of the war chief, Mahiyawicasta. An 1821 council held by Talliaferro brought together more than eight hundred Dakota and Chippewa, but was followed by a year of severe fighting that resulted in nearly a hundred casualties. Talliaferro followed this up with a formal peace treaty in 1823. The following year he sought to impress upon the Dakota the extent of American power by taking a delegation to Washington, D.C. In 1825, he helped to arrange a major meeting of Mississippi valley Indians at Prairie du Chien. Unlike earlier efforts to bring peace that had been based on engendering goodwill, the Americans finally tried to solve the root of the problem–the territorial conflict between the Dakota and Chippewa. The Dakota delegate protested bitterly when the Chippewa presented their claims to all lands east of the Mississippi. Little Crow had no intention of granting to the Chippewa the lower St. Croix homeland of his people. Finally after badgering by the Americans the Chippewa's recognized the Dakota claims to the lower river. The St. Croix boundary between the two peoples was ruled to be at "a place called the standing cedar, about a day's paddle in a canoe, above the Lake at the mouth of that river; thence passing between two lakes called by the Chippewas ‘Green Lakes,' and by the Sioux ‘the lakes they bury the Eagles in.'" In modern terms the line ran from a point on the river known as Cedar Bend, near the Chisago-Washington county boundary, northwest past Lindstrom, Minnesota to the upper reaches of the Rum River. Little Crow signed for his people while Peeseeker, known as Buffalo and Naudin, The Wind, signed for the St. Croix Chippewa. [72]

Within a year violence again flared and in 1826 the peace was shattered when the several Dakota warriors shot and killed two Chippewas trading within the shadow of Fort Snelling. By 1830 even Little Crow's Dakota were sending war parties across the boundary against the Chippewa. Some American leaders took the pragmatic, if somewhat cynical view, that while the Chippewa and Dakota were determined to fight each other "they will not feel a disposition to disturb the peace and tranquility of our exposed frontier settlements on the St. Croix and Chippewa rivers." Those officials who worked to stop the violence learned to adopt more modest goals and after 1826 they focused on simply trying to keep the warring parties apart. The Sioux Agency remained at the mouth of the Minnesota while the Chippewa of the Upper Mississippi were removed from Taliaferro's responsibility. Instead of being required to go to Fort Snelling they were directed northward to Lake Superior and the Indian Superintendency of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Government agents were so anxious to reduce the chance of conflict that in 1832 Schoolcraft burned the temporarily abandoned trading post of Joseph R. Brown because it was located "at a point where the Sioux and Chippewas" were "improperly brought into contact." [73]

In spite of Schoolcraft's punitive action, Joseph Renshaw Brown was destined to have a long and important involvement with the St. Croix River valley. He had lived on the Minnesota frontier since he was fourteen years old, when he came west as a drummer boy in the army. In 1825, he put away his uniform and entered the fur trade. There was an unsavory taint to Brown's fur trade career. This may simply be because he was imprudent enough to have gotten on the wrong side of Indian agents Talliaferro and Schoolcraft; whose voluminous writings greatly influence the historical record. But even with that bias taken into account Brown's callous treatment of Indian women, is disturbing. During the late 1820s when Brown was engaged in trade with the Dakota, he took as his bride a Metis woman of Dakota ancestry. She may not have been the most faithful wife, but Brown nonetheless ended the marriage after only five years. While trading on the St. Croix with the Chippewa, Brown took, first as his mistress and latter as his wife, Margaret McCoy -- a Chippewa-French Canadian Metis. After a little more than a year he abandoned Margaret, even though she was pregnant, when he decided to recross the Indian boundary and trade again with the Dakota. While trading at Lake Traverse on the Minnesota River, he enjoyed the favors of Winona Renville, the "second" wife of a fellow fur trader, Joseph Renville. At the same time Brown courted Winona's seventeen-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, the Dakota Metis Susan Freniere. Winona, Susan, and Brown all resided together in a small cabin at the trading post, which must have made for some interesting domestic arrangements. Although Brown was by now known among the American's as, in the words of one traveler, "a gay deceiver amongst the Indian fair," Susan Freniere agreed to become his wife. As he had never bothered to divorce Margaret McCoy this left Brown with two wives, a circumstance he did not legally fix for five years. [74]

Brown's initial post on the St. Croix was located about four miles upstream from St. Croix Falls, on the Minnesota side of the river. The spot was then known as "Granite Rocks" in reference to the boulders in the stream there that would in future cause great log jams in the river. Brown was in competition with the American Fur Company's St. Croix traders, Lyman Warren and Thomas Connor. He had a distinct advantage over his rivals. By the early 1830s United States Indian agents such as Schoolcraft and Taliaferro had forced the American Fur Company to reduce the amount of alcohol used in the trade. After 1832 Congress supported this policy by making it illegal to use alcohol in the Indian trade. Some sprits were still smuggled into Indian country, but the volume necessarily declined. Brown was one of those smugglers. Brown's partner in his venture, Joseph Bailly had purchased twenty-seven kegs of alcohol for the trading season. St. Croix Chippewa abandoned the American Fur Company post at the south end of Lake Pokegama and flocked to Brown at Granite Rocks and his branch trading post on the Snake River. The American Fur Company formally complained to territorial officials that Brown had "large quantities of whiskey and the consequence is a heavy loss to our people who had none." [75]

Brown was also an irritation to the Dakota. Although his Granite Rocks post was well within the Chippewa side of the border, it was considerably closer to Dakota country than any previously established Chippewa trading post. The Dakota leader Little Crow was concerned that the post would encourage the Chippewa to hunt and trap on Sioux lands. The fact that Brown encouraged the Chippewa to settle around his post sites, helped them to plant large fields of corn, and encouraged them to reside there during the summer, made Little Crow's fears seem all the more real. Eventually more than one hundred acres of corn was planted around Brown's post. When Schoolcraft encountered Brown on the St. Croix River in 1832, he ordered a careful search of his canoes for alcohol. Frustrated in this search Schoolcraft revoked Brown's license to trade at Granite Rocks. Neither this action nor Schoolcraft's burning of his buildings at Granite Rocks much perturbed Brown. He had already resolved to close that post and confine his Chippewa trading activities to the Snake River outpost and perhaps a small outpost on the St. Croix opposite the mouth of Wolf Creek. By 1833, Brown opened a new post dedicated to the Dakota trade near the mouth of the St. Croix at a place called Oliver's Grove, near the present site of Hastings, Minnesota. [76]

No description survives of the trading posts established by Brown. However, a detailed picture of the interior of a trading post from this period is found in the correspondence of William Johnson. The brother-in-law of Indian Agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Johnson traded furs at Leech Lake in 1833. In a letter to his sister, Jane Schoolcraft he left a pen picture of the interior of a trader's cabin:

I shall attempt to give you a description of a trader's house, humble as it appears, It is a palace to us; The building is thirty feet by twenty; built of hewed logs–and middling well finished outside. It is divided into two apartments, one of which serves as our Store House; and the other we occupy which is small being twenty feet each way.

