Historical Accounts of Pierre, Charles, and Severe Bottineau
from the Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society
First Logging Near the Crow Wing River We had very little trouble with the Indians during the winter. On one occasion an Indian put up his tepee in the night within a stone's throw of the camp. The next morning, when the teamster was hitching up his team, the Indian said, "If you don't give me some meat, I will kill an ox and get some." I told young Bottineau, who was interpreter, to command him to leave, and to threaten, if he refused, that we would have his scalp. Bottineau took the cook's poker and struck him just as he was about to fire. He knocked the Indian down, and the gun flew out of his hands. The squaw came to his rescue, but the whole crew by this time were out of the camp and ready to take a part in the row. I requested Bottineau to hold the Indian, but not to hurt him, and to tell the squaw to pack up and leave at once. She left with her papoose in double quick time. I reported the Indian's conduct to the chief, and we had no more trouble.
Near the end of the winter, some braves, numbering about twenty, had been out on the warpath for the purpose of punishing the Sioux. They had killed an old squaw, and returned with her scalp. They came into our camp about midnight, and commenced dancing around the camp-fire. The crew, awakened by their howling noise, were alarmed, and each secured some weapon to defend himself. When the Indians saw that we were all armed, they stopped their racket. Bottineau asked them what they wanted. They said that they were hungry, and he told them to sit down and the cook would feed them. After eating, they left for Crow Wing, without making any further disturbance. We had no other difficulties with the Indians during the winter.
Exploration of the Pineries on the Rum River It was near the end of summer when the outfit was in readiness for my exploring voyage. On the first day of September, 1847, there were seen, by Pierre Bottineau and others, three men, his younger brother, Severre Bottineau, Charles Manock. and myself, paddling in a bark canoe up the east shore of the Mississippi river above St. Anthony falls. When opposite what is now called Boom Island, we were hailed by Pierre from the shore, saying, "How far do you expect to travel in that canoe at this low stage of water? The bottom will be out of the canoe in less than a week." We answered, "To Mille Lacs, the source of Rum river;" and the canoe and party moved on up the Mississippi. This little exploring party's report, the money consequently supplied from the east, and Franklin Steele's perseverance and unlimited will, made it possible to make the improvements on unsurveyed government land. My written report secured the capital from Caleb Cushing and his associates; and his influence in Congress secured the survey of the government land adjoining the falls and including this claim. The discovery by the exploring party of the almost inexhaustible pine timber above the fails of St. Anthony, heralded throughout all the states and Canada, brought immigration from every state, and changed this part of the territory from barbarism to civilization.
The Jackson Hotel, with an Anecdote The Northwestern territory began about this time to attract more or less attention from tourists, and Henry Jackson was obliged to furnish to them shelter and accommodation such as he could afford from the scanty means he had at hand. His hospitality soon became known, and there were at all times some guests stopping at his caravansary. About this time there were several permanent boarders stopping with him: W. G. Carter, a cousin; Thomas Sloan, a stockman; and W. Renfro, a Virginian, a good fellow, who had wandered out west to get rid of society. There was also a Mr. Joseph Hall, a native of Wilmington, Delaware, a carpenter by trade. These boarders, with the balance of us, constituted the regular household of the Jackson Hotel.
This man Hall, poor fellow, was about half-witted, and very fond of the society of ladies. He spent all his earnings, on the arrival of every boat, and on other occasions, for sweetmeats and delicacies with which to treat them, all of which was very nice and commendable in him, of course; but, as there must be always some bitter with the sweet, our friend Renfro, being considerable of a wag, thought we must have a little fun at poor Hall's expense. Consequently, calling him aside one day, he said: "Yesterday, while taking my usual walk out on the road leading into the interior, I met a couple of nice girls. They inquired of me if I knew Mr. Joseph Hall. I told them I did. They told me they were about getting up a suprise party for Michel LeClaire, and that they would require your assistance, that they would be pleased to meet you here about dusk to-morrow evening, in order to make the necessary preliminary arrangement, and that you should be sure to bring a friend along."
This road coincided nearly with the course of Jackson street. It extended out beyond the Dawson residence, and thence on toward the Rice lakes, being an old road of the Indians, used by them in going out to their hunting ground every fall. From the description of the girls, Hall knew them at once. Everything being arranged, the following evening four fellows started out arrayed in war paint, blanket, and gun loaded to the muzzle with blank cartridges. No. 1, Henry Jackson. was stationed, in ambush, on the extreme outpost; No. 2, William G. Carter, was stationed about 200 yards this way; No. 3, Thomas Sloan, was stationed about 200 yards farther in; No. 4, Mr. Blank, was stationed nearer in, farthest from the enemy. At the proper time, Mr. Renfro, with Mr. Hall, came along, earnestly engaged in conversation, passing the concealed pickets all right, to the extreme outpost, precisely where the girls were to be. All at once, Jackson rose up out of the brusk, articulating some Ojibway word, blanket over his shoulder, and fired his piece. Renfro fell to the ground, at the same time saying "Hall, save yourself; I am killed." The poor fellow issued a yell of distress and started on a canter, reaching outpost No. 2, when a salute was given him, and another quickly from No. 3, and, as he rushed past, before you could think, No. 4 gave him the coup de grace. Such yelling and running was never seen nor heard of since. He made his way to what was known later as the Baptist hill. An Ojibway half-breed, Mr. Pierre Bottineau, lived there, and at that very time a ball was going on at his house. Mr. Hall made his way there and gave them a history of his woes, saying that he was taking a walk with his friend Renfro, when at a certain point of the road they were fired upon by Ojibway Indians, that his friend was killed, and that he escaped by a miracle.
