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

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

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.