On opening the door the first thing that attracts the eye is the chimnie [sic]; on each side of which are beds. The front and gable end of the house have each a window. Leather serving in place of Glass. Fawn shins are used, which are put on when wet; when dry and oiled give very good light. And they answered the purpose also of a drum. Under one of the windows, is our table nailed fast to the wall. Above it and the window is a Coffee Mill; and in line, there is a drawing knife, Tobacco pouch, a dirty Candlestick; which has not enjoyed the friction of a cloth, since we left the Sault [St. Marie]. Further on in the corner is a Cupboard, formed of two boards roughly hewed–in which is contained, all our articles of cooking utensils etc. added to which are many other articles–such as Augers, crooked knives, Candle Moles [molds], etc.

A little further on, near the other window between which and the cupboard, hangs a Coffee Pot, Table Cloth etc. Under the window, are the water buckets, kettles, Wash bowl–And upon the window, a piece of soap two or three nails–a pair of creepers[?], a dirty shaving brush. And in addition to the above ornaments, is a dirty fine tooth comb, which from appearance must have performed many a labourious [sic]task in its day, and is now cast aside, as useless, for any future adventure in trapping such animals as will now bring no price in market; either body or pelt as our oppositions tell the Indians.

Now comes the Door; next to which and hanging up, is a frock Coat, Then comes other articles in regular rotation; a portage collar one or two pairs of Mockesins [sic], an old straw Hat, a violin with all its appendages; a small shelf upon which are the few books we possess; one or two Cossetts [small boxes], an ax, a spade, Tobacco pouch etc. etc.

Johnson kept his weapons, a fowling piece, a brace of pistols, and a dirk, near his bed. [77] Joseph Brown should have been as careful to be prepared for action in a dangerous borderland like the St. Croix valley.

Brown's new trading post caused dissention among the Mdewakanton Dakota. The aging and increasingly less energetic chief Little Crow had his village located on the Mississippi River not far from Fort Snelling. Brown's new post offered a convenient trading site closer to the band's traditional St. Croix hunting grounds and two of the rising young leaders of the village defected from Little Crow and moved to the area near the mouth of the St. Croix. This greatly nettled Little Crow. First Brown had encouraged the Chippewa to live and hunt on the very edge of the boundary, now he was drawing the Dakota into closer proximity to the area of contention. Little Crow protested bitterly to Schoolcraft. Although the danger was real, Little Crow may have complained about Brown in order to enlist the Indian agent in bolstering his sagging prestige among his people. The fur trader, who by now had had both Dakota and Chippewa wives, clearly knew the risks of his actions but in quest of short-term profits, he was heedless of the consequences. Brown continued to trade on the St. Croix in 1833 and 1834, after which time Little Crow and Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro were able to force him to temporarily remove himself from the seat of conflict to the Minnesota River valley. [78]

Figure 9. William A. Warren the Metis historian whose History of the Ojibway People remains the single best source for the study of the Dakota-Chippewa conflict.

The Treaties of 1837

Land cession treaties made it impossible to maintain even modest controls on fur traders. The Dakota and Chippewa reluctantly accepted the treaties because of the growing environmental degradation of their embattled homelands. The elimination of beaver, during the 1820s had been one warning sign of the change. The high value beaver allowed Indian hunters to obtain their annual wants with a very limited effort. Much more hunting time was required and less food was obtained when the smaller less valuable muskrat was trapped as a replacement. The same was true of the increased difficulty encountered and energy required when subsistence hunters were forced to rely more on white-tailed deer than a herding animal like elk. The Dakota were particularly affected by these changes because the Chippewa had steadily encroached upon their territories along the St. Croix and Mississippi. The Dakota no longer had the broad sweep of territory over which they had traditionally ranged during their annual subsistence cycle. As early as 1812 the Dakota were forced to adapt to these changes. Agriculture, which was unimportant to the Dakota at the height of their power in the 1600s, became increasingly significant as a way to bridge the nutritional gaps in their seasonal subsistence cycle. When the Cass expedition in 1820 visited the Dakota villages on the St. Croix one of its members, Charles Trowbridge observed that corn was "almost their only food." While this was an exaggeration, to be sure, based on a misunderstanding of the Dakota's seasonal movements, it nonetheless reflected a profound change. Trowbridge further noted that Dakota hunters did not even try to hunt in the vicinity of Little Crow's village near the mouth of the St. Croix, a clear sign that game in the region had been seriously depleted. Buffalo, which were once abundant along the Upper Mississippi, in 1820, could not be found short of a two days journey beyond the river. Over time buffalo were found only after increasingly farther journeys to the west. Lawrence Taliaferro, a very careful observer of Dakota life, frequently noted that they suffered from starvation, not merely in the winter but even during the summer. In August of 1835, he noted that they were completely without wild rice and that "to go out to hunt is for them to go off to starve." A year latter he reported that the St. Croix Dakota had completed their summer hunt without killing a single deer. Requests for government supplies from the Indian agent became more frequent as did complaints of Chippewa intrusions on Dakota lands [79]

The Chippewa who were accustomed to operating within a smaller territorial range than the Dakota suffered less than the their rivals. Even so adjustments were forced upon them. In 1832, hunters along the Upper St. Croix still found deer near the river but moose, which had been abundant, were eliminated from the area and could only be found along the remote headwaters of the Brule River. The Chippewa, who in the early 1800s had provided fur traders with most of their provisions from hunting deer and gathering wild rice, also became more dependent on agriculture. Joseph Brown, making no mention of his large supply of illegal whiskey, claimed that the way he won the Snake River Chippewa to his posts was by showing the Indians how to plant fields of corn. "The failure of the [wild] rice crop in the fall made the corn, potatoes, pumpkins and turnips very valuable to the Indians and probably saved many from starvation during the winter," he claimed in a letter to a missionary. When Schoolcraft visited a Chippewa village near Big Fish Trap Rapids in 1832 he found "Corn and potato fields." Not only were such fields new to that generation of St. Croix Chippewa but Schoolcraft also noted that the fur trade had also brought "a considerable change of habits, and of the mode of subsistence; and may be considered as having paved the way for further changes in the mode of living and dress." By 1832 as much as half of the trade goods brought from Mackinac for the Chippewa trade were foodstuffs and clothing. A gradual but nonetheless decisive change in the fortunes of the St. Croix's Indian peoples was the transition, made apparent by the 1830s, from being providers of subsistence to the whites to becoming dependent upon fur traders for their subsistence. [80]

