Fifty Years In The Northwest by William H. C. Folsom

sons and one daughter. He came to Minnesota in 1854, removed to Stearns county in 1858, and to Otter Tail county in 1872, where he now resides in the town of Perham. He was a member of the legislature of 1876-77, and of the senate of 1878 to 1882, inclusive. In 1885 he was appointed one of the commissioners to locate the second state prison. JOHN W. BLAKE was born in Foxcroft, Maine, in 1839. His parents moved to Wisconsin in 1840. He received a good education in the common schools, in Milton Academy, and Wisconsin State University, and became a civil engineer. He served as a soldier during the war of the Rebellion. In 1872 he came to Minnesota, located at Marshall, Lyon county, and the same year was elected a representative in the legislature. He was a member of the senate during the years 1875, 1876, 1882, and 1884. KNUTE NELSON, born in Norway, came to America, studied law at Wisconsin University, and was admitted to the bar. He came to Alexandria in 1870, where he practiced law. He was a senator in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth legislatures, and was elected representative to Congress from the Fifth Minnesota district in 1884 and 1886. Mr. Nelson is a man of unquestioned ability and force, a strong Republican, and an enthusiastic advocate of a modified tariff. W. R. DENNY was born at Keene, New Hampshire, in 1839; received an academic education, and after spending eight years in Wisconsin, came to Carver, Minnesota, in 1867. He served in the state legislatures of 1874, 1876, 1879, and 1881. He was appointed United States marshal from 1882 to 1886. He was Grand Master of the Masonic fraternity in 1884-5. He was married in Wisconsin in 1863, and has a family of four children. [Illustration: PRESENT HOME OF THE AUTHOR ERECTED BY HIM A.D. 1855.] APPENDIX. MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS, ITEMS AND STATISTICS, INCLUDING AN ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE VARIOUS TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND THE INDIAN TRIBES INHABITING THE TERRITORIES OF WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY UNTIL THE CREATION OF WISCONSIN TERRITORY IN 1836. SPANISH CLAIMS. The Spaniards have made persistent claims to territory lying along the Atlantic coast, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and up the valley of the Mississippi, basing their claims on discovery and conquest. In 1512 Juan Ponce de Leon, a companion of Columbus, discovered Florida, and planted on its shores the standard of Spain. In 1539 Hernando de Soto visited Florida and having strengthened the Spanish claim adventured west to the Mississippi, on which river he died and in which he was stealthily buried by his surviving followers, who returned to Florida broken and dispirited with the loss of half their number. By virtue of De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, the Spaniards now laid claim to the land along that river and its tributaries. They also claimed land lying along the Atlantic coast, without limit, northward. This large and somewhat indefinite empire was by them styled Florida, after the name of the peninsula on which they gained their first foothold. Unable to defend or enforce their claims, they gradually relinquished them, giving up tract after tract, until the peninsula of Florida alone remained to them. This was ceded to the United States in 1819. The government of the Territory was vested in the discoverers. Ponce de Leon was governor from 1512 until 1521. De Soto was governor of Florida and Cuba until 1541. Melendez, by compact with King Philip, succeeded him, his commission giving him a life tenure. The history of the Spanish possessions is by no means interesting, and illustrates chiefly the Spanish greed for gold. FRENCH CLAIMS. The French early disputed the claims of the Spaniards and Portuguese to the possession of the New World, and accordingly in 1524 sent a Florentine, Jean Verrazzani, who explored the coast from Carolina to Nova Scotia, took possession of it, and called it New France. Ten years later Cartea continued the work, sailing around New Foundland and ascending the St. Lawrence as far as the site of Montreal. In 1564 a French colony located in Florida, but were almost immediately exterminated by the Spaniards. During the following century the French pushed their explorations to the regions of the Mississippi and the great lakes. In the year 1603 Champlain was engaged in the exploration of the St. Lawrence, and in 1609, he, with two other Frenchmen, explored Lake Champlain and the country of the Iroquois and took possession of it in the name of Henry IV of France. In 1611 and 1612 he explored Lake Huron, entered Saginaw bay, passed down Detroit river, exploring Lake Erie, and laid the foundation of French sovereignty in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Champlain for many years prosecuted the fur trade where Boston now stands, prior to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. We have not space for a complete