The ball was broken up for awhile, and some of the male portion started out to investigate, taking Hall along. They could find nothing, and thought they would go over to Jackson's and see what they could learn there. They entered his store, which was also the bar room, sitting room and everything else, when lo and behold, the dead man was sitting on the counter smoking his pipe, with the other fellows alongside of him, apparently unconscious of what had happened with our neighbors. It soon became apparent that a good joke had been played on someone, and for a time the half-breeds were a little disposed to take a more serious view of the situation. But someone suggested that we throw oil upon the troubled waters, and the demijohn was passed around. All then adjourned to the domicile of neighbor Bottineau, and the ball went on again, with renewed energy, until the next morning.
Biographic Sketches Among those who were my associates in the years 1847 to 1860, Severre Bottineau and Charles Manock are well remembered as companions of travel by canoe and afoot during the earliest years when I was cruising through the pipettes of Rum river and the upper waters off the Mississippi. The determination of the areas occupied by pine timber available for logging, and the estimation of the amounts that would be yielded from different tracts on the many streams of that great region, led many others also to prospect or cruise in search of the most desirable areas for lumbering. This was my principal work during a large part of each year up to the time of my appointment as surveyor general of logs and lumber. It was the custom of the cruiser to supply himself with some provisions, a blanket, a rifle or shotgun with plenty of ammunition, and a good stock of matches to start the nightly campfire, and then to go alone, or with one or two comrades, into the pathless forests, there to collect the information and estimates needed, remaining weeks or sometimes even months in the woods, and subsisting mostly on game, fish, and berries.
Manock was hired to accompany my first expedition for his aid as a hunter, and we seldom lacked an abundance of wild meat. He was a good cook, and always performed the usual work of preparing the camp and meals. Severre Bottineau, as previously noted, was a younger brother of Pierre, the well known guide. He was a stout and athletic fellow, accustomed to the hardships of exploring. His acquaintance with four languages, French, English, Ojibway, and Dakota, made him very serviceable in my dealings with the Indians. It should be added, too, that both Manock and Bottineau were mixed-bloods, thoroughly understanding the temperament, inclinations, and usages, of the two great tribes or nations of red men who then occupied and owned nearly all of what is now Minnesota. Young Bottineau, intelligent, friendly, fond of conversation, and always good-natured, was my companion during all the first year, until September, 1848. It would be a pleasure to me to write further of these men, but I am unable to do so, or even to state whether either of them may be still living.
The First Chapel The first site urged upon Father Galtier was probably not far from where Father Hennepin and his Dakota captors debarked at the end of April, 1680, to begin their overland journey to the Indian village at Mille Lacs. Father Galtier wisely decided that the ground there was dangerously low, and that the second, or Dayton's Bluff site, on the other hand, was inaccessibly high. The only available location remaining was the plot between Bench and Third streets and between Minnesota and Cedar streets. This was chosen, and in October, 1841, eight men accepted as a labor of love the task of erecting the first house of worship in their new home. The honored names of the builders are: Isaac Labissonniere, Joseph Labissonniere, the two Pierre Gervais, Pierre Bottineau, Charles Bottineau, Francois Morin, and Vital Guerin.
Sketches of the Early History of Real Estate in St. Paul In September of 1847, save the old government mill, on the west side of the river, there were no improvements whatever at the falls. On the east or St. Anthony side there was a log house, where Franklin Steele held his claim. Luther Patch and his family occupied this house. A log building was being constructed for the use of the men who were to build the mill dam. Pierre Bottineau's house, on the river bank above Nicollet island. Calvin Tuttle's claim shanty, and two or three French squatters cabins, were the improvements. Luther Patch and his family, the workmen on the log house where the dam was to be built, and Calvin Tuttle and a few French half-breeds, were the only inhabitants, where now stands the city of Minneapoli.
After the sale of Jackson to Hartshorn, the real estate market was rather quiet, no further sale being recorded until June 16, 1846, nearly two years later, when Pierre Bottineau sold to Francis Chenevert and David Benoit 100 acres, "bounded as follows: On the east by Kittson, on the north by James R. Clewett, on the west by Hartshorn and Jackson, and on the South by Louis Robert." There was no further description; not even the county or territory was mentioned. The consideration of the deed was $300, or $3 per acre. It seemed as though Parrant, who had been a wanderer and an outcast, would permanently occupy this pretty claim overlooking the river; but when Benjamin Gervais offered him the munificent sum of $10 for it, it was not in human nature to resist, and Parrant sold. So he escaped the curse of becoming a millionaire, and of having a contest over his will; and by this transaction the real estate market was opened in St. Paul.
Closely after Parrant, in 1838 and 1839, came Abraham Perret (Anglicized to Perry), Pierre and Benjamin Gervais, Evans, Hays, Phelan, and Vital Guerin: in 1840, Joseph Rondo, Xavier De Mair, and Father Lucian Galtier, of blessed memory; and, in 1841, Father Ravoux and Pierre Bottineau. Many of these became dealers in real estate, and so connected themselves with my theme.
Early Real Estate Deals On Jun 16, 1846, the second deed was recorded in Ramsey Co., when Pierre Bottineau sold to Francis Chenevert and David Benoit 100 acres, "bounded as follows: On the east by Kittson, on the north by James R. Clewett, on the west by Hartshorn and Jackson, and on the South by Louis Robert." There was no further description; not even the county or territory was mentioned. The consideration of the deed was $300, or $3 per acre. It is now Whitney and Smith's addition, embracing the very heart of the wholesale district, and Seventh and Eighth streets, from Jackson to Broadway. It is worth today at least $3,000,000; just ten thousand times its cost.
Cured of Townsite Fever I was one of a company of four who were tangled among townsites along the Red river of the North in 1857; therefore, I have charity for men who got boom fever into their blood. J. W. Prentiss and myself, J. C. Moulton, our agent, Pierre Bottineau and his brother Charlie, who were our guides, with four teamsters, making a total of nine men, started from St. Paul, January 2nd, 1857. Our destination was the junction of the Bois des Sioux and Otter Tail rivers, where Breckenridge and Wahpeton now stand. We had two long sleds, built for hard usage, and five yoke of oxen. Our route was by way of St. Cloud, lake Whipple, lake Pomme de Terre, and Lightning lake. We were twenty-seven days getting through, and six of us lived out there through the hardest February, March, and April, I have ever seen. After the first week out, the snow averaged two feet deep on the unburned prairie, and from six inches to a foot where it had been burned over. The surface of the latter, swept by forty degrees below zero winds, was covered by a sharp crust that bit the legs of our cattle sorely. During the latter part of the trip, they were swelled to three times their natural size, and nearly every step they made was stained with blood. The depressions of the trail were everywhere drifted full, and where we could not get around them, they had to be shoveled through.
The extreme severity of the winter and spring made relief impossible until May 11th. In the meantime, nine of our ten oxen had starved to death, there being nothing available for them after the first week of February, but elm browse. Before the close of February, our own supplies had become so exhausted that we had to eat the attenuated hams of our starved-to-death cattle. From April 13th until May 11th a little Englishman, whom we called Billy, and I, held down a townsite opposite Graham's Point, near where McCauleyville now is. We found patches of woods along the river down there, where we shot squirrels, prairie chickens, and rabbits, now and then, and when that supply failed us, we alternated with boiled cat fish and tea, without salt or other condiments.
I returned to St. Anthony in June, and went back to newspaper editing, thoroughly cured of my townsite fever; and, though more than forty-six years have passed, I have not seen a rod of that country since. The quarter share of lots coming to me, in three townsites we platted that winter, went for taxes many years ago, and all now are farms. This incident of my pioneer life in Minnesota is related to show the almost lunatic wildness here in the fifties. The rush for the new lands and business of the Northwest quite equaled the stampede to the gold fields of California in 1849. Sixteen of eighteen steamboats often lay at the St. Paul landings at one time, discharging passengers and freight. May 7th, 1857, twenty-four steamboats were here. One boat, the War Eagle, brought up 814 people on a single trip. Of course, the newspaper business boomed in those times, with everything else. Nine new weekly newspapers were added in 1855 to the fourteen already established in Minnesota. In 1856 eighteen more came. To these were added twenty-eight more in 1857. One daily, the Falls Evening News, was also started. The year 1857 began, therefore, with a total of forty-one weeklies and five dailies, and it closed with sixty-nine weeklies and six dailies. Of course, not nearly all of these were living at the close of 1857. But think of this number of newspapers spread over the then sparsely populated territory of Minnesota!
First Wheat Raising Near the Pembina River During the period thus far traced, no wheat was raised south of the international boundary line. The settlers there lived on fish, flesh, and fowl. They raised all the garden vegetables needed, and bought flour from the Selkirk settlement. For fresh meat they depended upon the plains, and were seldom out of a supply. Barley was raised for horse feed, and some oats were raised, but the blackbirds devoured most of the oat fields. Having no mills to grind wheat, the settlers on the south side of the line raised none, but did raise squaw corn for roasting ears. The few cattle were kept on hay in winter, and the Indian ponies dug theirs out of the snow, save in a period of unusually cold weather and deep snows, when they were fed hay.
In 1871 or 1872, Charles Bottineau, who had tilled ten acres to garden, seeded it to wheat, and claims to have raised fifty bushels of No. I hard wheat to the acre upon it. His place was four miles above Neche on the north side of Pembina river. Two years later Charles Grant, two miles west of Pembina, raised a small field of wheat, and claims to have averaged forty bushels to the acre, all of which they hauled to the Selkirk settlement to have it ground. A man named Vere Ether came to Pembina at the beginning of Riel's rebellion (1869), and was stopped at the boundary line by Riel's scouts. They sent him back to wait for a more convenient time. He was persuaded to take a preëmption on the Pembina river a few miles east of Neche. He opened up his farm and was the first settler there who made wheat-raising his chief employment. He always had good crops, in good seasons forty bushels per acre and never less than fifteen bushels.
The St. Anthony of 1847 In my third paper on "Journalism in the Territorial Period," I gave a list of voters in St. Anthony Falls township, now East Minneapolis, on October 30, 1848. The election was held for the territorial delegate to congress. There were forty-two voters at that time. In September of 1847, save the old government mill, on the west side of the river, there were no improvements whatever at the falls. On the east or St. Anthony side there was a log house, where Franklin Steele held his claim. Luther Patch and his family occupied this house. A log building was being constructed for the use of the men who were to build the mill dam. Pierre Bottineau's house, on the river bank above Nicollet island. Calvin Tuttle's claim shanty, and two or three French squatters cabins, were the improvements. Luther Patch and his family, the workmen on the log house where the dam was to be built, and Calvin Tuttle and a few French half-breeds, were the only inhabitants, where now stands the city of Minneapolis.
Volume 10, Part 1, Pages 16-17 It may be of interest to my hearers to learn the particulars as to how it happened that these three pioneers drifted into what is now one of the most famous agricultural regions in the world, but which was then a dreary waste uninhabited save by Indians and roamed by wild beasts. In March, 1859, a party of capitalists, consisting in part of Messrs. Peter Poncin, Welch, and Bottineau, of Minneapolis, and Barneau, John Irvine, and Freudenreich, of St. Paul, explored the Red river country; and their investigations convinced them that a point at the mouth of the Sheyenne river, about fourteen miles north of the present site of Moorhead, was the head of navigation of the Red river, and they judged that it was the natural point for a townsite. They therefore covered a plot of land at the point named on the Minnesota side of the Red river with scrip, and laid out a town which they named La Fayette, and they sold a great many shares in this townsite to parties east. On the site they built a large log house, which they intended for a tavern. At this time Mr. Probstfield was in business at St. Paul in partnership with George Emerling, and the townsite owners induced Mr. Probstfield to go up to La Fayette. He remained there for a year or more and soon after preëmpted a claim on the south side of Buffalo river, not far from Georgetown. In 1864 he went into the employ of the Hudson Bay Company at Georgetown, where they had a warehouse and trading post.
Grand Forks, North Dakota "He spoke every language in the region from French, English, Sioux, Chippewa, Cree, Mandan, and Winnibago. Experienced 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." source
Pierre Bottineau was born in 1817 in a hunting camp on the buffalo trail near Grand Forks. Despite being technically within the United States, the Red River Valley was part of a British trading colony that encompassed present-day northern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota and southern Manitoba, Canada. Pierre's father, Charles Bottineau, was a French-Canadian Protestant who worked as a voyageur, a ranger in the employ of the fur companies. His mother, Margaret Ahdik Songab (Clear-Sky), was a half-Sioux Ojibwe of the Lake of the Woods band.
Pierre's birthright was that of total outsider, making his lifelong civic accomplishments are all the more striking. The Métis (MEH-tee, French for "mixed", referring to their inter-racial origins), who formed their own subculture in the Northwest, were often regarded with antipathy by both sides of their bloodline. Whites associated them with Indians, and Indians with whites. While both sides relied on the Métis to cohere trading interests, they also tended to keep them at the fringes of society.
The Métis ranged the sparsely-populated prairies and forests of the Northwest, subsiding through hunting, trapping and trade. They also ran the ox-cart caravans vital in transporting people and goods between the fur-rich borderlands to the north and the commercial towns below St. Anthony Falls that were connected to the eastern states via the Mississippi River.
The Métis were famously hearty and independent, the men characteristically identified by their bright red scarves. Some Métis, including Pierre Bottineau, determinedly became Americans. Others resisted the domesticated values of settlement. A Métis movement for nationhood would eventually run afoul of federal forces, and the Métis holdouts, like the Indian nations, were displaced, hunted and coerced into assimilation by the American and Canadian governments in the latter half of the 19th Century.
Reared into an itinerant hunting and trapping life in the Red River Valley, Pierre and his brothers were trained to survive the harshest, most remote conditions. To be a voyageur was to be everything and nothing at the same time. The profession was akin to the teamster, except that the voyageur often had no team to carry his burden and no road to follow between the far-flung outposts of the fur companies. Voyageurs escorted immigrants into the interior of the fur country and carried game, crops, pelts, trade goods, supplies and news – everything that needed to be transported – sometimes by canoe, sometimes by ox cart or sled, sometimes on horseback and often on their own backs. They trapped and hunted and traded with Indian bands, reckoning their way through uninterrupted wilderness, in all seasons, at the bidding of company agents who wielded nearly absolute authority.
The voyageurs lived unsettled lives on the margins of civilization. Over two centuries between the establishment of the European fur trade in North America and the settlement of the Northwest Territory, a handful among them gained prominence either as hunters, trappers, traders or bandits. But most were wage laborers enjoying neither wealth nor influence. Voyageurs, and especially the proud but pedigree-less Métis among them, had freedom over their persons and mastery of the elements as their chief rewards in life.
And life in their situation tended to be harsh and abbreviated. Pierre Bottineau’s father died of the occupational hazard of exposure at age 48. He would have been considered an old man in that time and place. Pierre was taken in by LeCompte, another storied voyageur of the Red River Valley. Pierre, 15 at the time, began to accompany LeCompte in delivering messages and escorting migrants to American trading centers along the Upper Mississippi, ranging as far as Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Métis traders with ox carts, 1860Pierre Bottineau's youth was spent in the Red River trading colony, also called the Selkirk Colony after the British lord who established it in Winnipeg on behalf of the Hudson Bay Company in 1812. The British military had wrested control of the fur-rich Upper Mississippi Valley from the United States that year. Though much of the territory was returned to the Americans in the 1815 Treaty of Ghent, British and Canadian traders retained practical control through their unchallenged presence.
Yet it was not war among nations that most affected the fortunes of the colony, but war between the Hudson Bay Company and its rival trading operation, the North West Companies. When Lord Selkirk established his trading colony deep in what they considered their turf, agents of the North West Companies began a campaign of harassment against the Hudson Bay Company employees that erupted in violence in 1816.
That year Pierre's father, Charles, along with several Métis from his wife's tribal band, was ordered by his employers at the North West Companies to take part in a bloody attack on a Hudson Bay Company village. He refused and was later arrested. The trading companies effectively controlled the Canadian government, and the conflict between them led predictably to judicial stalemate. Charles Bottineau, along with many other hunters, voyageurs and would-be militants on both sides, was released during a series of show trials. Such highly-expert employees were scarce, and no good end was seen in having them stuck in jail.
The Northwest frontier, with its abundant resources and harsh winters, was a proving ground for trading networks, governance and development. Settlements often failed because they could not provide food and security, nor cohere the interests of local Indians and the various European pioneers who populated them. The "Pemmican War" of 1816 so sapped the finances of the two trading giants in Canada that they were forced to merge in 1821, and the Selkirk colony never achieved the prosperity in agriculture that was planned to encourage greater development for Canada. Soon the Americans, aided by the success of Fort Snelling in Minnesota, began to assert their control of the Upper Mississippi and Red River Valleys. Voyageurs like the young Pierre Bottineau found increasing work in guiding emigrants from southern Canada into America. In 1837, Pierre and members of his family, along with many remaining Selkirkers, came in from the prairie to settle in the Fort Snelling military reservation.
Fort Snelling, Minnesota Fort Snelling was built as America's gateway to the Northwest fur trade. By denying non-citizens commercial access to vital waterways, the fort supported American competition with the Selkirk trading colony in Winnipeg, which had operated unchecked in U.S. territory.
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and subsequent expedition of Louis and Clark unleashed America's westward expansion. In 1805, the U.S. military sent Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike up the Mississippi River to bring to heel the British and Canadian traders that continued to operate in U.S. territory. While Pike had some success in negotiating treaties to acquire strategic land from the Dakota Sioux (most significantly the future site of Fort Snelling), his efforts to establish American control of the Upper Mississippi had less success. Overcome by the harsh Minnesota winter for which his expedition was unprepared, Pike and his men survived only by sheltering with British traders.
American ventures into the territory halted for a time when it fell into British hands during the 1812 War. It took the German immigrant Jacob Astor and his American Fur Company to revive the U.S. effort to re-enforce sovereignty. In a challenge to the British-owned Hudson Bay Company and the Canadian North West Companies, both of which continued to trap and trade south of the Canadian border, Astor sent American traders into Minnesota in 1819, backed by an Army detachment led by Col. Josiah Snelling.
When it was established in 1819, Fort Snelling (as it was later named) constituted the northernmost U.S. outpost on the Mississippi River, a foothold deep in the frontier. Col. Snelling built an impressive diamond-shaped stockade of stone and heavy timber. He cleared hundreds of acres of land for planting, built roads to link local points of interest, and set up a grist mill upstream of the fortress at St. Anthony Falls. The result far outstripped the wooden lodge and ramshackle outbuildings typical of the trading posts set up by the French and British during their respective periods of sovereignty in the fur country. Advantageously located on a high bluff with a commanding view of the intersection of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, the fort quickly became a burgeoning center in the Indian trade and a way-stop for exploration. British trade operations quickly folded in the area.
Henry H. Sibley, 1862 "His boss was the man who seems to be in the middle of every critical event of Minnesota's formative years, Henry Hastings Sibley. They remained friends and associates. Pierre, like Henry, is one of Minnesota's ubiquitous influences. The two of them are always in the crowd somewhere, making things happen. Pierre's Métis heritage kept him a little further back in the crowd than some, however."
Pierre Bottineau first visited Fort Snelling in 1834, aged 17 but already a veteran voyageur of the territory. There he saw conditions he had never encountered. First was the impressive planning of the American effort there and the prosperity it provided. Built of stone, the American fort was not the ragged outpost typical of garrisons guarding fur operations in Canada. The U.S. Army was determinedly making room for development – clearing land, planting crops, building roads, improving river landing sites and beginning a robust millworks upriver at St. Anthony falls.
The thoughtful planning, solid construction and ultimate success of Fort Snelling signaled the fortunes of the Twin Cities community that would grow up around it. Compared to the Red River Valley, where Bottineau was raised amid bitter conflicts between hegemonic trading companies, the development in and around Fort Snelling must have indicated clearly that the Americans, by building a strong federal presence to protect and regulate trade, offered better prospects for success.
Second was the pronounced difference in the American traders' regard for the Métis. Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, looking to establish itself in the Northwest wilderness, permitted non-whites to advance within the operation. Like the French before them, the British traders in Canada treated the Métis disdainfully, with few exceptions relegating them to the grunt-work while promoting Europeans to management positions. Bottineau moved his family, along with many other families from the troubled Selkirk trading colony in Winnipeg, to Fort Snelling in 1837.
Bottineau’s abilities quickly brought him in contact with Henry Sibley, then the ambitious head of the American Fur Company operation at Mendota, which was thriving under the protection of nearby Fort Snelling. Choosing the young Bottineau to guide missions of logistical and economic importance, Sibley opened doors that led to opportunities for Bottineau as a government and railroad contractor and, through Sibley’s social network, as a land speculator. With the aid of Bottineau, who spoke nearly every Indian language in the territory and knew his way around the wilderness like few others, Sibley was able to deliver treaties, commercial deals and development plans that propelled Minnesota to statehood and himself to the office of governor.
The U.S. Army removed the collection of whites and Métis who had squatted on the Fort Snelling reservation in 1839 after tensions with local Indians mounted. Most, including Bottineau and his family, drifted to a good portage just downriver. This rough encampment, known mainly as the local source of moonshine whiskey, would become the city of St. Paul.
St. Paul, Minnesota Returning in 1840 from a season of buffalo hunting in the Red River valley, Pierre Bottineau found his fellow squatters evicted from the Fort Snelling reservation. He joined them downriver at St. Paul, holding down a quarter-section of land in the scrappy young town. His claim would eventually become the heart of Lowertown. He acquired more land, cleared it, and tried his hand at farming when not engaged in expeditions for the American Fur Company and the officers of Fort Snelling. Raising crops was not all he found well within his capabilities; he also started the prodigious enterprise of fathering 24 (some accounts say 28) children.
This husbandry must have changed the outlook of the voyageur, implanting in him both the need for a secure base and the desire to rise above the rough-and-tumble outpost mentality. At the time St. Paul was a wild town, a large mud field full of rowdy soldiers from the nearby fort and whatever spilled off the steamboats looking for a good time after weeks on the river. Bottineau also remained drawn by opportunity beyond the settled landscape. He had attracted educated and industrious friends in St. Paul, and along with them he started purchasing land above the St. Anthony Falls, site of Fort Snelling's grist mill.
Bottineau quit St. Paul after six years. Some accounts say that after consolidating his claims at St. Anthony and moving his family, he sold his 100 prime acres of downtown St. Paul $300. One account says he traded the land for a dog and a cow.
St. Anthony, Minnesota In 1842, Pierre Bottineau began an operation running Mackinaw transport boats upriver from St. Anthony Falls, the site of Fort Snelling's millworks. There, atop the falls, which provided immense power for local industry and marked the northernmost navigable point for Mississippi River steamboats, he made two purchases of riverbank land, apparently paying less than $200 for both. By 1846 he consolidated these claims into a 320-acre tract. Then the canny frontiersman, who had never seen a city, had his land platted to enlarge the growing village of St. Anthony. “Bottineau’s Addition” would become the Bottineau neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis, home to many generations of immigrants.
Now in his early 30s, Bottineau had become a leading citizen. When the Minnesota Territory was organized in 1849, he was appointed Supervisor of Roads for Ramsey County, which at that time included St. Anthony. His home was the popular gathering place for other local leaders, well-heeled travelers, incoming settlers and Métis ox-cart drivers alike.
In the mid-1850’s, the Upper Mississippi opened to settlement. St. Anthony Falls powered a lumber industry that would soon become the world’s largest. It was said that Bottineau both made a fortune selling parcels of his St. Anthony land and was cheated of thousands of dollars by unscrupulous purchasers. It was also said that he lost his claim to Nicollet Island in a hand of poker. Contemporary records and accounts describe Bottineau more as a man of means than wealth, suggesting both a mercurial nature and an inbred lack of fanciness. No matter the size his St. Anthony "take," Bottineau's entrepreneurship there established him as a central figure in the territory’s settlement and put him on the path to becoming a career town builder.
Elk River, Minnesota
"The Trading-Store"In 1849, Pierre Bottineau took over the trading post at Elk River, at the time a day’s ride from his home in St. Anthony. Like Fort Snelling, the Elk River trading post was situated on a bluff at the intersection of two rivers. The area was a source of hardwood and, like St. Anthony, water power. Bottineau also opened an inn there in 1850 and held these investments long enough to participate in founding the nearby town of Orono.
Bottineau’s talent for knowing where to situate development in the northwestern frontier would make him an indispensable guide for the trading companies, the U.S. military and, later, the railroad builders. Hunter, farmer, trader, government contractor, proprietor and land speculator, Bottineau’s enterprise would have kept most men tied down. But Bottineau never tired of the ranging life. He continued to spend much of his time trekking across the Minnesota Territory and the Northwest, guiding expeditions through the Dakotas, Idaho and Montana. By the 1850s he had become a celebrity adventure guide, leading wealthy tourists into the wilderness on hunting trips from his base in the boomtown of St. Anthony. These trips led to massive investment, building both the lore and the business networks of the Minnesota territory.
Dakota treaty delegation, 1858 In 1851, with the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, the Dakota Indian lands west of the Mississippi River opened to white settlement. Even before the treaty’s signing, Bottineau ran a trading post and an inn at Elk River, a way-stop on an Indian migratory path.
In 1852, commuting in the company of friends between the trading post and his home above the St. Anthony falls, Pierre Bottineau happened upon a beautiful clearing at the edge of a forest in what is now the Osseo and Maple Grove border. The small group, all influential land-holders in St. Paul and St. Anthony, agreed to make claims of this land. In 1854 Bottineau erected the area’s first frame house, instantly establishing him as a leading citizen amid the scattered log cabins and sod huts in the area. Once cleared by settlers, the surrounding lands proved excellent farming for vegetables, flowers and potatoes.
Bottineau’s presence in the northwest approach to the towns of St. Anthony and St. Paul (at the time these two towns, with populations approaching 1,000 each, could have been called the Twin Cities, with Minneapolis as yet a minor neighbor) led to rapid settlement that would, in the next few years, expand along the trade paths to the game-rich lands of the Red River Valley. His abilities to speak several Indian languages and throw a good party served him well as a rustic diplomat in Minnesota, especially in the Northwest Corridor, where traveling bands of Indians and white settlers often found themselves in disagreements over grazing rights and access to the land. For his frequent intervention in disputes between Indians and settlers, he came to be called "the walking peace pipe." An interpreter and witness to several Indian treaties in Minnesota, he once accompanied local Ojibwe to Washington, D.C., as a translator during a treaty negotiation.
Until the incorporation of Osseo and Maple Grove, maps bore the name "Bottineau's Prairie" when describing the tracts that make up their common boundary. The old Indian path and trading route that connected the area to Minneapolis, and which was eventually developed into County Road 81, was long called the Bottineau Road.
As exploration and settlement proceeded west from the foothold of the Twin Cities area, Bottineau was sought out by fur traders, the army, the railroad builders and generations of western settlers because of his exceptional talent for traversing the often harsh and forbidding wilderness. When the ox-cart trails were buried in snow and the rivers froze, when sweeping brush fires and clouds of black flies altered the geography, when bands of aggrieved Indians sought revenge on the trade routes and open plains, Bottineau knew the way through. His eye for locating development along providential corridors cannot be over-estimated in the calculus of the state’s rapid settlement.
Breckenridge, Minnesota, and Wahpeton, North Dakota In 1849, when Pierre Bottineau took over the trading post in Elk River, an estimated 4,000 non-Indians lived in Minnesota. Then followed the fastest 10-year population growth rate experienced by any state in the history of the country. By 1860, the population neared 175,000 – a 4,500-percent increase.
Even when Bottineau moved into his prairie home in Osseo in 1854, things were still relatively quiet. Most pioneers pushing into the former Sioux lands west of the Mississippi River were Upper Mississippi locals, whites and Métis from the ramshackle trading post days.
Families with covered wagon, c. 1880 But by the spring of 1855, Congress had ratified the major treaties that ceded Sioux land in Minnesota to the United States. Now a flood of new faces began to arrive from the eastern states, Midwest and Europe, each looking for a share of the nation's "manifest destiny." The steamboat berths in St. Paul saw outrageous traffic. The hotels filled, and hoards of emigrants slept their first Minnesota night in the city's muddy streets. The initial offering of settlement land was confined to a million acres located in the southeastern corner of the Minnesota Territory, largely speculated by advance men who waited to turn over parcels at great markups. Not to be deterred by boundaries, the pioneers of the day swarmed over the prized farming land beyond.
By the end of 1857, an estimated 700 towns were platted in the Minnesota Territory, capable of receiving 1.5 million people (Minnesota's population hit that figure about 1895, the year of Bottineau's death). The year 1857, however, held some tough surprises for the prime movers of western settlement, both locally and nationally. On January 1, Pierre and his brother Charles Bottineau left St. Anthony as guides for an expedition to site a town at the junction of the Bois des Sioux and Otter Tail Rivers, headwaters of the Red River of the North, which flows into Winnipeg through the Bottineaus' early stomping grounds. The backers of the 10-member expedition envisioned a second Chicago rising there, controlling a modernized era of trade with western Canada.
Near St. Cloud the expedition encountered the worst Minnesota blizzard in memory. Snow buried the ox-cart trails and made progress painfully slow, even for the famed voyageur. Navigation was virtually impossible except by instinct. Miraculously, none of the party died on the 200-mile journey. But the oxen bearing the supplies had to be put down or killed for meat along the way. The men slowly ran through their provisions and were saved from starvation by the chance sighting of buffalo and Pierre's ability to fell two of them in blinding snow. They arrived at the intended site after 27 days of frozen hell. The exhausted party set up camp and endured the rest of the winter, only to be flooded out by a rapid spring melt.
The men persisted, platting the townsite that would become Breckenridge, Minnesota, and another townsite across the Red River that would become Wahpeton, North Dakota. By the time they had finished this work, news of the Panic of 1857, then the nation's worst-ever financial crisis, had made its way west. "Townsite fever" was at an end in Minnesota. Nonetheless, the rapid spread of settlers through the territory had its intended effect. Minnesota attained statehood the next year, 1858, with Breckenridge on its western border and Wahpeton consigned to the newly-created Dakota territory.
In 1862, seven tribes of Sioux Indians, starving and tired of waiting in vain for remuneration for the millions of acres of land they had bartered away, attacked several villages across western Minnesota, killing 500 settlers and U.S. soldiers. Pierre Bottineau happened to be at Fort Abercrombie, near Breckenridge, when the Indians laid siege. The wily frontiersman snuck out of the fort under cover of night, crossing the Leaf Hills to Sauk Center and alerting troops who mounted the decisive counter-attack against the Sioux. The uprising demoralized the settlement movement for a time. Thousands of settlers reportedly fled Minnesota, their worst fears about the dangers of the frontier confirmed.
But that same year, Congress passed the Homestead Act, granting 160 free acres to anyone who could erect a permanent dwelling and farm the land for five years. Those who could raise $200 could purchase their 160 acres after living on the land for six months. The act proved a great relief valve for social pressures amid the Civil War and economic stagnation lingering from the 1857 crash. It drew 75,000 new emigrants to Minnesota within three years. This meant new life for the railroads and more than a decade of employment for Pierre Bottineau as guide for expeditions to negotiate Indian treaties, plan new rail lines, establish new forts, and otherwise show the way west.
In 1869, Bottineau was the celebrity guide for a 70-member expedition headlined by railroad magnates, government leaders and journalists. The ostensible purpose was to plot the route of the Northern Pacific Railroad from Duluth westward, though a good bit of public relations was accomplished as well. Escorted by a squad of federal soldiers, the expedition traveled from St. Cloud to the Missouri River near Bismarck, North Dakota, and back. Outbound, the group passed though Breckenridge, which it agreed would make a great whistle stop.
Train at Breckenridge, 1873 The party exchanged rifle fire with Sioux warriors one dark night on the prairie, but the over-riding message of the blue-ribbon expedition was clear: the northern prairies were safe for settlement. The pitch was heard back east. The allure of unbounded opportunity overcame the many physical and economic risks of life on the frontier. People continued to come and townsites continued to boom, served by new railroads and networks of forts.
In 1871, the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad reached Breckenridge, providing the first rail link between the Twin Cities and the Red River Valley. Even so, the fortunes of the Breckenridge-Wahpeton area (current combined population 16,000) somehow failed to overtake those of Chicago (metro population 9.5 million).
Red Lake Falls, Minnesota
Pierre Bottineau in his later yearsPierre Bottineau spent his youth hunting and trapping in the Red River Valley of northwestern Minnesota under the tutelage of his French-Canadian father, a voyageur in the employ of the Canadian trading companies that operated freely in the area before the Americans were able to assert their control. His father had been embroiled in the Pemmican War of 1816, a series of skirmishes between two of the largest trading companies in Canada. The internecine conflict had diminished Canadian influence in the area, while American control of trade routes grew with the success of Fort Snelling. By the 1860's, the Red River Valley was being settled in a way that was beyond the dreams of the founders of the Selkirk trading colony in Winnipeg, who had tried, with little effect, to introduce agriculture to the region. The place had simply been too remote, and the mix of white and Indian interests too volatile, during the period of Canadian control of the trade routes in the American fur country.
Thanks in no small part to the services of Pierre Bottineau, the veteran expeditionary guide, and interpreter, rail was mitigating the distance between farm and market. It was also diminishing the role of the ox cart caravans that had moved people and goods through the corridor for a hundred years. In 1863, Bottineau helped negotiate the sale of 11 million acres of key Red River Valley land by the Pembina and Red Lake Ojibwe to the United States. This accession meant U.S. control of the prime Red River crossing into Canada and the West. In 1869, Bottineau guided a much-ballyhooed expedition to explore routes through the area for the Northern Pacific Railroad. By the 1870s, Bottineau no doubt saw that his native frontier was closing, and he was motivated to claim its fertile heart before it could be over-run by opportunists from distant parts.
In May, 1876, Bottineau led 119 families from St. Paul into the Red River Valley. Like Bottineau, most of these families were of French-Canadian descent, early settlers of Ramsey and Hennepin Counties. The wagon train wound its way up the Northwest Corridor from the Twin Cities, passed through St. Cloud and then the dozens of outlying settlements strung out along the ox-cart trails. At Crookston the Bottineau party turned north and east, arriving 17 days after its departure at the cradle of the Red Lake and Clearwater Rivers. Bottineau's Ojibwe ancestors had occupied the area 200 years before. A French trading post had started operating nearby in 1798. Yet the wave of American homesteading had ignored this place, which contained some of the most fertile soil in the world.
Blacksmith shop in Red LakeFalls, c. 1900 There the Bottineau party set up the towns of Red Lake Falls and Gentilly. At first times were tough. Tales were told of living all winter on a barrel of flour and jack rabbits. But the area soon flourished. In 1878, Bottineau traveled into Canada and recruited yet more settlers.
It was in Red Lake Falls, within 50 miles of his birthplace at Grand Forks, that the famous ranger Pierre Bottineau more or less retired, though he was said to have been as strong and active at 65 as he was at 30. In 1879, influential Minnesotans secured him a Congressional pension of $50 per month in recognition for his long service. He sat on the village council of Red Lake Falls from 1882-1887 and was elected its president in 1885. He remained active in regional affairs and was involved in another land treaty with the Pembina Ojibwe in 1889.
Bottineau died in 1895, aged 78, vigorous to the last. It was said he took ill while on a moose hunt near Thief River Falls. He was eulogized across the state as the last of the breed of hearty frontiersman that put Minnesota on the map. A memorial to Bottineau stands in the cemetery at Red Lake Falls.
The Bottineau Family
My Elusive Ancestors
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