I have not deemed it entirely relevant to my subject to discuss the topography, the geology, or the aboriginal inhabitants of the Red River valley. And for another reason than its relevancy, I have omitted any discussion thereof because they have heretofore been treated by the honored secretary of this Society, Warren Upham, in a paper read at its annual meeting in 1895 (Minnesota Historical Society Collections, vol. VIII, pages 11–24).

The Red River valley, as this term is commonly used, is a broad and flat prairie plain reaching ten to twenty miles on each side of the Red river of the North, having thus about half of its expanse in Minnesota and the other half in North Dakota. It extends three hundred miles from south to north, continuing in Manitoba to lake Winnipeg. Inclosed by the higher land on each side, and pent in at the north by the barrier of the receding icesheet at the end of the Glacial period, this valley plain was covered in that geologic epoch by a vast lake, which, with the complete disappearance of the ice-sheet, was drained away to Hudson bay. To this glacial lake Mr. Upham has given the name of Lake Agassiz; and its survey and description are the subject of a volume prepared by him and published by the United States Geological Survey. The closing chapters of that work should be consulted by any who seek information concerning the general agricultural 0020 2 capabilities of this very fertile district, or concerning its water supply and its hundreds of artesian wells.

The beginning of wheat raising in the Red River valley was in the Selkirk settlement north of the boundary line, near Fort Garry, now Winnipeg.

In 1811 the Earl of Selkirk purchased from the Hudson Bay Company a vast tract of land in Manitoba, including the land afterward occupied by the Selkirk settlement. The purchase was subject to the Indian claim to its title. About the time of this purchase there was a compulsory exodus of the inhabitants of the county of Sutherland, Scotland, from the estates of the Duchess of Sutherland; and Lord Selkirk took a large number of these evicted persons under his protection and forwarded them to settle on the land he had purchased on the Red river. They arrived on the bay in the fall of the year, and spent the winter at Churchill, on the western shore of the bay. In the following spring they advanced inland, crossed lake Winnipeg, and ascended the Red river of the North. They intended to make their home at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red rivers, but on arriving there found that the X. Y. and the Northwest Companies of Canada, which were opponents of the Hudson Bay Company, regarded them as invaders and also as protégés of the latter. The Indians also objected to the cultivation of their hunting grounds, and were instigated to hostile proceedings against the new comers by the representations of the Canadian companies.

The year 1812 passed without any satisfactory progress being made toward settlement, and the immigrants spent the following winter in great distress at Pembina, whither they were driven by the Indians. By some means, however, they were able to mollify their opponents, and were permitted to return in the spring. They built log houses and began the cultivation of the land on the bank of the river. Within a year they were attacked by the partisans of the companies, who burnt their houses and killed some of their number. Afterward, being reinforced by a company of additional immigrants from Scotland, the settlers returned to the places from which they had been driven, and recommenced their labors. The 0021 3 hostility of the companies toward these poor immigrants was continued, their property was destroyed and men were captured and killed. At length, on June 19, 1816, the adherents of the two parties met at Seven Oaks, in the center of the settlement, under such circumstances that a small battle occurred, in which about twenty men, among whom was Governor Semple, were killed.

In 1817 Lork Selkirk came over and visited the settlement. Besides having a desire to see how the settlers were prospering, he desired to negotiate for the extinguishment of the Indian title to the land he had purchased. After much difficulty he negotiated a treaty with the Chippewas and Crees, which treaty was signed July 18, 1817. The consideration was the annual payment of 200 pounds of tobacco, half to the Chippewas and half to the Crees. The conditions in the territory at this time were so wretched that the Canadian government interfered and appointed a commissioner to make investigation, who recommended an amicable settlement and a union of interests by the companies, which had been reduced to the verge of bankruptcy. It was a long time, however, before action was taken. Lord Selkirk died in 1821, and the Right Hon. Edward Ellice succeeded to his rights. He was one of the principal stockholders of the Northwest Company, and the Canadian government consulted with him and under its auspices he instituted negotiations, which, after many difficulties, resulted in a harmonious union between the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company, the latter having before combined with the X. Y. Company. This agreement went into effect in 1821, and from this date the opposition to the settlers was withdrawn.

Lord Selkirk, on his arrival in 1817, had provided the settlers with agricultural implements, seed grain, and other necessaries, but the season was so far advanced that little produce was grown in 1817 and a famine ensued. The people again returned to Pembina, where they passed the winter, subsisting as best they could on the produce of the chase. The next spring they went back to their lands, ploughed and seeded them, and entertained high hopes for a bountiful harvest, but were to be sorely disappointed, as an army of locusts made its appearance and in one night destroyed every vestige of verdure in the fields. The locusts left their eggs and in 1819 were more numerous than 0022 4 in the preceding year, making agriculture impossible. The settlers again took refuge at Pembina, and Lord Selkirk imported 250 bushels of seed grain from the United States at an expense of £1,000, and this, which was sown in the spring of 1820, produced a plentiful crop in the autumn of that year. Thus it may be said that the first wheat that was ever successfully grown and harvested in the Red River valley was in the season of 1820 by the Selkirkers. I am principally indebted for the facts as above set forth to the book entitled “Red River,” by J. J. Hargrave, printed by John Lovell, Montreal.

The methods of cultivation in the Selkirk settlement were rude and primitive. Their plow was English or Scotch, made all of iron from the tip of the beam to the end of the handles, and was ten or twelve feet long. Its share was shaped like a mason's trowel. With this drawn by one horse, enough ground was scratched every spring to raise sufficient wheat to feed all the blackbirds and pigeons in the Red River valley, and leave a surplus large enough to meet the wants of the people of the settlement; also to sell to the Hudson Bay Company all they needed for their outposts in the British Northwest possessions, and still leave a surplus sufficient for food and seed for two years, which was stored up to be used in case of emergency or failure of crop in the coming seasons. The grain was cut with sickles, the bundles tied with willow withes and stacked in the barnyard, to be railed out during the winter and cleaned by the winds, men, and women and children all giving a helping hand in this work.

In August, 1851, Charles Cavalier arrived at Pembina. At that date the Red River valley, except the Selkirk settlement, was a howling waste throughout its whole length and breadth. Then there were only four white men in that section, namely, Norman W. Kittson, Joseph Rolette, George Morrison, and Charles Cavalier. There were 1,800 to 2,000 half-breeds, and Mr. Cavalier says that, as he was born among the Wyandotte Indians in Ohio and brought up near them, the Indians at Pembina were not much of a curiosity to him, but the half-breed was a new phase of the genus. “To this day,” says he, “I have not fully made up my mind whether the cross between the white man and the red man was much of an improvement, as with but few exceptions the Indian blood predominates.”

In those early days bread was a rarity, and pemmican, dried buffalo meat, fish and a few potatoes constituted the food supply. Charles Cavalier and Commodore N. W. Kittson planned a trip to the Selkirk settlement, where they were told they would find bread in abundance. They set out in the same year (1851) and in a day and a half's sail down the river in a canoe reached Fort Garry and St. Boniface, where they received a hospitable welcome from Vereck Marion, Mr. Kittson's father-in-law. They visited the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy and found them pleasant and agreeable gentlemen. They also visited the Sisters of Charity at the hospital, who gave them a warm welcome and showed them through the whole establishment. Kittson having returned to Pembina, Mr. Cavalier, in company with Mr. Marion, visited the office of the Hudson Bay Company, where they met also Major Campbell, who was in command of a company of British troops stationed near Fort Garry. With Marion, who was an old settler and acquainted with every one, Cavalier went on a tour of inspection and gathered all the information possible in his limited time in order to tell his friends on his return about this isolated, almost unheard-of community, and how they made life endurable in their frigid northern climate.

From Fort Garry to the Lower Fort the two men called at almost every house, and found a happy, prosperous, English-speaking people, mostly of Scotch descent from the immigrants sent over by Lord Selkirk. A few of other nationalities were also there. They were very kindly and hospitable people. The two men called upon Bishop Anderson of the English church, and found him to be “a fine old English gentleman all of the olden time.” With him they visited the colleges, one for males and the other for females, where the youth received a classical education, and which institutions are still in existence. Here Mr. Cavalier first met Donald Murray, one of the original Selkirk settlers, who had once settled at South Pembina and had remained there until it was determined to be south of the international boundary line, and whose daughter is now Mr. Cavalier's wife. Mr. Cavalier somewhat enthusiastically says that his impression at that time was that he had never seen a more prosperous community in the States than was the Selkirk settlement. There was not a family that was not well off as to all the wants of life. The latch string 0024 6 of every door hung on the outside, and all who called were welcome to the best the larder contained, and when leaving were asked to come again. Sectarianism was unknown among them, there being only one church, the Episcopal. Though the Scotch were mostly Presbyterians, yet when Dalton Black settled among them and an Episcopal church was built for them, there was no ill feeling shown on either side. Their houses were all built of logs and built for comfort, convenience, and warmth. Many of them are yet occupied, but the changes caused by Canadian immigration have had a large influence in changing their manner of life. However, they are today the same good people and live up to their religion.

The half-breeds of the Selkirk settlement, speaking English, are not nomads like those of French extraction, but take to the ways of their fathers and are workers and tillers of the soil. Nearly all have homes and lands of their own, educate their children, and have something laid by for a rainy day; while the French half-breeds, who are mostly of the Roman Catholic faith, believe that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

As the harvest of that season (1851) was nearly finished and the barnyards were filled with large and bountiful stacks of wheat and barley, and a stack or two of oats and peas, it was a rich sight, and there was no fear of starvation for two or more years, even should the crops fail. The land system, which gave a strip of land six chains wide fronting the Red River and extending back two miles, gave the settlement the appearance of a long, straggling village along the road from Fort Garry to the Lower Fort; and as the dwellings, barns and stock were in close view all the way, the picture was a most beautiful and interesting one, such as is nowhere seen in the States and rarely even in old Europe.

The Selkirkers generally had large families and old and young worked together on the homesteads. While like other farmers they suffered from drouth, grasshoppers, and frosts, yet they usually secured good crops, and saved a reserve for two or three years, an amount for seed, and sold the surplus to the Hudson Bay Company. Occasionally they would have poor crops and perhaps be compelled to use their reserve, or even to borrow from the Hudson Bay Company for seed and food. The company, whose interest it was to be liberal, as they depended upon these 0025 7 farmers for their supplies of wheat for their support, loaned willingly, but required the payment from the succeeding crop. A government never existed, in the opinion of Mr. Cavalier, that got on better with settlers than the much abused Hudson Bay Company.

At that time, as before noted, all grain was cut with sickles and bound with willow withes by the women and children. Wheat, barley, and oats, were threshed on a barn floor with a flail during the winter season, and were winnowed with a large wind scoop resting on the breast; and it was remarkable how fast, with a good wind, the grain could be cleaned. The wheat was ground in large windmills, bolted fine and clean, and made excellent bread. The flour was not like the flour of these days, and modern cooks would probably turn up their noses at it, but it was to the taste as good as our best.

Mr. Cavalier in his rambles on that trip counted fifteen windmills, all grinding out flour at a lively rate, which at that time sold for eight or ten shillings per hundred weight.

The old settlers told of a grasshopper scourge at a date forgotten by them, that made a clean sweep of every growing thing, and that grasshoppers were piled up by the winds and waves four feet deep on the shores of lake Manitoba and Shoal lake. They stated that after the grasshoppers had done all the damage they could, as every thing was eaten, the Catholic clergy got up a procession and said prayers, and on the next day the hoppers quit hopping, took to their wings, and flew away to the northward and were seen no more.

Mr. Cavalier says the first time he saw grasshoppers was in 1854. He was in camp one night on White Bear lake, now lake Whipple, and took an early start toward St. Cloud. It had rained during the night and all were wet, so at nine o'clock they turned out on the bank of Long lake and spread their clothes and other things to dry. They made a fire to cook breakfast. Mr. Cavalier, on looking around for his blankets, etc., saw nothing but a squirming mass of grasshoppers, all as busy as if they had struck a bonanza. They were not able to get out of that mass of grasshoppers 0026 8 until they had traveled about twenty miles. On the return they struck them at St. Cloud, and they had cleaned the country quite thoroughly on their flight east. On crossing the Red river and between that and the Wild Rice river they struck the forerunners of another cloud of grasshoppers, and did not get clear of them until they arrived home at St. Joseph, now Walhalla. For gluttony the hopper takes the cake, Mr. Cavalier says, and relates that they ate the seat of his saddle and the tops of his boots. He threw a plug of tobacco to them, and within an hour they had eaten that.

In 1870 another visitation of grasshoppers appeared, and in that year and the year following their ravages were disastrous. In 1874 they came again and stayed three years, eating everything in the Red River valley, and the settlers were obliged to haul their flour from St. Cloud. Minneapolis and St. Paul sent relief to carry the poor through, which saved many from actual starvation.

Thus the Selkirkers, with the simplest and rudest of agricultural implements, were always prosperous, and want was unknown among them. Through them we learned that the Dakota lands were not the barren wastes and howling desert of dry, drifting sand that our School books had taught us, and that the Red River valley contained a mine of wealth greater than any discovered mine of silver and gold. This we were slow to realize, but have at length made the Red River valley the most bountiful granary of the world. The windmills of that famous pioneer settlement have done their last grinding; most of the old hand labor implements have been laid aside; and the new and improved forms of farm machinery, so efficient and so exact as to give almost the appearance of having human intelligence, have taken their place. These are run or propelled by horse and steam power, and the labor of one man has become as that of many. Mr. Cavalier reminiscently says: “I was here for years living by the proceeds of the chase, never dreaming that this mode of livelihood would ever cease, or that the millions of buffaloes that roamed the prairies, would ever be exhausted, and that we old settlers would soon be seeking other means of support.”

The settlers south of the line had to depend upon the Selkirk settlement for their bread and butter. Old Father Belcourt, of 0027 9 St. Joseph, near the Pembina mountain, a Catholic priest, and a rustler in all things for himself first and for his people next, built a bull mill at his mission at St. Joseph and ran it a few years with oxen, and ground what little wheat the half-breeds raised. With no bolt to take the bran out of the flour, it had to be run through sieves or eaten husks and all. The half-breeds did not furnish wheat enough to make the mill pay, and they could not be induced to greater industry, so that the good old man had to give the mill up. The result was that the half-breeds returned to the coffee-mill or ate the grain raw or roasted. That mill was the first. George Emerling and John Mayn built the next, and that mill is now one of the paying concerns of Pembina county at Walhalla, having all the new improvements in merchant mills.

The first public business tending to civilization was the establishing of a monthly mail between Pembina and Fort Abercrombie. It was a kind of go-as-you-please, sometimes on foot, with the mail bag on the man's back, sometimes by horse and cart, and by courier, any way so that the mail was carried, and in those days it was never behind time. At least the contractor never was docked or fined. From Pembina the mail was taken to Fort Garry, and that office had to use Uncle Sam's stamps. From Fort Garry the route was to Fort Abercrombie and run by dog trains, horse and cart, and one year by ox cart, as all the horses from St. Cloud to Fort Garry died or were rendered useless by an epidemic. Sometime in the sixties, Capt. Blakeley and Carpenter secured the contract to carry the mail from St. Cloud to Georgetown on the Red river, and afterward had it extended to Fort Garry, Selkirk settlement.

The following is a list of the stations. Beginning at Pembina and going up or south, the first station was Frank La Rose's, at Twelve Mile Point; next were Bowesmont and Long Point, near Drayton, Hugh Biggiotoff; and Kelly Point, now Acton. Kelly was an old driver and gave it up. Gerard was station agent as long after as the route was in existence. Beyond were Turtle River, Jo Caloskey; Grand Forks, John Stewart first, and several others afterward; Buffalo Coulie, unknown; Frog Point, unknown; 0028 10 Goose Prairie, A. Sargent; Elm River, Johnson; Georgetown, Hudson Bay Company; Oak Point, unknown; Twenty-four Mile Point, McCauleyville, and Breckenridge. At none of the above stations was a handful of grain raised. The contractors hauled all their oats from St. Cloud. The above named points were all the settled points, and there was not a settler elsewhere on the river from Breckenridge to Pembina.