account of the conflicting claims of the French and English, but will give the boundaries of New France as defined by French and English authorities at different times: 1609--L' Escartot, in his "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," defines the French boundaries as extending "on the west to the Pacific ocean, on the south to the Spanish West Indies, on the east to the North Atlantic, and on the north to the Frozen Sea." 1683--Baron La Honton says, "All the world knows that Canada reaches from the 39th to the 65th degrees of north latitude and from the 284th to the 336th degrees of longitude." [More accurately from about 45 to 90 degrees west, or from Cape Race to the Mississippi.] The French government persistently denied the right of the English to any territory west of the Alleghanies. The great Northwest, therefore, was for a long time under French rule and influence. We must accord to France the credit of making the first progress in civil government in the Northwest. They made many permanent settlements and by a wise and pacific policy so conciliating the Indian tribes that they were able to hold their positions on the frontier at will. They were early and persistent explorers, and, under the guidance of pious and devoted Jesuit missionaries, planted settlements in the most desirable places. They made a cordon of posts reaching from Louisiana to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, and along the chain of the great lakes, completely surrounded the English colonies and disputed with them the possession of the country. The French-English War of 1689 to 1697 failed to decide satisfactorily the question of the interior domain. In 1712 New France was divided into two provinces, that of Canada and that of Louisiana, the dividing line being the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the Mississippi boundary line extending from the mouth of the Ohio to the mouth of the Missouri river. Mobile was made the capital of the southern province. The patent or commission of the new province was issued to Crozat, Marquis du Chatel. The Illinois country was afterward added, and it seems probable that the country east of the Wabash was also included in it. All north of the boundary named formed part of the province of Canada. Other boundaries than these have been given by geographers, but these boundaries are sufficiently established by official documents. In 1763 all of the territory claimed by France lying east of the Mississippi river was ceded to the English, the territory lying west to Spain. Virginia, by three royal charters, given in 1606, 1607 and 1611, by the English government, held a part of the Northwest Territory, and in 1776 established three counties north of the Ohio river, named Ohio, Youghiogheny and Monongahela, but in 1787 ceded this territory to the United States. Its settlement was somewhat impeded by the perils of the wilderness, not the least of which was the doubtful and often unfriendly attitude of the Indians, resulting in many cases from the changes in the tenure of the lands, and the influence of French or English emissaries, generally hostile to American claims. The history of these early settlements is replete with thrilling adventures. The first settlement made in the newly ceded territory was at Marietta, Ohio, in 1788, under the supervision of Gen. Rufus Putnam, nephew of Gen. Israel Putnam, and first surveyor general of the Northwest Territory. The settlement was named Marietta, in honor of Queen Marie Antoinette, who had been a firm friend to the colonies during the Revolutionary struggle. Gen. Arthur St. Clair was appointed governor July 15, 1788, of the newly organized Ohio Territory. The country claimed by Virginia under the royal charters included the land lying between the sea shore on the east, and the Mississippi on the west, the Ohio river on the south, and the British possessions on the north. It will be seen, therefore, that that part of the Northwest Territory lying immediately along the eastern banks of the Mississippi now comprised in the state of Wisconsin and part of Minnesota, has been successively claimed by Spain, France, England, Virginia, and the United States, and under the territorial governments of the Northwest--Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin territories. That part of Minnesota lying west of the Mississippi belonged to the French by right of discovery, but passed into the hands of Spain, thence back again into the hands of France, by whom, with the territory known as Louisiana, it was sold to the United States in 1803. The original grant to Virginia included far more than the area of the State and that of the Northwest Territory, but was subsequently reduced by grants made by states lying north of Virginia, and vexatious disputes arose as to titles, a circumstance calculated to retard rapid settlement. We append the following data concerning the early history of the territory included in the present states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, tabulated for more convenient reference: