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 Mendota 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.

THE TREATY OF TRAVERSE DES SIOUX IN 1851, UNDER GOVERNOR ALEXANDER RAMSEY, WITH NOTES OF THE FORMER TREATY THERE, IN 1841, UNDER GOVERNOR JAMES D. DOTY, OF WISCONSIN.*

BY THOMAS HUGHES.

THE TREATY OF GOVERNOR DOTY, 1841.

One of the most important events in the annals of our great Northwest was the opening to settlement of the Sioux lands west of the Mississippi river, which was effected by the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851.

Ten years prior, Gov. James Duane Doty of Wisconsin, under commission from the government, had concluded a treaty with the same Indians for the cession of this same territory. This Doty treaty was signed by the Sisseton, Wahpeton and Wahpekuta bands at Traverse des Sioux, then in the Territory of Iowa, on July 31st, 1841, and by the Medawakantons at Mendota on the 11th day of August following. By its terms, these tribes sold all their lands to the United States, except small designated portions thereof reserved for their homes. They were to receive therefor stated annuities and to be taught the arts of civilization, since their nomadic habits were to be exchanged for those of an agricultural character; lands were to be allotted to them in severalty, a hundred acres to each family; and citizenship could be

*Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, September 9, 1901.

conferred upon them after two years of probation. They were to have a constitutional form of government, with a legislative body elected by themselves and a governor appointed by the general government. The traders and half-breeds among them were also to receive certain privileges and to have their claims paid.

The object of this treaty was not to open the country for settlement, but primarily to provide a location for the Winnebago Indians, who, since the cession of their lands in 1837, had been on the government's hands under promise of a permanent home; and, secondarily, to furnish reservations for a number of other tribes similarly situated. In short, it was designed to create of the Sioux country a second Indian Territory, into which to dump all the odds and ends of Indian tribes still left east of the Mississippi. Fortunately, however, this treaty failed of confirmation by the Senate, and thus this vast and fertile territory was saved to a grander destiny.

MOTIVES LEADING TO THE TREATY OF 1851.

Prior to 1850, very little was known by the people generally about the Sioux country. No one but a few traders and an occasional explorer or missionary had ever seen its interior. In those ante-railroad days, the key to the whole region was the Minnesota river, which was supposed to be unnavigable, except to the bark canoe of the Indian and the Mackinaw boat of the trader.

The year 1850 was noted for a number of steamboat excursions up this river, which gave to the hundreds of people participating, and through them to the whole country, a practical demonstration both of its navigability and of the wonderful beauty and fertility of the country it drained. The press of the country east and west was full of glowing accounts of this western paradise. Everybody was talking about it, and thousands of homeseekers all over the land were eager to go up and possess it; but to the people of the newly created territory of Minnesota, circumscribed within the narrow and not over fertile land between the Mississippi and the St. Croix, the rich country beyond the river was indispensable.

The Indians, alive to their own interest, and perhaps incited thereto by the greater foresight of the traders, with the aid also of the military, guarded their lands with the utmost vigilance, and

almost daily chased some daring squatter back over the Father of Waters.

The situation at St. Paul and St. Anthony was growing daily more acute as the streams of immigration came pouring into them and there found their progress arrested. The voice of the people, thundered through Governor Ramsey and Congressman H. H. Sibley and others, at last awoke the Washington authorities to action, and in the spring of 1851 a commission, consisting of Gov. Alexander Ramsey and Col. Luke Lea, the then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, was appointed to treat with the Sioux for their lands. Both commissioners were men eminently fitted for the trust reposed in them, because of the confidence which their ability, experience and honesty elicited in both white and red men.

PRELIMINARIES OF THE TREATY.

Traverse des Sioux, on the Minnesota, because of its central location, was chosen as the principal place for the treaty, and the steamer Excelsior was chartered to transport the commissioners with their attendants and supplies to this designated spot. Dr. Thomas Foster of St. Paul was appointed secretary of the commission, and Alexis Bailly, of Prairie du Chien, had charge of the commissary department.

On Saturday, June 28th, 1851, the Excelsior, with Commissioner Lea on board, arrived at St. Paul, and next morning proceeded to Mendota, where the party was joined by a number of traders and Sioux chiefs of the Lower bands. Here also a drove of cattle, and other things necessary for the subsistence of the commission and the many Indians expected at the treaty, were taken on board.

At Fort Snelling, Governor Ramsey joined the party; but a company of dragoons, who were to accompany the commission as a guard, were not ready. The boat departed without them, nor, owing to the good behavior of the Indians, were their services once needed.

The river, in consequence of recent heavy rains, was exceptionally high, overflowing all the lowlands, so that its true channel in many places was hard to follow. At sunrise of Monday (June 30th) the boat reached its destination, and, quickly unloading passengers and cargo, departed down stream.

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Traverse des Sioux, being the French translation of its Dakota name "Oiyuwega" (crossing), was then, and from time immemorial had been, the most important point on the Minnesota. The excellent river crossing there found, together with its position where the great forest of the east and the vast plains of the west naturally met, where the Blue Earth and its tributaries were conveniently accessible, and where the headwaters of the Minnesota and Red rivers could be reached by a short cut over land, made Traverse des Sioux the natural capital of the Sioux country.

The place had been occupied by traders from a very early period, as early, at least, as the last half of the eighteenth century, when the father of Jack Frazer and others had trading posts there. Louis Provencalle had maintained a trading post there from about 1815 until his death in February, 1851, and his sons continued in the business until a year or two later. Other trading places had been also kept there, and in the near vicinity, off and on, by Philander Prescott since 1823, by Alexander Faribault since 1825, and by Alexander Graham since 1849. Nearly all of these traders were in some way connected with the American Fur Company.

At this same point was a mission station of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, founded for the Dakotas by Rev. Stephen R. Riggs in 1843, but which most of the time had been in charge of Messrs. Robert Hopkins and Alexander G. Huggins and their wives, Hopkins having settled there in the spring of 1844, and Huggins, on the departure of Mr. Riggs, in the fall of 1846.

The neatly painted school building of this mission, the residences of the two missionaries, and of the trader Alexander Graham, four old log store buildings, with dilapidated log stables in their rear, the trading establishments of Provencalle, Faribault, and others, scattered along the hillside, two or three cabins of the French voyageurs, and some twenty to thirty Indian lodges, comprised all there was of Traverse des Sioux when the commissioners landed there.

The spot selected for the commissioners' camp was at the brow of the second bench above the river, by a little old French cemetery, about twenty rods south of Provencalle's store, on land