MN History special 56/4 8/22/07 1:47 PM Page 154 ...collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/56/... · by the aging champions of national unity, Henry Clay of Kentucky and

T E R R I T O R I A L I M P E R A T I V E

RHODA R. GILMAN

MN History special 56/4 8/22/07 1:47 PM Page 154

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T he prairies and forests, the lakes and watersheds that surround

the upper reaches of the Mississippi and Red Rivers, and the

head of Lake Superior have been known and occupied by men and

women for more than 10,000 years. During that span, the human and

natural landscapes have been reworked several times by waves of climatic

and cultural change. But none was swifter than the change that went

into high gear as boundaries were drawn on a map and the region was

named “Minnesota.” That event occurred in March 1849, when a bill

Indian people at Mendota and soldiers across

the Minnesota River at the dawn of the

territorial era, portrayed in Henry Lewis’s

Fort Snelling, oil on canvas, about 1850



156 MINNESOTA HISTORY

ultimately, state government. The measure was urgedby the war department, recommended by the president,and vigorously supported by Henry H. Sibley, the localrepresentative of the American Fur Company.2 Yet lessthan a decade later, Sibley was lobbying just as hard toorganize the same region as a territory for European-American settlers instead. What had happened?

The seven years between 1842 and 1849 saw theUnited States assume continent-wide dominance as its“manifest destiny.” A war upon Mexico was concludedin February 1848 with the taking of that country’snorthern frontier from Texas to California. Later in thesame year, Oregon Territory was formed from a regionthat until 1844 had been jointly occupied with Britain.Thus, the entire configuration of the nation hadchanged, both on maps and in the minds of its citizens.No longer was the Mississippi River some sort of ulti-mate boundary. Linking the East Coast to the Far West

creating the new territory was passed by the U.S. Senateand signed by President James K. Polk.1

For most Americans, whether their sense of historystems from the classroom or from Disneyland, 1849 isassociated with the California gold rush. The fact thatMinnesota came into being at the same time is notentirely unconnected. Both events were expressions ofthe burst of expansion that transformed the UnitedStates in the 1840s. As late as 1842, the Senate had seri-ously considered but ultimately rejected a treaty withthe Dakota nation that would have created a permanentisland of Indian residence and government in theregion that was later to become southern Minnesota.The treaty promised the Dakota and other northerntribes that white immigrants would be excluded fromthe territory and that, after a short period of settled liv-ing, Indian people there would be granted UnitedStates citizenship along with their own territorial and,



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had become a national priority,and the idea of placing betweenthem a state that might differ inrace and culture from others inthe American republic—an ideanever accepted by Congress—became unthinkable.

The 1840s had also seen thecreation of two new states border-ing the upper Mississippi region—Iowa in 1846 and Wisconsin in1848. What was left of the two terri-tories from which they had beencarved straddled the headwaters ofthe great river and reached west tothe Missouri River and north to theBritish possessions. Most of the landstill belonged to the Dakota andOjibwe tribes, and the scatteredwhite population of traders, mission-aries, government agents, and a fewlumberjacks was far from the mini-mum of 5,000 required for territorial status—but thelogic of national expansion called for the area to beorganized immediately.

No one understood that fact more clearly than Sen-ator Stephen A. Douglas. The “Little Giant” of Illinoiswas already stepping into the large shoes being vacatedby the aging champions of national unity, Henry Clay ofKentucky and Lewis Cass of Michigan. Cass, who as gov-ernor of Michigan Territory had presided over theupper Mississippi country for 17 years, had visited theriver’s headwaters, and had left his name on one of itslakes, was the Democratic candidate for president in1848. During the campaign he addressed the divisiveissue of whether slavery would be extended across thecontinent by advocating local option, or “popular sover-eignty.” Although Cass’s loss to the Whig candidate,Zachary Taylor, was sealed in part by the upstart FreeSoilers, whose antislavery platform foreshadowed thetensions that lay ahead, his doctrine of popular sover-eignty was adopted by the more charismatic Douglas.The Illinois senator looked to the swelling populationof the West along with the powerful forces of economicgrowth, corporate organization, and outward expansionto counteract the conflict over human slavery.3

Like some other western statesmen, Douglas readdestiny in the geography of the upper Mississippiregion. The river already provided the country with athousand-mile channel uniting North and South. At thehead of steamboat navigation, the tiny hamlet ofSt. Paul was nourished by a growing commerce that

rolled over oxcart trails from theisolated British settlements on theRed River. From there it was nothard to chart the course ofAmerican empire across the far-flung private domain of theHudson’s Bay Company to the54th parallel, where Russianclaims began.4 Moreover, the

head of Lake Superior, little morethan 100 miles from St. Paul,

would eventually give deep-wateraccess to the heart of the continentand be the logical terminus for atranscontinental railroad.

