Red Wing at the Time  of the Grand Excursion by  Frederick L. Johnson

Red Wing Village documented in about 1848 by H. Lewis

    The clanging bell of the steamboat Franklin signaled a stop at a small Indian village. Travelers on the Mississippi River vessel gathered on deck to study the village and its people, now assembling on the beach. The steamer’s bell also alerted a nervous Joseph Hancock and wife Maria, who began to gather their belonging. It was about 4 PM, June 13, 1849, and the Hancocks, Presbyterian missionaries on their first assignment, were about to enter the Mdewakanton village of Red Wing.¹
    The uncertain newcomers eyed the crowd of Indians. Some wore native clothing, feathers, and paint considered strange and “fantastic” to the Hancocks. A familiar face in the crowd—that of their friend and fellow missionary John Aiton—helped reduce their anxiety. The entire experience unnerved Bossy, the Hancock’s cow, who later broke away from her owners and swam to momentary solitude across the river.
    Maria understood the cow’s feelings. “I really don’t blame her for being frightened. I am frightened myself at the thought of living in a village of 300 Indians. I shall be the only white woman here for some time.” Maria Houghton Hancock, sister to Boston publisher H. O. Houghton, had been ill but still was willing to travel to Red Wing with her husband and 18-month- old daughter Marilla.²
    A reserved, unassuming woman of New England Puritan stock, Maria Hancock showed a willingness to adapt to her new surroundings. Described by her husband as “weak, yet strong; bold, yet modest,” Maria became popular with the Mdewakanton. She joined husband Joseph in studying the Dakota language and taught Indian girls sewing and knitting. Indians called her “the good woman.”
    The Aitons and Hancocks—Aiton’s wife Nancy would soon return after giving birth at another Minnesota mission—shared a log home near what is today’s Bush and Third Street. Two earlier missionary couples, Samuel and Persis Denton and Daniel and Lucy Gavin, built that cabin in 1837 and later abandoned it.³
    The Gavins and Dentons were the first white residents of the Red Wing village, but they left after eight years of work, frustrated by failed attempts to “educate and civilize” the Indians. As he departed, Denton advised his superiors against sending anyone else to Red Wing, “after a full understanding of our utter failure here.”
    If they had heard of Denton’s warning, the new missionaries did not heed it. Both the Aitons and Hancocks were committed to the Red Wing move. Early in 1848 Nancy encouraged her nervous fiance´, John Aiton, writing in a letter, “How could Providence speak more plainly…Labor for the Indian.” The Aitons’ stay in the village proved brief. John’s dispute with superiors over his pay could not be resolved, and in 1850, he and Nancy left.
    New Hampshire-born Joseph Hancock did not shrink from the challenge of bringing Christianity to the Dakota people. As a young man, the adventuresome New Englander traveled to the Wisconsin Territory to live and teach in a climate believed to improve a person’s health. He returned east to marry Maria in 1846.⁴
    In Red Wing, Hancock worked long hours with the Mdewakanton, getting mixed results. He came to admire and respect the Indians, but could not convert them to his religion. Within three years, Hancock echoed the words of a predecessor at Red Wing, writing, “I can think of nothing…this year which may be considered favorable to our success.”
    Maria Hancock delivered a baby boy, Joseph Jr., in August 1850, but her health, never the best, began to fail soon after the birth. She grew weaker and died the following March. As Maria neared death, Joseph asked her if she wished her “earthy remains” to be sent back to New England. Maria said that she had come “to live among this people” and wished to be buried in Red Wing.
    Historians have called Joseph Hancock Red Wing’s “first permanent white resident.” They overlooked Maria. Despite her brief time in the village, she proved a steady, determined and hard-working wife and missionary. Certainly, Maria and Joseph should share the title.