In 1858, Anson Northup got the steamboat Pioneer in successful operation. Mr. Cavalier says he was then living at St. Boniface, Selkirk settlement, and with his wife made a trip on her to Lower Fort Garry, and he says that the settlers on the bank of the river were as much surprised as were the Indians in their villages on the Minnesota river at the first boat when she steamed up to Mankato. It was a perfect circus all the way down.

The International made her appearance within three or four years afterward as a freight boat for the Hudson Bay Company, ostensibly owned by Commodore N. W. Kittson, and was used as long as there was need of a boat on the river. She was all the time under the command of Capt. Frank Aymond, a St. Louis Frenchman from Ville Roche, and he was an excellent captain. SinCe leaving the river he has been living on his farm some four miles above Neche on the Pembina river, where he expects to pass the remainder of his days to a happy old age.

The Selkirk came next. She was built by James J. Hill; and other boats were built to supply the increased demand. Then followed the combination known as the Red River Transportation Company, which did business under that head until the railroads successfully shut off river navigation.

The amount of business that these boats accomplished was astonishing, and yet they did but little, perceptibly, toward settling the country, as there were only three or four points on the river that showed a beginning of what was to come. From Fargo and Moorhead to Grand Forks there were only a few settlers; and from Grand Forks to Drayton a few had settled to stay. Bowesmont was a steamboat landing, but never has amounted to much. Then Joliette commenced to grow and is now quite a 0029 11 prosperous community, and, last but not least, Pembina. Back from the river there was no settlement and without the aid of railroads it would have taken an age to build up the country to what it now is.

Prior to 1878 there had been a few shipments of wheat, which had been picked up along the river by the boats. Frank C. Myrick, who was in the commission business from 1864, made the largest shipment on one of the boats ever made from Pembina. It amounted to 500 bushels of wheat, which he had collected from the back country on the Pembina and Tongue rivers. From Grand Forks to Pembina settlers came dropping in by families one at a time, and all came with the idea that wheat was the only staple to be cultivated in the Red River valley, all of which they had learned from the remarkable crops raised in the Selkirk settlement with primitive tools for cultivation, yielding from twenty to fifty bushels per acre. In one instance by garden cultivation as an experiment on the ground of Deacon James McKay, the yield was seventy-five bushels to the acre. If such crops are raised in Selkirk with the imperfect cultivation, why may we not, they reasoned, do the same or better with improved machinery farther south in the valley? For a few years they did so, and they continued to do well as long as they confined themselves to the extent of land they could properly cultivate. But greed was their worst enemy. If 160 acres panned out so well, why would not a section do better? And there they made a mistake, as will be explained later.

During the period thus far traced, no wheat was raised south of the international boundary line. The settlers there lived on fish, flesh, and fowl. They raised all the garden vegetables needed, and bought flour from the Selkirk settlement. For fresh meat they depended upon the plains, and were seldom out of a supply. Barley was raised for horse feed, and some oats were raised, but the blackbirds devoured most of the oat fields. Having no mills to grind wheat, the settlers on the south side of the line raised none, but did raise squaw corn for roasting ears. The few cattle were kept on hay in winter, and the Indian ponies dug theirs 0030 12 out of the snow, save in a period of unusually cold weather and deep snows, when they were fed hay.

In 1871 or 1872, Charles Bottineau, who had tilled ten acres to garden, seeded it to wheat, and claims to have raised fifty bushels of No. I hard wheat to the acre upon it. His place was four miles above Neche on the north side of Pembina river. Two years later Charles Grant, two miles west of Pembina, raised a small field of wheat, and claims to have averaged forty bushels to the acre, all of which they hauled to the Selkirk settlement to have it ground. A man named Vere Ether came to Pembina at the beginning of Riel's rebellion (1869), and was stopped at the boundary line by Riel's scouts. They sent him back to wait for a more convenient time. He was persuaded to take a preëmption on the Pembina river a few miles east of Neche. He opened up his farm and was the first settler there who made wheat-raising his chief employment. He always had good crops, in good seasons forty bushels per acre and never less than fifteen bushels.

One of the oldest settlers and farmers in the Red River valley, south of the international line, is Hon. R. M. Probstfield, now living on his farm three and a half miles north of Moorhead. He came to the valley in 1859, and located at the mouth of the Sheyenne river, about five miles south of Georgetown. In October, 1860, he went to Europe, and returned in the spring of 1861, but, owing to the flooded condition of the valley that spring, he was unable to reach his location until June 10th. At that time parties by the name of Roundsville and Hanna were on the land where Mr. Probstfield now lives, and that spring they sowed a little wheat and planted potatoes. Roundsville and Hanna were called away and they made arrangements with Mr. Probstfield to harvest the wheat and dig the potatoes, but the Chippewa Indians threatened to drive them away and kill their stock. The wheat was destroyed by hail. Mr. Probstfield dug the potatoes. He had brought some cattle from St. Paul, and that fall he cut some hay on the place now occupied by Jacob Wambach. The Indians never molested them, as, after the troops at Fort Abercrombie had given them a whipping, they went north into the British possessions. 0031 13 In the fall of 1861 he went to the post at Georgetown, and lived there until March, 1863; when General Sibley ordered all whites to go to Abercrombie. This was owing to the Indian uprising. He remained at Abercrombie until June, 1863, when he was ordered by General Sibley to remove to St. Cloud, where he remained until May, 1864, when he returned to Georgetown. The Indians had burned his buildings on the Wambach place, on the Buffalo river near Georgetown. He then opened a boarding house in one of the Hudson Bay Company's buildings at Georgetown and was appointed postmaster. There were twenty-five men there at work building barges, who lived in the military quarters and boarded with him.

From 1864 to 1868, Mr. Probstfield was the Hudson Bay Company's agent at Georgetown. In 1862 the company seeded some wheat, but it was not harvested, owing to the abandonment of the post on account of the Indian scare. The company leased its boat, the International, to Harris, Gaeger, Mills & Bentley, until the post was again opened in 1864. Roundsville and Hanna having abandoned their farm, in Oakport, Mr. Probstfield took it as his homestead and occupied it in May, 1869, where he has ever since lived. There were seventy-one acres in the place, and he afterwards purchased additional land at $1.25 per acre. In 1869 he broke land for a garden, and seeded oats and barley and planted potatoes. He also kept live stock. As there were no threshing machines or mills in the country, it would not pay to raise wheat. In 1874, the Hudson Bay Company brought a thresher, a horse power machine, and the company's agent at Georgetown, Walter J. S. Traill, offered to thresh any wheat that was grown. Mr. Probstfield accordingly broke up fifteen acres and seeded it to wheat, harvesting twenty-eight bushels per acre, which was sold at about $1.50 per bushel. I should have remarked that during the years 1870 to 1873, Mr. Probstfield cultivated ten acres to oats, barley, corn and garden. Moorhead and Fargo had begun to be established in 1871, and these places afforded an excellent market for all the produce grown.

Nels Larson raised some wheat also in 1874, on land about two miles north of Moorhead, now known as Dr. Brendemuehl's farm. O1e Thompson, Hogan Anderson (Hicks), and Jens Anderson, raised wheat south of Moorhead the same year. This 0032 14 wheat was sold to an elevator in Fargo that was built before Bruns & Finkle had built their large elevator and mill in Moorhead.

In 1875, Mr. Probstfield again raised wheat, and the number who were engaged in the industry considerably increased that year. In the spring of that year a number of Norwegians from Houston county came up and looked at land on the Dakota side between Georgetown and Argusville. Finding the land very wet by overflow of the river, they returned to the Minnesota side, and Mr. Probstfield, meeting them, asked where they were going, and they replied, “Back to Houston county.” He was cultivating potatoes, and he said to them that if they would put two young men to work in his place, he would go with them and show them good land that had been surveyed. They agreed, and he took them over to the Buffalo river about six or eight miles east, where they located. There were six or seven families, and among them were Ole Thortvedt, Ole Tauge, Torgerson Skree, Ole Anderson, and others. They were delighted with the location and land, and they or their descendants are still there and prosperous. A. G. Kassenborg, A. O. Kragnes, and B. Gunderson and others, came a little later, and located on the Buffalo river. Jacob Wambach came in 1874, with his father-in-law. Joseph Stochen. Contemporary with Mr. Probstfield was E. R. Hutchinson, who settled where he still resides, about two miles south of Georgetown on the river. The boom began about 1878, when the immigration into the valley was very large. Wheat sold for $1 and above until about 1882, and it fell until it reached the low price of 42 or 43 cents.

One of the oldest settlers in the valley on the Dakota side and one of the most successful farmers is James Holes. He came in July, 1871, and bought out the claim of Ole Hanson, who had a cabin on the west bank of the river about one mile north of the Northern Pacific surveyed line. Hanson had a small patch of corn and potatoes. No corn was secured that year, and Mr. Holes says he dug about half a barrel of potatoes. The Northern Pacific railroad had laid tracks in the fall of 1871 to the east side of the river, to a point where Moorhead now stands. There was no bridge as yet, and owing to want of timber the bridge was not 0033 15 built until the summer of 1872. The first engine crossed the river July 4 (or June 6), 1872. Mr. Holes states that the freight charges for wheat to Duluth at that time were prohibitory and this discouraged the growing of it. He interviewed the general manager and made such representations to him. The Charge then was $99 for 20,000 pounds. This was exactly 30 cents per bushel. The company soon after (in 1873) made a considerable reduction. In 1872 Mr. Holes had the largest cultivated field in Cass county. It was cropped to oats, potatoes, and garden vegetables, and contained twenty-four acres. There were good markets, and Mr. Holes shipped his produce to Fort Buford, Bismarck, Winnipeg, and Glyndon. In 1873 he pursued the Same employment. In 1874 he seeded fifteen acres of wheat, and harvested twenty bushels per acre. The season was dry, and, as the land had been gardened, it blew out badly, which caused a rather light yield for those early years. The wheat was the Scotch Fife variety, and he sold it for seed. In 1875 his acreage of wheat was about the same, but having in 1876 broken 150 acres, in the spring of 1877 he seeded 175 acres to wheat and secured an average of twenty-seven and one-half bushels per acre, which he sold at $1 per bushel. As this wheat was raised on land worth $5 per acre, the profit was large.

From 1878 to 1893, Mr. Holes yearly increased his acreage of wheat until he had reached 1,600 acres, which has been about the extent of his yearly wheat cultivation since. His land is now worth $30 per acre. The poorest field he ever harvested was ten bushels per acre, and the best forty-four bushels. His average has always exceeded ten bushels, but never exceeded twenty-seven and one-half bushels. The price has ranged from $1.50 to 45 cents per bushel. Grasshoppers prevailed from 1871 to 1877, and wreaked more or less damage every year. In May, 1876, the settlers burned the young grasshoppers in the prairie grass, which checked them; and in 1877 they all flew away, and this part of the valley has not been troubled with them since. Mr. Holes' crops have in the twenty-eight years of his residence here, been injured by hail four seasons. The most disastrous hailstorm was last season, when he lost, as he figures it, about 16,000 bushels of wheat by hail. Mr. Holes states as his judgment, formed after long experience, that wheat can be produced at a profit in the 0034 16 valley when properly cultivated, excluding from the calculation the advance in price of land, and that the valley is one of the best in the United States for profitable farming.

Moorhead was the terminus of the Northern Pacific railroad for a period of two years, and a large amount of freight was transferred at that point for transportation down the Red river to Winnipeg and other places. At that time nine steamers were plying on the river, and a number of flatboats were used in connection. An eye witness has informed me that he has seen as many as eleven hundred Mennonite immigrants camped at Moorhead and bound for Manitoba and the Northwest Territory, who pitched their tents on the banks of the Red River, awaiting transportation by boat down.

In May, 1871, there were a few settlers at Glyndon, Muskoda, and Hawley, and a few along the Red river within the present limits of Clay county. The very earliest settlements were made at Georgetown by Adam Stein, R. M. Probstfield, and E. R. Hutchinson, who became husbandmen and tillers of the soil. We have the gratification of knowing that they are still living witnesses of the fertility of the Red River valley soil and the healthfulness of the climate, and moreover of the fecundity of mankind when under the influence of both these. Mr. Hutchinson is the father of seventeen children, Mr. Probstfield of thirteen, and Mr. Stein of eight.

It may be of interest to my hearers to learn the particulars as to how it happened that these three pioneers drifted into what is now one of the most famous agricultural regions in the world, but which was then a dreary waste uninhabited save by Indians and roamed by wild beasts. In March, 1859, a party of capitalists, consisting in part of Messrs. Peter Poncin, Welch, and Bottineau, of Minneapolis, and Barneau, John Irvine, and Freudenreich, of St. Paul, explored the Red river country; and their investigations convinced them that a point at the mouth of the Sheyenne river, about fourteen miles north of the present site of Moorhead, was the head of navigation of the Red river, and they judged that it was the natural point for a townsite. They therefore covered a plot of land at the point named on the Minnesota side of the Red river with scrip, and laid out a town which they named La Fayette, and they sold a great many shares in this 0035 17 townsite to parties east. On the site they built a large log house, which they intended for a tavern. At this time Mr. Probstfield was in business at St. Paul in partnership with George Emerling, and the townsite owners induced Mr. Probstfield to go up to La Fayette. He remained there for a year or more and soon after preëmpted a claim on the south side of Buffalo river, not far from Georgetown. In 1864 he went into the employ of the Hudson Bay Company at Georgetown, where they had a warehouse and trading post.

Mr. Stein was induced in July, 1859, to go to La Fayette, and he afterwards preëmpted a claim near Georgetown. His first work was in cutting prairie grass and making hay, which he sold to the Hudson Bay Company; and later he worked in erecting buildings at Georgetown for that company. In December, 1861, Mr. Stein enlisted as a soldier in the Fourth Minnesota regiment and served through the Civil war. After his return from the war, he settled on land near the Hudson Bay Company's buildings at Georgetown, and has been a farmer there ever since.

The first steamboat on the Red river was built at La Fayette, the materials for which were transported across the country from Crow Wing on the Mississippi, where the steamer North Star was broken up for that purpose. The new boat was named the Anson Northup. With the party who came across the country with those materials was E. R. Hutchinson, who helped to build the boat, and for a number of years he was engaged in boating on the Red river and building boats thereon and also on the Saskatchewan. Mr. Hutchinson afterward became a farmer and preëmpted land not far from the old site of La Fayette, where he now lives. I have related in another place how Mr. Probstfield became one of the first farmers in the valley. Besides these three men on the north of the line of the Northern Pacific railroad there were on the south Jens Anderson and his brother, about three miles south of Moorhead. Ole Thompson made settlement about the same time on the river about eleven miles south.

Early in the spring of 1871 Henry A. Bruns went from St. Cloud to Brainerd, which was then the western end of the Northern Pacific railroad track. From Brainerd he rode to Oak Lake, at the engineers' headquarters of the road, where he met Gen. Thomas L. Rosser. The Northern Pacific had surveyed its line 2 0036 18 to the Red river at a point some twenty-eight miles below Moorhead. Mr. Bruns was prospecting, looking for business chances. He then returned to St. Paul, bought a load of provisions and ready-made clothing, and hauled them to the Red river. Where Mr. Probstfield's house now stands (about three and a half miles north of Moorhead), he found an encampment of tents, and here he met H. G. Finkle, J. B. Chapin, and John Haggert. This was about June, 1871. Mr. Bruns opened out his goods in a tent, and formed a partnership with Mr. Finkle. They remained at this point (Oakport) until September, when, the townsite of Moorhead having been staked out, all those at Oakport removed thereto. At Moorhead they did business in tents all winter. In March, 1872, Mr. Bruns went to McCauleyville and bought a lot of lumber, hired teams, and hauled it to Moorhead. Bruns & Finkle then erected a frame building, of 21 by 50 feet. They continued to do business in this building until 1877, when they built a large brick store.

