The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier Part 6

Under the influence of this great rush of immigration it is very natural that the prevailing idea should be that lands would greatly increase in value in the near future, and everybody became a speculator. Towns and cities sprang into existence like mushrooms in a night. Scarcely anyone was to be seen without a town-site map in his hands, the advantages and beauties of which fict.i.tious metropolis he was ready to present in the most eloquent terms. Everything useful was neglected, and speculation was rampant. There were no banks of issue, and all the money that was in the country was borrowed in the East. In order to make borrowing easy, the law placed no restrictions on the rate of interest, and the usual terms were three per cent per month, with the condition that if the princ.i.p.al was not paid at maturity, the interest should be increased to five per cent per month. Everybody was in debt on these ruinous terms; which, of course, could not last long before the inevitable explosion.

The price of lands, and especially town lots, increased rapidly, and attained fabulous rates; in fact, some real property in St. Paul sold in 1856 for more money than it has ever since brought.

THE PANIC OF 1857.

The bubble burst by the announcement of the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, which reached St. Paul on Aug. 24, 1857.

The failure of this financial inst.i.tution precipitated a panic all over the country. It happened just on the recurrence of the twenty year period which has marked the pecuniary disasters of the country, beginning with 1837. Its effects on Minnesota were extremely disastrous.

The eastern creditors demanded their money, and the Minnesota debtors paid as long as a dollar remained in the country, and all means of borrowing more being cut off, a most remarkable condition of things resulted. Cities like St. Paul and St. Anthony, having a population of several thousands each, were absolutely without money to carry on the necessary commercial functions. A temporary remedy was soon discovered, by every merchant and shopkeeper issuing tickets marked "Good for one dollar at my store," and every fractional part of a dollar, down to five cents. This device tided the people for a while, but scarcely any business establishment in the territory weathered the storm, and many people who had considered themselves beyond the chance of disaster were left without resources of any kind and hopelessly bankrupt. The distress was great and universal, but it was bravely met, and finally overcome.

Dreadful as this affliction was to almost everyone in the territory, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It compelled the people to abandon speculation, and seek honest labor in the cultivation of the soil and the development of the splendid resources that generous nature had bestowed upon the country. Farms were opened by the thousands, everybody went to work, and in ten or a dozen years, Minnesota had a surplus of forty millions of bushels of wheat with which to supply the hungry world.

LAND t.i.tLES.

All the lands of Minnesota were the property of the United States, and t.i.tle to them could only be obtained through the regular methods of preemption, town-site entry, public sales, or private entries. One event occurred on Aug. 14, 1848, which ill.u.s.trates so clearly the way in which western men protect their rights that I will relate it. The recognized price of public lands was one dollar and a quarter per acre, and all pioneer settlers were willing to pay that sum, but when a public sale was made, any one could bid whatever he was willing to pay. Under the administration of President Polk, a public sale of lands was ordered to be made at the land office at St. Croix Falls, of lands lying partly in Minnesota and partly in Wisconsin. The lands advertised for sale included those embraced in St. Paul and St. Anthony. The settlers selected Henry H. Sibley as their trustee, to buy their lands for them, to be conveyed to them subsequently. It was a high offense under the United States laws to do any act that would tend to prevent persons bidding at the sales. Mr. Sibley appeared at the sale, and bid off every tract of land that was occupied by an actual settler at the price of $1.25 per acre. The general, in a paper he read before the Historical Society, says of this affair:

"I was selected by the actual settlers to bid off portions of the land for them, and when the hour for business arrived, my seat was universally surrounded by a number of men with huge bludgeons. What was meant by the proceeding, I could, of course, only surmise, but I would not have envied the fate of the individual who would have ventured to bid against me."

It has always been a.s.sumed in the far West, and I think justly, that the pioneers who first settle the land and give it value should enjoy every advantage that flows from such priority, and the violation of laws that impede such opportunity is a very venial offense. So universal was the confidence reposed in Mr. Sibley, that many of the French settlers, the t.i.tle to whose lands became vested in him, by his purchase at this sale, insisted that it should remain in him, and he found it quite difficult in many cases to get them to accept deeds from him.

THE FIRST NEWSPAPER.