As early as 1846, Douglas, then acongressman, had prevented Iowafrom extending its state line northto include the Fort Snelling areaand the Falls of St. Anthony. Againin 1847, while Wisconsin struggledtoward statehood, he reined in

efforts from politicians in Madison to take in St. Pauland the falls by supporting a bill for the organizationof “Minasota” Territory. It was tabled, but he revived itagain in 1848, for he could see that if the small nucleusof American population growing at the head of rivernavigation were to be annexed by another state, theremaining northern reaches of the country extendingto the British boundary would have little hope of orga-nized government for years to come.5

For the time being, economic control on the up-per Mississippi lay with a network of traders that wasanchored during the 1840s by the firm of PierreChouteau Jr. and Company of St. Louis. They includedHercules L. Dousman at Prairie du Chien, his associate,a mercurial newcomer to the Indian trade namedHenry M. Rice, and Sibley at Mendota. Formerly Dous-man’s partner, Sibley by 1846 was working indepen-dently with Chouteau, both as trader and land agent.His polish, education, and impeccable social and poli-tical connections gave him a recognized claim to lead-ership. Through a post operated by Norman W. Kittsonat Pembina on the British border, he was fast develop-ing a business in buffalo hides from the western plainsand smuggled furs from the Hudson’s Bay Companypreserve.6

The late 1840s saw this group alternately challengedand supported by lumbermen moving from Maine andNew Hampshire into the rich pine stands of the St. Croixvalley, which had been ceded in 1837 by the Ojibwe andDakota. With financial backing from the northeastern

Senator Stephen A. Douglas

of Illinois, who championed the

creation of Minnesota Territory




Those officers were ultimately named by the newpresident. Chief among them was the governor, Alex-ander Ramsey, a former Whig congressman from Penn-sylvania. Sibley had already been sent to Washington bya quasilegal election held in 1848 and was confirmed asthe territory’s congressional delegate in August 1849.Legislators, elected at the same time, held their first ses-sion at a St. Paul hotel early in September.

With the territory of 166,000 square miles orga-nized, the prime issues became land and people. A cen-sus taken in the summer of 1849 recorded the residentEuro-American population as 4,535. Probably as manyas one-third of those were of mixed Indian and Euro-pean ancestry, including nearly everyone in the widelyscattered settlement formed by the descendants ofFrench traders and voyageurs around Pembina. Censustakers listed these métis people as white, provided theydressed and lived in European fashion. The Indianpopulation can only be guessed at. Ramsey’s estimatewas some 25,000—none, of course, considered citizensor voters.

While nearly half the population counted in thecensus was concentrated in the three towns of St. Paul,Stillwater, and St. Anthony, Indian people were spreadwidely. On the banks of the Missouri at the far westernedge of the territory, more than 400 miles from St. Paul,the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes lived together in anearth-lodge village, Like-a-Fishhook, that was withoutmuch question the largest in the territory. Its estimatedpopulation of about 700 outnumbered Stillwater andprobably surpassed St. Paul.7

Not for long, however, was this true. Creation of thenew territory turned St. Paul into a feverish little boomtown. The population more than doubled within a year,four newspapers appeared, and shanties sprouted likemushrooms along the Mississippi River bluff. Neverthe-less, all of the huge territory—except the narrow trian-gle of land between the St. Croix and the MississippiRivers and south of a line running through Lake MilleLacs—was still Indian country. No treaties of purchasefor the rest of the territory had yet been signed. FacingSt. Paul across and just down the Mississippi lay theDakota town of Kaposia, a daily reminder of the funda-mental barrier that stood in the way of new immigration.

The human face of that barrier was represented bythree tribes: the Dakota or Sioux of southern Minne-sota, the Ojibwe or Chippewa to the north, and theHo-Chunk or Winnebago, who had been moved fromtheir home in central Wisconsin to northern Iowa,promised a place in central Minnesota in 1846, and set-tled on land bought in 1847 from the Ojibwe. All three

Territorial powers (from right) Henry Sibley, Joseph

Rolette Jr. (standing), and unidentified man, possibly

Franklin Steele, photographed by Mathew Brady in his

Washington, D. C., studio, about 1857

states, these New Englanders began rafting logs down theMississippi and building sawmills at places like MarineMills and Stillwater. A personal link between the twogroups was Franklin Steele, brother-in-law and businessassociate of Sibley. Steele owned the key waterpower siteat the Falls of St. Anthony, where he built the first sawmilland started producing lumber in September 1848.

Both traders and lumbermen were eager for thejobs, patronage, and wider influence that would accom-pany a new territory. With the support of Douglas, theWisconsin boundary was eventually placed at theSt. Croix River. Again in 1849 the Illinois senator playeda key role at the last moment, saving the bill creatingMinnesota Territory from a congressional deadlock overwhether the outgoing Democratic or incoming Whigadministration would appoint the territorial officers.



WINTER 1998–99 159




the traders. This was a feature of nearly every Indiantreaty, despite mandates to the contrary often made byCongress in an effort to prevent fraudulent claims. Toensure collection, traders represented at Traverse desSioux drew up a document listing the debts andsecured the signature of each Indian headman as heleft the treaty table.

