St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 1:
Valley of Plenty, River of Conflict (continued)

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).