We have given this somewhat lengthy introduction of Mr. Bruns into this history for the reason that he was a pioneer in promoting the industry of wheat raising in the Red River valley. In the winter of 1871–2, Mr. Bruns purchased 500 bushels of seed wheat, which he gathered along the Minnesota river and farther south and east, and transported it hundreds of miles by sleds, which wheat he distributed among the farmers of Clay and Norman counties, Minnesota, and Cass and Traill counties, Dakota. The facilities for raising wheat that year being poor and the grasshoppers very destructive, there was no surplus from the harvest in excess of the amount required for seed the next year. Early in 1874, Mr. Bruns organized a stock company which erected the first flouring mill and sawmill. This mill soon demonstrated that the wheat of the valley was of superior quality for making strong flour and excellent bread. The flour was awarded the first premium at the Minneapolis and Minnesota State fairs two consecutive seasons. The sawmill cut timber for the construction of the steamboats, the Minnesota and Manitoba. built at Moorhead in 1875, by the Merchants' Transportation Company, of which James Douglas, brother of John Douglas of St. Paul, was president. They were the best boats ever on Red river. This assisted in opening up Manitoba and the Northwest Territory markets. 0037 19 Later the Upper Missouri and Black Hills countries were secured, and later still the Yellowstone country, as markets for the flour of this mill. It created a market for the wheat produced within a wide radius, and for a number of years took all that was offered, rarely giving less than $1 per bushel.

In 1878, Bruns and Finkle, seeing the necessity for more storage for the rapidly increasing production of wheat, erected a large steam elevator at Moorhead, with a capacity of 110,000 bushels. It was the first steam elevator built in the Red River valley. Mr. Bruns informs the writer that in the fall of 1873 he shipped the first carload of wheat from the Red river to lake Superior, which, by personal hard work in cleaning, was graded No. 2, though it certainly was No. 1, none like it ever having been shipped in the history of the world before. Mr. Bruns, in a personal letter, says: “In the fall of 1874 I commenced to grind about all the wheat then grown in the Red River valley, and in the fall of 1875 I gathered wheat and other grain, not as before by the thousand but by the tens of thousands of bushels, and with wheat and flour of my own grinding supplied the Canadian government and Mennonites with seed and bread throughout Manitoba.”

Of the pioneer farmers who broke land extensively and opened farms in Clay county are John and Patrick H. Lamb, Franklin J. Schreiber, G. S. Barnes, Lyman Loring, George M. Richardson, Capt. W. H. Newcomb, A. M. Burdick, W. J. Bodkin, and Charles Brendemuehl.

Wheat was grown near Abercrombie, on the east or Minnesota side of the river, in what is now Wilkin county, about as early as anywhere in the valley, except in the Selkirk settlement and in Pembina county, North Dakota, then the Territory of Dakota. Probably the first man to sow and harvest wheat in the upper or southern part of the valley was Hon. David McCauley. I append herewith his narrative just as he has given it to me.

“I came to Abercrombie July 17, 1861, to act as post sutler, postmaster, and agent for the Northwestern Transportation Company. In the spring of 1862, I sowed a few acres of barley, 0038 20 planted potatoes, and opened up a garden, which were destroyed by the Indians in August. In the spring of 1864, I crossed over on the Minnesota side of the river opposite to the fort and commenced farming. In 1865 I sowed some seventy-five acres of oats and planted a few acres of potatoes, and continued to sow and plant the same crops until 1871. There was no market for wheat until that time, nor until the railroad reached Moorhead or Breckenridge. In the spring of 1872 I put in a few acres of wheat, and have continued the same up to the present time. This season (1899) I raised 10,000 bushels of wheat. In the earlier years the yield of wheat was about the same as now. The land that I cultivated in 1865 has been cropped every year since except three, and the yield in 1899 was as good as I have known it. I know of no wheat being sown in the valley earlier than mine. The following are some of the men who sowed wheat soon after I did: Edward Connolly and Mitchell Robert, Breckenridge; Loure Bellman, J. R. Harris, and J. B. Welling, McCauleyville; Frank Herrick and John Eggen, Abercrombie. In the early days the only market for oats and potatoes was Fort Abercrombie.”

Prior to 1878 there were no settlements away from the Red, Red Lake, and Pembina rivers, in the lower or northern portion of the valley, so that, in treating of the Minnesota side north of the Northern Pacific railroad, it is apparent that no wheat was grown on that side (except near Moorhead) until the completion of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba railroad (now the Great Northern) to St. Vincent, when immigration set in, bringing settlers to many stations, who at once began to break land and sow it to wheat. The district between the railroad and Red river was first settled.

It is a fact, which none will dispute, that the building of railroads into and through the valley has been the most important factor in settling the country and developing the resources of this fertile plain. Without these it would today be practically unpopulated and undeveloped, as it remained for fifty years after the Selkirk settlers had demonstrated its adaptability to cultivation. 0039 21 There might have been a fringe of settlements along the streams, but without more efficient means for transporting wheat and other agricultural products to market, there could not have been any great development and production.

Another leading factor in settling the country has been the so called bonanza farms. Those demonstrated on a large scale the practicability of producing wheat at a profit on the flat lands of the valley. They advertised the results of great operations, and made known to the world the wonderful possibilities of the region.

The first of these was the Dalrymple farm, eighteen miles west of the Red river, opened up in 1875 and subsequent years. A brief description of this farm may be of interest. In the year 1875, a number of large holders of the bonds of the Northern Pacific railroad company, supposed to be the Grandin brothers, Messrs. Cass, Howe, and Cheney, who had taken the bonds at par and which were then worth only ten cents on the dollar, determined to save as much as possible, and exchanged the bonds for a great block of the company's lands in the Red River valley. In March, 1875, Oliver Dalrymple, an experienced farmer of Minnesota, examined the land and became convinced of its value for wheat growing. He therefore entered into a contract with the owners to test the merits of the soil, the terms of which contract are understood to be that they were to furnish the stock, implements, and seed, with which to cultivate the land, and were to receive in return seven per cent. on the amount invested, Dalrymple to have the option of paying back the principal and interest, at which time he was to be granted one third of the land. In that year he broke 1,280 acres, and his first harvest, in 1876, yielded 32,000 bushels of the choicest wheat, or an average of a little more than twenty-three bushels per acre.

As soon as the results of Mr. Dalrymple's experiment became known, capital began seeking the depreciated railroad bonds and exchanging them for land, and labor flocked from adjoining states to preëmpt government land. In May, June, and July, 0040 22 1879, the sales of government land amounted to nearly 700,000 acres, and during the year, 1,500,000 acres were taken on homestead preëmption, and tree claims in Dakota.

The Dalrymple holdings comprised some 100,000 acres in all, and in 1878 the wheat acreage had been increased to 13,000 acres; and it was increased from year to year until in 1895 there were some 65,000 acres under cultivation. The cultivated land was subdivided into tracts of 2,000 acres, each tract being managed by a superintendent and foreman, with its own set of books. Each estate had suitable and complete buildings, consisting of houses for superintendent and men, stables, granaries, tool-houses, and other buildings. As a matter of course, to carry on the Dalrymple farm required the services of a large number of men and horses, the use of many plows, harrows, seeders, harvesters, threshers and engines, wagons, and other implements and tools. A settlement was effected in 1896 and years following, Mr. Dalrymple taking his share, and the great farm was divided and now comprises, besides the Dalrymple, the Howe and Cheney farms, and perhaps others.

Another bonanza farm of large extent was the Grandin farm consisting of 38,000 acres, of which 14,000 acres in and around Grandin, and 6,000 acres near Mayville in Traill county, North Dakota, are now under cultivation. The first crop of wheat was grown and harvested on this farm in 1878. This farm was operated in a similar manner as the Dalrymple farm, being divided into tracts of 1,500 acres, managed by a foreman. The two farms employ some 300 men and 300 horses, and use 100 plows, 50 seeders, 75 binders, 10 separators, and 10 engines, etc. The average yield of wheat on this farm has been 17 bushels per acre. In 1899 a severe hailstorm destroyed eight sections of wheat on this farm, which was ripe for the harvest. That was the only widespreead damage that has occurred to the crops of the farm in the twenty-one years it has been operated.

There are a number of other bonanza farms on both sides of the river, as the Lockhart and Keystone farms, respectively in Norman and Polk counties, Minnesota, and the Dwight, Fairview, 0041 23 Cleveland, Downing, and Antelope farms in North Dakota. In fact, large farms have been opened in all the twelve counties, farms comprising three to five sections of land. They have served their purpose, and many of them have been reduced or divided and sold.

It is interesting to note the rapid growth of population and wealth that has taken place in the Red River valley within thirty years. In that time many cities, villages, and hamlets, have been established and builded, some of which have grown until they may fairly be denominated as magnificent and metropolitan. It is hardly needed to name Fargo and Moorhead (one city in a commercial and social sense, although situated in different states); Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, similarly situated; and likewise Wahpeton and Breckenridge. Pembina and St. Vincent also are somewhat similarly situated, though more distant from each other. Besides there are Crookston, on the Red Lake river, Hallock, Warren, Ada, and Barnesville, in Minnesota, Grafton and Hillsboro, in North Dakota, and many others of less note in both states.

In 1870 the population of the twelve counties was about 1,000. In 1880 it was 56,000. In 1890 it was 166,000. In 1900 it is estimated to be 350,000. The valuation of property in the valley in 1870 was zero. At this date it is estimated at not less than $100,000,000; and I am speaking of assessed valuation, which is, as a matter of course, far short of actual valuation.

While there has been a somewhat remarkable development of the wheat growing industry in the Red River valley, and it is undisputed that its soil and climate are as favorable as any in the United States, and perhaps in the world, yet many industrious men have scored failures. In every employment, business, or industry, failures sometimes occur; and therefore, if they have occurred in raising wheat where the conditions are favorable, it is not surprising. It is also clear that such failures are chargeable to the mistakes of the men so engaged, rather than to the country.

From a long observation of the methods employed and of the equipment of those who have pursued the work, I am of the opinion that the chief cause of failure has been the fact that men have undertaken larger tasks than their means warranted. In the early years of the settlement of the valley men were infected as with a craze. Wheat was selling at a dollar and upwards per bushel, while land could be had by paying the government fees for making entry, or by purchase at $5 per acre. Stories of large yields and high prices were circulated, and many believed that they could make themselves rich in a few years by raising wheat. Many embarked in it on borrowed capital, secured at high rates of interest; and some capital is needed although no payment of money was made in advance on the land. It must be broken and seeded, the crop harvested, threshed, and marketed. To do this requires horses, implements, and hire of laborers. Many men, doubtless, who have commenced in this way have succeeded: but this result has been accomplished by superior skill, economy, good business management, and fortuitous circumstances. By far the greater number have failed in the end. They may have won some success for a year or more, but, when they found themselves ahead, greed got the better of their foresight and judgment, and they have contracted for more land and larger equipment. Then a year of light yield, of damage by flood, drouth or frost, and a fall of price in conjunction, have succeeded, which has greatly diminished the value of their harvested crop; while the labor bills, the payments for machinery, the interest on borrowed capital, have piled up, and so the failure comes.

If these men had been satisfied to let well enough alone, if they had continued to cultivate what they might have done without hiring much help or buying additional machinery, they would have weathered the unfavorable years, as their obligations would have been small, and as to obtaining a living, there is no question but that they could have done that, though their entire crop was a failure. They could have found work with their horses among their neighbors; they could have cut hay on the wide prairies and have hauled it to market, or found employment sufficient to keep themselves and families, in a score of ways.

It has been the undue haste to get rich, the reaching out and covering more land than they had means of doing, except on borrowed capital, that has been the ruin of so many. This inclination 0043 25 has also had another injurious effect. It has produced poor cultivation, careless plowing and seeding, harvesting and threshing at unseasonable times, and general slighting of work, instead of thorough, timely and skillful cultivation, which always brings its reward, but the other kind never.

I am of the firm opinion that, whereas the average of wheat produced from an acre of land in the valley is about fifteen bushels per acre, or in some years a little more, it could be raised to 28 or 30 bushels; and that, while there are now produced crops ranging from 12 to 30 bushels per acre, there could be secured 30 to 40 bushels almost invariably. I am confirmed in this opinion by numerous instances where small fields which have been especially treated and cultivated, sown to wheat, have produced 35 to 40 bushels per acre. Thus we have seen pieces which had been cultivated to roots, potatoes, garden vegetables, etc., in previous years, the cultivation of which crops has required deep tillage, frequent stirring of the ground with plow or cultivator, and other pieces which had been seeded to timothy and pastured, being plowed and sown to wheat, produce 35 and as high as 42 bushels per acre in years when the adjoining large fields did not average more than 16 or 18 bushels per acre.

And so the conclusion is drawn that when the valley becomes more thickly settled, the value of land higher, compelling to better cultivation, and in less extensive tracts, no man undertaking to exceed 320 acres, the yield per acre will be increased. When this time comes, it will be accompanied also with more diversified farming. There will be flocks and herds, milk and butter, eggs and fowl, beef, pork and mutton, etc.; and then the Red River valley will be, according to its extent, the most productive region in the whole country.

Along in 1883, or 1884, the price of wheat at Red river points having fallen to about 60 cents, there was little or no profit in its production and in many cases a considerable loss, which caused great uneasiness and dissatisfaction among the farmers. They 0044 26 looked about them for some relief, and, as the cost of transporting wheat to the terminal points was the same, namely, 25 cents per hundred pounds, or 15 cents per bushel, as when wheat sold for $1.00 or more per bushel, they were of opinion that the freight charge should be reduced. They thought that the railroad companies might fairly be called upon to share with them some of the loss that they sustained. Appeals to the companies for reduction were without effect. Therefore the farmers resolved to secure a reduction, and other reforms connected therewith, by political action, and they began holding meetings, where the whole matter was discussed and resolutions passed. A good deal of complaint was also made against the alleged close alliance that existed between the railroad companies, the elevator companies, and the millers' association, by which every producer was compelled to pass his wheat through an elevator and pay its charges for handling, which fixed its grade, and he generally had to sell it to the elevator at such a price as the company owning the elevator might give. The farmer wanted the right to load on cars and ship direct to a terminal market. This agitation had its birth in Clay county, and it extended throughout the wheat-raising districts of the state. It was the promoting cause for the organization of the Farmers' Alliance, which afterward became a political party, and evolved into the People's party. It had its effect, and the legislature, in its session of 1885, passed an act, approved March 5, 1885, which regulated railroads and provided for the board of railroad and warehouse commissioners.

Briefly stated, the law provided that the railroad companies should make annual reports to the board of commissioners, showing amount of stock subscribed, amount of assets and liabilities, amount of debt, estimated value of roadbed, of rolling stock, of stations and buildings, mileage of main tracks and of branches tons of through and local freight carried, monthly earnings for carrying passengers and freight, expenses incurred in running passenger and freight trains, and all other expenses, rate of passenger fare, tariff of freights, and many other minor particulars and things; and the commission was authorized to make and propound any other interrogatories relating to the condition, operation and control of railroads in this state, as might be necessary, and they were empowered to make investigation, examine books, etc.; 0045 27 and proper penalties were provided for in case of refusal of companies to furnish the information demanded. It also required every railroad company to permit any person or company to build and operate elevators at any of its way stations. It compelled railroads to furnish cars on application for transporting grain stored in any and all elevators or warehouses without discrimination. It prohibited extortion and discrimination in rates, and also empowered the commission to notify any railroad company of any changes in rates, or in operation of roads, that in their judgment ought to be made for carrying passengers or freight, and, in case of refusal of the company to make them, to institute suit to compel such changes or reductions.