Debate raged later as to whether the Dakota under-stood the traders’ paper, and the procedure gave rise tocomplaints of fraud and favoritism from other traders.

groups were acquainted with European ways throughtraders who had lived and married among them for acentury. More recently they had dealt with Christianmissionaries and the U.S. Army. All three had experi-enced the fickleness of the Great Father in Washingtonand the unreliability of his many agents. Their principalleaders—Little Crow and Wabasha of the Dakota, Hole-in-the-Day and Flat Mouth among the Ojibwe, andWinneshiek of the Ho-Chunk—were canny and wary,yet keenly conscious of the power behind the migratinghordes that were poised to overrun their land.

In his inaugural address to the first legislature,Governor Ramsey targeted purchase of southern Min-nesota from the Dakota tribe as the prime need of thenew territory. A memorial on the subject was duly sentto Congress, and for the next three years that goal wasthe central preoccupation of Minnesota citizens. Thekey to achieving it peacefully was the trading establish-ment led by Sibley, who had lived and worked for nearly20 years among the Dakota. Allied with him werepowerful mixed-blood families like the Faribaults andRenvilles. Without support from these people and theirwidespread networks of kin among the four bands ofthe tribe, there was little hope for getting agreement toa treaty.

It was in July 1851 that Ramsey and Commissioner ofIndian Affairs Luke Lea, acting as federal treaty negotia-tors, met with the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands at Tra-verse des Sioux, near present-day St. Peter. On the samespot, just 10 years earlier, these Dakota groups hadagreed immediately to the treaty that would have createdan all-Indian territory. But the Great Father had changedhis mind, and in 1851 they were faced with somethingfar different. In the meantime there had been lean years,and some of the people were close to starvation whileothers had survived only on credit from traders.8

The United States now proposed to take all theirland as far west as Lake Traverse and the Big SiouxRiver for its own citizens. When the bargaining was fin-ished, the two bands found themselves confined to astrip of country extending 10 miles on each side of theMinnesota River above the Yellow Medicine River.Below that, another 20-mile-wide strip was reserved forthe Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands, with whom aseparate treaty would be made.

For their land they were to be paid about 7.5 centsan acre. Most of the sum would be invested and itsinterest yield an annuity for 50 years. Some $30,000 wasto be spent immediately on schools, mills, blacksmithshops, and other government services, while the re-maining $275,000 would be given to the chiefs, whomight then pay the debts members of the tribe owed



WINTER 1998–99 161

Those charges led to a congressional investigation thatprobed the close working relationship between Ramseyand Sibley but found no malfeasance. Most of the smalltraders who received money as a result of the treatywere deeply in debt to Sibley, who in turn owed nearlyall of what he collected to the Chouteau company.Thus, little of the payment stayed in Minnesota.

Meanwhile a separate treaty had been signed atMendota in August 1851 with the Mdewakanton andWahpekute. Having already received some treaty money

Dakota leaders lined up to make their signature marks in

Francis D. Millet’s oil, The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux,

painted in 1905 from sketches that artist Frank B. Mayer

had made at the signing in 1851




Lobbying the treaties through Congress was again thework of Sibley, this time in his role as territorial delegate.It was a bitter struggle. Southern diehards who opposednational expansion to the north succeeded in amendingthe documents in a way that they hoped the Indianswould reject. One major change was to strike out theprovision for a reservation along the Minnesota Riverand to leave the Dakota with nowhere to go except someunnamed place that the president might designate. The

from ceding their land east of the Mississippi, the Mdewa-kanton were less hungry and desperate than the others.They were also more determined and suspicious, sincethey had learned from experience that government pay-ments were always late and that many promises werenever kept—facts that Little Crow repeatedly pointedout. But there was nothing they could do except pro-test. They were trapped by the fact that the westernbands had already given in.

Minnesota

River

Black Dog's



WINTER 1998–99 163

Dakota were indeed angered. But Ramsey assured themthat the president would name the valley of the Minne-sota River as their permanent home, and the revisedtreaties were reluctantly accepted in the fall of 1852.

During the same years the Indian barrier to thenorth was also under attack. Ironically, this began withan effort to move more Ojibwe into Minnesota Terri-tory. In 1837 and 1842 they had ceded all of their landin northern Wisconsin, but in both cases treaty negotia-tors had assured the people that they would not have tomove for several generations, if ever. What the UnitedStates wanted was only access to timber and minerals.By February, 1850, however, the Great Father hadchanged his mind, and all of them were told to relocatewest of the Mississippi. Governor Ramsey of Minnesotawas to take charge of the process.9

Ramsey plannedto put most of themin the neighbor-hood of LeechLake, still far fromthe edge of settle-ment and awayfrom increasingcommerce on LakeSuperior. The U.S.Indian agency wouldbe moved from LaPointe, in northernWisconsin, and the mostimmediate change heforesaw would be moregovernment business,jobs, and money flowingthrough St. Paul tonorthern Minnesota.He took no steps, how-ever, to get agreement from the Ojibwe bands alreadyliving around the Mississippi headwaters, and when theyobjected, the new location was changed to Sandy Lake.Forcing the Wisconsin bands to move was thought to besimple: their annuities, including both money and sup-plies, would be paid only at Sandy Lake, and any whorefused to travel there would receive none.

