River of History - Chapter 1 - Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (U.S. National Park...

On July 2, 1679, Europeans first visited Minnesota and saw the headwaters of the Mississippi in an expedition led by Daniel Greysolon de Du Luth. From the article:

"River of History - Chapter 3 - Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)
Discovery and Dispossession
Two men observe a large waterfall. One is a priest and the other is dressed in buckskins and carrying a rifle.

To French explorers and traders probing westward from eastern Canada in the early 1500s, rumors of a great river stirred fantasies that only the unknown can evoke. Was it the Northwest Passage, that long hoped for shortcut to the riches of China? They knew that whoever found that fabled passage would gain enduring fame and wealth. To talk of the Mississippi River’s discovery, however, is an ethnocentric endeavor. To the Dakota and other Native Americans, the great river was as well known as a local freeway to an urban commuter. It was their daily and seasonal highway. But it was more. It was their front and back yards. It was their supermarket as well as their superhighway. They fished, hunted, gathered plants, planted crops, swam, and prayed in or near the river. The contrast between European discovery and Native American familiarity could not have been greater. The stories of European discovery lay bare this contrast.

Dakota life changed dramatically as French, British and American explorers and traders found the MNRRA corridor. Where the Dakota lived, what they hunted and ate, and the tools and other material objects they relied upon changed. They began the era as the region’s dominant people and ended it, in 1854, with a forced exodus away from the river they had known and used for so long. While the French and British left little evidence of their presence in the MNRRA corridor, the Americans took it over, transforming not only Dakota life but the river valley’s landscape and ecosystems.

The French
During the French era, the Mississippi evolved from a rumor into a thoroughfare of exploration and Euro-Indian commerce. The French period on the upper Mississippi covers approximately 100 years, but the French presence was limited and sporadic. The French began exploring eastern Canada in the early 1500s. In 1534 Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence to the site that would become Montreal. But the French only established small fishing camps and trading sites. Samuel de Champlain finally founded a settlement at Quebec in 1603-04, and the French began sending traders and explorers into the continent’s depths. In 1623 or 1624, Etienne Brule became the first to report on rumors of a vast lake (Lake Superior) to the far west. Ten years later, in 1634, Jean Nicolet voyaged into Green Bay, contacting the Winnebago, or Ho-Chunk. And in 1641, Recollet priests Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues became the first to document the discovery of Lake Superior. They met the Saulteurs, or Chippewa, and reported on news of the Dakota, who lived on a great river, only 18 days away. These are the recorded accounts. The coureur de bois (independent, illegal fur traders, who ranged in advance of the official explorers and legal traders) may have visited the Great Lakes, the Dakota and the Mississippi earlier, but we may never know.1

Medard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre d’Espirit, Sieur de Radisson, might have been the first Europeans to see the upper Mississippi. Between 1654 and 1660 they conducted fur trading expeditions into the western Great Lakes and supposedly beyond. On at least one voyage, they purportedly canoed into Green Bay and up the Fox River. They then crossed over a short portage and into the Wisconsin River and paddled down to the Mississippi River. This route–the Fox-Wisconsin waterway–would become one of the principal highways of exploration and trade. Groseilliers and Radisson possibly traveled upriver as far as Prairie Island. The evidence is sketchy, and Minnesota historian William Watts Folwell calls it too far fetched to give Radisson and Groseilliers the title of the river’s European discoverers.2

By the 1670s, the French were poised to explore the Mississippi River. They had posts as far west as La Pointe, on Madeline Island, in Chequamegon Bay. Rumors of the “Mechassipi” or “Micissipi” grew and inflamed the hope that it was the Northwest Passage. Jean Talon, the indendant or head of finance, commerce and justice, in New France, chose Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette to lead an expedition to the far-off river. On May 17, 1673, they left Michilimackinac, near Sault Ste. Marie, took the Fox-Wisconsin waterway, and glided into the Mississippi on June 17, 1673, becoming the first Europeans to unques- tionably discover the river. From here the party drifted south, hoping to find the river’s mouth. After a month they decided that the river flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. Fearing the Spanish and Native American tribes, they turned around and headed back to the Illinois River. Traveling up the Illinois, they crossed into Lake Michigan. Although the French had discovered the upper Mississippi River, the reach above the Wisconsin River’s mouth lay unexplored. Joliet’s account and France’s desire to expand its claim to America, to capture the trade, and to find the route to the Far East, however, spurred the French government to want more detailed information about the river and its inhabitants.3

Merchants from Montreal and Quebec, hoping to be the first to seize the fur trade of the region, assembled a party to visit the Dakota and chose Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luth, as their leader. He left Montreal on September 1, 1678. The next summer, on July 2, 1679, he reached the Dakota villages on Mille Lacs Lake. Du Luth then returned east, leaving three men behind to learn more about the tribe and about a route to the western sea. Boosting French hopes, these men heard of a great, salty body of water only 20 days to the west. Some speculate that this might have been the Great Salt Lake, although the French hoped it was the Pacific Ocean. This news and his desire to discover the storied western river made du Luth want to return as soon as possible.4