At the same time the legislature passed an act to regulate elevators and warehouses, and for the inspection and weighing of grain. The main provisions of this act may be stated as follows: Declaring all elevators and warehouses at Duluth, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, public; requiring their proprietors to take out license; providing that such elevators and warehouses shall receive grain for storage without discrimination, to give receipts therefor, to deliver the grain or return the receipt; requiring the owner or lessee to make and post weekly in a conspicuous place a statement of kind and grade of grain received, to send a report daily to the state registrar, and to publish rates for storage; prohibiting the mixing together of grain of different grades; providing for the appointment of a state weighmaster and assistants, who shall weigh grain at points where it is inspected; providing for the appointment of a chief inspector and of deputy inspectors, for the inspection and grading of grain under such rules as the commission shall prescribe, for which inspection a fee shall be collected sufficient to meet the expenses of the service; and providing that the commission shall establish Minnesota grades and publish the same.

Under these laws and amendments thereto, it is well known and undisputed that there has been much more freedom in the shipment of wheat and other grain than before. Farmers have since been able to order cars to a side track and load them from their wheat fields, or otherwise, whence they are hauled to such market as they shall designate. The commissioners have, under the law, defined and established grades of wheat, and the inspection 0046 28 is made at the terminals in accordance therewith, and the wheat is also weighed.

The operation of this law seems to have been beneficial and satisfactory for the most part. The season of 1898 was an exception, when it was charged that the grades were suddenly stiffened, by which the producer lost one or more grades, or from 4 to 7 cents in value per bushel of wheat, and that this stiffening was without just ground. These charges also originated, as the agitation for reduction of freight charges had done, in Clay county, and were made an issue in the state election that year; and it is believed that, as Hon. John Lind, the candidate for governor of the Democrats, Populists, and Silver Republicans, championed them, it gave him many votes. They were substantially verified by an investigation made by a joint committee of the legislature.

Since the first wheat was grown in the Red River valley, a revolution has occurred in plowing, seeding, harvesting, and threshing. By the old method of plowing, with the best plow and horses, one man with a 14-inch walking plow and a pair of 0047 29 good horses, might plow two and a half acres of land in a day. Now one man with a gang plow, turning 28 inches, and drawn by four horses, can plow four and a half acres. The area is not quite doubled for the reason that the speed is somewhat slackened by increased weight, the driver riding on the plow, thus rendering the labor much easier to him.

By the old method of seeding by hand one man could sow sixteen acres in a day, and the land had to be harrowed and dragged, often with tree tops, to smooth it. Now with a drill, drawn by four horses, one man will put in twenty-five acres and no harrowing is necessary afterward, although many harrow the land previous to seeding.

By the old method of cutting grain with a cradle a good man could cut four acres, while it required another man to rake and bind it. Now with the best binder, drawn by three horses, he can cut sixteen acres, and the machine binds it, and carries along a number of bundles and drops them in rows.

In threshing there is even more disparity in the amount accomplished by modern machinery over the old methods. In fact, the difference is so great that a comparison is not worth while. With the best and largest threshing machine, 3,500 bushels of wheat can be threshed in a day. Thus on land producing an average of 20 bushels per acre, one day's work will thresh the wheat grown on 175 ecres. The area of land covered in a day will be more or less than this, according to the average yield per acre. To operate this machine, which is provided with a self-feeder and an automatic band-cutter, also a blower which stacks the straw, only four men are required. To haul the bundles to the machine requires eighteen men and twenty horses, or ten wagons with two horses to each. The number of men and horses and wagons required to do the hauling of the threshed wheat from the machine to the granary, elevator, or cars, depends upon the distance to be traversed. It costs at the present time ten cents per bushel to thresh the wheat and load it into wagon tanks.

I have gathered the statistics of wheat acreage and yield for 1898 from the most reliable sources obtainable, namely, from the county auditor's office of each county which lies partly or mainly 0048 30 in the Red River valley south of the international boundary. Some of the officers reported that the statistics on this head as furnished by the assessors were not full, owing to the failure of some of the assessors to make returns; but in these cases, army request, the auditors furnished me with estimates based upon other sources of information. Therefore, although the figures in the following table cannot be claimed to be absolutely correct, they approach accuracy, and, it is believed, are in no case excessive.

I have mentioned Charles Cavalier, of Pembina, who has taken great interest in my labors in gathering materials for this paper, and who has given me much valuable assistance. In further acknowledgement thereof, and in compliment to him, I desire to embrace herein a portion of a recent letter of his to me as follows:

“It would be a pleasant thing for me to be present with them [meaning this annual meeting of the society] and see some of the old faces of fifty years ago, but alas, the infirmities of eighty-one years forbid it. Present my respects to them, and tell them that though far away, I am with them in mind if not in body. I still keep up an occasional correspondence with my old friend, A. L. Larpenteur, and through him I hear from Bill Murray and others of the old timers, and I see occasionally the name of Ex-Governor Ramsey, for whom I have a high regard and a warm spot in my heart. He appointed me first territorial librarian, and has in many instances aided and befriended me. May he live until he learns to enjoy the good things of this footstool of God, and then, after his life of usefulness and goodness, tranquilly fall asleep and awake in the kingdom prepared for him and all of us who have kept God's commandments or tried to do so. Such is the wish of this old settler whose mundane existence of close onto eighty-one years has been one of pleasure and enjoyment far exceeding its many ills and misery. My health is now tolerably fair.”

I have not found it practicable to treat wheat-growing as a state-wide industry, owing to its magnitude, and have confined myself strictly to the subject assigned to me, which has necessitated as much labor and research as I have been able, while editing a daily and weekly newspaper, to devote to it. With more abundant leisure I might properly have touched upon the expansive prairies of the state, both level and rolling, and told something 0051 33 of their productions, not only of their wheat, which makes the best bread ever eaten by man, but of their rye, oats, barley, corn, flax-seed, and potatoes; of their green meadows, which abound with luxuriant grass and furnish food for countless flocks and herds, and of the Minnesota cow, whose milk, after being treated in the creameries, makes the very best butter known to civilization; of the fruit orchards, gardens, flowers, shrubbery, etc., together with the neat and cozy dwellings that dot them o'er and are the homes of a hardy, happy, and prosperous people.

I might have touched upon the great extent of forests, from which have been taken so many millions of feet of the best white pine and hardwood lumber, adding largely to the wealth of the state, and which are not yet exhausted.

I might have told of the iron mines, which, for richness and extent, have been one of the marvels of the closing part of the nineteenth century, and which are yet, maybe, to exceed the most sanguine expectations of enthusiasts; of the mighty river having its rise in our state, whose commerce has been so great a factor in the making of the history of the North American continent, and advancing its civilization; and of the smaller rivers, which are interesting in other ways.

I might have dwelt at length upon the surpassing beauty of the state's landscape, whose ten thousand lakes are bordered by a superb growth of primeval forest timber, through whose foliage the pure air of a wholesome climate sings a ceaseless lullaby to exhausted humanity, which seeks quiet and rest upon their bosom. In these lakes the finny tribe leap and splash and entice the skill of the expert angler, as well as the efforts of the novice, affording the most exquisite enjoyment and the most health-giving and recuperative recreation that man is blessed with, and whose skill, good luck, or patience is rewarded by the catch of as good food fish as swim.

And, lastly, I might have said that this great, resourceful and fertile state of ours, at the age of fifty years, contains a population of nearly two millions of as intelligent, generous, brave, and at the same time as gentle, industrious, progressive and patriotic people, as can be found in any state in all this broad land. 3

It is recorded, and is probably true, although it does not come within the milling experience which it is my privilege to review here tonight, that the first mill operated in Minnesota was the hand mortar of the Indian aborigines. This make of mill seems to have been much on the plan of that described in the Bible, the mortar used by Moses in grinding corn and manna in the wilderness within sight of Canaan. Speaking of Moses and milling, you will pardon me, if in passing I call attention to the fact, that this great law-giver of Bible record, the first legislator of historic repute, exempted the mortar or mill of that day from being taken in pawn, because, said he, it would be like taking a man's life to take the mill from which proceeds life's staff. But the hand mortar of Moses and the red man is no longer used in the flouring industry of Minnesota, and its further history we will leave with our friends, the apothecaries, who long since secured the monopoly for the use of this kind of milling machine.

The next step in the evolution of milling in the Northwest was the introduction of the hand-mill by the early territorial pioneers. The hand-mill was the prevailing mill in use among the ancient Britons down to the time of the Roman conquest. It is 0054 36 still in use in Minnesota by the wives and daughters and by the retail grocers for grinding the family coffee. For a full account of the milling industry and process connected with the hand-mill, you are respectfully referred to the Daughters of the Revolution or to the Minnesota Retail Grocers Association.

The horse-mill followed the hand-mill. Fifty years ago it was not an uncommon sight, on the prairies of Illinois, Iowa and southern Minnesota, to see a farmer coming in a distance of ten to twenty miles with an ox team and camping around a bonfire sometimes two days and a night, dining meantime on parched corn, while he waited his turn to get a sack or two of corn ground at the one and only horse-mill in that section. For the horse-mill we are said to be indebted to the Romans. For an exhaustive account of its modern use in Minnesota, you should apply to the farmers who grind feed for live stock.

From the horse-mill there was a broad progressive stride to the windmill as a source of power in flour manufacture. Wind grist-mills are of great antiquity, and are still operated in Europe. The crusaders of the thirteenth century introduced them into England, France, Germany, and Holland, borrowing the invention from the Saracens. In the seventeenth century wind grist-mills decorated the hills of New England, just as the water mill afterward sung in the valleys. An early historian of Minnesota, J. W. McClung, speaks of the wind grist-mills at St. Peter and Mankato, that at the latter place, in 1868, grinding 160 bushels of wheat daily, which would be equivalent to perhaps thirty barrels of flour. In 1876, Mr. A. Simpson, of Owatonna, in a contribution to the Northwestern Miller, in answer to an inquiry regarding wind grist-mills, said: “I have operated a Halliday power mill since 1867 with satisfactory results. The wind wheel is 60 feet in diameter and furnishes 45 horse power. It runs three run of buhrs with all necessary machinery in a common gate. The wheels are perfectly self-regulating and durable. I have ground in one month 3,540 bushels of wheat and over 1,200 bushels of feed. As good flour can be made with wind power as with any power and as much per bushel. The mill runs about three-fourths of the time during the year, part of the time running one run of feed. There are seven 60-foot wind wheel touring mills in this state, two in Wisconsin, one in Nebraska, and several more with smaller wheels, all doing a good business.”

This description is doubtless news to most of the milling profession of Minnesota, as well as to many of our pioneer citizens. The writer talked as though he might be an agent for the Halliday mills, and before his words are accepted as verified history it might be well to have the subject of wind-grist mills investigated by a joint committee of eloquent members of the legislature now in session.

Nature laid the foundation for the milling industry of Minnesota when she filled the soil and atmosphere of this chief wheat belt on the globe with such a remarkable quality and quantity of food nutrition, and laid through the woods and across the prairies such a cordon of strong and reliable streams, carrying power to cheaply and efficiently convert the wheat of the Northwest into flour. After that, it was simply a matter of human energy and method; the ultimate result was assured. In 1899 Minnesota raised the largest wheat crop ever produced by this or any other state, and the largest mill-power ever got together in one state converted it, with half the crop of the Dakotas thrown in, into 25,000,000 barrels of flour,—enough to feed one-third of the people of the United States one year.

It is interesting to note that the first flour mill built in Minnesota was owned and run by the government, and that the first wheat raised was planted and harvested by the government. One of the first acts of Col. Snelling on taking possession of the fort named after him was to send a detachment of fifteen soldiers to St. Anthony falls to build a mill. Commissary Clark, father of Mrs. Charlotte O. Van Cleve, who is still a resident of Minneapolis, was the first to suggest the raising of wheat and flour to support the soldiers. That was the beginning of Minnesota's wheat and flour industries.

At the annual meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society, twenty-one years ago this month, there was exhibited a letter, dated Washington, D. C., August 23, 1823, from General George Gibson, commissary general, as follows:

From a letter addressed by Col. Snelling to the quartermaster general, dated the 2nd of April, I learned that a large quantity of wheat would be raised this summer. The assistant commissary of subsistence at St Louis has been instructed to forward sickles and a pair of millstones to St. Peter's 0056 38 If any flour is manufactured from the wheat raised, be pleased to let me know as early as practicable, that I may deduct the quantity manufactured at the post from the quantity advertised to be contracted for.

In a second letter General Gibson said:

Below you will find the amount charged on the books against the garrison at Fort St. Anthony for certain articles, forwarded for the use of the troops at the post, which you will deduct from the payments to be made for flour raised, and turned over to your free issue:

One pair buhr stones $250.11

Such was the infantile milling plant and harvesting outfit with which the grain and milling industries of Minnesota saw daylight and a cradle. That was seventy-eight years ago, back in the infancy of the oldest pioneer members of this society.

It was not until about a quarter of a century later, that the first grist mills were built for the accommodation of the general population. The wheat industry and the milling industry properly may be said to cover a half century. The United States census of 1850 credits Minnesota with a wheat product of 1,401 bushels, and a flour product valued at just $500. In the fifty years history of our cereal industries, therefore, the wheat product has grown from 1,400 bushels to near 70,000,000 and the the value of the flour output from $500 to about $100,000,000.

Excepting the government mill, the earliest flouring mill in Minnesota was built by Lemuel Bolles in Afton. Washington county, in the winter of 1845–6, as noted in Folsom's “Fifty Years in the Northwest.” A grist mill had been built in Little Canada, Ramsey county, by Benjamin Gervais in 1844.

From 1850 to '55 small grist mills were planted on the streams of about a dozen counties of the territory. The river counties, Houston, Winona, Wabasha, Dakota, Washington, Chisago, Hennepin, Sherburne, and Stearns, were the first to build mills. Chatfield and Rochester had each a mill in 1855, and Northfield and Preston in 1856. E. P. Mills & Sons of Elk River, Sherburne county, place the date of construction of the little 30-barrel mill by the famous pioneer, Ard Godfrey, at that place, 0057 39 in 1851. It was in 1851, also, that the first grist and merchant mill was erected at St. Anthony Falls, in East Minneapolis. It was built by Richard Rogers, between First and Second avenues southeast, and began business on May 1, 1851, as a grist mill with an equipment of one run of stone, all told, to grind corn. In 1852, Franklin Steele became partner in the enterprise, and the growth in the firm and capital was celebrated by the addition of a second run of stone to grind wheat as a merchant mill. This pioneer mill survived until the fire of 1857.

Merchant milling in Minneapolis made its first substantial beginning in 1854, when Eastman, Rollins and Upton erected on the lower end of Hennepin island a five-run mill, 40 by 60 feet, at a cost of $16,000. That it was a profitable enterprise, is shown by the fact that the firm realized $24,000 profit the first year. This mill was famous for the title, “The Minnesota,” and it well earned its name. There was not wheat enough tributary to Minneapolis within the state in those days to supply the mill, and wheat was hauled by wagon 100 miles from Wisconsin, or was brought up the river by boat from Iowa.

“The Minnesota” was the first mill to ship Minnesota flour to eastern markets. This it did in 1858, paying $2.25 per barrel freight, which is over five times the present transportation rate and is three-fifths of the present value of the flour itself.

New Ulm, the home of ex-Governor John Lind, lays claim to being the first town to incorporate a milling company under the laws and constitution of the state. Its articles of incorporation read: “Recorded in Vol. 1, pages 1, 2 and 3 of Incorporations.” The firm name was the Globe Milling Company of New Ulm. The incorporators were the German Land Association. The purpose of the milling company was stated to be: “The business and object of this company is to manufacture lumber and flour. The capital stock of the company is $30,000; the number of shares, 1,500. The capital stock actually paid in is $265.” The mill, which had a daily capacity of fifty barrels, was already constructed and in operation when Minnesota entered the Union as a 0058 40 state. It was operated until the Sioux outbreak in August, 1862. At that time New Ulm had three mills: The Eagle, erected as a sawmill in 1856; the Globe, erected in 1857–8; and the Windmill, with “one set of buhrs for flour, and one run of stones for flaxseed,” in 1859. All were burned to the ground in the Sioux attack of August 23, 1862. The Indians began firing the town to windward early in the day, burning 190 houses, including the Globe and Eagle mills. The Windmill, which held a strategic position at the foot of the range of hills, was used by the white riflemen as an outpost, during several hours of the fight, but finally succumbed to the flames.

The Eagle mill was rebuilt after the war and converted into a 4-run flour mill in 1867; again into a 225-barrel roller in 1881; and finally was enlarged by the present Eagle Roller Mill Company into a 1,200-barrel mill, being one of the best country mills in the state. As an outgrowth of the Globe Milling Company, the New Ulm Roller Mill Company, with Benjamin Stockman, president, and the veteran Charles L. Roos, secretary and treasurer, operates two mills of an aggregate capacity of 700 barrels. New Ulm has retained its early precedence as a milling town, and today boasts an annual output of 400,000 barrels of high grade flour. Brown county today runs eight flouring mills, with a total daily capacity of 3,500 barrels.

Two years before the incorporation of the Globe Mill Company at New Ulm. John W. North founded a mill and a town at Northfield. Jesse Ames & Sons bought the mill in 1864, building a new mill in 1869–70. The Ames mill was known as one of the most successful in southern Minnesota. Unlike the New Ulm mills, the Northfield mill did not have to contend with the Indians and fire; but it did have to fight the Grangers and water.

So impressed were the Grangers of Rice county with the success of the Ames mill, that they organized a company of well-to-do farmers and built another just a mile down the stream, starting up their mill in the winter of 1873–4. Spring opened with war. The Grange mill backed its water upon the Ames dam, and the Ames mill employed its tail race as a weapon of war to no avail. The result was a battle of lawsuits and newspaper articles, 0059 41 which led to flowery eloquence, but not to profits in flour. It was at that time that Capt. John T. Ames achieved great celebrity, not only as a miller, but as a brilliant writer of Philippic invective. He always maintained that the Ames mill made larger profits and paid less for wheat after the Grange mill came into the field, than before.

On the Cannon river, only three miles from the Ames mill, was the mill of the famous Archibald, the Scotchman who made Cannon river celebrated in eastern markets long before Pillsbury added fame to the upper Mississippi. Long before the new milling process was introduced in 1871, Minneapolis millers used to make trips to Dundas and peek into Archibald's mill, to see if they could fathom the secret of Archibald's flour beating Minneapolis flour $1 or more per barrel in the New York and Boston markets. Charles A. Pillsbury had an idea that the difference in the flour was due to the quality of the wheat. So he managed one day to put in his pocket a handful of the Ames and Archibald wheat; but when he got home he found the Cannon valley wheat no better than that in his own hoppers.

The difference was, that Archibald was his own scientific and practical miller. He dressed his stones with greater care, did better bolting, and used less pressure, and more even, in grinding, so that a whiter and purer flour was produced. He was also progressive, being among the first to use the new middlings purifier in 1871 and the roller process in 1880. A staff correspondent of the Northwestern Miller , March 24, 1876, then published at La Crosse, spoke of Archibald as “the man or firm who takes the leading place among the flour makers of this country or of the world.”

As a boy, in 1859, I drove over from Janesville, Wisconsin, to St. Paul, and I still distinctly remember stopping at the famous Gardner mill at Hastings, on my trip both ways. This was not only one of the earliest, but one of the best mills of Minnesota. Scientific milling resulted in unusual prices and large profits for 0060 42 the Hastings flour, because of its fame in eastern markets, at a time when Minneapolis flour yielded neither fame nor profit. The benefits of the middlings purifier process and high grinding with reduced speed and pressure, which were introduced in Minneapolis in 1871, were in great measure anticipated in the Hastings process of years before. By reducing the pressure and increasing the number of grindings, the Hastings mill avoided the undue heat which injured both the color and quality of the flour; and by special pains with both stone-dressing and bolting, the Gardner mill turned out a product which sold in the east at one to two dollars per barrel higher than the Minneapolis, the Wisconsin, or the best Illinois flour.

It is said that the Gardner mill, by its exceptional quality of flour, in the earlier days realized a profit as high as $3 per barrel, which beats all other records for profitable milling in the Northwest. The average mill of today is well satisfied with a net profit of ten cents. Successful milling in Hastings is by no means at an end. Only the other day Hastings exported to Europe a cargo of fifty cars of flour to fill a single contract.

The ups and downs of milling are well illustrated in the history of John Kearcher, the miller of Isinours on the Root river. The miller is a prey to more of the ills of business life, by fire, by flood, by drouth, by storm, by panic, and by patent sharks, than perhaps any other business man. John Kearcher's career is in point. Born in 1831, in Alsace, then a province of France, he lived successively in Canada, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. He came to Preston, Fillmore county, in 1855, and put up a mill which ran with success until the financial crash of 1857. He lost the mill, and afterward regained it, to lose it again. He then ran mills at Chatfield, Hampton, Fillmore, and Troy, and succumbed to fire, flood, and misfortune, until he landed on his back on the South branch of the Root river, with a debt of $30,000 and no assets except lost faith and confidence in every quarter. He then swore that he would live to pay up every dollar of debt and build one of the finest milling enterprises in the state. He managed to build a little mill with one four-foot stone and a two-foot pony and called it “Clear Grit.” And “Clear Grit” won. Inside of ten years 0061 43 it grew into a large modern structure of fourteen run of stone, one of the largest in southern Minnesota, and marketed 100 barrels or more daily of high-grade flour in the Chicago and Albany markets. “Honest John,” as he was known to the trade, earned the unusual editorial tribute from a well-known milling journal, in 1877, of being “the maker of probably the best straight spring flour now manufactured in the United States, if not in the world.”

The ups and downs of milling are dramatically pictured in the tragic career of the once glorious, but now effete hamlet known as Minnetonka Mills, Hennepin county. As early as 1852, Simon Stevens, brother of Col. John H. Stevens, the founder of Minneapolis, started up Minnehaha creek to find the famous inland sea described by the Indians. He followed the creek until he came to lake Minnetonka, the sea in question. On the way he noted the rapids at the present site of Minnetonka Mills, and the next year he located a claim and built a mill which lived three years. In 1860, T. H. Perkins erected on the same site a three-and-one-half story mill, which afterward fell to the present congressman from Minneapolis, Hon. Loren Fletcher, and his partner, C. M. Loring. On Oct. 20, 1874, they organized the Minnetonka Mills Company. They doubled the size of the mill, put in four run of stone and nine double rolls, turned out 300 barrels of flour daily, which found a ready market in Boston, New, York, and Europe, and then sold the plant to two Canadian capitalists for the round sum of $95,000.

The mill wheels at Minnetonka Mills never turned again. First, the new partners had their partnership tangle to settle. Then, the property owners at lake Minnetonka brought suits without end against the county for damage to property by reason of the dam raising the water level, and the county in turn laid violent hands upon the dam. Next came the owners of damaged property along Minnehaha creek. The result was fifteen years of lawsuits at a cost of $30,000 to Hennepin county taxpayers, and death and decay to the once blooming hamlet of Minnetonka Mills.

The first report of the Minnesota commissioner of statistics, 0062 44 Joseph A. Wheelock, on page 121, reviewing the flour industry of Minnesota for 1859–60, says:

Two years ago Minnesota imported flour to supply the deficiencies in her own product. She has now probably 140 grist mills, 122 being the sum of those actually reported to this office. Some of these mills are very large and fine, and the quality of flour produced rivals the best eastern brands.

This earliest estimate of the statistics of Minnesota milling was apparently too large; for in the following year's report detailed figures, quoted from the government census, are given, placing the number of flour mills at 85, instead of 140. Of the 85 mills, 63 were run by water, and 22 by steam. The wheat ground amounted to 1,273,509 bushels, and the flour produced reached 254,702 barrels. The value of the entire mill product was $1,310,431, as compared with $500 in 1850. The 1861 report estimated the daily output at Minneapolis to be 4,000 barrels, which is about one-third of the present output of the “Pillsbury A” mill.

The leading states in volume of flour production in 1860 were in order, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia. The largest mill, 300,000 barrels per annum, was in Oswego, New York; the next two, 190,000 and 160,000, respectively, were in Richmond, Virginia; and the fourth, 140,000 barrels, in New York city. The value of the annual product of these mills was around $1,000,000 each. The so-called big mills of New York and Virginia in 1860 were about the same in capacity, but greatly inferior in mechanical perfection, to the mills of such Minnesota towns as St. Cloud, Mankato, New Ulm, Faribault, Northfield, Hastings, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Waseca, today.

By the census of 1870, the 85 Minnesota mills of 1860 had multiplied to 216, requiring 281 water wheels and 38 steam engines, and representing 507 run of stone with a daily capacity of 61,314 barrels. The capital invested had grown from $587,000 in 1860 to $2,900,000; and the value of the milling product had increased from $1,300,000 to over $7,500,000. The output of the 216 mills represented about a million barrels of flour and half a million bushels of corn meal and feed. The milling industry had therefore more than trebled in the decade; although the aggregate flour output of 1870 is today very nearly equalled by one of 0063 45 several Minnesota counties, even outside of Hennepin and St. Louis, while either one of two milling companies in Minneapolis ground last year five times more flour than the total amount credited to the state by the census of 1870.

The leading milling counties of 1870 by number of mills were: Hennepin, fourteen; Winona, thirteen; Rice and Goodhue, with eight each; and Houston, Le Sueur, and Stearns, with six mills apiece. In value of milling product, there were fourteen counties that made a showing of over $100,000: Hennepin, leading with $1,125,000; Rice and Winona, following close with about $800,000 each; Goodhue, the fourth, with $600,000; then Dakota, with close to $400,000; followed by Olmsted and Fillmore, with $200,000 to $250,000 each; and then, in order, Stearns, Le Sueur, Mower, Scott, Blue Earth, Meeker, and Houston, with a product of $100,000 to $160,000 each.

Flour manufacturing had not yet obtained a foothold in Duluth or the Red River valley. St. Paul was holding her own with a total of two mills and a product valued at $51,748. And speaking of St. Paul, permit me to say that however sensitive or seemingly hostile that city may have been as regards her sister town up the river in the matter of population figures and real estate bargains, St. Paul has never refused to eat Minneapolis flour. The fact will go down the corridors of history and stand as a monument of self-abnegation and sisterly affection, that for over twenty-five years the good and devout people of St. Paul, whenever they asked blessing upon the morning, noon, or evening meal, invoked the blessing of Providence upon bread made from Minneapolis flour.

The year 1870 stands as a landmark in the history of milling, because that was the year when Edmund N. La Croix of Faribault went to Minneapolis and introduced the middlings purifier into the “Washburn B” mill, thereby increasing the value of Minnesota flour $1 to $2 per barrel and the value of Minnesota spring wheat ten to forty cents per bushel.

For nearly three generations American millers had made little advance on the milling system invented by Oliver Evans. It was he who invented the American automatic mill. He made it possible, by the use of the elevator and conveyer and other appliances 0064 46 for a bushel of wheat to make the rounds of a two to seven story mill without the aid of a human hand from the time the grain was dumped by the farmer into the hopper at the platform until it reappeared as a barrel or sack of flour. The dusty miller might swap stories over the farm wagon, visit the neighboring inn, or go-a-fishing, and the old mill and babbling brook would pursue the even tenor of their way and grind the grist with business-like precision. From the inventions of Oliver Evans down to 1870, about the only improvements were the substitution of a French buhr stone for the granite, a silk bolting cloth for wool, with some advancement in cleaning the wheat and dressing the stones.

For a hundred years the ambition of American millers was to emulate the mills of the gods and grind “exceedingly fine,” and likewise grind all the flour possible at one grinding. The mill-stones were set close together and run at as high-speed as practicable, with the idea of reducing the grain into flour at one grinding. This was the fast reduction and low grinding process. Middlings, or meal from that part of the berry which lies beneath the bran covering and the starchy center, was a thing to be avoided; for the old-fashioned miller did not know what to do with them.

It was the mission of the “new process” to make middlings the most valuable part of the product. The middlings purifier, with its horizontal shaking screen and air blast for cleaning and separating the middlings, preserved for re-grinding that which for bread-making was by far the best portion of the wheat. Gluten, which not only gives bread its rising power or strength, but is the most nutritious quality in wheat for sustaining life, lies in the hard exterior of the kernel just beneath the bran covering, and therefore is contained in the middlings. Flour made from the purified middlings, according to the new process system, immediately commanded in the bread-making markets of the east from $1 to $2 per barrel higher than other Minnesota flour.

The result was a revolution in flour manufacture. Instead of making as little middlings as possible, the aim became to make as much middlings as possible. To do that, instead of grinding as much flour as possible at the first grinding, the aim became to grind as little flour as possible at the first grinding. So, instead of running the stones at the rate of 250 to 300 revolutions per minute 0065 47 they were run at 100 to 150. Instead of being set low or close together, they were set high so as to simply crack the berry at the first grinding for the liberation of the bran covering. Instead of reducing the kernel to flour at one grinding, the cracked chop was put through two or three grindings. Low and rapid grinding by the old process made of hard spring wheat dark and specky flour. Pressure and speed generated heat which made dark and pasty flour, damaged in both color and quality. The new process required more time and labor, but the far higher price repaid the extra effort handsomely.

The effect upon wheat and flour production in the United States was marked. The wheat product rose from 287,000,000 bushels by the census of 1870, or 7.5 bushels per capita, to 459,000,000 or 9.2 per capita, in the census of 1880. Specially notable was the increase in yield in the Northwest, which produced hard spring wheat rich in gluten and middlings. Minnesota spring wheat, instead of standing low in the market, because of the large amount of dark middlings flour which it carried by the old process of milling, at once rose to the top of the market, because of the large proportion of fancy middlings patent which it yielded. In the ten-year period of 1870–80, Minnesota's wheat crop rose from 18,000,000 bushels to 34,000,000, nearly doubling, and the mills multiplied from 216 to 436. The capital invested in Minnesota mills rose from less than $3,000,000 in 1870 to over $10,000,000 in 1880. The sum paid by the millers to Minnesota farmers for wheat increased from $6,000,000 to $37,000,000, multiplying six fold, and the wages paid to mill employees grew from $293,000 to $1,371,000; while the value of flour produced rose from $7,500,000 to $41,000,000. The newly discovered wealth in the production of spring wheat on the prairies of the Northwest brought to Minnesota and the Dakotas a vast pilgrimage, and the blossoming of farms, railways, towns, and cities.

In 1861, Alexander Faribault, founder of the Minnesota town named after him, sent to Montreal for Nicholas La Croix to build for him a mill. La Croix came, and with 'him his brother, Edmund 0066 48 N., and his son Joseph. After building the mill for Faribault, the La Croixs, in 1866, built at Faribault a mill for themselves. They were educated men, skilled millers and engineers, the two brothers being graduates of the “Ecole des Arts and Metiers” in France. Familiar with French milling and engineering works, as well as with French machines and processes, they began to experiment, and in 1868 made a draft of the middlings purifier patented in France by Perigault, August 16, 1860, and described in the French work by Benoit in 1863. They then constructed from this draft a machine with which they experimented at their Faribault mill during the next two years. But a freshet carried away their dam and they gave up their mill, Edmund N. La Croix moving to Minneapolis in 1870.

La Croix visited the millers of Minneapolis, and told them of the wonderful results which could be obtained from Minnesota spring wheat by his process. Some thought him visionary, and others feared he was insane. But George H. Christian, who was more of a student and had greater interest in scientific matters than most business men, had faith enough in La Croix and his project to give him opportunity to put a machine into the “Big Mill,” the “Washburn B,” which Christian was then operating. La Croix worked on his machine for a good part of a year, and with some later modifications it was a success. The machine was built in Minneapolis at the Minnesota Iron Works, owned by C. M. Hardenburgh & Co. It cost only $300, but it increased the price of Minneapolis and Minnesota flour from $1 to $3 per barrel. The success of the middlings purifier at the “Washburn B” soon spread; and Pillsbury, Archibald, Ames, and other enterprising millers, rapidly got the new machines.

The fate of the La Croixs is that of many inventors. They realized nothing from their study and enterprise. After introducing the new milling system into many Minnesota mills, Edmund went to Rochester, N. Y., and Nicholas to Milwaukee, where he suddenly died in 1874. Edmund followed his brother to the grave a week later. Nicholas left a widow, three daughters, and a son Joseph, in straitened circumstances. Joseph got together the various improvements inaugurated by himself, his father, and uncle, and secured patents, and then interested capital to manufacture the La Croix machines. But meantime the greed of the 0067 49 patent sharks had resulted in the formation of a gigantic combination, which crushed La Croix and left him bankrupt, with three helpless women to provide for. A committee of three, of which Henry L. Little, manager of the Pillsbury-Washburn Company, and W. C. Edgar, editor and publisher of the Northwestern Miller , are members, is now pushing the cause of raising a subscription from the millers of America to pay the long-standing debt of the milling industry of the world to the La Croix family.

When the purifier combine, twenty years ago, attempted to levy upon the millers of America a royalty tribute that would have reached millions of dollars, and relied upon the La Croix patents in order to perfect a complete monopoly, the La Croix family stood by the millers in the fight and refused from the combine at one time a one-sixth interest in the proposed monopoly, and at another time a gratuity from the combine of $10,000. In the face of such loyalty and sacrifice, the millers of America should not now fail to stand by the La Croix family in an hour of need.

After the middlings purifier, adopted from the French, came the iron and porcelain rolls, adopted from the Hungarians. In 1872, Minnesota millers, who for years had followed the English milling system handed down from colonial times, swore by every mill invention that was French, and in 1880 they vowed by everything that was Hungarian. The success of the middlings purifier in the Washburn mills caused Geo. H. Christian, the chief operator, to look for further novelties. He sent for the latest French and German works on milling, and learned of the chilled iron rollers used in the big mills of Hungary, in lieu of millstones. In 1874 he had a number of sets of rollers made for the big “Washburn A” mill just built. The experiment succeeded, and when the big mill was rebuilt after the explosion of 1878 it was equipped with rolls after the Hungarian pattern. Charles A. Pillsbury meantime had visited Hungary, and W. D. Gray, representing E. P. Allis, had made inventions which he perfected after a study of Hungarian milling. American ideas were engrafted, and the best principles of French and Hungarian milling were Americanized, and reconstructed on the Yankee plan of an automatic mill. 4

The revolution in milling was complete. In 1870, the Washburn burn “big mill,” the “B,” was only a 600-barrel mill with twelve run of stone. The “Washburn A” of 1878 came out with an equipment of 86 sets of rollers,—48 corrugated iron, 26 smooth iron, and 12 porcelain,—through which the wheat, instead of being ground at one operation as by the old process, passed six times, being gradually reduced by six different breaks. After each break the chop or meal passed through the purifiers, of which there were 78, and the bolting reels, of which there were 148. The grain was prepared for the rolls by 58 cleaning machines, which successively removed the dust, the chaff, the oats, the cockle, polished the berry, removed the crease in the side and the beard at the end, and graded the kernels according to size. The “Washburn A” then had a capacity of 4,000 barrels daily, which was several times that of the biggest mills of the east. Then came the “Pillsbury A,” larger still, the largest in the world, the first half only having an equipment of 94 sets of rollers, 100 middlings purifiers, and 170 reels, with a capacity of 4,500 barrels. The “Washburn A” today claims a capacity of 11,000 barrels, and the “Washburn C” over 8,000; while the “Pillsbury A” shows 13,000, and the “Pillsbury B” over 7,000,—the quartette of the largest hummers in the milling choir of the world.

It is interesting from the present point of view to look back to 1870, before the day of the first middlings purifier. George H. Christian states that, when Judd & Brackett retired in 1867 from the so-called “Washburn Big Mills,” because unable to make them pay, men of experience in milling pronounced the 600-barrel mill, which was the jumbo of that day, as too large ever to be successful. Today the cities of St. Cloud, New Ulm, Mankato, and other towns that could be named, are operating mills of double that size. Duluth's big mill has many times that capacity. The smallest of the twenty-one mills now operating in Minneapolis is as large as the Washburn “big mill” of the old milling days; and sixteen range from three to twenty times the capacity of the mill which thirty years ago was pronounced too large for profitable running.

One reason for the increase in capacity is that the change from millstones to rolls has largely reduced the amount of power and mill-space required for a given output; but a more important 0069 51 reason is, that the new system, with its more intricate processes and maze of machinery, is more economically run on a large scale.

The history of Minnesota milling would not be complete without reference to the great explosion of 1878, perhaps the greatest catastrophe in the history of milling. Cut in a stone tablet on the north side of the “Washburn A” mill are the following words:

THIS MILL WAS ERECTED IN THE YEAR 1879, ON THE SITE OF WASHBURN MILL “A,” WHICH WAS TOTALLY DESTROYED ON THE SECOND DAY OF MAY, 1878, BY FIRE AND A TERRIFIC EXPLOSION OCCASIONED BY THE RAPID COMBUSTION OF FLOUR DUST. NOT ONE STONE WAS LEFT UPON ANOTHER, AND EVERY PERSON ENGAGED IN THE MILL INSTANTLY LOST HIS LIFE. THE FOLLOWING ARE THE NAMES OF THE FAITHFUL AND WELL TRIED EMPLOYEES WHO FELL VICTIMS OF THAT AWFUL CALAMITY, VIZ.

E. W. BURBANK, CYRUS W. EWING, E. H, GRUNDMAN, HENRY HICKS, CHAS. HENNING, PATRICK JUDD, CHAS. KIMBALL, WM. LESLIE, FRED. A. MERRILL, EDWD. E. MERRILL, WALTER SAVAGE, OLE SHIE, AUGUST SMITH, CLARK WILBUR.

“Labor, wide as earth, Has its summit in Heaven.”

This inscription tells the story. It was the largest and best equipped mill at that time in America. It was 138 by 110 feet on the ground, six-and-one-half stories high, and was fitted out with 42 run of French buhr stone, 100 reels, and 80 purifiers. The walls were of solid masonry, and for the first story were six feet thick, and built down to the bedrock. The 80 purifiers had small fans, but no dust collectors. The mill was full of dust, and the millers commonly wore sponges for the protection of mouth and nose. The walls were blown down to the foundation and fell outward.

W. D. Gray, a mill expert, who at one time was employed in the Washburn mills, speaks of previous experiences which the millers had with the explosion of mill-dust. At one time several of the men had a severe shock from a slight explosion, and at another time the roof was partially lifted by the explosion in a dust room.

In the great explosion of 1878, the fire is supposed to have 0070 52 started in some of the machinery before its communication to the dust room. There were eighteen lives lost, as partly named above, and six mills were wholly destroyed, as follows: Washburn A, 42 run; Diamond, 6 run; Humboldt, 8 run; Zenith, 6 run; Galaxy, 12 run; and Pettit-Robinson, 15 run; total, 99 run of stone. They were all promptly rebuilt with purifiers and buhr stones, not waiting for rolls, which at that time were being experimentally introduced. Property was damaged by the explosion in cases nearly a mile away, and the total loss exceeded a million dollars.

Governor C. C. Washburn, at the time, was building a new mill near the others. On the morning after the explosion he paced off a distance beyond the foundation as planned, and, driving a stake at the point to which he paced, said to the architect: “Build your mill out to here;” and it was done. The hastily added space, however, gave the new “Washburn C” more room than it could economically utilize until 1899.

In 1858, the year Minnesota became a state, the people of this great wheat and flour producing commonwealth, according to the authority of both Joseph A. Wheelock and Ignatius Donnelly, were compelled to import a considerable portion of their flour. Horace Greeley, in a letter to J. W. McClung in 1858, confessed that his earliest impression of Minnesota was unfavorable, on the following ground: “I saw that your state imported not only loafers in great abundance, but the bread they ate as well as the whisky they drank; and I did not see how she could stand it (you must pardon my weakness) in the defection of home industry.” The state statistician, Joseph A. Wheelock, found in 1859, however, that we were beginning to export flour. He discovered that we shipped out by way of La Crosse and Prairie du Chien, for example, 403 bales of buffalo robes, 100 bales of furs, 343 bushels of cranberries, 70,218 pounds of ginseng, and the grand total of 114 barrels of flour. Such was the first ripple of the tidal wave to follow.

From 1860 to 1870 Minnesota shipments of flour to eastern markets gradually increased until they reached several hundred thousand barrels. Among the leaders in this eastward business were Archibald of Dundas and Gardner of Hastings, the “Vermillion flour” of the latter being a much celebrated brand. It was 0071 53 not until 1878, however, that Minneapolis began to send direct exports abroad, independently of the New York and Boston middlemen. The delay and cost incident to shipment through the hands of eastern agents at length could not be borne, and Gov. C. C. Washburn got the well-known milling and elevator man, W. H. Dunwoody, to spend several months abroad and secure direct relations with European buyers. There was great opposition among New York middlemen for a time; but the enterprise was a complete success.

Direct exports from Minneapolis to foreign ports began in 1878 with 107,183 barrels. In five years the figure was multiplied ten times. For a period of years our direct export trade was stable, but comparatively stationary, and then after 1890 it again advanced. In 1890 our direct exports were 2,000,000 barrels, and in 1891 3,000,000 was reached. In 1899 Minneapolis topped 4,000,000 barrels as the direct export to foreign markets; and in 1900 it was 4,702,485, being one-fourth of the total exports of flour from the United States. Next to Minneapolis as a direct exporter stands Duluth, which in 1898 reached close to 1,000,000 barrels.

The principal foreign consumer of Minneapolis flour is the United Kingdom. During the ten months ending with October last, there were exported from the United States to foreign markets, all told, something over 15,000,000 barrels of flour; but over 8,000,000 barrels, or more than one-half, went to the United Kingdom. Next after Great Britain, the best consumer of American flour is the West Indies; and then follow, in order, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Germany. Oregon and other Pacific coast mills principally supply the Hong Kong and other Oriental trade, and the mills of our more southerly and easterly states have paid more attention than Minnesota to the West India and South American trade. Great Britain and the European continent are the principal foreign market for Minnesota flour. But geography and differences of language and customs are no obstacles to the Minnesota miller. He obliterates time, distance, and nationality, if there is a mouth on the globe that can eat bread; and Minnesota flour is the most cosmopolitan thing on the earth today. It is eaten by the German and the Jap, the Englishman and the Boer. It goes to the Arctic and the tropic zones, and conquers all competitors, colors, and climes.

Minnesota flour shipments are a large factor in the business 0072 54 of the Soo canal; and the traffic of that great inland channel marks in a way the progress of Minnesota flour sales in eastern and foreign markets. In 1871, when the new milling process was just beginning to see day in Minneapolis, the flour shipments of the Soo canal were only 26,000 barrels. In 1881 the Soo canal flour shipments had multiplied twenty-fold and were 600,000 barrels. By 1891 nearly 4,000,000 barrels were reached; and for the year just closed the total will reach 8,000,000. Today over 90 per cent. of the flour ground in Minnesota is eaten by eastern states and foreign nations, and of the Minneapolis product over 97 per cent. is shipped away, the shipments of the year just closed reaching 14,800,000 barrels, of which one-third is eaten abroad and the balance in the eastern states.

The census of 1890 gave Minnesota 307 flour and grist mills, employing 4,038 hands at $2,243,855 wages, and paying out $52,383,857 for grain, while turning out $60,158,088 worth of flour.

There are in Minnesota in 1901 about 400 flour and grist mills. The capacity of twenty-one mills at Minneapolis exceeds 75,000 barrels daily, and they grind annually 70,000,000 bushels of wheat into 15,000,000 barrels of flour. The state gazetteer enumerates about 200 Minnesota mills, outside of Minneapolis and Duluth, with an aggregate daily capacity of over 42,000 barrels, and 180 others whose capacity is not given. Placing the capacity of this 180 conservatively at 20,000 barrels, we arrive at about 140,000 barrels daily as the milling capacity of the state. It is fair therefore to state that Minnesota mills consume from 110,000,000 to 120,000,000 bushels of grain per annum, and turn out upwards of 25,000,000 barrels of flour a year, which is enough to sustain one-third of the nation.

The ten largest milling centers in America today, as measured by their flour output in 1899, are as follows: Detroit, 594,700 barrels; Nashville, 630,803; Buffalo, 1,068,944; Kansas City, 1,094,846; Chicago, 1,125,745; Toledo, 1,150,000; St. Louis, 1,166,439; Milwaukee, 1,737,826; Duluth-Superior, 1,763,920; Minneapolis, 14,291,780. It is gratifying that Minnesota contains within her boundaries the two largest milling centers in the Union, 0073 55 and that one of them grinds more flour in a year than all the other nine put together and 4,000,000 barrels added.

, In conclusion, permit me to say that at the World's Exposition at Paris during the past year, bread made from Minnesota flour carried off the prize medal for the best bread in the world, and that Minnesota flour likewise took the first premium in the contest for the best flour in the world, showing that Minnesota holds the world's sweepstakes both for the quantity and quality of product.,

Well founded tradition gives to George Washington, the first President of the Republic, the credit of devising the plan for the survey of lands which for nearly a century has been applied to the survey of the public domain of the United States.

This plan or system of surveys has as its unit the square acre; then the section, a mile square, 640 square acres; then the township, six miles square, containing 36 square sections. The townships ships lying between two consecutive meridians six miles apart constitute a range, and the ranges are numbered from principal meridians both east and west. In each range the townships are numbered both north and south from the principal east and west base line.

For obvious reasons the author of this plan or system of land surveys did not have the occasion for putting the same into practical operation, since each of the thirteen colonies had adopted systems of surveys of the lands granted them by Great Britain, which could not readily be conformed to this system. It was inaugurated and carried out in the survey of lands which have come into the possession of the general government after the adoption of the constitution, known generally as Government Lands, sometimes Lands, or as the General Domain.

This plan of surveys was to some extent inaugurated in 1803 by Col. Jared Mansfield, then surveyor general of the Northwest Territory; and was subsequently enacted as a law, in 1804, upon the recommendation of President Jefferson.

The more general feature of this plan of surveys of the public domain, thus devised and covered by the enactment of Congress, provides for the establishment of principal meridians, extended north and south from an east and west base line. These are numbered from the east to the west, as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth principal meridians; and the lands in Minnesota lying west of the Mississippi river are all described as west of the fifth principal meridian.

These principal meridians were established in the beginning, in the successive “land districts,” over each of which was appointed a surveyor general, who controlled the surveys in his district, subject to such rules, regulations, and directions, as should be given him from time to time by the commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington. Hence the first principal meridian was the most easterly, in the first surveyor general's land district designated by the general government.

It is not, perhaps, strictly germane to the special subject to be presented in this paper, that I should enter into a more particular description of these principal meridians, and the points upon the east and west base lines from which they were respectively run and established. I have in this paper to deal mainly with the government survey of public lands in Minnesota lying west of the Mississippi river, which, as I have already stated, were and are described as west of the fifth principal meridian.

That a clearer understanding of these surveys may be given, it should be stated that the east and west base line from which the townships in Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota west of the river, are numbered, passes nearly through the center of the State of Arkansas. The townships in the first tier on the north side of that line are designated as numbered one north, and each township in the first tier south of that line is designated and described as township number one south,—counting north and south from this base line.

This will answer and explain the oft repeated inquiry, what this word north means in describing townships in Minnesota. When, in describing land, after giving the number of the section, 0079 59 we say, for instance, in township number 120 north, we mean it is that number north, counting from the east and west base line I have referred to.

We also say such or such a range number west, meaning west of the fifth principal meridian.

The number of townships from the base line in central Arkansas up through Missouri and Iowa to the south boundary line of Minnesota is 100; so that the north tier of townships in Iowa next to the state line is numbered 100, and the south tier of townships in Minnesota north of and next to the boundary line is numbered 101, the next 102, and so on.

The government surveys of public lands in Minnesota lying east of the Mississippi river have as their east and west base line the south boundary of the state of Wisconsin, or, to speak more accurately, the boundary line between the states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Therefore the numbering of the townships of the public surveys of lands in Minnesota lying east of the Mississippi river is entirely different from the numbering of townships west of the river. Most of the government surveys of land in Minnesota lying east of the Mississippi river were completed very early, and before the surveys of lands west of the river were made.

The two systems of surveys have no connection, except that in the northern part of our state there are lands, east of the river, which are described as being west of the fifth principal meridian.

Very early in the history of the surveys of the public lands of this country, a difficulty arose because of what is now generally called “the convergency of meridians.” It was found by actual measurement (which should have been known without) that these principal meridians, starting from points on an east and west base line and running therefrom on a true north course to their intersection with the Great Lakes, were, at such northern intersection, nearer one another than at the points where they started from the base line. The effect of this convergency of the principal meridians was to fractionalize the sections and townships in northern Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, so that in those parts of these states the government surveys produced townships 0080 60 six miles in length north and south, and less than two miles in width east and west, and sections a mile in length, north and south, by a few rods wide east and west, thus destroying the unit, the square acre, the section a mile square (640 acres), and the township six miles square, of thirty-six sections. It should be stated that this same serious effect is manifest in the surveys of the public lands in northern Iowa, the northern boundary of which is six hundred miles north of the base line in Arkansas.

An attempt to remedy this difficulty by running a series of east and west correction lines, parallel to the base lines, only corrected the difficulty to a limited extent.

In 1850 this whole matter was referred to a commission of intelligent scientific men, with Prof. Edward D. Mansfield of Cincinnati, Ohio, as chairman, who made a report to the commissioner of the General Land Office, which report was approved and adopted by that department and made the basis of instruction to the surveyor generals in the survey of the public domain thereafter.

The change in the public surveys, as recommended by Mansfield and adopted by the government, was substantially as follows: That what should be known as “guide meridians” should be run north from an established east and west base line forty-two miles apart, offsetting a quarter of a mile at every twenty-four mile station on such guide meridian to provide against convergency. These guide meridians were to be intersected by what should be known as “standard parallels,” east and west lines twenty-four miles apart, thus dividing the public lands into what were to be known and are known as cheques, measuring forty-two miles east and west by twenty-four miles north and south, with twenty-eight square townships in every cheque, except those made fractional and smaller by bordering on some great natural boundary, as, for instance, the Mississippi river.

The greatest care was to be observed in running the guide meridians and standard parallels. They could only be run with an astronomical instrument known as a solar compass, one of the most perfect and useful instruments ever invented for running 0081 61 lines. Having adjusted its latitude and declination arcs, a line as perfect as the movement of the sun can be run with it; and the exact variation of the magnetic needle at any place is readily determined by it, as well as exact time.

Two sets of assistants, compassmen, chainmen, axemen and markers, were to be employed at the same time in the running of these lines, so as to guard against possible error. The variation of the needle, as shown by the solar compass, was to be carefully noted every quarter of a mile, or oftener if necessary, as a guide to the surveyors who should come after to run the township and section lines.

This new system for conducting the surveys of the public lands by the government was first inaugurated in the State of California in the autumn of 1852, and next in Minnesota west of the Mississippi river, early in the spring of 1853.

As I had, to some extent, personal supervision and charge of that work in Minnesota in 1853, 1854, and 1855, I may be pardoned if hereafter in this paper it seems necessary to make some few references of a personal nature.

Minnesota at that time was included, with Iowa and Wisconsin, in a surveyor general's district. The office of the surveyor general was at Dubuque, Iowa. Hon. Warner Lewis was surveyor general. The boundary line between Iowa and Minnesota was run and established by Capt. Andrew Talcott of the Topographical Bureau in 1852, the next year after the Indian title to lands in southern Minnesota was extinguished by treaty. It was currently reported that Captain Talcottt, in running this boundary line, had with him as assistants and other employees about three hundred men. The work was not done under contract. I traversed that line from the river west a hundred and fifty miles, early in 1853. The travel of Talcott's company over the line made it like a highway then, and there were strewed along it abundant evidences that at times, at least, great hilarity must have prevailed among the men under his command.

It is but just that I should state that the preliminary line of this boundary was run by Captain Marsh of Dubuque with a solar 0082 62 compass; and it was not changed a particle by Captain Talcott and his assistants, but was verified by them after making the most thorough scientific tests thereof.

In January, 1853, the surveyor general, Warner Lewis, gave a contract to Elisha S. Norris to run the first, second, and third guide meridians in Minnesota, west of the Mississippi river, and the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh standard parallels. The work was to be paid for by the government, ten dollars per mile for running and establishing the guide meridians, and eight dollars per mile for standard parallels. Mr. Norris had been state surveyor of Maine, and he stood high as an engineer and surveyor. He had for some years been a deputy surveyor of the surveyor general's office at Dubuque; he had made a careful study of the new plan of prosecuting government surveys which had been devised and suggested by Mansfield; and, because of this, had been selected to introduce this new system in the new Territory of Minnesota. Mr. Norris had been my preceptor, and I came with him into Minnesota as one of his assistants in this work.

In the beginning of this work, in the remote southeast corner of the then Territory, Mr. Norris had the misfortune to get his solar compass out of adjustment in passing through a dense thicket, slightly bending both the declination and latitude arcs. He did not discover it until the inspector of surveys, who was following closely on the line with a solar compass and chainmen, called his attention to it and at once reported the blunder to the surveyor general's office. Mr. Norris was recalled. A great clamor, born of envy and jealousy on the part of the other deputy surveyors of the office, compelled Gen. Lewis reluctantly to relieve him, and, because of his desire to make the matter as agreeable as possible to Mr. Norris, and because of the well known partiality of the surveyor general for myself, together with political influence to a certain extent from friends (we were all simon-pure Democrats then), the supervision of these surveys was given to me, then in my seventeenth year, and I established these guide meridians and standard parallels in the years 1853 to 1855.

The first line established was not a guide meridian, strictly, but rather a line beginning on the state line, on the east side of range four, running north thereon till it intersected the Mississippi 0083 63 river at or near where the city of La Crescent is now situated.

After completing this line, we returned and went west on the state line forty-two miles to a point between ranges ten and eleven, and thence ran the first guide meridian north between these ranges, making the required offsets every twenty-four miles. This meridian intersects the Mississippi river at the foot of lake Pepin, just a little above Read's Landing. Returning on this guide meridian to the state line, we measured west thereon forty-two miles to a point between ranges seventeen and eighteen, from whence the second meridian was run north between these ranges, making the required offsets, till it intersected the Mississippi river close above the city of Hastings. Returning again to the state line, we once more measured west thereon forty-two miles to a point between ranges 24 and 25, where the south point of the third guide meridian was established; and thence we ran it north between these ranges to its intersection with the Mississippi river near Monticello. The third guide meridian passes through the “Big Woods,” crosses the Minnesota river at Belle Plaine, goes about three miles west of lake Minnetonka, and thence crosses the Crow river and Pelican lake to its intersection with the Mississippi.

So careful was the government in the establishment of these base lines, that the instructions were modified as to running the third guide meridian, requiring that it should be run during the winter season, after the large number of lakes which were supposed to be thereon were frozen solid, so that the chainmen could actually measure the line over them, and not trust to mathematical calculation from triangulation or other methods of determining distances across impassable places. I was engaged in establishing this meridian nearly five months, from some time in November, 1853, to some time in April, 1854. I ran the standard parallels intersecting these guide meridians. Afterward I did some township and section work, and terminated my connection with the surveyor general's office at Dubuque, January 1, 1856, at which time I came to Winona, where I have ever since resided.

The plan of the government surveys of the public domain devised by Mansfield has to a very great extent answered the purpose intended. The sections and townships in Minnesota, west of the Mississippi river, were not fractionalized by the convergency of meridians; and I am also told that this is true of the survey of 0084 64 public lands by the government in California and elsewhere in the Union, where from that time this plan has been followed in the survey of all public lands held by the government.

Perhaps it would not be out of place, in closing this paper, to make some reference to a few incidents of more or less historic interest which I met with at the time of making these early government surveys, and to refer to my acquaintance at that time with some of the earliest pioneers of Minnesota.

In running a line some distance southwest of Hastings one very bright summer day, we came upon a white sandstone pillar on the smooth open prairie. It was quite high and impressed us as peculiar, being in that locality without any other similar formation near it, glistening in the bright sunlight. Some of my company clambered up this natural obelisk far enough to find cut in the sandstone the name of Nicollet and the date 1837. The government had furnished me with copies of Nicollet's maps of the survey he had made in this country, and we examined them and found this pillar of white sandstone indicated thereon. That Nicollet had carved his name there in 1837, I have for good reasons doubted; but that he visited and took note of what is now known as Castle Rock, there cannot be a shadow of a doubt.

I want to bear testimony to the wonderful fidelity and accuracy of this savant and explorer in marking the topography of this section of the country as shown in his maps. The main streams and water courses of southern Minnesota were most accurately indicated by him on his topographical maps, copies of which I had.

A somewhat curious and interesting etymological result grew out of the name given by the early French voyageurs, and thence by Nicollet, to the water courses, streams, and river, which drain the counties of Dodge, Olmsted, and Wabasha, now known as Zumbro river. The French name was Rivière aux (or des) Embarras, referring to the difficulties (embarassments) of navigating it with canoes. This river, which flows east through Wabasha county was named “Des Embarras river” by Nicollet, and this was followed by me in the report of the survey of guide meridians and standard parallels which crossed this river and its tributaries. 0085 65 Hence Des Embarras was the name given to this river upon all the early maps of Minnesota. Its Sioux name was Wazi-oju, meaning “the pine place,” for the white pine trees which occur sparingly on its bluffs. When English-speaking people settled the lands bordering on this stream, they adopted the French name, but found it difficult to give the French pronunciation. After many unsuccessful efforts, it finally resulted in the name Zumbro for this stream and its tributaries.

Before starting out to run the third guide meridian, I was advised that if the line passed through or near the place where the Winnebago Indians were located, I and my men might have trouble, as these Indians were greatly dissatisfied about something; and I was assured by the Department that a messenger should be sent from Fort Snelling to apprise me of the exact state of affairs with the Winnebago Indians, and if there was danger I should abandon the line. No messenger ever came, or, if he did come, he failed to find me; so the alarm and fear of my men and myself, eighteen in all, can readily be imagined, when we reached a place on the line where the snow was all tramped down, unmistakable evidence of human beings in the vicinity. It was late in the afternoon and in a dense forest, and, if my recollection is right, it was on the Crow river. I set my compass, and my men came up and we stood for a few minutes in consultation, when out from behind a tree near us, came an Indian, gun in hand, white blanket on, and otherwise comfortably well dressed. He spoke to us, saying, “How do you do?” Soon other Indians came out from behind the trees, and then others, in such numbers that we were ready to believe, literally, that “the woods were full of them.” They were wonderfully interested in my compass and surveying outfit, the chain, the tally pins, etc. They told us, as best they could, that, hearing the noise we made coming up through the woods, they took us for an attacking party of Indians, but they were glad to know we were white men.

I asked who they were, and they said, “Winnebagoes,” and that Winneshiek, their chief, was farther down. We camped, and, taking one of my men with me and after passing through a most awful cordon of yelping dogs, I called on Winneshiek that 5 0086 66 evening. Whether this was a title or a name I knew not, but he received us kindly, speaking in fair English. He complained bitterly of his treatment by the Indian commissioners and other government officials, who, he said, had either deposed or wanted to depose him, and to get another chief to give away his lands. I assured him that I had nothing to do with such matters, and joined him heartily in his righteous indignation at the manner he was being outraged. He not only made us no trouble, but next morning, when we passed through on the line, three rods west of his tepee, he gave us a large quantity of fine venison for a reasonable compensation. I was led to believe that this was a large band of Winnebagoes hunting off their reservation.

In the autumn of 1854, I met at Mendota Captain Tilton and Major Reno, who had just completed the survey of a military road from Sioux City to Fort Snelling. Major Reno was greatly interested in my solar compass, and asked me if he could bring around the next day, to see this instrument, Capt. George B. McClellan, who had just come from the west to consult Gov. Isaac I. Stevens in regard to the Northern Pacific Railroad surveys. They came the following day, and, of course, I “spread myself” in explaining the use and merits of the solar compass to these distinguished West Pointers. I recall that Reno said it was a shame that this instrument had not been introduced for use in the army engineering, and the only reason he could give was, that it had not been invented by an army officer.

While making these surveys, I met a few of the early pioneers, notably General Sibley, who laid me under great obligations for much kindness and consideration, and Joseph R. Brown, at whose hospitable home, at Henderson, I was entertained four weeks while waiting for instructions. I was greatly impressed with Joseph R. Brown in many ways. I recall now quite vividly the impression I had then, that he was the smartest man I had ever met.

I also made the acquaintance of Henry M. Rice, Alexander Faribault, and Alexis Bailly. I think I met Martin McLeod. I met Governor Gorman and many others, all of whom I remember most kindly. They all did what they could for me. For some 0087 67 reason unknown, I had not the good fortune during this time to meet the most illustrious of all these, Governor Ramsey. Minnesota was and is greatly indebted to its earliest pioneers. Many of them were men of culture and refinement, all of them strong men, brave, hospitable, courteous, and kind. What a welcome they gave all those who came to make a home in this beautiful land and glorious commonwealth!

On the 16th day of December, 1850, I called on Governor Ramsey at his new house on Walnut street, to which he had recently moved. The governor was surrounded by a large delegation of Sioux Indians, each of whom had a long-stem pipe across his lap. Those were the first wild Indians I had ever seen. Their faces were painted in streaks of red and black, and many of them had eagle feathers on their heads. They were orderly, so far as I could see, and I little thought that within a few years I should carry their yearly supplies to Redwood Agency, and guns and ammunition up the Minnesota river to destroy these same Indians.

St. Paul at that time was little more than an Indian-trading post. The Indians in winter camped in the heavy timber on the west side of the river from Kaposia to a point opposite St. Paul. As soon as the ice formed so as to bear them, great numbers would cross over to trade. Trading was done with A. L. Larpenteur, on the corner of Third and Jackson streets; with Mr. Simpson, on Minnesota and Third streets; and the Fuller Brothers, at the Upper Levee. All these traders dealt heavily in furs.