During the next three years a tangled and tragictale, marked by incompetence, lies, and callousness tohuman suffering on the part of both Ramsey and Indianagent John M. Watrous ended in the death of betweentwo and four hundred Ojibwe. They were saved furtherloss from starvation, exposure, and disease when theelection of 1852 sent Democrat Franklin Pierce to theWhite House. The new administration replaced Ramseyand Watrous with Democratic appointees. Possiblyinfluenced by appeals from the Ojibwe leader Buffalowho with a few others traveled illegally to Washington,the president also cancelled the policy of removal.

Relieved and thankful, the Ojibwe bands aroundLake Superior willingly signed a new treaty in 1854.In return for permanent, designated reservations intheir own country they gave up the Minnesota Arrow-head, the northeasternmost region of the territory,which was already suspected to contain important min-eral wealth. Also included in this treaty was the northbank of the St. Louis River at its mouth, where a shel-tered deep-water port provided the key to transporta-tion and commercial expansion at the head of LakeSuperior. In 1855 still another section of the barrieragainst American occupation fell, when the Ojibwe

Little Crow at the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, an 1895 oil

portrait by Frank B. Mayer based on his 1851 sketch

Territorial Governor

Alexander Ramsey




ulation poured into an area. A tract bought from Indianpeople for 7.5 cents and resold by the government to itsown citizens for $1.25 might be worth hundreds if plat-ted as a town lot or even thousands if it became thebusiness block of a rising city. Successive waves of landspeculation built great fortunes and fueled the U.S.economy through much of the nineteenth century, andone of them was cresting just at the time Minnesotabecame a territory.

Not until February 1853 did the purchase of south-ern Minnesota from the Dakota become official, andsettlement was not legal there until a year and a halflater. But the tide would not be held back. As soon asthe signing of the treaties was announced late in 1852,a flood of trespassers surged onto Indian land. As atRed Wing in the spring of 1853, the new owners has-tened the departure of lingering Dakota neighbors bytorching bark houses that stood in their way.

They came on overcrowded steamboats or theywalked across Illinois and Wisconsin beside coveredwagons—men, women, and children, cattle, pigs, andother livestock. Many were newcomers from Sweden,Germany, Ireland, and other north European countries.Some came as extended families and others accompa-nied neighbors from the Old Country. Along with theirdomestic animals they brought seed to replace the na-tive prairie grasses with crops that had fed their ances-tors in Europe. Thus, not only the human face but theunderlying biological patterns of Minnesota began tochange immediately. By 1854 the Euro-American popu-lation of the territory was more than 30,000, and justthree years later it topped 150,000. Among people over15 years of age counted in the U.S. census of 1850, whitemen had outnumbered white women by more than twoto one, but by 1860 the ratio was almost one to one.11

A sizable number of these people congregated inthe new towns that sprang up along the Minnesota andMississippi Rivers: Carver, Henderson, Mankato, Wi-nona, Wabasha, Read’s Landing, Red Wing, Hastings,St. Anthony Falls, and eventually Minneapolis, after theFort Snelling military reservation was opened to landclaims in 1855. The mainstays of this urban frontierwere sawmills and river commerce. Farms in the coun-try behind them were still small, producing little morethan subsistence crops, and roads to market were few.So throughout the territorial years Minnesota importedfood from downriver. Its principal exports remainedlumber, hides, and furs.

During these years there was constant agitationfor relaxing federal land law, which required that landbe surveyed before it could be claimed. In 1854 thiswas changed for Minnesota to allow pre-emption

bands around the Mississippi headwaters agreed to asimilar arrangement and ceded most of north-centralMinnesota. The same year saw the Ho-Chunk againmoved, this time to a small reservation in the BlueEarth River valley of southern Minnesota.

With the signing of these treaties a subtle but pro-found change had already taken place. Prairie and oakopenings had become acres; forests had become timberstands; tumbling rivers had become water rights. Aworld of natural features once invested with mysteryand power of their own had become resources forhuman manipulation. Unlike the Dakota, the Ojibwehad a generation yet ahead of them to accommodateto this transformation. In southern Minnesota, changecame more quickly.

To nineteenth-century Americans, too, land had analmost holy quality. The sacred element they saw wasnot the land itself, with its ancient layers of interwovenplant and animal life, but the dream of what humanlabor could produce from it. In the words of one anony-mous midcentury poet:

The land is the gift of bounteous God,And to labor his word commands;Yet millions of hands want acres,And millions of acres want hands.10

Even more alluring and powerful than the naturalbounty of land was the meteoric rise in its value as pop-

Silver peace medal (reverse side), dated 1853 and

presented to Ojibwe chief Hole-in-the-Day II during the

administration of President Franklin Pierce



(registering of a claim) on unsurveyed land. Such claimscould be “proved up” later. The great fear of many set-tlers was that a land auction would be declared beforethey had the money to buy their claims, and politicianswere kept busy working to have such sales postponed.In 1862 the Homestead Act ended this system, but dur-ing Minnesota’s territorial years grassroots claim associa-tions, which were prepared to defend the rights of vul-nerable settlers, were common. So also were scores of“paper towns” platted and promoted in hopes of bal-looning land values that were never realized. Along withthese came land speculators and loan sharks like Jason C.Easton of Chatfield, who advertised that he made andbrokered loans, collected on bad debts, paid taxes,examined titles, and above all located and dealt inmilitary-bounty land warrants. Those certificates for thepurchase of government land became a bonanza forspeculators after 1855, when Congress gave them as abonus to Mexican War veterans.12