The dependency of both the Dakota and the Chippewa on the European-Americans for alcohol, trade goods, and increasingly for food, was the knife's point used to push them into treaty negotiations that led to the loss of the territory over which they had fought for so long. In July of 1837, Henry Dodge, Governor of the Wisconsin Territory negotiated the cession of Chippewa lands along the Upper Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. In return for these hard won lands the Chippewa received annual access for the next twenty years to a paltry $19,000 worth of trade goods, and a mere $9,500 in cash payments, and government supported blacksmith shops and model farms. They retained the use of their old lands for hunting, fishing, and gathering, but only at "the pleasure of the President of the United States," which in effect meant as long as they did not get in the way of European-American settlement and industry. Of greatest immediate importance, however, was the provision that paid $70,000 to fur traders who had claims against the Chippewa. The decline in stocks of fur bearing animals on their lands and their growing need for European-American manufactured goods had gradually put the Chippewa in the position of annually accepting more goods in advance than they could pay for at the end of the trapping season. The accumulated debt was substantial, although the payment of $25,000 to Lyman M. Warren, the principle trader on the St. Croix, seems excessively high. Settlement of this debt was an important matter, in part because of the presence of traders like Warren at the negotiation. But the Chippewa themselves were well aware that they needed the treaty to keep open their source of credit. Chief Shagobi, of the Snake River band, bluntly admitted that he and the other leaders were "afraid to return home if their traders are not paid. They fear they should not survive the winter without their aid." [81]

Even considering their dire necessity the St. Croix Chippewa made a poor bargain when they agreed to the 1837 Treaty. The payment received for their very extensive and valuable lands was too small to make a significant difference in the band's quality of life. Indian Agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who did not participate in the treaty negotiation, complained, with some exaggeration, that the payment "would not exceed a breech cloth and a pair of leggings apiece." Fur trader Lyman Warren blamed the bad deal on bribes paid by Lawrence Taliaferro to the leaders of the Pillager Chippewa, who lived at Leech Lake. The Pillagers then used their influence to encourage the St. Croix and Chippewa River bands to accept a hasty settlement. Schoolcraft, who was strongly biased against Taliaferro, found this tale convincing. "The pillagers certainly do not," Schoolcraft wrote in his memoirs, "as a band own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the Mississippi. . .but their warlike character has a sensible influence on those tribes quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers." Even the location of the treaty payment sites favored the Pillagers, not the eastern bands. The St. Croix people were forced to travel several hundred miles to the Crow Wing River to receive their meager payments. [82]

The Dakota were also forced to part with title to their share of the bloody St. Croix in 1837. The American Fur Company clamored for the treaty, claiming in excess of $50,000 in Dakota debts. The Dakota were loath to sell their St. Croix lands, but there also was a strong feeling that they could not go on as before. Little Crow, the son, namesake, and successor to the leadership of the St. Croix Dakota, found it harder and harder to locate game within their old hunting grounds. In the fall of 1835, after nearly dying of exposure in a snowstorm, he staggered into Taliaferro's agency in desperate need of food. Wearily Little Crow agreed to the necessity of taking up the plough. A smallpox epidemic in 1836 further demoralized the Dakota, leading one chief to say to Taliaferro, "the land is bad. . .and your advice is this day asked for my people." Taliaferro's advice was to go to Washington, D.C. and negotiate the secession of some of their lands. By advocating the journey it may have been the Indian agent's intention to overawe the Dakota with American power. If so the strategy worked, for after a week of negotiations the Sioux representatives were forced to accept the government's price of one million dollars for all tribal lands east of the Mississippi, more than $600,000 less than the Dakota asked for. Unlike the Chippewa treaty, the 1837 Treaty of Washington did not grant the Dakota a limited right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands. From the government's point-of-view the Dakota's tenure on the banks of the St. Croix was at an end. [83]

In agreeing to the 1837 land cessions the Chippewa and Dakota people embraced an unavoidable contradiction. Their lifestyle and culture was based upon their occupation of the land. Yet, to maintain that lifestyle they had to give up their ownership of the land. Far from being dupes of the government negotiators the Indians knew the Americans were anxious to exploit the pine forests of the St. Croix and Rum River. Chippewa chiefs very sagely had proposed ceding the territory for sixty years, the amount of time they estimated for its forest resources to be exhausted. Flat Mouth, chief of the Pillager Chippewa, observed, "it is hard to give up the lands. They will remain and cannot be destroyed but you may cut down the trees and others will grow up." Governor Dodge, however, rejected that proposal and insisted on a traditional cession. What the Dakota and the Chippewa received in return were treaty annuities that allowed the Indians for twenty years the opportunity to continue the pattern of living they had adopted since the beginning of the fur trade. The Chippewa retained a limited right to use the forests and the waters of the St. Croix. A Leech Lake Chippewa captured this sentiment when he told the treaty council "we wish to hold on to a tree where we get our living and to reserve the streams where we drink the waters that give us life." In that sense the treaty was a conservative solution to a looming crisis. Life would go on as before. But for how long? The President of the United States could order them off the lands at any time and the annuity payments, that kept the flow of trade goods coming were due to last only twenty years. The treaty was a blend of trying to protect a fading old way of life and tentative embrace of a new, scarcely imagined way of living. Annual payments for farm implements, seed, and the assistance of experienced farmers and the less specific provision for the establishment of schools, clearly demonstrated that Dakota and Chippewa leaders understood that the they were fast approaching a threshold of change, and that they would need help to cross to the other side. [84]

Figure 10. Lawrence Talliaferro, the proud intelligent Virginian who served as the long-time United States Indian Agent on the Upper Mississippi. He tried to mediate the Dakota-Chippewa conflict on the St. Croix.