In the year 1850, I preëmpted what is now called Langdon, situated near the river, fifteen miles below St. Paul. After I finished 0116 92 my house on the prairie and moved in, the Sioux used to pass frequently on their way to Point Douglas. During the two years we were on the prairie, we were not troubled by them, neither did we hear of any family that was troubled. I found that farming was not my forte, so I returned to St. Paul.

In 1855 I had command of the steamer Globe, making trips on the Minnesota river, and in the early fall of that year we carried supplies to the Sioux at Redwood Agency. The Indians would come down the river several miles to meet the boat. They were like a lot of children, and when the steamboat approached they would shout, “Nitonka pata-wata washta,” meaning, “Your big fire-canoe is good.” They would then cut across the bend, yelling until we reached the landing.

In the fall of that year, 1855, their supplies were late, when I received orders from Agent Murphy to turn over to the Indians twelve barrels of pork, and twelve barrels of flour. As soon as we landed, we rolled the supplies on shore. I was informed that the Indians were in a starving condition. It was amusing to see five or six of them rolling a barrel of pork up the bank, when two of our deck hands would do the work in half the time.

A young Indian girl stood at the end of the gang plank, wringing her hands and looking toward the boat, exclaiming “Sunka wanicha,” meaning “They have my dog.” The cabin boy told me the cook had coaxed the dog on board and hid it. I could speak the language so as to be understood, and I motioned to the girl and said, “Niye kuwa,” meaning “Come here.” She came on board, and I told the cook to bring the dog to me. When the dog came, she caught it in her arms, exclaiming, “Sunka washta,” meaning “Good dog.” She then ran on shore and up the hill. It seemed to me that white people took advantage of the Indian when they could, even steamboat cooks.

When the flour and pork were on level ground, the barrel heads were knocked in, and the pork was cut in small strips and thrown in a pile. Two hundred squaws then formed a circle, and several Indians handed the pieces of pork to the squaws until the pile was disposed of. The flour was placed in tin pans, each squaw receiving a panful.

Later, in the same season, we had an unfortunate trip. The boat was loaded deep. Luckily Agent Murphy and Capt. Louis Robert were on board. We had in the cabin of the boat ninety thousand dollars in gold. About three miles below the Agency, we ran on a large boulder. After much effort, we got the boat afloat. Major Murphy gave orders to land the goods, so that they might be hauled to the Agency. We landed and unloaded, covering the goods with tarpaulins. There were about fifty kegs of powder with the goods. While we were unloading, the agent sent for a team to take Captain Robert and himself, with the gold, to the Agency. Then we started down the river. We had gone only a few miles, when we discovered a dense smoke, caused by a prairie fire. The smoke was rolling toward the pile of goods, which we had left in charge of two men. When we reached the ferry at Red Bank, a man on horseback motioned us to land, and told us that the goods we left were all burnt up and the powder exploded. This was a sad blow to the Indians.

The following is a list of the steamboats running on the Minnesota river, during high water, in the year 1855 and later: Clarion, Captain Humberson; Globe, Captain Edwin Bell; Time and Tide, Captain Nelson Robert; Jeannette Roberts, Captain Charles Timmens; Mollie Moler, Captain Houghton; Minnesota, Captain Hays; and the Frank Steele and Favorite, both sidewheel steamers. These boats were drawn off when the water got low; and when the railroad paralleled the river, all boats quit running.

On the 16th day of December, 1895, I called on Governor Ramsey again, to talk over old times, forty-five years after my first call. What changes have taken place since then! When I started to leave, I thought I would see how much the governor remembered of the Sioux language. I said, “Governor, nitonka tepee, washta.” “What did you say, captain ?” asked the governor. I replied, “Nitonka tepee, washta.” “Why, captain,” said he, “that means, My house is large and good;” and, with a wink, “Captain, let's have a nip.” Of course we nipped, and said “Ho!” All old settlers will know the meaning of the Sioux exclamation, “Ho!”

In the summer of 1859 I arranged with Mr. J. C. Burbank 0118 94 to go to the Red River of the North to take charge of the steamboat Anson Northup, load the freight on the boat, and take it to Fort Garry. This was the first steamboat ever run on the Red river.

I was to take a few men with me for deck hands, and Dudley Kelly, a brother of Patrick H. Kelly, as clerk. I would find a pilot and engineer at the boat. We left the next morning on the stage. On arriving at the Red river, we were informed that the boat had started for the townsite of Georgetown, in charge of the stage agent. If we drove fast, they said, we would overtake the boat, as the river was very crooked. We got ahead of her, and when we heard her coming around the bend, we hailed them. They landed, and I went on board and showed my papers to the man in charge of the boat, who introduced me to the pilot, Jesse Young, and also to Lem Young, the engineer. Then leaving us, he got on the stage, going to Abercrombie.

We started for Georgetown. We found three deck hands on the boat. Two were old pinery men. They were of great service afterward at Goose rapids. There were also two families on board, the first pioneer families coming through the United States to Fort Garry. All others came by the way of Hudson bay. Two men were also passengers, one a minister. We soon landed at Georgetown, and loaded the freight on the boat.

Two more passengers got on board there for Fort Garry. I inquired about the river below. They said the water was deep down to the fort. As voyageurs, in their birch canoes, they had passed up and down without trouble, but we found a steamboat a little different from a canoe. I called a meeting to find out the amount of provisions there was on board, as in our stage trip to the Red river we had passed the wagon with provisions for the boat. They had a broken wheel, and a man had gone back to St. Cloud for a new one. This would take several days. The passengers and crew were all anxious to start down the river, and, as there were provisions to last through the trip, all went well until we reached Goose rapids.

There we saw the break of boulders in the channel of the river, and we also saw shoal water on a gravel bar below. The pilot and I took the small skiff to examine. We found that the boulders would have to be removed before we could get through. We made scrapers to dig below the boulders. When we had dug 0119 95 a hole large enough to hold a boulder, we brought the bow of the boat against it and then came ahead, shoving the boulder into the opening we had made.

This we continued to do until the boulders were all out of the way, and then we started over the bar. Getting half way over, the boat stuck fast. We commenced to carry the freight on shore, to lighten; and fortunately the freight was in square packages with lugs. The men would turn their backs to the guard of the boat, receive a package, and wade to shore, to the pile. This was of no benefit, as the water fell fast. I sent two men back to Georgetown, to have Mr. Joseph McKay come and get the freight.

When we had the boat unloaded we tried to move her by backing to throw the water under her, and then reversed to come ahead quick for starting. It was of no use. Some of our party wanted me to abandon the steamboat and strike for Pembina, a hundred miles or more down the river. I said “No,” and at once decided to build a dam, this being the first dam ever put in on the Red river.

I will describe the way it was built. First we cut two cottonwood logs, ten feet long, and chopped out the middle to form a trough, leaving the ends and sides of each. We then spliced them together, calked them, and built a platform on this scow for men to stand on to drive stakes. The stakes were cut about seven feet long and sharpened. We commenced to drive from the east shore, and drove a straight line of stakes to the boat. We had a man at each end of the scow, to hold it up to the stakes, and to move it as the stakes were driven. There was a very strong current over the bar. We knew that if the dam was not a success there would be starvation, for our provisions were nearly exhausted and we were a long way from civilization.

Now came the tug of war. Our crew cut cottonwood logs, twelve feet long, and rolled them to the river. This was hard work. All brush had to be cut in front of the logs to clear the way. When in the water two or three men would follow them to place them in line above the stakes. This was done until we had enough to reach to the boat.

We had as a passenger a hearty Scotch minister. He sent for me to come on board for prayers. I went. After prayers he 0120 96 spoke as though I ought to have brought the men with me. I said to him, “God will help them that help themselves.”

The dam required a large amount of brush. This was carried to the lower side of the logs, to be put on them with the brush ends up stream and the butts on the logs. While we were so placing the brush, I looked on the shore where the freight was piled, and saw a man. He hailed us and came on board. It was Capt. Russell Blakeley. I explained to him the condition we were in. He pulled from his pocket a lot of fish lines and hooks, and handed them to me. They proved a great blessing to us. I knew then that they would save us from starving. All who could be spared from the work began fishing, and they had great success. We continued to pile the brush on the logs, and when we got about half way from the shore to the boat I could see the water begin to rise above the dam. When we got to within fifteen feet of the boat with the brush, she rose and shot over the bar into deep water.

We hauled the small scow aboard, which was built for driving the stakes, fearing that we might need it farther down the stream. Then we raised steam and started for Fort Garry, Captain Blakeley going with us from Goose rapids. When we reached the mouth of the Red Lake river, we saw a great many birch canoes on the west batik of the Red river. We heard later at Fort Garry that the Indians intended to intercept the boat; but they had got out of provisions, and had left their canoes to go on a hunt.

Just below the Red Lake river we caught up with two men in a canoe. They had a large number of geese and goslings in their canoe that they had shot. We lifted their canoe on board, and I offered to buy their game. They refused to sell, but made us a present of all they had, knowing the need we were in. We then lived high on fish and goslings for breakfast, goose for dinner, and goslings for supper.

The boat being light, we reached Fort Garry without further trouble. We unloaded the passengers and freight, and then had to find a place to lay the boat up in safety for the winter. We were recommended to take her to the Stone Fort, about fifteen miles below Fort Garry.

In the morning we got ready to start for the Stone Fort, 0121 97 when a few men came and said they wanted to go down to the fort with us. After landing at the fort, a few more men came and said they wanted to take a short ride as they never had seen a steamboat before. We started, and about five miles below the Stone Fort, we saw a band of Indians looking with wonder at the boat. When we got opposite the Indians, I motioned to the pilot to blow the whistle. He did so, and such a scattering you never saw. Some ran, and some jumped into the bulrushes close by to hide. One of the gentlemen called to them, and they came to the boat laughing and having great fun among themselves. Then we returned and laid the boat up. The engineer drained the pumps and blew the water out of the boilers, leaving the boat in good order for the winter.

All the crew walked to Fort Garry, and we made our camp at the mouth of the Assiniboine, to wait for the ox train to go to Georgetown.

I visited the fort several times. They were very precise in all their movements within. The bell rang at nine o'clock, and the gate was opened for trade. All goods came by way of Hudson bay. I was invited to dine with Governor McTavish, and had a pleasant time, talking about our trip down the river. He asked me, with a twinkle in his eye, if the minister prayed us over the bar.

I was invited to attend an Indian feast in the morning. It was a religious ceremony, and in the afternoon a feast. It was held in an enclosure made of brush. No one was allowed inside except their band, but we could see over the fence all that transpired. The Indians sat on the ground inside the enclosure, and there were in the center, at certain distances apart, five large dead dogs with their hair singed off. At the head of the enclosure a young squaw sat on a bed of moss. She wore a new red blanket, and her hair was braided and hung down her back. An Indian would spring up and go with a kind of hop, holding a beaver skin in his hand and shaking it before her, saying something as though asking a blessing. She would nod, and he would pass around the squaw. The next Indian brought an otter skin, the next a muskrat, 7 0122 98 and so on until they had brought all the animals, going through the same ceremony as with the beaver. The next were geese, ducks, and other birds, and so on down to hay from the marsh. The company then broke up until the afternoon.

Going back about one o'clock, I found the squaws making soup from the dogs that were in the enclosure. The Indians went and took their seats as before, the young squaw in her place. The squaws brought the soup to the entrance, and then the Indians took the kettles of soup with a ladle in each kettle, and it was passed around, each Indian taking a sup, until the soup was all gone. I left before the company broke up.

Winnipeg now is not as Fort Garry was then. There were only three houses there. I went across the river several times to visit Mr. Norman W. Kittson in his Indian trading post, and always had a pleasant call.

When the train was ready to start for Georgetown, each of us had an ox cart to travel in. We then started on our long journey. We made a short stop at Pembina. The second day out from there we saw some buffaloes running over the hills. The hunter for the train started for them, and in a few hours returned with all the meat and hide he could carry on his horse. The hide was for harness. We passed deep paths made by the buffaloes going in single file from lake to lake.

We made camp early that evening, having found good feed and water for the cattle. Standing by a large oak tree, in full view was an immense buffalo. A man from St. Paul who was in the train gave the hunter two dollars to let him take a horse and gun to kill the buffalo. When the man got within thirty yards of him, the buffalo started toward the man. He shot, but did not take time to look around to see if he had killed the buffalo. It was amusement for us to see the buffalo chasing the man on horseback. The way our expert hunter killed the buffalo was interesting. He circled around him, and then shot. He dropped dead.

We were called next morning early. The oxen were all near the carts excepting mine. I could see him a long way behind feeding, and Mr. Dudley Kelly and I started for him. By the 0123 99 time we arrived where we thought the ox was, there came a dense fog, so that we could not see thirty feet ahead of us. I exclaimed, “Dudley, we are lost! I haven't a knife or match with me,” he said. “Well,” said I, pointing to the large frogs in the grass, “as long as these fellows are jumping around, we will not starve.” I knew the way the wind blew when we left camp, and I was sure by keeping the wind on my left shoulder I could return to it.

After about half an hour's walking, I said, “There is the tree near the camp where the buffalo was that we killed last night.” As we approached the tree, we could see, through the mist, that the limbs were moving. Directly we heard a voice. The tree was Captain Blakeley, and the limbs moving were his arms waving for us. He was on the road waiting for us, and it was a great relief to find him. He informed us that the train had moved on. We did not overtake it until they went into camp.

This must have been the great hunting ground for the Indian, as there were thousands and thousands of bleached buffalo bones lying on the prairie.

We reached Georgetown all right, and thence we left the river and went across the country to St. Cloud. When we arrived at the Crow river, the water was so high that we had to ford it, carrying our clothes on our heads, and it was indeed a cold bath, as there was ice on the edge of the river. We arrived at home in St. Paul safely after a hard trip.

In August, 1862, we were making the steamboat trip from St. Paul to Carver and back again daily. On one of our return trips from Carver in the latter part of that month, as we arrived opposite Fort Snelling we were hailed by two soldiers, with guns, and ordered to land. As soon as our head line was made fast, one of the soldiers came on board and asked me whether I was captain of the boat. I said, “Yes.” “I have orders,” said he, “to bring you to the fort.” “Why?” I asked; and he replied, “I have no time to talk.” Then we started on half a run up the bluff to the fort. When we arrived inside the gate we met Captain Arnold, who said, “Captain, they are waiting very anxiously for you in the next building.” I knocked at the door, and it was opened by Governor Ramsey. Then I learned that the Indians 0124 100 had broken out and were murdering the settlers right and left. General Sibley was also present. The governor said, “We want you to make a quick trip to St. Paul, get arms and ammunition, and return to the fort.” They gave me a detail of twenty men to assist.

As soon as we landed in St. Paul, I went to the arsenal, and started the guns and boxes to the boat. My brother, H. Y. Bell, found Mr. Rider, and they went to the magazine, and got all the ammunition there, that being all there was in the city. We then started to the fort. I had arranged with General Sibley that when we arrived at Mendora island, I was to blow the whistle, to give him time to meet the boat on the landing. As soon as the general came, we started for the fort, received the troops on board, and went to Shakopee. On our arrival there, we landed all the soldiers except one company, and then went on up the river.

When we rounded the point below Carver, a sight I shall never forget was seen. Men, women, and children, were on the bank of the river, many in their night clothes just as they left their beds to flee from the Indians. There was much rejoicing when they saw the boat had come to their relief. We went about three miles above Carver, there left the remaining soldiers, and then returned to Shakopee.

The next spring we carried the supplies to Camp Pope, at the mouth of the Yellow Medicine river, for General Sibley's troops. This was a dangerous trip, for Indians were seen along the bank of the river. We had a small guard of soldiers on board, and as we had not run at night we took the precaution to anchor the boat in the middle of the river.