"A race that long has passed away

Built them! A disciplined and populous race,

Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock,

The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields

Nourished their harvests. Here their herds were fed,
When haply by their styles the bison lowed,
And bow'd his maned shoulder to the yoke.

All day this desert murmured with their toils,

Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and woo'd
In a forgotten language, and old tunes

From instruments of unremembered form,

Gave the soft winds a voice.

"The red man came

The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,

And the Mound Builders vanished from the earth.
The solitude of centuries untold

Has settled where they dwelt. *

*

* All is gone

All, save the piles of earth that hold their bones-
The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods-
The barriers which they builded from the soil,

Following the era of the Mound Builders, came the "Aboriginal Period,"-erroneously so called-or the period when the Red Race, or Indians, were in possession of this region, and probably all the continent of America, when it was discovered by the Northmen in the eleventh century. The nation which occupied this spot, and the region immediately about it, from the earliest period concerning which any traditions of the Red Man exist, was the Dakota or Sioux, one of the most populous of the Indian Nations of North America. There were numerous villages of that Nation in this vicinity at a very early day, and it appears to have been a favorite locality for them, on account of natural advantages, and the abundance of game. As late as the time of CARVER's visit. this was the case. The towering cliffs, or "bluffs," of white sandstone which overhung

the river, formed a prominent landmark for the Indians as they paddled up or down in their canoes, and it was known to them from time immemorial as Im-in-i-ja Ska, i. e., White Rock, and to this day is so called in their tongue.

The scenery, before the hand of the white man marred its wild, quiet beauty, must have been picturesque in the extreme. Then the bluffs were crowned with majestic trees, and the bottom lands above and below and opposite the city, were a dense jungle, where the primeval forests* grew in unchecked luxuriance. Here the deer, the bear and the buffalo roamed freely, disturbed occasionally by the wily Indian, whose skin teepee was frequently pitched in the bottom-land along the margin of the river. Standing on the edge of the high plateau, or second table, say where the bridge now starts, the eye would then have wandered over a sea of foliage on the bench below, through which rolled the calm and placid river, unvexed by anything except the "squaw's birch canoe." Civilization had not then come with its burning force, changing and marring the natural face of creation, but instituting new forms of beauty -planting in the solitude a busy, populous city, with its din and noise, and smoke and clang of factory and mill, and the scream of engine and steamer.

"Here lived and loved another race of beings." On the upper plateau of our city they hunted the deer and bear and bison; speared the muskrat in its marshes, and shot the beaver in its streams. The quiet river bore their canoes. Under the old century-mossed trees in the glen their group of skin teepees stood. Their songs of festivity echoed in the vale; anon it rang with the demon yells of their scalp-dance, or the shrieks of a victim tortured to death. The Indian lover wooed his dusky sweetheart with a flute serenade, or whispered sweet tales of love by moonlight. Anon they joined in death-combat with the wily Chippewa, and the soil beneath our feet may have once been reddened with the life-blood shed in those fierce battles.

*In 1854, Mr. R. O. SWEENY counted the rings on a large tree that had been cut down near the upper levee, and found over six hundred annual rings, indicating an age of over six centuries. Primeval indeed.

But it is not necessary here to speak at length of the Red Race who once occupied this spot. Their history, customs and character are too well known and too thoroughly recorded to need incorporation into this work. They seem doomed to disappear before the settlement of the white man, and, however lightly they may be regarded by those who have mingled with them on the frontier, there is something sad in the way they have been dispossessed of their ancestral heritage by the pale-faced intruder. Truthfully are they represented as lamenting:

"They waste us—aye, like April dew,
In the warm noon we shrink away,
And fast they follow as we go,

Towards the setting day,

Till they shall fill the land, and we

Are driven into the western sea!"

At the period of which we write they were at least untainted by the vices the white man introduced among them, and whatever natural nobility of character may be claimed for them by their eulogists, must have then been displayed. The white people, since St. Paul was settled, do not seem to have admired them greatly, though many who read this book may entertain for them the romantic regard of LONGFELLOW and COOPER.

CHAPTER II.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE NORTHWEST.

THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES AND THEIR EXPLORATIONS-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET VISIT THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI-LA SALLE AND HIS ACTS-FATHER HENNEPIN SENT TO THE SIOUX REGION-HIS ADVENTURES AMONG THAT NATION-HE DISCOVERS AND NAMES SAINT ANTHONY'S FALLS-SUBSEQUENT DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS-CESSION OF THIS REGION TO GREAT BRITAIN.

THE

HE Northwest was early claimed by the French through the right of discovery, and its first explorers were of that nation. Religious zealots have ever led the vanguard of discovery, and, in accordance with this rule, we find that many years before even the traders had dared to traverse the wilds of the Northwest, a class of men of that remarkable Order founded by IGNATIUS LOYOLA-the Jesuits-had explored much of the country around the Lakes and the headwaters of the Mississippi, sent hither to plant the banner of the Cross among the aborigines, and win them to its mild religion. Its missionaries, inspired with a sublime heroism in the cause of CHRIST, visited these wilds, endured incredible toils and privations, and, with a fortitude that never faltered, even in the face of peril and death, carried the precious words of the Gospel to the savages of the wilderness. History records no devotion more sublime. Many of them now wear the martyr's crown, but their sufferings and toils were not in vain. To no sect or order could such a work have been more properly confided. Says MACAULAY: "Before the Order had existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done and suffered. There was no region of the globe in which Jesuits were not to be found. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same—entire devotion to the common cause,

implicit obedience to the central authority. None of them had chosen his dwelling place or his avocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the Arctic circle or under the Equator-pass his life collating MSS. at the Vatican, or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere not to eat each other-were matters which he left, with profound submission, to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom." Bishop KIP pays them this just tribute: "Amid the snows of Hudson's Bay-among the woody islands and beautiful inlets of the Saint Lawrence by the council fires of the Hurons and of the Algonquins at the sources of the Mississippi, where, first of all the white men, their eyes looked down upon the Falls of Saint Anthony, and then traced down the course of the bounding river as it rushed onward to earn its title of 'Father of Waters'—on the vast prairies of Illinois and Missouri-among the blue hills which hem in the salubrious dwellings of the Cherokees, and in the thick cane-brakes of Louisiana-everywhere were found the members of the Society of Jesus.'

6

999

The reports and letters of these devoted Heralds of the Cross to their superiors, (Jesuit Relations, and Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses,) contain the earliest reliable historical and descriptive data relating to the Northwest, and are rare and valuable. From them we glean the meagre details of the earlier explorations in the Northwest, and the

PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY TOWARDS THIS REGION.

GABRIEL SAGARD, in 1624, visited the tribes on Lake Huron, and in 1641 Fathers JOGUES and RAYMBAULT reached as far as the Sault Ste. Marie. Here they first heard tidings of the Dakotas. PAUL DE JEUNE, a Jesuit Missionary, is perhaps the first writer who mentions them with any distinctness, about the same date. He says they were called by the voyageurs, "The People of the Lakes." The Iroquois war ensued,