Strangers on the Land: The St. Croix Indians in the Settlement Era

In the wake of the treaties several new kinds of European-Americans came into the St. Croix country. Lumbermen were the largest group, followed by farmers and merchants. Of most direct interest to the Chippewa were the missionaries. Showing much less scruple for the division between church and state than modern public officials, the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs relied upon missionaries to carryout the transformation of the St. Croix bands from hunters and gatherers, to sedentary agriculturists. The work had actually begun four years before the treaty, in 1833, when Reverend Frederick Ayer established a mission school at Yellow Lake, about a mile from the trading post. Ayer was a Presbyterian sent west by the American Board of Foreign Missions. After two years of difficult work trying to win the support of the Yellow Lake band, Ayer moved the mission to Pokegama Lake. The soil there was much more conducive to agricultural experiments and the supplies of wild rice and fish were reputed to be more reliable. These factors made the Snake River band more sedentary than the Yellow Lake Chippewa. Best of all Ayer received an invitation from the Snake River people to bring his school to their band. In time Pokegama became the most successful mission in the region. In 1838, the Presbyterian missionaries working among the Chippewa agreed to consolidate their efforts at that site. Ayer was joined at various times by William Boutwell, Edmund Ely, and Sherman Hall. The government lent support to their effort by locating one of the official Indian model farms at the south end of Pokegama Lake. Jeremiah Russell, of the Indian bureau, sought to carve a farm out of the wilderness. He hoped that in time it could be a nursery for Chippewas schooled in European-American agriculture. [85]

As agents of change the missionaries caused tension and division among the ranks of the Chippewa. No two Chippewa responded to the presence of these new strangers in the same way. The leaders of the Snake River band saw the mission school as a positive development that would give their children the means to learn the white man's letters. Others may have accepted the missionaries out of regard for their farming efforts, which after all provided a backup source of support during times of famine. The Yellow Lake band was deeply divided by Frederic Ayer's initial mission. At a council soon after his arrival Ayer was told in no uncertain terms he was not wanted there. "The Indians are troubled in mind about your staying here," said one speaker, "and you must go–you shall go." But a second faction in the tribe felt contrary, and the next day told Ayer that they were grateful for what he had done, "you have clothed and provided for us. Why should we send you away?" Ayer was invited to stay, but in the months that followed he was constantly unsure of his position, "things were not as they should be." The band chief remained constantly, in Ayer's words "on the fence," as he tried to maintain a consensus among his badly divided people. When the missionary left Yellow Lake the chief must have been greatly relieved. Reverend Boutwell had an even more difficult time with the Leech Lake Chippewa. After receiving several warnings they poisoned the missionary's daughter. Fortunately the girl recovered and Boutwell quickly left for the friendly clime of Pokegama Lake. [86]

The modest success enjoyed by Ayer and Boutwell was partially based on the care each took to cultivate the fur trade elite that had long influenced life along the St. Croix. Ayer became a friend of Lyman Warren. The veteran fur trader was a devout Presbyterian who used his money and influence to help Ayer build his base among the Snake River band. Boutwell earned entry into any trading post in the region by marrying the daughter of Ramsay Crooks, the managing partner of the American Fur Company. This Chippewa Metis woman was described by one contemporary as "a commanding figure" who did much to win her husband a hearing among her mother's people. Even so the missionaries often skirmished with their Indian neighbors across a cultural divide. Frederic Ayer, at great trouble and expense, brought farm animals to the lake mission. His effort to have a proper American farm were sometimes frustrated by Indian hunters, who when hungry did not differentiate between wild game and domesticated animals. "At Fond du Lac and Pokegama," wrote the Reverend Sherman Hall, "they have been much tried this summer with the Indians. They have killed several cattle at the latter place for the mission, and one at Fond du Lac. Some have appeared otherwise hostile." Nonetheless, the missionary was convinced he and his colleagues would "preserve in efforts to save these wretched heathen." On another occasion Ayer lost considerable face when he accused an Indian women of stealing several shirts left out in the sun. He went so far as searching, and none to gently, her lodge, only to find out that Mrs. Ayer had simply misplaced the items. The Indian women felt disgraced by the affair, although she never took action against the missionary. "Some of the Indians laughed heartily," at the crestfallen man of God, "others made remarks rather sarcastic." [87]

It was not, however, the cultural barriers that separated the Chippewa from the evangelical Christians that led to the demise of the mission in the St. Croix valley. In the end it was the rekindling of the ugly war between Dakota and Chippewa that broke up the mission and its agricultural experiment. With the withdrawal of the Dakota to the west side of the Mississippi with the 1837 treaty, there was hope that European-American commerce could expand in the region and the chronic wars might be brought to an end. This hope was shattered in 1839 when four Leech Lake Chippewa killed a Mdewakanton leader at Lake Harriet, the site of a successful Protestant mission to the Dakota. The attack was the action of a few rogue warriors. The bulk of the Chippewa wanted to maintain peaceful relations. Two large delegations of Chippewa, one from Mille Lacs the other from the St. Croix had just met with Dakota leaders at Fort Snelling where they smoked tobacco and pledged amity. When news of the murder reached the Dakota, they vowed to reward treachery with treachery. Dakota war parties fell on the Chippewa returning unsuspectingly from the Fort Snelling conference. The St. Croix people were surprised at the present site of Stillwater, Minnesota and twenty-three Chippewa, mostly women and children, were killed. "I was on the battle-field of Lake St. Croix soon after the conflict, " recalled a missionary, "and saw the remains of the slaughtered Chippeways scattered in all directions. The marks of bullets were upon the trees, and the shrubbery was all trodden down. Some of the dead were suspended upon the branches of the trees." A new round of vengeance raids followed. One ambush led to the deaths of two of Little Crow's sons in the forest between the Snake River and St. Croix Falls. The scalping knife fell on the Lake Pokegama settlement in 1841. [88]