The French had now been near the Mississippi’s headwaters and at Prairie du Chien, but the river in between remained a mystery, and others hoped to beat du Luth to the Northwest Passage and the furs of the upper Mississippi. In 1677 Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, gained royal permission for an expedition to discover the river’s mouth and source. Delays, however, left him only as far as a fort on the Illinois River, just below Peoria, in January 1680. When directed to return to Montreal, la Salle chose Michael Accault, a voyageur, to lead an expedition to the Mississippi, accompanied by Antoine Auguelle and Father Louis Hennepin.

The small party headed down the Illinois on February 29, 1680. As they paddled upstream, they met a Dakota war party of 120 men in 33 canoes. After convincing the Dakota that their enemies, the Miami of Illinois, had already gone west, the two parties returned upriver. Nineteen days after beginning their journey, Hennepin estimated they were 14 miles below St. Anthony Falls, near the mouth of Phalen Creek (since filled in), just upstream of Mounds Park (Figures 2 and 3). So the first recorded European visit to the MNRRA corridor occurred about March 19, 1680. The European discovery of the falls would have to wait. Rather than continue upriver, the Dakota abandoned their canoes and marched overland to Mille Lacs Lake, where they arrived after five days.5

Three and one-half months later, on July 1, 1680, the Dakota, taking the Frenchmen along, left Mille Lacs and started off to hunt buffalo in southwestern Minnesota. Traveling in small groups, they rendezvoused at the Rum River’s mouth at Anoka. Hennepin and Auguelle received permission to continue down the Mississippi to find la Salle, who was to have supplies and reinforcements. Accault stayed with the hunters. As they paddled downstream, Hennepin and Auguelle came to the great falls of the Mississippi, which Hennepin named for his patron saint, Anthony of Padua (Figure 1). (For Hennepin’s description of St. Anthony, see Chapter 6, which focuses on the falls.) Hennepin and Auguelle continued downstream but apparently did not make it to the Illinois River. Soon Accault and the Dakota hunters joined them somewhere below the St. Croix. Together they headed back to Mille Lacs.6

Meanwhile, du Luth, itching to reach the Mississippi and the Dakota, left his post on Lake Superior, near Thunder Bay, crossed over the continental divide, and canoed down the St. Croix River. At the St. Croix’s mouth, he heard rumors of some Europeans who had passed downriver shortly ahead of him. Fearing they could be English or Spanish, expecting they might be French, he took a canoe and pursued them. On July 25, 1680, he found the French and Dakota paddling upriver and “rescued” Hennepin’s party. Together they continued on to Mille Lacs, where they arrived on August 14. On this trip, the Dakota traveled up the river to St. Anthony, portaged around the falls and continued up the Mississippi and Rum Rivers. Late in September, the Frenchmen finally returned east. Since they left in canoes and took the Fox-Wisconsin route, they probably went down the Mississippi through the MNRRA corridor again.7

To the extent that we can trust Hennepin’s flawed and exaggerated account, we learn for the first time about Dakota culture and the Mississippi River in the MNRRA corridor. From Hennepin we learn that to the Dakota the falls was a place of energy, spirituality and history (see Chapter 6).8 As Hennepin’s party descended the Mississippi below St. Anthony Falls, they found some members of a Dakota band he called the Issati camped on an island. They had a great deal of buffalo meat. Two hours later, 15 or 16 Dakota, who had been with the Frenchmen at the falls, “came with their war clubs in hand, pulled down the wigwam of our hosts, and took all the meat and bear’s grease they found.” Hennepin learned that those with the meat had gone ahead and, “contrary to custom,” had killed what they wanted and scared the rest away. Therefore, those hunters coming later had the right to take the meat.9

After their early expeditions, the French hoped to establish a series of posts in the interior to hold off Spanish and English expansion. As a result, the French began building posts on the upper Mississippi River. These posts were south of the MNRRA corridor, however, near Trempealeau, Wisconsin, on Lake Pepin, and on Prairie Island, just above Red Wing.10 During the 1680s, Nicholas Perrot built Fort St. Antoine on Lake Pepin. From the 1680s to the mid-1690s, Pierre Charles Le Sueur worked for Perrot, trading with the Dakota on the upper Mississippi River. In 1695 Le Sueur returned to France and helped the French cartographer Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin draw “the first accurate map of the upper Mississippi watershed.” The map shows 10 villages east of the Mississippi and 12 west of the river centered around Mille Lacs Lake.11 In 1699 Le Sueur returned to America, sailing up the Mississippi River to Biloxi and from there canoeing all the way to Minnesota. Entering the MNRRA corridor, he reached the mouth of the Minnesota River on September 9, 1700, and pushed up the Minnesota to the mouth of the Mankato River, where he built Fort L’Huillier for the Dakota trade.12 While Le Sueur’s voyage seemed to portend a surge in French trade, that trade did not follow.

