The courts were held in pursuance of the governor's proclamation, the first one convening at Stillwater. But before I relate what there occurred, I will mention an attempt that was made by Judge Irwin, one of the territorial judges of Wisconsin, to hold a term in St. Croix county, in 1842. Joseph R. Brown, of whom I shall speak hereafter as one of the brightest of Minnesota's early settlers, came to Fort Snelling as a fifer boy in the regiment that founded and built the fort in 1819. He was discharged from the army about 1826, and had become clerk of the courts in St. Croix county. He had procured from the legislature of Wisconsin an order for a court in his county for some reason only known to himself, and in 1842 Judge Irwin came up to hold it. He arrived at Fort Snelling, and found himself in a country which indicated that disputes were more frequently settled with tomahawks than by the principles of the common law. The officers of the fort could give him no information, but in his wanderings he found Mr. Norman W. Kittson, who had a trading house near the Falls of Minnehaha. Kittson knew Clerk Brown, who was then living on the St. Croix, near where Stillwater now stands, and furnishing the judge a horse, directed him how to find his clerk. After a ride of more than twenty miles, Brown was discovered, but no preparations had been made for a court. The judge took the first boat down the river, a disgusted and angry man. After the lapse of five years from this futile attempt the first court actually held within the bounds of Minnesota was presided over by Judge Dunn, then chief justice of the Territory of Wisconsin. The court convened at Stillwater in June, 1847, and is remembered not only as the first court ever held in Minnesota, but on account of the trial of an Indian chief, named "Wind," who was indicted for murder. Samuel J. Crawford of Mineral Point was appointed prosecuting attorney for the term, and Ben C. Eastman of Plattville defended the prisoner. "Wind" was acquitted. This was the first jury trial in Minnesota.