The mission was located on east side of Lake Pokegama, although the majority of the Snake River band lived on an island in the lake. The island village gave the Chippewa extra protection from Dakota raiding parties. A few of the Snake band, however, trusting the protection of the mission had settled in cabins on the mainland. The evening before the attack a large Dakota war party secreted themselves in the brush adjacent to the mission. Their plan was to wait for the Chippewa to commence work in their fields and then fall upon them. This ambush, like so many others, was spoiled by several overly anxious warriors. That morning the Chippewa were late in canoeing from the island to the mission and those on the mainland did not go to the fields. When a solitary canoe of two men and two young girls approached the shore, it was fired upon. The Chippewa were thus alerted to the danger. Those on the mainland barricaded themselves in several cabins while those on the island took up arms. The Dakota laid siege to the cabins for several hours before giving up in frustration. At least one Dakota was killed in the fighting as well as two young Chippewa girls. The Missionary E.F. Ely found the little corpses on the shore. "The heads cut off and scalped, with a tomahawk buried in the brains of each, were set up on the sand near the bodies," he latter recalled. "The bodies were pierced in the breast, and the right arm of one was taken away." [89]

Although the Snake River band had successfully defended their village, they feared a return by the Dakota. The band broke up into family groups and retreated into the wilderness. The mission was abandoned by its acolytes. "The Indians were scattered," recalled Elizabeth Ayer, "and dared not return." For a time Reverend Ayer tried to visit the scattered members of the band in their isolated camps, but when it became clear they did not intend to return to Pokegama the Presbyterians had no choice but to abandon their mission. In 1842 the mission was removed to La Pointe. Not until the spring of 1843 did the Chippewa return in force to Pokegama Lake. The mission was briefly reestablished. But the rapid increase in the number of European-American lumbermen and a handful settlers in the region made the missionaries lose faith in the location as an effective base from which to convert the Chippewa to the white man's God and a farming lifestyle. The Reverend William Boutwell, who also served as a field agent for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, encouraged the Snake River Chippewa to abandon Pokegama Lake and locate at Mille Lacs, where wild rice and fish were abundant and contact with whites less frequent. The mission in the St. Croix valley was abandoned in 1845. [90]

The missionaries also soured on their prospects along the St. Croix, Rum River, and other areas ceded in the 1837 Treaty because of the pervasive presence of whiskey traders. While the St. Croix had been Indian territory, the agents of the Office of Indian Affairs had the power to regulate who traded there, where they traded, and with what wares. After 1837 the valley was simply another part of the Wisconsin Territory, a vast region with large opportunities and little in the way of civil administration. Alcohol, which in times of competition between fur traders had always greased the wheels of commerce, now became the principle article of trade for men intent on separating the Chippewa from their annuity payments. By 1844 William Boutwell complained to a fellow missionary that the ceded lands were "inundated with whiskey." [91]

Among the unsavory traders who entered the St. Croix at this time was Joe Covillion. He was a Metis who took over the former mission school at Yellow Lake and used it for his post. Located on the Yellow River just where it leaves Little Yellow Lake, the trading house was the scene of many drunken reveries and a key location in the first murder mystery in the St. Croix valley. In 1845 Albert McEwen hired Covillion to guide him to timberlands in the Yellow Lake region. McEwen had a large amount of gold coin he hoped to use to secure title to lands upon which a profitable speculation might be made. McEwen never returned from the trip. Covillion explained that he had actually not been with McEwen and he cast suspicion on a Chippewa who was alleged to have actually served as guide. Not long afterwards McEwen's body was found stuffed in a hallow tree about ten miles from Covilion's post. Preliminary investigation revealed that Covillion had in his possession a large amount of gold coins, McEwen's watch, and a fist full of land warrants. Calmly the trader explained that he obtained these from the Chippewa in trade. Later that winter the Indian whom Covillion had claimed guided McEwen was found dead in his camp. Covillion, the owner of "considerable property" retired to Taylor's Falls, where he died in 1877. [92]

Another less than worthy trader of this period was Maurice Mordecai Samuels. In 1846 he had a trading post at the mouth of the Sunrise River. In time honored fashion he established himself with the Chippewa by taking one of their women as his wife. Latter he relocated to St. Croix Falls where he operated a "ball alley" and trading post. Samuels was described by fellow pioneer W.H.C. Folsom as "a shrewd man and an inveterate dealer in Indian whisky." No friend of the fur trader, Folsom accused Samuels of being "unprincipled" and "repellant" to the "moral sense of the community." There can be little doubt about how repellant was the type of whiskey sold by Samuels. He did not trouble to import the product from the Ohio Valley where it was abundant and cheap, for less expensive still was to use grain alcohol and then attempt to impart the right flavor and color by artificial means. Samuel's recipe included boiled roots and tobacco, which according the Folsom poisoned many whites and Indians. One consumer of the concoction went insane and leapt from a high point of the Dalles to the falls below. Samuels profited handsomely from his trade with the Chippewa and in time became a leader of the community of St. Croix Falls. [93]

National Park Service archeologists have explored the site of Samuel's 1846 trading post at the confluence of the Sunrise and the St. Croix River. The post consisted of a main building where Samuels lived and conducted his trade and a second flimsy outbuilding that served as a barn or other shelter for animals. The diet of the traders who lived there at this time was somewhat different than that of the Northwest Company traders a generation earlier. In addition to local meat products such as fish and rabbit, Samuels consumed a large amount of pork. Whether this pork was slaughtered on the site from his herd of livestock or sent up river salted in barrels, Samuels was in a much less isolated position than earlier traders. An historic site within the Riverway from this period can be found where Goose Creek enters the St. Croix River. In 1846, Thomas Connor, an old veteran of the Northwest Company, operated a trading post at that location. William Folsom, who visited the post in 1846, described it as a "bark shanty, divided into rooms by handsome mats." [94] The location has been tested for archeological remains on many separate occasions and has also been much visited by collectors of antique bottles and metal detector enthusiasts. Archeological explorations by the National Park Service's Midwest Archeological Center revealed the foundations of a structure from the mid-nineteenth century. The site, however, was not confirmed as Connor's post because the remains of a chimney seemed to clash with Folsom's description of the post as a portable bark shanty. Artifacts found at the site, such as gunflints, glass beads, and kaolin pipes suggested the occupation of the site by temporary traders or Indian hunters in contact with traders. [95] Trading posts like Connors or those of whiskey traders were seldom occupied for long periods of time. The whiskey traders were particularly active in the wake of an annuity payment.

