Profile: Pierre Bottineau

I keep finding intersections between where I grew up, and other places in my home state of Minnesota, including where I just moved to (I now live only a few miles from one of the main Red River oxcart trails...) Also, many of the men and women who show up in the historical record crisscrossed the entire region over and over in their daily lives - guiding, exploring, surveying, and conducting business - again, some traveling or living near where I now live myself.

One such man - whom I have written about before - was Pierre Bottineau...

In 1856, Pierre was guide for the expedition led by Colonel F. Smith from Fort Snelling to explore the mouth of the Sheyenne River, the southern tip of Devil's Lake and the region around Pembina for the best sites for military posts. This would have been in anticipation of and just the year prior to Major Seton coming up in November of 1857.

In June of 1860, Pierre accompanied a military expedition with Gov. Ramsey to Pembina to conclude treaties with the Northern Minnesota Chippewas. On his return, he guided an expedition led by Commissioners Cullen and Bailey to the Red River to hold council with the Chippewa of the Red Lake and Red River Lands in MN

Regarding the 1863 Treaty with the Chippewa-Red Lake and Pembina Bands, Oct 2, 1863, 13 Stats., 667, Ratified Mar 1, 1864, Proclaimed May 5, 1864, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Vol. II - aka the Old Crossing Treaty - Pierre Bottineau signed his mark as a witness to the treaty made and concluded at the Old Crossing of Red Lake River, MN, on Oct 2, 1863, between the US, by their commissioners, Alexander Ramsey and Ashley C. Morrill, agent for the Chippewa Indians, and the Red Lake and Pembina bands of Chippewas; by their chiefs, head-men, and warriors.

Pierre, called the "Kit Carson of the Northwest", was a man who truly got around, doing a lot in the time he had. He had been involved in many of the major events that created our state. He died in 1895 at age 78, and is buried just west of Red Lake Falls, MN which is only about 20 miles southeast of where I live now.

The memorial below was created in honor of Bottineau for "...his years of distinguished service as a founding father and civic leader." I find it very ironic that he is honored now which is exceedingly appropriate; however, in an obituary written at the time of his death, there were definite mixed messages - on the one hand it praised him, but on the other hand insulted his ethnicity (Metis)...

No one in the northwest ever passed a life of more romantic adventures, thrilling experiences, hairbreath escapes and accidents--- generally by flood and field. He travelled over nearly every square mile of the northwest and knew the country as thoroughly as a farmer knows his lands.

He spoke every language in the region from French, English, Sioux, Chippewa, Cree, Mandan, and Winnibago. Experiences in all the particulars of frontier and savage life, he was equally proficient as a hunter, trapper, boatman, guide, and businessman. He could build a house, fashion a boat or plow a field with equal facility. Fully six feet tall and straight as a grenadier with clean piercing black eyes, he was of attractive appearance, despite swarthy complexion due to his Indian blood. He was naturally of manly instincts and gentlemanly deportment, polite, agreeable and of a kindly disposition, always true to his word and his fellowman.

Pierre Bottineau Memorial at St. Joseph Cemetery
NOTE: Much of the above information is from a timeline provided by a descendant of Pierre Bottineau. An amazing collection of historical information on an individual, I was quite impressed!

Profile: Major George Seton

Men's Barracks, Lower Fort Garry - Winter of 1857-1858

The Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment men's barracks as seen from the officer’s mess room window at Lower Fort Garry during the Winter of 1857-1858. Following incursions into Canadian territory by American troops, a company of this regiment was sent from Montreal in July 1857 via York Factory. It was at Fort Garry by early October and remained in garrison until 1861. Watercolour by Major George Seton the detachment's commander. (Library and Archives Canada, C-001066)

Seton was one of many military personnel that passed through our area during the 19th century. When researching him in response to a print I recently acquired, I came across a research project being done on his family line by a descendant of his, Nancy Anderson. She has kindly been corresponding with me and has shared a bit of information on Seton, which is hard to come by as you might suspect. Although Seton does surface peripherally in the historic record in several documents, it was mostly in records that mention him in passing - i.e., listing rank/position/location, or he participated in such and such event, etc.

On her website, she states:

...Seton [of the 93rd Highlanders and Royal Canadian Rifles] came to Lower Fort Garry (Red River) in advance of his troops and, in July 1857, met John Palliser of the Palliser Expedition there.

Blackfoot parfleche¹, around AD 1860
From the Canadian Plains, North America collection

She later wrote me with more specific information as regards the intersection of Major Seton with our area, stating:

...from The Palliser Expedition, an account of John Palliser's British North American Exploring Expedition 1857-1860, by Irene M. Spry comes this - "John Palliser and his men set out south, on horseback, from Upper Fort Garry [Winnipeg] to Pembina² Fort in the United States, along the banks of the Red River in July 1857. There was the usual scurry and bustle, swearing and shouting, attendant on a large party setting off from the fort...[I've omitted some description]...The civilized society in question included not only Mr. Swanston of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had received them so hospitably and helped them greatly with their preparations, but also Major Seton, who had come overland to Red River in advance of the troops then on their way from Canada by the Hudson's Bay route, and Mr. Johnson, the Recorder of Assiniboia..... These two gentlemen saw Palliser and his colleagues ten miles on their way next morning. Nine miles farther on, the explorers caught up with the slower carts, just as the men were pitching camp for the night..."

She also said, "The Hudson's Bay Archives information on Sixth Reg of Foot Records is on Reel 4M145, E.67/2-5. I haven't read it yet and don't know what's in it. Probably you can request it through your library or local archives...and there's a Beaver Magazine article, A Soldier at Fort Garry, by George F. G. Stanley, Autumn 1957 that talks about the troops coming to Fort Garry. They made Fort Garry (from Hudson's Bay) on Oct. 13, It says, 'One Major Seton of our Corps had been sent in advance via U.S. Route in order to see preparations made for our accommodation, and right nobly he had done it. Several of the large Stores Houses had been fitted up for the comfort and convenience of the men, and a Separate apartment for each married man.' I know that George Seton later formed part of the government of Assiniboia, but I can't remember what that government was called. That's about all on Seton [as regards our area...]"