French expansion into the upper Mississippi River faltered during the late seventeenth century. By 1696 the French began gathering their forces around Montreal under pressure from Iroquois attacks. Then, from 1702 to 1713, France became embroiled in the War of Spanish Succession in Europe and turned its attention away from Canada and America. Under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 that ended the war, France lost its claims to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and its lands around Hudson Bay. Although the French returned to the Great Lakes shortly thereafter, they did not establish a post (Fort Beauharnois) on the upper river again until 1727, and it was well downriver from the MNRRA corridor at Frontenac, Minnesota. Ten years later, the French abandoned the fort and, for the most part, gave up their efforts among the Dakota and on the upper Mississippi River, focusing instead on the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley. Still, the French managed to build another fort on Prairie Island in 1752. But the potential for further French involvement ended with the French and Indian War, which began in 1756 and concluded with the Treaty of Paris on February 10,
1763. Under the treaty, the French transferred their claims in Canada and east of the Mississippi in America to the British, except for New Orleans.13

The impact of French trade on intertribal relations and tribal migrations exceeded the French presence and would increase the Dakota’s use of the MNRRA corridor. At the time of French contact, there were four primary Dakota groups: the Mdewakantons, Wahpekutes, Sissetons, and Wahpetons. The Mdewakantons occupied the area around Mille Lacs Lake and were known as the “People of the Spirit Lake” or “People of the Mystic Lake.” The Wahpekutes lived near the Mdewakantons, and the Sissetons and Wahpetons resided to the north and west.14 When Le Sueur returned to the upper river in 1700, after being gone for five years, he discovered the Dakota had begun migrating west and south from Mille Lacs.15

Some scholars argue that the Chippewa had started pushing the Dakota out of their homelands. Since the Chippewa had better access to guns and ammunition, the argument goes, they were more powerful than the Dakota. Other scholars disagree, contending that certain forces pulled the Dakota away from Mille Lacs. Dakota historian Gary Anderson suggests that the presence of French traders on the Mississippi at Lake Pepin and below helped draw the Dakota out of the Mississippi Headwaters region by the 1720s. And the buffalo and horse provided a strong incentive for the Sissetons and Wahpetons to begin moving toward the plains.16 A combination of these factors most likely convinced the Dakota to leave their traditional villages around Mille Lac Lake.

By the 1750s the Dakota had largely abandoned their ancestral homeland. The Mdewakantons had begun living in semipermanent villages along the lower reaches of the Minnesota River, on the Mississippi below St. Anthony, and on the St. Croix. When Pierre Boucher, Sieur de Boucherville, arrived at Lake Pepin in September 1727 to build Fort Beauharnois, he hoped to find the Dakota there, but they had gone to St. Anthony Falls. Anderson suggests that the falls might have become the primary gathering place for the eastern Dakota by this time. The Dakota not only moved, they began changing their lifestyle. Between 1680 and 1727, they extended their buffalo hunting trips to the plains from a few weeks to a few months. Even though the Dakota had begun migrating south and west, they remained the strongest tribe on the upper Mississippi River from its headwaters to well below Lake Pepin and still asserted control over the St. Croix River and lower Chippewa River.17 Overall, they remained very mobile.18

As the Dakota settled along the Mississippi River below St. Anthony Falls and on the Minnesota River, traffic through the MNRRA corridor increased. The Dakota, other Indians, and traders often traveled through the MNRRA corridor on their way to and from villages on the main stem or on the Minnesota. The Chippewa came down from the headwaters to attack the Dakota, using the Mississippi, St. Croix, Rum and other rivers that fed into the main stem. Traders ventured up the Mississippi to the Dakota villages within the corridor or turned up the Minnesota to Dakota villages there. They also portaged around St. Anthony and paddled upstream to trade with the Chippewa. The Dakota employed the Mississippi and the Minnesota, St. Croix and other tributaries to travel between their villages, to hunt, gather, and go to war.

Whether the Dakota moved out of their homeland voluntarily or retreated from it, we know that intertribal warfare increased greatly as the French spread westward. When the French built Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin in 1727 and Fort St. Charles on Lake of the Woods in 1732, they bypassed the Chippewa. The Chippewa resented this, both because it took away their middleman position in the trade and because it brought firearms directly to their enemies. As a consequence, warfare between the Chippewa and Dakota intensified and became a central part of Dakota life in the MNRRA corridor. The French did not invent intertribal warfare, but they unquestionably helped define its nature and extent, as would the British and Americans.19"