Despite growing ethnic diversity, the economic,cultural, and political leadership of the territory washeld firmly by Anglo-Americans, and the influence ofthose from northeastern states earned Minnesota thenickname “New England of the West.” Laws and institu-tions embodied that influence. At its first session in1849, the legislature passed an expansive common-school act, and nine years later 72 school districtsoffered free education to anyone between the ages of

four and twenty-one. The same legislators chartered auniversity and proclaimed their keen sense of destiny bycreating a historical society. While the university re-mained a dream for many years, church bodies movedahead at once to supply the growing need for trainingschoolteachers and ministers. On the town square ofRed Wing in 1856 Hamline University laid stone foun-dations for the first four-year college west of the Missis-sippi. The next year it opened its doors, admittingwomen as well as men. Other than elementary teaching,there was little paid employment for women in the ter-ritory, but they undertook social service and nursingwhen the Sisters of St. Joseph founded St. Paul’s firsthospital after a cholera epidemic in 1854.13

A literate population demanded newspapers, andby 1858 more than 80 had been started in the territory.From their print shops early editors like James M.Goodhue of the Minnesota Pioneer and David Olmsted ofthe Minnesota Democrat, both in St. Paul, and Charles G.Ames of the St. Anthony Falls Minnesota Republicanacted as territorial boosters and opinion makers. In1857 the first woman’s voice was heard, when Jane GreySwisshelm issued the controversial St. Cloud Visiter tochampion abolition and women’s rights.

In politics it was a time when party lines were shift-ing all across the nation in response to rising sectionaltensions. This was reflected in Minnesota, where partiesexisted in name only through most of the territorial

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Bank note from 1849, a rare surviving example of the territory’s fledgling economy



made possible by the pressure of economic interestsfrom both North and South. With an immediate con-frontation over slavery postponed, Douglas and othersturned to an emerging network of corporate enterprisethat they hoped would support a political coalition pow-erful enough to hold the nation back from war.

This new force rode on the steel rails that were eventhen transforming the country by shrinking time anddistance. Douglas himself had performed a politicalcoup in 1850 when he secured to the state of Illinois thefirst major grant of federal land for purposes of railroadbuilding. He envisioned an expanding web, knitting thecountry together, with the Illinois Central system at itsheart. Southern extensions would reach into Texas,and its northern anchor would be a new city namedSuperior at the head of the big lake.14

That city, platted in 1853 on the Wisconsin side ofthe St. Louis River, further expressed the continentaldreams that had gone into the making of MinnesotaTerritory. A possible route for a transcontinental rail-road west from Lake Superior was even then beingexplored by the U.S. Army. The Sault Canal, alreadyunder construction, would bring shipping from thelower lakes to the head of Lake Superior within twoyears. But the most immediate step would be building arail line that would link the lake with St. Paul and ex-tend on through Minnesota and Iowa where it wouldconnect with a branch of the Illinois Central.

Then, as now, money ruled politics. In accord withDouglas’s vision, shares in the far northern boom townwere distributed to a host of influential Democraticpoliticians from both the southern and northern

wings of the party, while much of the capital for itsdevelopment came from the deep pockets of Wil-liam W. Corcoran, a Washington-based financier withstrong southern sympathies. In Minnesota, where thecharter and a land grant for the proposed railroad

link had to originate, all political factions werebrought to the table, including Sibley, Ramsey, Gor-man, and others less prominent. Henry Rice wasamong the first and most closely involved. After try-

ing to make his own claims on the site of the townof Superior, he had come to terms with the

agents of Douglas and was actively promotingthe railroad scheme.

Rice had succeeded Sibley as Minne-sota’s territorial delegate in 1853, and atemporary truce prevailed between them.Then, early in 1854, lobbyists from theIllinois Central company strong-armed

the territorial legislature into passing thecharter of the new Minnesota and North

years. Although replaced as governor by DemocratWillis A. Gorman in 1853, Ramsey remained a power,far outweighing the influence of the few other localWhigs. As his party began to disintegrate he played awaiting game, refusing to commit to the new MinnesotaRepublican Party, organized in 1855, until it gainedunmistakable momentum. Sibley, a moderate Demo-crat, had strong personal and political ties to Cass andDouglas but, following the nonpartisan model set byCass in Michigan Territory, he maintained local allies inall camps. Sibley’s chief rival, Henry M. Rice, with whomhe had quarreled in business and continued to quarrelin politics, was nonpartisan in his own way. As thenational Democratic Party threatened to split betweennorthern and southern wings, Rice, a skilled lobbyistand office-seeker, remained a friend of whoever was inpower. With unfailing charm and cheerful cynicism, hebrought the spoils from Washington back to Minnesota.