¹ - Parfleches are rectangular rawhide containers that fold over like envelopes. They were used in the nineteenth century particularly for holding pemmican, ground dried buffalo meat mixed with fat and berries. This food was vital in the fur trade, where a high calorie diet was required by canoe men.

On the northern Plains, moccasin soles were sometimes made from sections of painted rawhide, re-used either from an older pair or from parfleches made as gifts.

This parfleche forms part of the earliest documented collection of material from the Canadian Plains in The British Museum. It was acquired from a soldier, Major George Seton (1819-1905). Seton was also an artist, trained in creating panoramas for military purposes. He served in the Royal Canadian Rifles from 1853-58, the last two years stationed at Fort Garry, Manitoba (Rupert's Land), at the behest of the Hudson's Bay Company who had requested protection from supposed American and native threats. At the end of his posting he participated in two expeditions, one British and one Canadian, sent out to report on the Canadian Plains. He collected this parfleche while on the British expedition, which reported that the plains of Saskatchewan and Alberta were suitable for farming.

J.C.H. King, First peoples, first contacts: (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)

From British Museum collection: North America (Room 26)

² - "...On 21 July the expedition started on its journey across the plains, heading south up Red River to the American boundary, where they made careful observations in conjunction with a chance-met American land surveyor, Charles W. Iddings. From Pembina (N. Dak.) the party travelled west via St Joseph’s (Walhalla)..." - From Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on John Palliser. FYI - Charles W. Iddings was a surveyor living over the post office in St. Paul in 1856. He eventually became associated with Joseph S. Sewall of St. Paul, the engineer who built the Wabasha Street bridge. During this connection the two men published a map of Minnesota which is known as the Sewall and Iddings map of 1860.

Map from Muskets to Missiles: A Military History of Minnesota by Virginia Brainard Kunz

Dave Thompson Revisited

I recently posted about an amazing artist from my region named Don McMaster. I posted about Don because he had created a series of paintings about explorer David Thompson.

Now the Canadian National History Society's magazine (formerly known as The Beaver), has published a cover story about this series...

McMaster... [created] a series of paintings that depict the travels of the explorer David Thompson through northwestern Ontario and the prairies.

Thompson mapped over 3.9 million square kilometres of western North America for the North West Company, beginning in 1797. He traversed the Canadian prairies and the Rocky Mountains several times and was the first European to navigate the length of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. Thompson is widely considered to be one of the greatest land geographers to ever live.

Great American Desert

From: Democracy in America By Alexis de Tocqueville

The concept of the Great American Desert had long been familiar to Americans and indeed it controlled much of the directions of the growth of the nation for a major part of the nineteenth century. So we have to dip back a little bit before the Civil War to see how this geographical concept, this geographical myth, came into being, and how it influenced the growth, the thoughts, the attitudes, of the American people as they moved westward.

In 1819, the federal government of the United States decided that it needed a good amount of information for the territory that lay beyond the Mississippi River, westward to the Rocky mountains. They hired an explorer, a map-maker named Stephen H. Long to take a journey to map this terrain, to keep a journal, to inform the federal government about what at the time was a vast unknown territory to all Americans. And so Long set out in 1819 traveling westward from what is now the border of Nebraska, traveled through Iowa to the front of the Rocky Mountain ranges, then traveled south and back through what eventually would become Oklahoma and Arkansas. He drew a massive map as well as a series of subsidiary maps and wrote a major report for the federal government, a report that was published along with its maps in 1821. Over the area that today we know as the Great Plains, Stephen H. Long simply printed in giant letters, the words "The Great American Desert." And in his journals and in his reports which accompanied his map, Long wrote that in his opinion, "I do not hesitate in saying that the entire area is almost wholly unfit for cultivation. And of course it's uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their existence." Buffalo, wild game, goats might live there, but not people. It was indeed on the map that finally reached the public in 1823--it was the Great American Desert.

Consequently, there was very sparse settlement in the area beyond the Mississippi River in the 1840s and the 1850s--isolated pioneer homesteads here and there, but not settlers pouring in vast numbers until the late 1850s and the early years of the 1860s. In the years immediately following the end of the Civil War, traffic into the trans-Mississippi West picked up dramatically by the hundreds, then by the thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands. Settlers poured into the Great Plains moving westward. As the population increased in the Great Plains trans Mississippi West area, many people came to recognize that the old myth of the Great American Desert was no longer true. If indeed it had been true, they needed a way to combat the myth. People eager on boosting settlement and attracting business and getting railroad connections wanted the rest of the nation to believe that the so called Great American Desert was not a desert at all. So they built a counter myth. Now they began to call the Great Plains in the late 1860s and the 1870s "The Garden," the Garden of the West, an agricultural paradise in which there was space enough, and time enough for people to achieve their wildest dreams. A new kind of booster literature appeared portraying the entire Great American Desert area, the entire Great Plains area as an agrarian heaven, an idyllic spot.

From American History 102: Which Old West and Whose?

Power believed that the only way to overcome the tradition that Dakota was the Great American Desert was to actively promote the region in the farm periodicals of America and Europe of that day.

From Bonanza Farming in the Red River Valley

Sketches by a Camp-Fire, Part II

Weather cool and pleasant; the mercury forty-eight degrees at sunrise. This morning we rode a few miles out of town, and met the dragoons advancing, and then escorted them to the junction of the Pembina and Red rivers where we all crossed the former stream, to the settlements beyond. We found a busy scene on going over. The houses are built around an open space, and the square courtyard (so to speak) is filled with a miscellaneous crowd of half-breeds, Indians, of all sizes, with their lodges of bark and skins together with horses, cattle, carts dogs, &c., in great variety and numbers.

