Fifty Years In The Northwest: With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And NotesFolsom, William H. C. (William Henry Carman)
History
Fifty Years In The Northwest: With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And Notes
Folsom, William H. C. (William Henry Carman)
Minnesota -- History; Wisconsin -- History
pawing and splashing I was able to reach the other shore. That night I
stopped with an old Indian trader, Mr. Connor, who, with his Indian
wife, welcomed me to his bark shanty, divided into rooms by handsome
mats, and made me quite comfortable. He had plenty of good food, and
entertained me besides by a fund of anecdotes, incidents in Indian
history, and adventures of traders, trappers and missionaries in the
Lake Superior and St. Croix region. He was a very intelligent and
genial man. Next day I went to Russell's farm, paddled a canoe to
Ground House river, and traveled thence on foot to Ann river, where I
found the parties of whom I was in quest, Greely, Colby, Otis and
others, a jolly log driving crew, with whom I spent a very pleasant
evening. On the return journey, about two miles above the mouth of
Ground House river, I saw the ruins of the trading house in which
Henry Rust was killed. Rust, at the time of his murder, was selling
whisky for Jack Drake. Rev. W. T. Boutwell gives the following account
of the murder: "In the winter of '46 and '47 I visited the camps of
Kent & True and Greely & Blake. On one occasion I met Rust, and asked
him to come and hear me preach. He did not attend. On this day I
preached at three camps. On the following night, at Greely's camp,
came a midnight visitor with word that Rust had been shot.
Seventy-five men armed themselves with all kinds of weapons, proceeded
to the scene of the tragedy, removed the body of Rust and all
valuables from the house, knocked out the heads of two whisky barrels
and fired the house, the whisky greatly aiding the combustion. I
removed the body to Pokegama and buried it there. Forty men attended
the funeral. They held a meeting and resolved to clear the country of
whisky. They commenced by destroying two barrels of it for Jarvis. He
begged hard for his whisky, saying he was a poor man, and in debt to
Frank Steele at Fort Snelling. The response was, 'Out with your
whisky,' and it was destroyed before his eyes. The whisky of two other
trading stations followed. For a brief period there was peace, but the
whisky soon put in an appearance again."
The first term of district court held in Minnesota, then Wisconsin,
was convened in Stillwater, the county seat of St. Croix county, June
1st. It was held in the upper story of John McKusick's store,
southwest corner of Maine and Myrtle streets, Hon. Charles Dunn
presiding. The session lasted one week. The bounds of St. Croix county
then included Crawford county, Wisconsin, on the south, Brown county,
Wisconsin, and the Lake Superior country on the east, the region as
far as the British possessions on the north, and to the Mississippi
river on the west. The jurors were found within a circuit of a hundred
miles.
The grand jury was composed of the following gentlemen:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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