A year after Minnesota emerged as a political entity,Cass, from his position as senior statesman and senatorfrom Michigan, stitched together the patchwork ofagreements known as the Compromise of 1850. It was

Desk set used in the 1856 territorial legislature by

Representative Thomas W. Pierce of Richfield,

Hennepin County: wax sealer with wooden

handle, maple sand shaker (for blotting), and

cast-iron paperweight




Western Railroad Company, with a provision that anyland grant made to Minnesota for railroad buildingwould automatically go to that company. Sibley becameincreasingly cool, and Congress also proved skittishabout such a restrictive arrangement. One land-grantbill introduced by Rice was defeated.

As the price of his support for a second attempt,Sibley demanded the right to draw up the bill himself.In doing so, he worded it carefully so that the Minne-sota and North Western would not be eligible to receivethe grant. That version was successful in Congress, butjubilation in Minnesota came to a screeching halt whenit was found that the law’s wording had been altered tofavor the company some time between its passage by theHouse of Representatives and its signing by the presi-dent. The resulting scandal sunk both the land grantand the Minnesota and North Western.

Thus, the steel rails that might have stretched fromSt. Paul to Superior in 1855 were not laid until 1870, andthe whole railroad era in Minnesota was delayed beyondthe end of the territorial years. Although Minnesota’sisolation during the months when the Mississippi wasfrozen had been partially overcome by governmentroads and stagecoach lines established in the territorialyears, the need for all-weather transportation remained,and the political scheming and burning desire for ashare in the economic bonanza promised by railroadsplayed an important role in the rush toward statehood.

Time was running out for the promoters of Superiorand the Illinois Central, for in 1857 the wave of pros-perity that had supported the northwest region’s phe-nomenal growth crashed on the rocks of financialpanic. Money became tight throughout the country andalmost nonexistent in Minnesota; land values collapsed,and western settlement slowed. Superior shrank into afrontier outpost, and even exuberant St. Paul was throwninto the doldrums for several years.

For the political vision of Illinois’s Little Giant, timehad also run out. Far from defusing the slavery issue,the doctrine of popular sovereignty, embodied in theKansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, had brought outright war-fare to the territory of Kansas. The forces of corporateempire-building and interlocking material interests hadnot proved strong enough to contain those of moraloutrage and cultural conflict. Thus, when Minnesotadelegates gathered in the summer of 1857 to draw up astate constitution, the shadow of “Bleeding Kansas”hung over them. The flaming issues that divided themwere the status of black people, both free and slave, andthe new relationships implied by a recent decision ofthe U.S. Supreme Court, which held that Harriet and

Territorial delegate to Congress Henry M. Rice

WINTER 1998–99 167



PostScri

GILMAN C

1650s–70s • European explorers encounterOjibwe and Dakota inhabitants ofMinnesota region

1787• Some Ojibwe and Dakota landsincluded in Northwest Territory ofthe U.S.

1803• Louisiana Purchase acquires for theU.S. 828,000 square miles of Indian-occupied land between MississippiRiver and Rocky Mountains

1805–06• Zebulon M. Pike, an Americanarmy officer, explores parts ofMinnesota region

1812• Red River colony (Winnipeg)started by Lord Selkirk, a Scottishnobleman

1818• Convention with Great Britainestablishes 49th parallel as northernboundary of the U.S. from Lake ofthe Woods to Rocky Mountains

1819 • Fort Snelling established as north-westernmost army post on the U.S.frontier

1820s• American fur trade peaks inMinnesota

1820• Missouri compromise bans slaveryin Louisiana Territory north of36°30 ′ (southern boundary ofMissouri)

1823 • First mail-carrying steamboat, basedat St. Louis, reaches Fort Snelling

T W O C E N T U R I E S O F M I N N

Thirty-hour shelf clock, made in Connecticut by

E. N. Welch Manufacturing Company and brought to

Minnesota Territory by Gottfried Henneberg



Script Picture

AN CLOCK.ghost

1834 • Missionaries arrive in Minnesota toconvert Indians to Christianity

1836 • Slave Dred Scott brought to Fort Snelling by his owner, an armysurgeon

1837• First major treaties with Ojibwe andDakota take east-central Minnesotaand adjacent Wisconsin for whitesettlement

1839• Pierre Parrant constructs shanty at“Pig’s Eye” (St. Paul)

1846• Iowa admitted as 29th stateMexican-American War begins

1847• Harriet Bishop starts Minnesota’sfirst school in St. Paul

1848• Gold discovered in California• U.S. acquires California, the South-west, and Rio Grande boundary areaat end of war with Mexico • Wisconsin admitted as 30th state,leaving Minnesota area withoutgovernment• Mass northern European migrationto U.S. begins• Stillwater Convention stimulatesMinnesota’s drive for territorialstatus

1849• Minnesota Territory organized with less than 5,000 people• First newspapers in Minnesota published