The houses are built of logs, filled with mud and straw; the roofs thatched with the latter, and some covered over with bark. Around the angles of the yard are various warehouses, and icehouse, blacksmith-shop, and the trading-house, or store, which is covered completely over with large squares of bark, and looked like an entire barkhouse. In front toward the river, are barns, and stables, haystacks, &c., with numerous horses and cattle feeding, and a general appearance of thrift, comfort, and industry, pervades the scene - so new and interesting to us all, after a three-weeks' jaunt across the prairies, in which we did not meet a single human creature, not even a roaming Chippewa or Sioux.

We took possession of Mr. Kittson's house, which he had kindly placed at our disposal, and celebrated our arrival by a sumptuous dinner, in which hot corn and potatoes, onions, &c., as big as pint tin-cups, formed the principal item in the vegetable line. These were grown in the gardens here, and are the only productions of the soil now cultivated at this place, no farming whatever being done, on account of the annual floods in the valley of the Red river, for three years past - the waters have risen to the height of thirty-one and thirty-three feet above low-water mark, flooding all the country and inundating the houses at this place to the depth of two and three feet. Mr. Kittson was obliged to leave the post at this place last spring, and take up his residence for a month upon the surrounding highlands. These floods, should they continue, will prove a serious drawback to the settlement of this valley, the half-breeds being loath to put in crops when they are liable to be swept off annually.

Mr. Kittson had some six thousand rails swept off from his place last year. To obviate this difficulty, a new town and an agricultural settlement has been laid out by Mr. Kittson, and the Rev. Mr. Belcourt (the catholic priest stationed at this place), on what is called the Pembina mountain, thirty miles to the west of this place, and bordering on the river Pembina. The situation is a very eligible one, in a fine farming region; the land is excellent, and the timber abundant. The town is called "St. Joseph's," and is situated upon the eastern slope of the longitudinal ridge of land, called Mount Pembina, which is in places heavily wooded, and presents an Alleganian appearance as it is approached or skirted along toward the east.

Since our arrival, the name of "Waucheona," the Chippewa term for mountain, has been selected by Dr. Foster, and adopted by Mr. Kittson, as the name of the embryo town; he being opposed to exhausting the whole calendar of saints, and making every one of them stand as godfather to every town, lake, mountain, or stream, in the territory.

In consequence of there being no farming operations carried on here now, we found no grain on hand to feed our horses, excepting barley, and that is brought up from the Selkirk settlements, one hundred miles down Red river. Barley is a stronger feeder than oats, yet not so good as corn. It produces more than oats, say about forty bushels to the acre; and the price below ranges from fifty cents to a dollar per bushel, the former being the stard price when no extra demand takes place.

This afternoon I took a walk across "the line," two miles below, in company with the Rev. Messrs. Black and Tanner, the latter a half-breed Chippewa. About half way down, we passed the residence of the Rev. M. Belcourt, a large, two-story frame-house, situated alongside of a rude log-church, surmounted by a wooden cross.

The site is a very pleasant and commanding one, upon the high ground about half a mile back from the river, and safe from floods. Gardens, out-houses, and vehicles, were scattered around, and an air of comfort, and the rude enjoyments of a far off home, were visible. I am told that all the half-breeds here are catholics, with perhaps a few exceptions, and that Mr. Belcourt has resided among them, at the settlements below, and here, the long term of twenty-three years and upward. He is at present at the Mountain. At the line (forty-nine degrees) we found an elm-post, which was planted in the ground, upon the river bank, by Major Woods and Capt. Pope, bearing date, August 14, 1849. Just beyond is the first trading post and buildings of the Hudson's Bay Company, in this direction, a rival post of Kittson's. The buildings are built of logs and mud, one story high, and thatched with straw, are very warm and comfortable, and built around an open square. Here we found an old Scotch gentleman, named Sittare, an employee of the Bay Company, and who has charge of this place. He is a native of the Orkney Isles, and has resided in British America the still longer term of forty-eight years. A lifetime spent amid such solitudes is enough to make a man a misanthrope, and no one need wonder at it if I were to say that the old gentleman was not the most agreeable personage that I have met in this direction.

His only companions were a few half-breeds; the trading-house was closed, no trade, or business of any kind on hand, and the whole place was dull and desolate. Slept in our tent to-night, as of old; it is pitched in the court-yard, in front of the main buildings, with large fires burning around, and at each, is assembled a motley group of whites, half-breeds, and Indians; while in the distance, the dogs are howling, the braves and younger squaws are dancing promiscuously around their lodges, singing and beating drums for their amusement, and perhaps as a lullaby to us. They succeed most admirably, in making the black night as hideous as possible. Our escort of dragoons, are encamped about one fourth of a mile back upon the prairie, and their camp of snow-white tents, with the American flag flying gayly in the breeze, presents quite a pretty appearance, in contrast with the half-breed and Indian lodges, which are dotted here and there, separately, and in little hamlets of a dozen, all around as far as the eye can reach.

Saturday, 13th (September) - Cloudy, cold, raw, and windy, most of the day. The wind is keen from the northeast, and feels like that of a winter's day in milder latitudes. The mercury was down to fifty degrees at sunrise, and only rose to sixty-five degrees. Early this morning, a large Mackinaw boat started for the settlements below, in quest of barley; ourselves and escort requiring three hundred bushels. The boat was manned by eight half-breeds, six of whom were oarsmen. They will occupy two days in going down; two more in collecting the barley, and getting it thrashed, as it now stands out in the fields in shocks; five days to ascend the crooked, sluggish stream, and will bring about one hundred and sixty bushels; after which they will return for another load, and immediately on their second arrival, say about the 1st October, we will start homeward. To-day the half-breeds and Indians were served out rations; the Indians received flour and pemmican for three days' subsistence; and the half-breeds the same; with an additional allowance to each family of four pounds of sugar, and one pound of tea, they all being great lovers of that beverage. This occupied all the morning. The Indians number some five hundred, and the half-breeds, who drew rations, about fifty families. The latter are living here during their attendance on the treaty, in skin-lodges; though I am told they have comfortable log-houses, when settled permanently at home; and when not out on their semi-annual hunt. I have observed a number of their houses along the banks of Pembina and Red rivers, and understand the rest to be at the Mountain, and away out at Devil's lake, about one hundred miles to the southwest. Their occupation at present is exclusively that of hunters; and their life is naturally a free and easy, and a careless one; hunting buffalo and making pemmican and ox-carts, occupy all their time. These carts are made entirely of wood, not even an iron nail is used, wooden pins and thongs and bands of hide, being substituted. The only tools used are an axe, a hand-saw, a three-quarter, and an inch auger, with chisels of the same size. The carts are sold for thirty shillings; which is the average price, except in the hunting seasons, when in demand, they sell as high as ten dollars. A pair of wheels alone, are then worth five dollars. They are very strong, and will carry twelve hundred pounds of buffalo and pemmican.