Although the first message of the governor went a great way in introducing Minnesota to the world, she was particularly fortunate in the establishment of her first newspapers. The Stillwater convention of 1848, of which I have spoken, first suggested to Dr. A. Randall, who was an attache of Dr. Owen's geological corps, then engaged in a survey of this region by order of the government, the necessity of a newspaper for the new territory. He was possessed of the means and enterprise to accomplish the then rather difficult undertaking, and was promised ample support by leading men of the territory. He returned to his home in Cincinnati in the fall of 1848, intending to purchase the plant and start the paper that year, but the navigation of the rivers closed earlier than usual, and he was foiled in his attempt. He, however, set up his press in Cincinnati, and got out a number or two of his paper there. It was then called the "_Minnesota Register_," and appeared as of the date of April 27, 1849, and as printed in St. Paul. It was in fact printed in Cincinnati about two weeks earlier. It contained valuable articles from the pens of H. H. Sibley and Henry M. Rice. These articles, added to Mr. Randall's extensive knowledge of the country, made the first issue a great local success. It was the first Minnesota paper ever published, and bears date just one day ahead of the _Pioneer_, subsequently published by James M. Goodhue, which was actually printed in the territory. Dr. Randall did not carry out his intention, but was caught in the California vortex, and did not return to Minnesota.

James M. Goodhue of Lancaster, Wis., who was editing the _Wisconsin Herald_, when he heard of the organization of the new territory, immediately decided to start a paper in St. Paul, and as soon as navigation opened in the spring of 1849, he came up with his press and type. He met with many difficulties and obstructions, necessarily incident to a new place in a venture such as was his, but he succeeded in issuing the first number of his paper on the twenty-eighth day of April, 1849. His first inclination was to call his paper the "_Epistle of St. Paul_," but on sober reflection he was convinced that the name might shock the religious sensibilities of the community, especially as he did not possess many of the attributes of our patron saint, and he decided to call his paper "_The Minnesota Pioneer_."

In his first issue he speaks of his establishment of that day, as follows:

"We print and issue this number of the _Pioneer_ in a building through which out-of-doors is visible by more than five hundred apertures; and as for our type, it is not safe from being _pied_ on the galleys by the wind." The rest can be imagined.

Mr. Goodhue was just the man to be the editor of the first paper of a frontier territory. He was energetic, enterprising, brilliant, bold and belligerent. He conducted the _Pioneer_ with great success and advantage to the territory until the year 1851, when he published an article on Judge Cooper, censuring him for absenteeism, which is a very good specimen of the editorial style of that day. He called the judge "a sot," "a brute," "an a.s.s," "a profligate vagabond," and closed his article in the following language:

"Feeling some resentment for the wrongs our territory has so long suffered by these men, pressing upon us like a dispensation of wrath,--a judgment--a curse--a plague, unequalled since Egypt went lousy,--we sat down to write this article with some bitterness, but our very gall is honey to what they deserve."

In those fighting days, such an article could not fail to produce a personal collision. A brother of Judge Cooper resented the attack, and in the encounter between them, Goodhue was badly stabbed and Cooper was shot. Neither wound proved fatal at the time, but it was always a.s.serted by the friends of each combatant, and generally believed, that they both died from the effects of these wounds.

The original _Minnesota Pioneer_ still lives in the _Pioneer Press_ of to-day, which is published in St. Paul. It has been continued under several names and edited by different men, but has never been extinguished or lost its relation of lineal descendant from the original _Pioneer_.

Nothing tends to show the phenomenal growth of Minnesota more than the fact that this first newspaper, issued in 1849, has been followed by the publication of 579 papers, which is the number now issued in the state according to the last official list obtainable. They appear daily, weekly and monthly, in nearly all written languages, English, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Bohemian, and one in Icelandic, published in Lyon county.

BANKS.

With the first great increase in immigration business was necessarily enlarged, and banking facilities became a necessity. Dr. Charles W.

Borup, a Danish gentleman, who was engaged in the fur trade at Lake Superior as an agent for the American Fur Company, and Mr. Charles H.

Oakes, a native of Vermont, came to St. Paul, and established a bank in 1853. They were brothers-in-law, having married sisters. They did a private banking business, under the name of Borup & Oakes, which adapted itself to the needs of the community, including real estate, and almost any other kind of venture that offered. The house of Borup & Oakes was the first banking establishment in Minnesota, and weathered all the financial storms that swept over the territory in its early history.