1850• Compromise of 1850 calms slaverycontroversy by permitting Californiato enter Union as a nonslave state,opening Utah and New MexicoTerritories to slavery at statehood,prohibiting slave trade in District ofColumbia, and increasing powerof slave owners to retrieve runawayslaves• First U.S. census in Minnesotashows population of 6,077

1851• 200,000 Irish emigrate to U.S. toescape potato famine• By treaties of Mendota andTraverse des Sioux, the Dakota cedetheir land west of Mississippi River(southern and western Minnesota) tothe U.S.• St. Paul, St. Anthony (merged withMinneapolis in 1872), and Stillwaterselected as sites of capital, university,and penitentiary• Caravan of 102 Red River oxcartsarrives in St. Paul

1852• Grammar and Dictionary of the DakotaLanguage, compiled by Stephen R.Riggs, Thomas S. Williamson, andGideon and Samuel Pond, publishedby Smithsonian Institution

1854• Kansas-Nebraska Act reopens slav-ery controversy by repealing theMissouri Compromise and allowingvoters to decide the status of slaveryin the two territories • By Treaty of La Pointe, the Ojibwecede northeastern Minnesota to theU.S.• U.S. legalizes pre-emption, grantingpurchase rights to the first claimanton unsurveyed land in Minnesotaand Iowa• Rock Island Railroad excursionbrings tourists and publicity toMinnesota

1855• Mississippi, Pillager, and Winnibi-goshish bands of Ojibwe cede theirlands in central and northernMinnesota to the U.S.• Minnesota’s Republican Partyorganized in response to formationof national party in 1854• First bridge to span MississippiRiver’s main channel anywherealong its length opens betweenMinneapolis and St. Anthony

1857• National financial panic ends pros-perity that has supported MinnesotaTerritory’s growth• U.S. Supreme Court exacerbatesslavery controversy by ruling in DredScott case that Scott’s residency inMinnesota Territory did not entitlehim to sue for freedom• Pre-statehood census showsterritorial population of 150,037• Democrats and Republicans holdrival constitutional conventions inanticipation of statehood• Attempt to remove Minnesota’scapital to St. Peter

1858• Trans-Atlantic cable connectingU.S. and England laid• Minnesota admitted as 32nd state

1859 • Oregon admitted as 33rd state

1860• Abraham Lincoln elected presidentSouthern states begin seceding

1861• Governor Alexander Ramseypledges President Lincoln 1,000 vol-unteers, making Minnesota the firststate to offer troops to the Unioncause

E S O T A A N D U . S . H I S T O R Y




Douglas in Washington, however, had ensured that anelongated north-south shape was specified in theenabling act passed by Congress, and this ultimatelyprevailed. In reaching to the British line and includingthe envisioned railroad route from Lake Superior west-ward, it reflected the continuing strength of expansion-ist ambitions.

As early as 1851 Ramsey had ridden to Pembina tonegotiate with the Ojibwe a treaty of purchase for partof the Red River Valley. Congress had failed to ratify it,but throughout the territorial years trade with theBritish colony to the north had steadily increased. Thefirst three years of statehood saw an even stronger pushin that direction, with the building of a stage and wagonroad to supplement the meandering oxcart trails thathad served since the 1830s. A move was also made toopen steamboat navigation on the Red River. Theseefforts were temporarily suspended, however, by theCivil and Dakota wars.15

In the interval thus created, Britain began the slowprocess of consolidating civil government in its sprawl-ing North American territories and reached out toestablish control over the Red River settlement and the

Dred Scott were stillslaves, although theyhad lived for years atFort Snelling in freeterritory. So hot weretempers that Minne-sota’s Democrats andRepublicans met sep-arately and drew updifferent constitutions.

Local self-interestremained alive andwell, nevertheless.Statehood promisednot only influence indebates at the nation-al level but controlover local borrowingand taxation. A cru-cial incentive was thecontinuing fever tosubsidize and pro-mote railroads, in-cluding the prospectof a transcontinentalline running throughMinnesota to thePacific. Compromisewas therefore reachedoutside the meeting rooms, and a single constitutionwas at last agreed upon.

In anticipation of statehood, elections were heldthat pitted Sibley, who campaigned as an antislaveryDemocrat, in a race for governor against Ramsey, thenew champion of Minnesota Republicans. Margins werenarrow but Sibley prevailed, and Democrats won mostof the offices. The elected legislators agreed to sendHenry Rice to the U.S. Senate. Candidates for the otherSenate seat were deadlocked, and the choice went to adark horse named James Shields, a former Illinois sen-ator and friend of Douglas. With Congress immobilizedover Kansas, Minnesota’s admission was held up formonths, but at last, on May 11, 1858, the territory be-came a state.

Its shape had been hotly debated. Some had arguedthat Minnesota should extend west to the Missouri andnorth only to the 46th parallel (the latitude of present-day Little Falls). Less compelling alternatives set thenorthern boundary at 45°30 ′, 45°15 ′, or even farthersouth. Such a state would have included most of Min-nesota’s immigrant farmers and a majority of Repub-lican voters. The influence of Democrats Rice and

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WINTER 1998–99 171

restive gens libres, or métis, of the northern plains. Withthis, the vision of American territorial expansion beganto fade, although in Minnesota it flickered a short timelonger, encouraged by the U.S. purchase of Alaska in1867 and the Riel Rebellion of 1870 in Manitoba. Butalthough the 49th parallel remained the internationalline, bioregions, human communities, and economicinterests continued to ignore it. Before the first railroadwas opened from Minnesota to Puget Sound, Canadiancitizen James J. Hill’s St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manito-ba Railroad, financed by the Bank of Montreal, was car-rying grain from Manitoba to the mills of Minneapolis.