The fall hunt comes off soon after the conclusion of the treaty. The usual tie for starting upon the summer and fall hunts, is the 10th of June and September. Nothing but pemmican and dried meat is secured on these two hunts; the robes being all taken in the winter, when the hair is long; the party returned from their summer hunt just before our arrival here. They were unsuccessful too, for once, and returned quite poor and empty-handed. They had a desperate fight, about the 20th of August, with the Yankton Sioux, who were one thousand strong, and all mounted upon horses; the affair took place away off upon the Missouri pains, upon the western slope of the Coteau des Prairies, and resulted in the victory of the half-breeds after they had been entrenched behind their carts and an earth embankment, for a day or two. I did not ascertain the number killed on either side.

Sunday, 14th - Cloudy, cold, raw, and windy; quite unpleasant and unseasonable. An over-coat is necessary out of doors, this morning, and fires in the house, for comfort; the weather, as well as other matters, serves to remind us of our northern latitude. To-day we had preaching by the Rev. John Black, in the dining-room of the governor's house; a novelty most certainly, in this far distant region. The congregation consisted of about a dozen whites, and three half-breeds. The Rev. Mr. Tanner also officiated, sang, and prayed, in English; and this afternoon, he preached in the open air, to the assembled Indians in the Chippewa language. Some of them paid close attention, sitting in a circle upon the ground; while others were listless and wandering, and others stood looking on from a distance, with the dragoons and half-breeds. The Chippewa is a beautifully sounding language, like the Italian. Mr. Tanner uses the Chippewa testament and hymns, which were translated by his father, who was for many years a prisoner among them, and wrote a book thereon. Mr. Tanner is about thirty-five years of age, and a very superior man for his class; he was born on the east side of the Red river, opposite this place (MY NOTE: where present-day St. Vincent, MN is located); was educated at Mackinaw, and has acted as a missionary among the Indians at Red lake, for the last five years. He removed to this place a week ago, and intends farming, teaching school, &c., for livelihood after the conclusion of the treaty. His wife is a half-breed, and they reside at present, in a lodge in the yard at this place. He is a fluent and earnest speaker, and discourses with great fervor and much eloquence to his red brethren, and is calculated to do good, if any can be done among them; he has been with them on their buffalo-hunts to the Missouri plains, armed like the rest; and has hunted buffalo and made pemmican all the week, and preached the gospel to them on Sundays - this being one phase of missionary life upon the prairies. He also has a half-breed brother, a real heathen as he styles him, who ranks as a chief among the Indians, and who lives among them, and accompanies them upon their hunts. This afternoon, things are dull and quiet; the Indians are strolling around, or lying idly in their lodges; the squaws are lugging huge loads of wood upon their backs, which they cut upon the river's bank, and secure by a strap passing over their shoulders and around the forehead; their bodies bending beneath the heavy load. Dozens of dirty children, half-clad in a piece of still dirtier blanket, are also playing around. The half-breeds are sitting around the fires in the yard; some lying in their lodges, and others standing at a respectful distance, listening to Mr. Tanner. Their young priest, M. Lecombe, has come down from his residence at the mission-house since vespers, and is holding a consultation with the governor. He seems to be a very intelligent, fine, young fellow; and intends accompanying us homeward to St. Paul, on his way to Montreal; where the Rev. Mr. Black came from, on his way to Selkirk settlement; thus keeping up an equilibrium in religious matters, and effecting a change between these two distant regions, in the persons of two ministers of different faiths; which is pleasant to contemplate, and which will be of great advantage to all concerned.

The Treaty

Monday, 14th - Still cold, raw, windy, and unpleasant; wind east-southeast; it looks, feels too, very much like snow, and has for several days past; the mercury was down to fifty at sunrise. At noon the Indians met, and the treaty commenced in front of the governor's house; his excellency, with Dr. Foster as secretary, and others, were sitting at a table at the front door; the principal chiefs, braves, and head men of the Red lake and Pembina bands of Chippewas, were sitting on low seats in front, while around behind them in a semi-circle stood a numerous crowd of half breeds and Indians, men, boys, squaws, and papooses, accompanied by their dogs, who, for once during our stay here, were quiet. the governor opened the council by an address of some length, which was interpreted by the Rev. Mr. Tanner and James Nolen, to them; as also their replies made in return. An old Indian, named "Clear-Weather," replied twice to the governor's remarks, in which he was quite pert and facetious as he thought, and ended by wanting a plain statement of our business there, and what we were going to do for them - what we were going to offer them, told bluntly and without any circumlocution or ornament; he wanted no "sugared words or honeyed phrases." He was not all satisfied with what had been said to them, and wanted something more definite, explicit, and to the point, and then they would go and make up their minds upon it, provided their great father would present them at least two bullocks in the meantime, as they were extremely hungry and could not deliberate on empty stomachs. The governor then told them they were women, and not the great Chippewa hunters he had thought them; that it was their duty as children to present their father with something to eat, after he had travelled such a long weary journey across the prairies purposely to meet them; but as he was now satisfied that they were squaws, and knew not how to hunt, he would go himself this afternoon and kill them some buffalo, and asked them "if they would have cows or bulls!" This little sally or bit of byplay put them in a good humor, and the council closed till ten, A.M., to-morrow. The dignitaries and potentates of this region of the earth then walked off majestically and proudly; and these stoics (?) - these men without a teat (?) - were seen no more. In plain terms they removed, in double quick time, lugging off their tobacco on their shoulders, and driving off their cattle, with loud shouts, to camp, where the rest of the day was devoted to gormandizing, and to-night we have hell let loose again among them.