They were followed by Truman M. Smith, but he went down in the panic of 1857-58. Then came Bidwell's Exchange Bank, followed by C. H. Parker and A. Vance Brown. Mackubin & Edgerton opened a bank in 1854, which was the ancestor of the present Second National Bank, and always legitimate. I think Erastus S. Edgerton may justly be said to have been the most successful banker of all that were early engaged in the business. An enumeration of the banks and bankers which succeeded each other in these early times would be more appropriate in a narrative of the localities where they operated than in a general history of the state. It is sufficient to say that nearly all, if not all, of them succ.u.mbed to the financial disasters in 1857-58, and there was no banking worthy of the name until the pa.s.sage of the banking law of July 26, 1858. But this act was a mere makes.h.i.+ft to meet a financial emergency, and it was not based upon sound financial principles. It allowed the organization of banks and the issue of circulating bank notes upon securities that were capable of being fraudulently overvalued by misrepresentation, and, as a matter of course, advantage was taken of the laxity of the provisions of the law, and securities which had no intrinsic value in fact were made available as the foundation of bank issues, with the inevitable result of disaster.

Another method of furnis.h.i.+ng the community with a circulating medium was resorted to by a law of July 23, 1858. The state auditor was authorized to issue his warrants for any indebtedness which the state owed to any person in small sums, and the warrants were made to resemble bank notes, and bore twelve per cent interest. The credit of the state was not sufficiently well established in the public confidence to make these warrants, which were known as "state scrip," worth much over sixty-five or seventy cents on the dollar. They were taken by the money changers at that valuation, and when the state made its first loan of $250,000, they were all redeemed in gold at par, with interest at twelve per cent.

In this uncertain way, the financial interests of the territory were cared for until the breaking out of the Civil War, and the establishment of the national and state systems which still exist.

Another evidence of the growth of the state may be found in the fact that at the present time the state has within its limits banks in good standing as follows: State banks, 172 in number, with a paid-in capital stock of $6,736,800, and sixty-seven national banks, with a capital stock paid in of $11,220,000. This statement does not include either the surplus or the undivided profits of these banks, nor the capital employed by private banking concerns which do not fall under the supervision of the state, which latter item can safely be estimated at $2,000,000.

THE FUR TRADE.

The first legitimate business of the territory was the fur trade, and the carrying business resulting therefrom. Prior to the year 1842 the Northwestern Fur Company occupied the territory which is now Minnesota.

In 1842 it sold out to, and was merged into, the American Fur Company, which was owned by P. Choteau & Company. This company had trading stations at Prairie du Chien and Mendota, Henry H. Sibley being their chief factor at the latter. The goods imported into the Red river settlements and the furs exported therefrom all came and went through the difficult and circuitous route by way of Hudson Bay. This route was only navigable for about two months in the year, on account of the ice.

The catch of furs and buffalo robes in that region was practically monopolized by the Hudson Bay Company. The American Fur Company soon became well established in the Northwest. In 1844 this company sent Mr.

Norman W. Kittson from the Mendota outfit to establish a trading post at Pembina, just south of the British possessions, with the design of diverting some of the fur trade of that region in the direction of the navigable waters of the Mississippi. The company, through Mr. Kittson, invested some $2,000 in furs at Pembina, and had them transported to Mendota in six Pembina carts, which returned loaded with merchandise of the character needed by the people of that distant region. This venture was the beginning of the fur trade with the Red river country, but did not prove a financial success. It entailed a loss of about $600, and similar results attended the next two years' operations, but the trade increased, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the Hudson Bay Company to obstruct it. This company had enjoyed a monopoly of the trade without any outside interference for so long that it looked upon this new enterprise as a direct attack on its vested rights. But Mr. Kittson had faith in being able in the near future to work up a paying trade, and he persevered. By the year 1850 the business had so far increased as to involve a consumption of goods to the extent of $10,000, with a return of furs to the amount of $15,000. Five years later the goods sent to Pembina amounted in value to $24,000, and the return of furs to $40,000. In 1851 the firm of Forbes & Kittson was organized, and also "The St. Paul Outfit," to carry on the supply business. When St. Paul became of some importance in 1849 the terminus and supply depot was removed to that point, and the trade rapidly increased in magnitude, and made St. Paul one of the largest fur markets in America, second only to St. Louis, the trade of which city consisted mostly of buffalo robes, which was always regarded as a distinct branch of the business, in contrast with that of fine furs. In the early days the Indians and a few professional trappers were about all who caught fur animals, but as the country became more settled the squatters added to their incomes by such trapping as their environments afforded, which increased the market at St. Paul by the addition of all Minnesota, which then included both of the Dakotas, and northern Wisconsin.

The extent and value of this trade can better be understood by a statement of the increase of the number of carts engaged in it between 1844 and 1858. In the first year mentioned six carts performed all the required service, and in 1858 six hundred carts came from Pembina to St.

Paul. After the year 1858 the number of carts engaged in the traffic fell off, as a steamer had been put in operation on the Red river, which reduced the land transportation to 216 miles, which had formerly been 448 miles, J. C. & H. C. Burbank having established a line of freight trains connecting with the steamer. In 1867, when the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad reached St. Cloud, the caravans of carts ceased their annual visits to St. Paul. St. Cloud then became the terminus of the traffic, until the increase of freight lines and the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad to the Red river drove these most primitive of all transportation vehicles out of business. Another cause of the decrease in the fur trade was the imposition of a duty of twenty-five per cent on all dressed skins, which included buffalo robes, and from that time on robes that formerly came to St. Paul from the British possessions were diverted to Montreal.

The extent and value of this trade to Minnesota, which was then in its infancy, can easily be judged by a brief statement of its growth. In 1844 it amounted to $1,400 and in 1863 to $250,000. All the money paid out for these furs, and large sums besides, would be expended in St.

Paul for merchandise, in the shape of groceries, liquors, dry goods, blankets, household utensils, guns and ammunition, and, in fact every article demanded by the needs of a primitive people. Even threshers and mowers were included, which were taken apart and loaded on the return carts. This trade was the pioneer of the great commercial activity which now prevails.

I cannot permit this opportunity to pa.s.s without describing the Red river cart, and the picturesque people who used it, as their like will never be seen again. The inhabitants of the Pembina country were princ.i.p.ally Chippewa half breeds, with an occasional white man, prominently Joseph Rolette, of whom I shall hereafter speak as the man who vetoed the capital removal bill, by running away with it, in 1857.

Their princ.i.p.al business was hunting the buffalo, in connection with small farming, and defending themselves against the invasions of their hereditary enemies, the Sioux. They were a bold, free race, skilled in the arts of Indian war, fine hors.e.m.e.n, and good fighters.

The Red river cart was a home invention. It was made entirely of wood and rawhide. It moved upon two wheels, of about a diameter of five feet six inches, with shafts for one animal, horse or ox,--generally the latter. The wheels were without tires, and their tread about three and a half or four inches wide. They would carry a load of six to eight hundred pounds, which would be protected by canvas covers. They were especially adapted to the condition of the country, which was largely interspersed with swamps and sloughs, which were impa.s.sable for any other character of vehicle. Their lightness, the width of the surface presented by the tread of the wheel and the careful steps of the educated animal which drew them, enabled them to go where anything else would flounder. The trail which they left upon the prairie was deeply cut, and remained for many years after they were disused.

When a brigade of them was ready to leave from Pembina for St. Paul, it would be manned by one driver for four carts, the train being arranged in single file with the animals. .h.i.tched to the cart before them, so that one driver could attend to that number of carts. Their speed was about fifteen miles a day, which made the voyage last about a month. When night overtook them they formed a circular corral with their carts, the shafts pointing inward, with the camp in the center, which made a strong fort in case of attack. The animals were allowed to graze on the outside, but were carefully watched to prevent a stampede. When they reached St. Paul they went into camp near some lake, and were a great source of interest to all the newcomers. During their stay the town would be thronged with the men, who were dressed in vari-colored costumes, always including the sash of Pembina, a beautiful girdle, giving them a most picturesque appearance. The only truthful representation of these curious people that has been preserved is found in two full length portraits of Joe Rollette, one in the gallery of the Minnesota Historical Society and the other on the walls of the Minnesota Club, in St. Paul, both of which are the gift of a very dear friend of the original.

During the progress of this peculiar traffic many people not connected with the established fur companies, engaged in the Indian trade, prominently Culver and Farrington, Louis Roberts, and Nathan Myrick. I remember that Mr. John Farrington made an improvement in the construction of the Red river cart, by putting an iron box in the hub of the wheel, which prevented the loud squeaking noise they formerly made, and so facilitated their movements that they carried a thousand pounds as easily as they had before carried eight hundred.

The early fur trade in the Northwest, carried on by canoes and these carts, was very appropriately called by one of our first historians of Minnesota, "The heroic age of American commerce."