Whiskey was an important commodity at all trading posts but the whiskey shops of men like Samuels and Covillion in particular were the scenes of many degrading and deadly spectacles. Bad liquor sold with no restraint led to trouble at Alexander Livingston's grog shop on the St. Croix at the mouth of Wolf Creek. Livingston, who may have operated in cooperation with the veteran fur trader and whiskey dealer Joseph R. Brown, was gunned down in 1849 after a "drunken melee in his own store." Livingston died of his wound, while his killer, a Metis named Robido, escaped prosecution. Another whiskey dealer to die as a result of his own greed was Miles Tornell, a Norwegian operating near Balsam Lake. Tornell refused to back down in the face of competition from a German-American whiskey dealer, a man identified only as Miller, who operated a post on the lake. The German resolved the competition by hiring a Chippewa to murder Tornell. When the crime was detected, the Indian was executed, while Miller was merely flogged. In 1847, one of Samuels' subordinates, Henry Rust, was killed in a brawl with a drunken Chippewa, Notin. Unlike most such cases this one came to trial. The verdict reflected the outrage many early settlers felt toward the whiskey traders. Notin was found not guilty and a criminal complaint was issued against Jake Drake, the Samuels employee who sold Rust his stock of booze. Drake himself fell victim to foul play shortly thereafter, an inebriated Metis slew him near his Wood Lake post. [96]

The presence of the whiskey dealers and the availability of treaty money accelerated the abuse of alcohol among the Indians of the valley. James Hayes, Indian agent to the Chippewa, complained of the "cupidity and heartlessness of the whiskey dealer," which he blamed for the "accounts of outrages and crime" that washed over the St. Croix frontier in the wake of the treaties. Among the Dakota, who had formerly lorded over the St. Croix, the impact was even more pathetic. "They would have whisky," wrote missionary Gideon Pond. "They would give guns, blankets, pork, lard, flour, corn, coffee, sugar, horses, furs, traps, any thing for whisky." As a result "They killed one another. . .they fell into the fire and water and were burned to death, and drowned; they froze to death, and committed suicide so frequently, that for a time, the death of an Indian in some of the ways mentioned was but little thought of by themselves or others." [97]

Between the rapacity of the whiskey dealers and the incompetence of federal authorities the St. Croix Chippewa benefited little from the financial terms of the 1837 land cession. In 1838 the Office of Indian Affairs bungled the first payment due them. The Chippewa had been told to gather on Lake St. Croix, near the future site of Stillwater, Minnesota, to receive their payment in goods and supplies. The Chippewa began to gather there in July. Every steamboat ascending the river was besieged by anxious Indians who sought their due from white immigrants, not appreciating that they "had nothing to due with payments." All summer and most of the fall the Chippewa waited, faithful and famished. The large congregation of Indians stripped the surrounding area of both firewood and game. Only in November with the Indians starving and freezing did the promised goods finally arrive. One hundred barrels of flour, twenty-five of pork, bales of blankets, boxes of guns and ammunition, even casks of gold dollars were all unloaded while thick flakes of snow covered the ground. Desperately hungry the Chippewa tore into the food. Many ate too much too soon, and suffered agonizing cramps for their trouble. According to one witness, "many of the old as well as the young died from overeating." In the meantime ice formed on the St. Croix rendering useless more than a thousand canoes the Chippewas had brought to transport their goods. They were forced to destroy the craft, rather than let them fall into the hands of the Dakota. Only that which they could carry on their backs could be taken north to their winter camps. Much of the food, money, and goods had to be left behind. During the long agonizing march up river and during the harsh winter that followed many Chippewa perished. As pioneer chronicler William Folsom noted, "their first payment became a curse rather than a blessing to them." [98]

In this manner the thousands of dollars of federal assistance to the Chippewa that the chiefs had seen as the means to maintain their fur trade lifestyle only further impoverished the Indians. J. F. Schafer, who distributed supplies to the Chippewa in 1851 complained of "the introduction of liquor among the Indians immediately after issuing provisions." When Schafer saw the Chippewa trading "their Blankets &c. for liquor," he tried to suspend the distribution of goods until the whiskey dealers left the payment site at the mouth of the Snake River. Indian agents frequently referred to the St. Croix Chippewa as "exceedingly poor, and naked and needy." William Warren, who had spent his life living amongst the Chippewa, advised the Governor of Minnesota "there is not under the sun a more wretched people than they are & will continue to be so as long as they remain in close proximity to a bad white population." Governor Alexander Ramsay himself described the St. Croix band as "the most miserable and degenerate of their tribe." [99]

The condition of the Indians excited more fear than pity among the European American settlers and lumbermen who were quickly moving into the ceded lands along the St. Croix. There was little attempt on settler's part to understand the customs and traditions of the Indians they found living in the valley. Typical of these cultural clashes were the numerous stories of Indian men barging into the cabins of white settlers and demanding food. Chippewa etiquette required visitors, however uninvited, to be fed. That kindness, of course, required some reciprocation, but not immediately. Whites regarded these visits as intimidation and complained to Wisconsin and Minnesota officials of "marauding Indians." Whenever something went missing, Indians were the first suspects. When early settlers in St. Croix Falls were missing a pig of lead, they accused the Chippewa of the theft. The Indians denied the crime, although the whites later noticed, "that all their war clubs, pipes and gun stocks had been lately and elaborately ornamented with molten lead." These types of actions, and encounters with lumbermen, inclined federal officials to revoke the provision of the 1837 treaty that allowed the Chippewa to remain on the ceded lands. [100]

On February 6, 1850 President Zachary Taylor issued an executive order ending the Chippewa's right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands. Local Indian agents were given the responsibility of determining which Chippewa were to be removed and where they would be relocated. The news caused considerable consternation among the Chippewa of Lake Superior, but among the St. Croix bands there was some interest in removing to another area. Only a month before the President's order the Snake River Chippewa had petitioned their agent for removal to the Crow Wing River in the Minnesota Territory. Portions of the band had already left the valley and crossed over the divide to Mille Lacs. Plans were made to remove all of the Chippewa from the valley, but typical of the slipshod manner in which Indian removals were managed federal authorities were unable to gather together the majority of the Indians in the region. After working all summer to make the move work Indian Agent John Watrous was able to effect the removal of 288 St. Croix residents to the Crow Wing River. Few of these remained long; nearly half were gone in a month. No concerted effort was again made to remove the St. Croix bands, nor were they awarded reservation lands in subsequent federal treaties. In the wake of President Taylor's order and the botched removal program, the St. Croix Chippewa were left in a legal limbo. They were not recognized as having rights in the St. Croix valley, yet there they resided for the next eighty years on lands unused or abused and abandoned by European American settlers. This precarious, furtive lifestyle led to the St. Croix band of the Chippewa being dubbed "the lost tribe." While the government may have lost sight of where they were, the Chippewa themselves were never "lost," or even in hiding. All they lost was the opportunity to live on at the Lac Court Oreilles Reservation. Instead they simply continued to live in small, band communities within the valley, where they live today. [101]

With no remaining legal claim to the St. Croix than the Chippewa, farmers of the lower St. Croix had no tolerance of the Dakota. In 1855, a large band of Dakota established a winter camp in the valley near Marine Mills. At first residents regarded the Dakota as interesting exotics. "They were really a curiosity to many of our citizens; they having not seen since their settlement here so large a party of Indians before," reported one townsman. In seeing the Dakota "dressed in pure Indian winter style" the people of Marine shared with each other "not a few half supressed, half frightened remarks at [of] ridicule." The merchant in charge of the local general store brought out a large barrel of crackers that the Indians "devoured" with the noise of "a flock of hungry geese." But it was not long before the Dakota ceased to be interesting and were regarded by most people in the area as a nuisance. One farmer complained the Dakota were, "frightening our wives and children, plundering our premises, laying vicious hands on every thing their savage eyes crave, and not leaving unmolested the domestic sanctity of our potato hoes." Without the least irony the settlers complained "and what is worse they are killing all our deer, --this last offense amounts to an unpardonable crime." [102]

The opportunity to hunt in the under utilized forests of the St. Croix is what lured the Dakota back across the Mississippi River. What recently arrived farmers regarded as "our deer" were, of course, a resource the Dakota had relied upon for generations as part of their seasonal subsistence cycle. Changes in the population and ecology of the Upper Mississippi country made their old hunting grounds on the St. Croix more attractive than ever. The growth of settlements such as Red Wing, Hastings, and St. Paul, and their adjacent agricultural districts, where by 1850 more than five thousand European Americans resided, taxed the game populations along the Mississippi. Development along the St. Croix was focused more on logging, with Swedish immigrants only just beginning to establish farmsteads north of Stillwater. The presence of these whites was not yet enough to deplete the game resources of the long contested region. The Dakota may also have felt somewhat shielded from Chippewa attack by the small population of newcomers. Every January or February in the 1850s the Dakota undertook hunts in the valley. These were male dominated hunting parties, with only a handful of women and children in the company. In addition to helping to prepare the deer hides the women made moccasins that they sold for bread in Stillwater. The Apple River was a particularly rich hunting preserve. "They were heavily laden with skins, game, &c., and seemed to be well pleased," recorded the St. Croix Union in January of 1857, at the conclusion of that year's hunt. The amount of game brought down by these hunting parties was indeed prodigious. "How many deer did you kill?" asked a reporter who visited a Dakota camp in 1855. In answer one of the hunters "held up both hands, and motioned with them quite deliberately, ten times–indicating, as we interpreted it, One Hundred." A year later when the Dakota left their hunting camps near Marine the local populace estimated, with perhaps some exaggeration that between eight and twelve hundred deer had been taken. [103]

The hunting success of the Dakota perturbed the European American settlers because they counted on game as a source of food and barter during the first years of farming. "It is hard for the industrious and poor white settler to have his wood and stacks of hay burnt up," the St. Croix Union editorialized, "his traps and their booty stolen, and his game shot down, and much of it wasted." The settlers formed committees, signed petitions, and lobbied the territorial governor, but to no avail. The new white residents of the St. Croix complained the Dakota had not become sedentary and blamed the government who "allowed a set of scheming rouges with a pittance of whiskey to cheat them out of their annuities." But nothing was done to stop the Dakota visits, which continued till the 1860s, when their villages were pushed far up the Minnesota River valley and the St. Croix ceased to be a lucrative hunting ground. [104]

Tragically throughout the painful twilight of Indian tenure, while English and Swedish voices replaced those of the Chippewa and Dakota along the St. Croix, the vicious intertribal war continued. The conflict was no longer really about territory, as treaties with the United States had awarded the valley to others. Vengeance, however, continued to exert a powerful spell. Remembering the wrongs of the past helped to obscure the problems of the present. Just as important was the need of young men to find a way to assert their manhood in a traditional way. Economic decline narrowed their range of opportunities to win distinction, so the feud continued.

In March of 1850, a war party from the village of Little Crow, the son of the Dakota leader who had first negotiated with the Americans, surprised a Chippewa camp on the Apple River. The ambush was a complete success. Eleven Chippewa women and children, and three men, were killed as they made maple sugar. One boy was captured. The next day the jubilant Dakota passed through Stillwater on their way west. They "went through the scalp dance, in celebration of their victory–forming a circle round the Chippeway boy–their prisoner–and occasionally striking him on the face with their reeking trophies," recorded the Minnesota Chronicle. The encounter was no different than hundreds that had come before and others that would follow. But the times and the river were different. With hope, boldness, and perfidy new people and new ways were dominating the valley. What once was seen as the way of wilderness war now, with the passage of the frontier and the disinheritance of a people, was deplored as simple, tragic, murder. [105]

The wretched attack at Apple River was one of the concluding scenes in the long history of Dakota dominance of the St. Croix Valley. After the tragic Sioux Uprising of 1862 the Dakota were removed far from the border river. Indian voices continued to be heard along the waterway but after 1862, those people were the Chippewa. They outlasted their ancient enemies by sheer persistence and they endured in the valley after the 1837 cession of their lands to the United States by practicing that same virtue.

The majority of the old Snake River band of Chippewa abandoned the valley during the 1850s, relocating to Mille Lacs. The bands at Yellow Lake and along the headwaters of the St. Croix, however, remained where they had always lived. Lacking land tenure they lived as squatters on government or lumber company lands. Wild rice and cranberry harvests remained vital to their subsistence and were supplemented with the yields of hunting and fishing. Furs continued to be traded, although the exchange now took place with small town merchants at a general store and not with red-sashed voyageurs at a trading post. During the late 1860s the United States government began to move Chippewa on to designated reservations. Most of the St. Croix Chippewa were related to tribal members living at the Lac Courte Oreille Reservation. A smaller number had family connections to the Chippewa of the Bad River Reservation. In time the reservations were subdivided into individual family allotments. The St. Croix Chippewa were not based at any reservation and most received no allotments and little in the way of educational or health services. While Bad River and Lac Courte Oreille were recognized Indian communities the St. Croix Chippewa pursued an independent existence largely unknown to the government. People in northern Wisconsin began to refer to the St. Croix band as "the lost tribe." [106]