Tuesday, 16th - Cloudy, cold, windy, and rainy. At daylight a rainstorm set in form the southeast, and continued nearly all day. A regular old fashioned equinoctial; mercury down to fifty-four and only rose to sixty-one degrees. No council was held that day in consequence of the storm. The Indians all invisible; all at home in their lodges, surfeiting themselves on ox meat and pemmican. Things very dull and gloomy; everywhere around the tent-fires all extinguished, and the star-spangled banner droops and hangs straight down the tall flag-staff, reared high in air above. The mud in the court-yard is as tenacious as pitch, and glues a man to the ground as soon as he steps out. We were, therefore, compelled to be sedentary; spent the day, for my own part, in reading "Major Long's Second Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter's River, Red River Valley, and Across the British Line, in 1825-'26" also prepared and packed up provisions for a canoe trip to-morrow down to Selkirk settlement, Fort Garry, &c.

Wednesday, 17th - The weather has cleared off finely, and is cool and pleasant; wind west-southwest, and the sun quite warm; the mercury sixty-one degrees at sunrise. Rose at daylight and prepared for a start down the river, in company with the Rev. John Black, in a bark canoe, with two Boise Brules (Halfbreeds, the name signifies 'burned wood') as voyageurs. Our canoe was fifteen feet long, and three feet wide, and was pretty well loaded down with ourselves, our bedding, baggage, and provisions. We started at seven, A.M., and paddled down the crooked, muddy river at the rate of some four miles an hour. stopping several hours to breakfast and dinner upon the river bank, and more frequently to haul out our leaky, frail canoe, and pitch the bottom with melted epinette, a vegetable gum used for that purpose. We saw large flocks of geese and ducks swimming among the dead willows along the banks, and could have shot large quantities, but we had not time to stop and pick them up. The ducks were all quite tame, and would approach within a few feet of our canoe, being so unused to the sight of human beings as to feel no feat. Other birds are numerous, among which I notice the eagle, hawk, crane, crow, plover, blackbird, and pigeon; also observed a fish-duck diving after fish; he was a fine large fellow, with a long bill, and a bright scarlet head; he swam toward us boldly, and thereby saved his life by his fearless confidence.

Red River is a very uninteresting stream; its waters are a liquid mud and have a very disagreeable taste, and affect the bowels of all persons unaccustomed to their use. The banks of the river are low, and extremely soft and muddy; you sink in knee-deep immediately on stepping foot on shore, where you stick and flounder about considerably before reaching the dry, hard prairie-ground above.

Along its whole course, both banks, within the margin of the stream, are covered with the thick growth of drowned-out willows before spoken of, while farther back on the prairie, fine large trees, majestic oaks and elms, are in the same condition; and now stand towering aloft like high, giant skeleton sentinels, throwing out their dry and leafless limbs across the water, as if to guard its passage. Each tree is marked at the height of some thirty feet above the water by the heavy drift-ice during the spring freshets; and the bark of all the timber to their height is of a dirty mud color, which, with the dead, drowned-out trees, presents a very disagreeable aspect. In some places the timber merely skirts the banks on both sides, and a broad expanse extends far on either hand; at others the timber extends farther than the eye can penetrate, and no prairie at all is visible for many miles, all being a desolate solitude of dead and dying skeleton trunks of leafless trees. There are some trunks in the river too forming snags; the water is very deep, current sluggish, say about one mile an hour generally, and in some places almost impreceptible, with not more than half a mile of straight chnnel at a time; for while its general course is due north it twists and turns in a very serpentine manner, to all points of the compass. The river contains no islands, and the only rapids are down below Selkirk settlement. A fine steamboat navigation will be found from there up to the junction of the Bois des Sioux, a distance of nearly four hundred miles; and one far better than that of the Mississippi above St. Anthony. We passed by the mouths of a number of small streams, viz., the Red Grass, Marias, Gratiaro, &c., which all resemble deep crooked ditches, and pour out additional quantities of thick, dark, mud-colored water, the washings of the rich and fertile prairies, now blooming with numerous flowers, through which they flow.

This is a splendid evening, the finest we have had for a long time; the sun is setting beautifully into the bosom of the far-off prairie, as it were, while all Nature is calm, still, and composed; the silence only broken by the dipping of our paddles, the occasional chirping of a bird, and the rapid rising of the scared wild fowl from out the smooth, calm surface of the water as we approach. We halted at sunset, about forty miles distant from Pembina, and have a good camp in a thick woods, where the only drawback to our comfort is the mosquitoes, which are as usual extremely annoying to us. The warm sun to-day unfortunately revived them from the torpid state in which the late cold storm had thrown them. We have our bar put up, ten-fashion, the corners being fastened to four stakes, and the raised apex or centre is secured to a bent pole, which keeps it upright and tightly stretched. Our bed consists of a robe and three blankets, with our coats and overcoats, &c., for pillows. We are upon an old camping ground, where two hundred and fifty cords of wood has been cut and piled around for the use of the settlements below this winter. The night is very clear and fine, the face of heaven is smiling amid myriads of twinkling stars; the northern horizon is lit up with the rays and dancing beams of an aurora, while the woods and silent flowing river are illuminated by our camp-fire; our voyageurs are fast aslepp upon the ground before us, and not a sound is heard, save that of the crackling, leaping flames and the low tone of our own voices as we chat merrily. And now as my companion reads a chapter in his French pocket-bible, and I pencil down these sketches of fact and fancy by the light of the burning fagots - but hark! we have company it seems and are not so lonely as I thought - that was the hoot-owl's cry; and sounds like the wailings of a fiend in misery - that was the cry, long drawn out and dismal, of a distant wolf; and now they are heard yelping and barking furiously, like a pack of hungry curs. And what was that - more unearthly than the fierce war-whoop, which almost freezes the young, warm blood, and turns the stout, athletic frame to stone? Was it a "demon-spirit or boglin damned," or the mere howling of the rising wind, the precursor of another store, I see arising in the distant horizon! Ha! I see two gleaming, fiery eyeballs in the thicket of the underbrush: "Take that, to light you to better quarters" I hurl a blazing fire-brand toward the varmint, who, with another dismal cry, leaves us to quietness, and to repose and sleep. From Sketches by a Camp-Fire
- to be continued...

Sketches by a Camp-Fire, Part I

This is the first of several posts taken from first-person accounts of a mid-nineteenth century expedition expedition started out in late August 1851...

Pierre Bottineau who contracted to take our [treaty expedition (1851)]¹ goods and provisions from Sauk Rapids through to Pembina, is a half-breed Chippewa; of a highly-nervous temperament, with Indian features strongly marked, very swarthy, dark hair, tall, muscular, and active, and is about thirty-seven years of age. He is an excellent hunter and voyageur; was born in, and has spent his whole life in wandering in and exploring, this territory and adjacent country. He has along eight carts, each loaded with about five hundred pounds of freight, and six Canadian French boys as drivers; also two half-breed men of the Chippewa tribe - one his own brother...

...at two, P.M., we started on, and soon found the dragoons again. They were encamped in the edge of the woods on Tongue river, where they remain till to-morrow. We now had eight miles of swampy prairie to cross, and at four, P.M., came in sight of the first houses at the Red river settlement, much to our great joy; as a house was as much a novelty to us after a tramp of five hundred miles across the unpeopled prairies, as the first sight of land is to the weary and tempest-tossed mariner.

The houses were full of half-breeds, who saluted us with the discharge of guns, &c. Dr. Foster and Mr. Lord rode on ahead, and were treated to milk and potatoes - a treat equal to that of the milk and honey received by the wandering children of Israel of old. A mile beyond we came to the unction of the Red and Pembina rivers, and found the trading-post of N.W. Kittson, Esq., and the settlement called Pembina in the angle at the junction. Here we found half a dozen log-dwellings, and a quantity of half-breed and Chippewa lodges; the American flag flying from the top of a tall flag-staff; with barns, stables, haystacks, horses, cattle, &c., and things generally looking very comfortable. On the muddy banks in front stood an admiring group of several hundred whites, half-breeds, and Indians, of all sizes; with any quantity of dogs, very large and wolfish: and amid this Babel of cries, yelps, barks, and shouts, from the said big dogs and little papoose Indians, we came to a halt and reconnoitered, on the southside of the Pembina and west of the Red river, standing almost glued fast in the sticky, tenacious mud, caused by the rains and annual overflow of these two rivers for three years past. The timber upon their banks is dead (drowned out), the ground destitute of grass, with tall, rank weeds three and four feet in height abounding.

The rivers are very muddy and deep, with but little current. Red river is about one hundred yards in width, and the Pembina twenty-five yards. The country is very flat all around, and the streams heavily wooded, while a thick growth of young, dead willows line the water's edge from Pembina to the Selkirk settlement. Mr. Kittson and Messrs. Rolette and Cavileer soon visited us and took us over to the town, giving us the freedom of the place, besides sending some Selkirk butter and eggs across to us at camp. Our carts arriving at dark, we built a rousing fire, pitched tents, covered the banks with grass and weeds, spread our oil-cloths and mattresses, and were once more comfortable.

This is our last night "out of sight of land" - slept out last sleep on the tented prairie for the present, which I regret, as it is far preferable to a bed of down within a palace. Slept well, too, considering the multitude of discordant and almost unearthly sounds which struck upon our drowsy ears, accustomed to quietness and calm. Now are heard the Indians shrieking and beating upon drums at their camp across the Pembina; and those big dogs keep howling dismally, like a host of wild, voracious wolves. The dark and cloudy night is made hideous with hell-like wailings; and the mournful sighing wind bears to our ears the sharp and piercing cries from a hundred deep-toned throats, sounding in their awfulness like the despairing howlings of the damned. So much for our first night at Pembina.

We have thus made the march from Sauk rapids to this place in twenty travelling days, being Twenty-two in all, and from St. Paul just twenty-five days. Messrs. Kittson and Cavalieer came through a short time since in twelve days, or about nine- and a half days of marching time, the quickest trip on record.

¹ - The object of the expedition narrated in the pages these excerpts are taken from, was to form a treaty with the Red Lake and Pembina bands of Chippewa Indians for their country lying in the valley of the Red River of the North, and south of the British line. Governor Ramsey was appointed commissioner to treat with them, and Dr. Thomas Foster appointed secretary. The treaty was formed, but was afterward rejected by the United States senate...
[To Be Continued...]

Officially American

Major Stephen H. Long of the United States Army was the most important government-sponsored explorer in the decade after the War of 1812. He led three major and several minor expeditions up the Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas rivers and the Red River of the North, as well as exploring the central and southern Plains, the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Lakes. His companions included engineers, cartographers, naturalists, ethnologists, and artists, and they gathered a wealth of scientific, military, and artistic data about the interior of North America. For years Long's expeditions have been overlooked or misunderstood; here for the first time they are placed in the context of American scientific development.

When they reached Pembina on the Red River, the explorers paused. There, they had only one task - to decide whether the village lay north or south of the 49th parallel. Once they had done that they would begin their journey back to the eastern states. The return trip would take them along the virtually uninhabited north shore of Lake Superior and then south across the Great Lakes, a region that offered them little scientific challenge. In fact, rather than examining animals and plants along their route of march, the naturalists found their chief task to be getting themselves and their equipment back to civilization before the early northern winter blocked travel. This they succeeded in doing. yet, they encountered so little of interest or significance that the last half of the expedition proved anti-climactic for them.

On August 5, 1823, the explorers rode into Pembina and found the settlement virtually deserted. Most of the villagers had left on their annual buffalo hunt nearly seven weeks earlier and had not yet returned. The next day, the hideous screeching of 115 wooden carts loaded with fresh buffalo meat announced the villagers' return as 300 men, women, and children marched into town, shouting and singing. They had good reason for joy. Each of the wagons carried some 800 pounds of buffalo meat, enough to last for the winter. For a community with almost no domesticated animals, the annual hunt was a matter of grim necessity and this had been a good hunt.

The happy townsfolk straggled into their rude community, which consisted of about sixty log cabins strung out along the banks of the river for nearly five miles. A Hudson's Bay Company trading post had operated there until earlier that same summer, when company officials guessed that the settlement lay within the United States. Now the building stood empty. By August 8, Long and Colhoun completed their survey and astronomical observations and decided that the village did indeed lie south of the 29th parallel. Accordingly, on that day the major had an oak post placed in the ground at the border. On the south side of the pole he put the letters U.S., while G.B. faced to the north. At noon the troops raised the American flag and fired a salute. Then, in the presence of the villagers, Long proclaimed that "by virtue of the authority vested in him by the President...the country situated upon the Red River, above that point...was within the territory of the United States."

This simple ceremony completed the explorers' last specific assignment, and all that remained was their return trip. Long's orders called for the detachment to follow the 29th parallel east, but the settlers urged him not to try that route. They described the entire region between the Red River and Lake Superior as a maze of marshes, small lakes, and boulder-filled streams - all virtually impenetrable by a party as large as Long's. Instead, they claimed that the only practical way to travel east was by canoe via the larger streams. This advice convinced the Major to use his discretion, as Secretary of War Calhoun had suggested, and he chose to proceed north into Canada before turning east. Accordingly, the party prepared for the last part of their journey.

The brief stay at Pembina precipitated several bitter quarrels within the detachment, and, as a result, Mr. Beltrami quit the expedition. Long noted that the mercurial Italian, "having taken offense at the party generally, and being highly provoked at my objecting to his turning an Indian out of our lodge, left the party in a very hasty and angry manner." The Italian had proved a troublesome companion, and few of the other explorers expressed any regret when he left. James Colhoun claimed that the Indians said that one of the explorers "must be a foreigner, because he wanted the mild expression of countenance, which they said is universal with Americans. Their judgment was correct," he concluded. When the argument ended, Beltrami bought a horse from Long, and with a single companion rode south to find the source of the Mississippi. They failed to do so, but did find and name Lake Julia.

- From Stephen Long and American Frontier Exploration (1995)

Profile: H.L. Hime, Expedition Photographer

Encampment on the Red River - Hind Expedition, 1857

Born in Ireland, H. L. Hime came to Canada in 1854 and joined the Hind Expedition as official photographer. His photographs are probably the first ever taken of the Canadian prairies.

As so often happens, due to the geographic proximity, he is connected to our area in that he passed through it, and made observations of the land and the people living here...

The Palliser and Hind Expeditions, 1857 -1860

By 1855, the last remaining piece of wild land in Canada West (formerly Upper Canada) was sold for settlement. This allowed politicians to look to the prairies as a possible region to open up for immigrants. Starting in 1857, two explorers named John Palliser and Henry Youle Hind would set out on a "scientific expedition" to discover if this land was suitable for mass settlement.

However, Palliser's expedition had another purpose. It was to survey the 49th parallel as a possible western border between the U.S. and Canada. This was crucial as America created massive east-west Intercolonial railways during the 1860s, a move that some in British North America viewed as an attempt by the Americans to expand their territory into what was to become Canada.

- From Intercolonial Railway, The Canadian Encyclopedia

On Wednesday we reached Fort Pembina, and stayed the night with Mr. Mackenzie, the officer in charge of the Post, whose sad fate last December (described further on) is a melancholy proof of the danger attending traveling alone during the winters of this climate. The woods and prairies are then perfect deserts, Indians being at their winter quarters, birds far in the sunny south, and wild animals hibernating, or seeking food and shelter in the thickest parts of the swamps and forests. So complete is this desolation in the interior of many parts of Rupert's Land during the winter, that Mr. Christie, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, when traveling from Athabasca to Red River in December 1859, did not meet with a single Indian throughout a long and dreary journey of 1400 miles. (of that I can believe!!)

The thermometer at Pembina Fort indicated 22 below zero on the morning of December 2nd, when we left the Post. Having procured another train of two dogs at the small village of Pembina, two miles from the Hudson's Bay Post of that name, we struck across the prairie to the "first of the Two Creeks," where we camped...

Pine River crossing is the spot from which Mr. Mackenzie, who had so hospitably treated us at Fort Pembina, started on the morning of the 29th December 1859, on his ill-fated journey in search of assistance. He and some companions were escorting an engineer from Georgetown to Fort Garry, who was traveling thither to make alterations and repairs in the steamer Anson Northrup, then laid up for the winter near the Indian settlement. The party fell short of provisions, and Mr. Mackenzie pushed on in the hope of being able to send supplies from Pembina. After leaving his companions, he appears to have followed the trail for some distance, and at the approach of night to have lost his way. His beaten track showed that in order to keep himself from freezing, he had spent the night in running round in a circle. At the break of day he started again across the trackless waste, but in a direction considerably to the eastward of his proper course. A second day of fruitless wandering was followed by a night more dreary than the first. The third day's journey brought him near the Roseau Lake, far to the east of his destination; here his strength appears to have failed him, for having hung some shreds of his coat on a tree, to mark his last resting-place, he lay down beneath it, where his frozen body was found, with one hand on his heart and the other grasping a compass.*

* An account of this melancholy journey is given in the Red River Nor'Wester, [Issue January 14, 1860] 

From Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857 by Henry Youle Hind

Boundary Commission Tales - Part II

...Yet this [boundary] line which may be so simply described as "west on the 49th parallel" was not as easily marked on the ground. Perhaps the first attempt to fix its location was made by the Hudson's Bay Company. In the spring of 1823 it abandoned the fort at Pembina on the Red River, taken over from the Northwest Company two years earlier. Astronomical observations had placed the site too far south to be in British territory. A United States surveying expedition soon reached the spot, under Major Stephen H. Long of the Topographical Engineers. His astonomer, after four days' observations for latitude, determined a point for the parallel as it crossed the Red River. On the west bank an oak post was forthwith planted bearing on its north side "G.B." and on the south "U.S." This was the mark that some wag later turned around. Major Long issued a proclamation August 8, 1823, claiming the land south of the post for the United States. Yet neither his action nor that of the Hudson's Bay Company had lasting effect.

...Major Long's post on the Red River was renewed substantially in the same place by Captain John Pope, also of the Topographical Engineers, when he visited Pembina in 1850. Meanwhile the Hudson's Bay Company had in 1845 reinstated its fort or store a quarter of a mile to the north, in a position which later observations by Mr. Nicolay, an American scientist, confirmed as being in British territory. When Capt. John Palliser, the British explorer, visited the Hudson's Bay post in 1857, he "adopted" Nicholay's fix, although his own observations brought the 49th parallel 370 yards farther north. This multiplicity of positions may have inspired the citizens of Pembina to erect in 1860 what became known as the "whiskey post,"¹ about a mile north of Long's and Pope's, to stop the smuggling of liquor into the United States from a house near the line. In effect, their action created a no man's land and perhaps opened the door to more serious encroachment ten years later.

From West on the 49th Parallel: Red River to the Rockies 1872-1876, by John E. Parsons

¹ - This later post was never taken very seriously as it was put in for a special practical purpose. A man from the Red River settlement built a house close to the "Pope's Marker" and used it as a base to smuggle liquor into Pembina, a location convenient to both exporter and importers but too easily accessible to suit the good people of Pembina. It was to strike a blow at those liquor dealings that the more northerly post was erected and aptly dubbed "Whiskey Post." - From Adams George Archibald, First Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba

Boundary Commission Tales - Part I

Treaties and Preludes

The boundary between Canada and the United States, where it sweeps westward along the 49th parallel of north latitude, was once marked by a single oak post, carved on one side "G.B." and on the other "U.S." But some humorist among the settlers living in the vicinity of Red River or perhaps a passing cynic, uprooted and turned the post around, so that the "U.S." faced north. So little did the mark matter, however, that it was allowed to stand thus until it rotted away.

As late even as 1875 the westernmost settlement in the Red River Valley was the Metis village of St. Joseph, about thirty-five miles from Pembina. Beyond that point in the northern border country not a single permanent habitation existed as far as the Rocky Mountains, if a few Indian tepees at Turtle Mountains and some log cabins where half-breeds wintered at Woody Mountain be disregarded. Much of it arid and treeless, with great extremes of temperature, the land was peopled by roving bands of Sioux, Assiniboine, Blackfeet, or Metis hunters who lived off the receding buffalo herds. Through this remote and austere wilderness, a part of the west still unwon, the boundary surveyors of the early 1870's were to make their arduous way.

From the Lake of the Woods to the Pacific Coast the border along the parallel is, between nations, the longest in the world formed by a continuous curve. For many years this 1300-mile line existed only as an imaginary concept, its beginnings going back to the early eighteenth century, when the 49th parallel of north latitude was first suggested to the commissioners under the Treaty of Utrecht as a southern limit for the Hudson's Bay Company in western North America. Although it appeared on several mid-century maps, mo such limit was actually fixed by these commissioners, or by subsequent treaty, when Great Britian took over French Canada in 1763 and France ceded Lousiana to Spain...

From West on the 49th Parallel: Red River to the Rockies 1872-1876, by John E. Parsons

Scientific History Made

In the 19th century, science was making great strides. Included in those gains of knowledge was the field of astonomy. St. Vincent and Pembina played their small parts in playing host to many expeditions that came to the area or were passing through...


"The interest aroused in total eclipses was now so great that astronomers were determined to take advantage of every opportunity, no matter how short the time of totality nor how great distances it was necessary to travel in order to view the eclipses."

Title: Excerpts From Simon Newcomb's Diary of 1860
Authors: Kennedy, J. E. & Hanson, S. D.
Journal: Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 90, p.292

Using the Google coordinates for St. Vincent below, I think your best candidate for an eclipse visible from your town that would have attracted scientists would have been that of May 26, 1854. It was a rather long annular (ring) eclipse, with the Moon too far from the Earth to cover the Sun entirely, that had a duration of 4 minutes and 10 seconds in the annular stage. Here's the chronology:

2:30:38 p.m. CDST, SW edge of Moon makes first contact with the Sun, then 52 3/4 degrees above the SW horizon.
3:57:12 p.m., annular stage _begins_ with both bodies 40 degrees above the WSW horizon.
3:59:17 p.m., maximum annular eclipse, with 90.5% of the Sun's surface covered by the Moon.
4:01:22 p.m., annular eclipse ends as the leading edge of the Moon exits the Sun's NE rim, with both objects 39 1/6 degrees over the WSW/W skyline. Duration = 4 min. 10 sec.
5:18:42 p.m., last contact, with both bodies 26 3/4 degrees above the western horizon.

The partial solar eclipse of 7/18/1860 covered 83.3% of the Sun's surface, the partial solar eclipse of 10/19/1865 obscured 68.5% of the solar surface, and the partial solar eclipse of 8/7/1869 hid 93.5% of the solar disc. There were some piddling little partial solar eclipses that I have left out of consideration. Therefore your best candidate for a major eclipse that would have attracted the attention of astronomers and which lasted long enough to justify an excursion to St. Vincent would have been that of May 26, 1854. Hopefully narrowing down the eclipses to one strong contender will enable you to discover some eyewitness accounts.

Dr. Timothy L. Bratton
Department of History/Political Science
Jamestown College
Jamestown, ND