The nine territorial years had set the stage fortransforming the natural and cultural landscapes of theupper Mississippi country into those of a “civilized”Euro-American community. The undisturbed systems ofplant and animal life that Americans called “wilderness”were converted into commodities subject to ownership

and exchange. A way of life that regarded them as eter-nal and necessary for human existence was ruthlesslyeliminated. As a result, the scene was also prepared forthe tragic drama that drenched Minnesota’s westernprairies in blood when the Dakota made a last desper-ate effort to take back their country in 1862.

Still in the future during the territorial years was thetime when the forests would be slashed and the curvesof prairie land would be regimented into rectangularfields fenced with barbed wire and deeds. Even fartherin the future was the time when Minnesota could boastof being the world’s breadbasket and its iron mineswould build the steel infrastructure of an industrialsociety. And undreamed-of yet was the swelling metro-politan area that would leap even state lines to becomethe transportation, economic, and cultural hub of thewhole region between the upper Great Lakes and theRocky Mountains. The script, however, was already inplace. ^

1 Unless otherwise noted, factual material for this article canbe found in standard sources on Minnesota history, especiallyvolume 1 of William W. Folwell’s A History of Minnesota (St. Paul:Minnesota Historical Society, 1956) and Theodore C. Blegen,Minnesota: A History of the State (Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press, 1963).

2 For an account of this treaty, negotiated by WisconsinGovernor James D. Doty, see Rhoda R. Gilman, “A Northwest-ern Indian Territory—The Last Voice,” paper delivered at theannual meeting of the Western History Association, Oct. 1997,forthcoming in Journal of the West.

3 The most recent biography of Cass emphasizes his role asa negotiator and compromiser; see Willard C. Klunder, LewisCass and the Politics of Moderation (Kent, Oh.: Kent State Univer-sity Press, 1996). On Douglas, see Robert W. Johannsen, StephenA. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

4 The southern limit of Russian claims was 54°40′. As earlyas the election of 1844, Polk’s supporters had coined the cam-paign slogan “54-40 or Fight,” but destiny soon manifested tothe south, and the U.S. and Great Britain compromised to setthe northern border of Oregon at the 49th parallel.

5 For a full discussion of the controversy over the Wisconsinstate boundary and the creation of Minnesota Territory, seeWilliam E. Lass, “Minnesota’s Separation from Wisconsin:Boundary Making on the Upper Mississippi Frontier,” Minneso-ta History 50 (Winter 1987): 309–20, and “The Birth of Minneso-ta,” Minnesota History 55 (Summer 1997): 267–79.

6 Rhoda R. Gilman, “Last Days of the Upper Mississippi FurTrade,” Minnesota History 42 (Winter 1970): 122–40.

7 Folwell, History of Minnesota, 1: 351–52; Roy W. Meyer, The

Village Indians of the Upper Missouri: The Mandans, Hidatsas, andArikaras (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 104.

8 For full accounts of the 1851 treaty, see Folwell, History ofMinnesota, 1: 266–304; Lucile M. Kane, “The Sioux Treaties andthe Traders,” Minnesota History 32 (June 1951): 65–80.

9 On the Ojibwe removal effort, see James A. Clifton, “Wis-consin Death March: Explaining the Extremes in the OldNorthwest Indian Removal,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Acad-emy of Sciences. Arts and Letters 75 (1987): 1–39; Ronald N. Satz,“Chippewa Treaty Rights: The Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’sChippewa Indians in Historical Perspective,” Transactions of theWisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 79 (1991): 51–59.

10 “The Acres and the Hands,” Daily Minnesotian (St. Paul),Dec. 18, 1860.

11 See United States Historical Census Data Browser, withdata from 1790 to 1970, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/.

12 Rodney C. Loehr, “Jason C. Easton, Territorial Banker,”Minnesota History 29 (Sept. 1948): 223–30.

13 Sister Helen Angela Hurley, “The Sisters of St. Joseph andthe Minnesota Frontier,” Minnesota History 30 (Mar. 1949): 9.

14 For development of Superior and the political dreamsand railroad schemes surrounding it, see Henry Cohen, Businessand Politics in America from the Age of Jackson to the Civil War: TheCareer Biography of W. W. Corcoran (Westport, Conn.: GreenwoodPress, 1971), 159–201. See also Johannsen, Douglas, 304–21,435–37.

15 See Rhoda R. Gilman, Carolyn Gilman, and Deborah M.Stultz, The Red River Trails: Oxcart Routes Between St. Paul and theSelkirk Settlement 1820–1870 (St. Paul: Minnesota HistoricalSociety, 1979).

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