Of course, the Chippewa were the last people in the valley to be "lost." They adapted to the rise of the logging industry by utilizing it as a source of wage labor. Chippewa frequently worked as lumberjacks and river drivers. In the latter task they excelled. In 1902, the loggers Gear & Stinson employed an entire crew of Chippewa to bring their drive down the Clam River. [107] A resident of Shell Lake later recalled "the young men, many of them, are our best drivers on the river; quick, sprightly, active." [108] Edward St. John, a Metis logger employed a large number of his Chippewa kinsmen in his forest operations. One of his logging campsites, located in Pine County, Minnesota, exists within the Riverway. The camp was operated by St. John for the Marine-on-St. Croix lumber company of Walker, Judd, and Veazie. During the last years of the nineteenth century between 150 and 175 Chippewa continued to reside along the St. Croix. [109] Trouble for them came when the pine forest was cut and there no longer were log drives on the river. This period coincided with the rise of fish and game regulations that made it difficult for Indians to live off the land on a full-time basis. Private ownership of land was also at its peak during the first years at the end of the nineteenth century restricting their ability to gather wild foods. Cranberry marshes that had been utilized for generations, for example, were increasingly drained to grow hay for dairy cows. White farmers, often from foreign lands, sometimes nursed fears about the native people who lived around them. In 1878, several Swedish settlers started a panic that spread like wildfire through Burnett County, Wisconsin. A large gathering of Chippewa was exaggerated into the beginnings of a concerted attack by both the Chippewa and the Dakota on all settlers. Scores of farms were abandoned in anticipation of an attack the Governor called upon General Philip Sheridan to dispatch federal troops to restore order. The army exposed the entire affair to be a misunderstanding, although it did recommend to Wisconsin that the Chippewa not be allowed to "roam about in bands." [110] As squatting on private lands became problematic some of the Chippewa bought parcels of land where families erected wooden shanties and invited friends and kinsmen to settle as well. One such collection of wigwams and houses was located about a mile up the Namekagon River from the St. Croix. Called Dogtown or Ducktown it was home to as many as fourteen families and was occupied as late as 1938. John Medoweosh, a band leader, owned a tract of land at the junction of the Yellow and St. Croix rivers. He lived there for many years with an extended, multi-generational family. Augustus Lagrew, a Metis with a full-blooded Chippewa wife, owned land a few miles from Shell Lake, Wisconsin, that also served as place of congregation for the Chippewa. Gifts of food or small loans by white neighbors helped the Chippewa get through hard winters, although rarely did the Indians beg for handouts or apply for formal aid through the county poor fund. [111]

There are scores of historic sites associated with the post-treaty occupation of the valley by the Chippewa. One such site was the Pacwawong Lake village site that was occupied from the mid-nineteenth century until about 1910. It was located about where there is now a boat launch, which destroyed the historical integrity of the site. Another village site from this period was at Little Yellow Banks on the St. Croix River in Pine County, Minnesota. The area had been utilized as a camping site by the Dakota and before them by prehistoric Native Americans. Several Chippewa families lived there until the 1930s when, according to oral tradition, they were displaced to make way for a Boy Scout camp. There are also many sites of historic and prehistoric Indian burials in the valley. [112]

The United States Government rediscovered the St. Croix Chippewa in 1910 when Senator Robert M. La Follette held a Senate hearing on the condition of Indians in Wisconsin. The fact that the St. Croix Chippewa had in the past received little in the way of annuities prompted several congressional efforts to provide them with federal relief. But the St. Croix Chippewa were not given what they needed most, a guaranteed land base within their homeland. Not until 1934, with the passage of the Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act), did the St. Croix Chippewa receive a federally recognized reservation. After eighty landless years the St. Croix people could not be brought together at a single location. Instead the new 3000-acre reservation was spread out over eleven separate Burnett County locations.

In the years that followed the Chippewa grew more and more like their neighbors whose ancestors hailed from Europe. Most of the St. Croix band became practicing Christians. One of their numbers, Philip B. Gordon, became the first Indian priest in the United States. He served not only his own people, but for many years was the beloved pastor to a largely white parish in the St. Croix valley. [113] Chippewa children participated in the same rural schools as the sons and daughters of farmers. Yet, in spite of these marks of assimilation the Chippewa remained anchored in their Indian identity. This identity became more important in the 1970s when the "Red Power" movement sparked greater political assertiveness. One result of this was the so-called "Walleye War" that was triggered in 1983 when the federal court established the rights of the Chippewa to fish outside of state regulations. The decline of both agriculture and forest products in the region had forced both whites and Indians to rely more on jobs in the tourism and recreation fields. Whites feared that the Chippewa's exercise of treaty rights would degrade stocks of fish that were critical to maintaining tourism. These tensions, which became violent in some parts of the North Country, were largely restrained in the St. Croix Valley. [114]

A more important assertion of Native American status came with the establishment of casino gambling. In 1974, President Richard Nixon approved changes in federal Indian policy that sparked a general move toward greater independent control of reservation lands by the tribal community. Although unanticipated at the time this led to a gradual expansion of restricted enterprises, from garbage dumps to gambling, on Indian reservations. The St. Croix Band of Lake Superior Chippewa took advantage of this change to establish two casinos, at Turtle Lake and Danbury. In a stunning turnaround, the St. Croix Tribal Enterprises became the largest private employer in Burnett County. Hundreds of white as well as Indian people found jobs in the gaming rooms and hotel complex. Profits from gambling led to the growth of a series of family, housing, and health services for the tribe.

At the 1837 council that resulted in the cession of their St. Croix lands the Chippewa chief Maghegabo tried to explain to Governor Henry Dodge that his people would endure in the valley. "Of all the country that we grant you we wish to hold on to a tree where we get our living & to reserve the stream where we drink the waters that give us life." The chief then placed an oak sprig, the germ of new life, on the council table. "Every time the leaves fall from it, we will count it as one winter past." After more than one hundred and fifty leaves have fallen from that symbolic tree the St. Croix Chippewa are more numerous and more economically successful than at any point in their history. Through exercise of the same patience and persistence that had served them so well in the long twilight struggle with the Dakota, the Chippewa survived the wave of white emigration that broke over the valley in the mid-nineteenth century. For them the St. Croix and the Namekagon remain "the waters that give us life." [115]

Figure 11. Dakota Village.