The Mdewakanton Village at Red Wing, 1849

    Upon their arrival in the Red Wing village—also known as Khemnichan, the Dakota reference to the area surrounding it—the Hancocks saw 20 to 30 bark lodge along the river between today’s Plum and Franklin streets. They stood about 20 feet above the high water mark of the day; no house was farther from the Mississippi than present day Main Street. A government census in 1846 listed 314 Mdewakanton living in the village, but a cholera outbreak the next year killed 23.
    Corn fields, divided into family patches, covered much of what is today’s central downtown district between Bluff Street and College Hill. The Mdewakanton planted as much as 30 acres of corn and vegetables even before getting assistance from government farmers. John Bush, who taught Indians new farming methods, reported that 55 acres had been plowed in 1849, the Hancocks’ first year in the village. The Indians also kept ponies and owned dogs. A nearby grassy meadow between Sorin’s and Barn Bluffs served as pasture.
    Two trails ran along the Mississippi and entered Red Wing from the east. They split and went on either side of today’s Sorin’s Bluff. A path leading north, out of the village, splintered in a number of directions, one paralleling the river and heading toward St. Paul. Footpaths also led to the hills surrounding the village (Barn Bluff, Sorin’s Bluff and College Hill).
    The physical appearance of the Mdewakanton impressed white visitors. These eastern Dakota people were taller, on average, than Euroamericans and carried themselves with dignity. One New Englander wrote of Indians in a hunting camp near Red Wing, “The men were all young & most of them really fine looking fellows & the girls rather handsome.” As early as 1823, visiting geologist William H. Keating described some of the Red Wing men as “very fine-looking,” with one resembling Napoleon.⁵
    Hair styles varied, but women often braided their hair into two strands worn behind the ears. Men trimmed their hair above the eyes. Younger men had four braids, smaller ones on either side of the face, the others behind the ears. Both sexes liked to wear beads and ornaments, but usually reserved them for special times.⁶
    Annuities from 1837 land sales produced money for the Indians that they used to purchase goods from white and mixed blood traders. The Dakota made their clothing mostly from cloth that they bought. Women preferred blue skirts gathered at the waist, coats of printed cotton, broadcloth leggings of red or blue, along with moccasins and blankets. They also had finer clothes for special occasions, including skirts embroidered in ribbons and beads.
    Men typically wore cotton shirts, cloth or leather leggings, foot-wide wool breechcloths, moccasins and wool blankets. In colder weather they could add coats fashioned from blankets or animal skin with the fur on.
    When the Hancocks arrived in Red Wing, they noted the summer bark homes of the Mdewakanton. Indians made these using a framework of poles lashed together with basswood bark. They placed on the framework large pieces of live elm tree bark, sometimes six feet long and heavy when fresh. Woven bark served as shingles, and a hole in the roof allowed smoke from fire to escape. Benches, about two feet high and six feet wide, provided a space for sitting, eating or sleeping. Bark or buffalo robes covered the floor. A single family or several could live in such a home.
    Men hunted and served as protectors of the community, with their status dependent on abilities in those areas. Hunting trips resulted in contact with rival tribes—mainly the Ojibwe, Sac and Fox—which often produced conflict. A local newspaper report in 1860, years after the Mdewakanton left the village, noted that members of the Red Wing band had traveled into Wisconsin on a hunt and killed more than 100 deer, 20 bears and four Chippewa (Ojibwe).
    Women handled planting duties and tended and harvested corn, the chief crop. They gathered fruits and wild vegetables, hauled water and wood, prepared meals, dressed animal skins and made clothing. Women did the majority of work on the summer bark lodges and put up and took down tipis during the hunts. They owned the home and its contents.⁷
    Women had considerable influence on tribal life and, in most respects, men treated them as equals. Missionary Samuel Pond, who had worked with the Dakota beginning in 1834, wrote that “the women were not afraid of their husbands [and] are not the right material to be made slaves.”

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    Within a few days of the Hancocks’ arrival in Red Wing, a river steamer churned past Barn Bluff and the Red Wing village. It carried Alexander Ramsey, the new governor, who was moving to St. Paul, the tiny river town rumored to be the future territorial capital.⁸
    Ramsey saw a massive wilderness landscape broken only by a few, small Indian villages dotting the riverbank. From the start, the practical, politically-savvy governor would make it his goal to fill this remote territory with settlers who would create a flourishing new outpost of American civilization.
    The eastern Dakota stood in the way of Ramsey’s dreams for Minnesota. The governor knew that the tribes living in the scattered villages were members of the formidable Dakota nation. He well understood that Indians would be reluctant to give up their homes.
    The river communities Ramsey passed at Wabasha, Red Wing, and Kaposia (five miles south of St. Paul) were all Mdewakanton, an eastern division of the Dakota nation. The tribe also had towns on the Minnesota River (then called St. Peter’s) under the leadership of Shakopee and Black Dog. In all, the Mdewakanton numbered about 2,200 in 1849.⁹
    Early French explorers and traders in the region misnamed the Dakota people “Sioux,” a form of an Ojibwe word roughly meaning “enemy.” Whites commonly applied the word Sioux to Dakotas, an error that even today makes following the history of this nation more difficult.¹⁰
    White traders and explorers knew the Dakota and had lived among them or visited their villages since the 17th century. The Mdewakanton became most familiar to Europeans and Americans because their villages stood along the Mississippi and
Minnesota, the river roads of the new territory.
    The Mdewakanton had dealings with U.S. officials long before the 1849 organization of Minnesota Territory. The great warrior Tatankamani (Walking Buffalo or Red Wing to whites) joined Americans in fighting the British during the War of 1812. Other leaders, including Wakute and Iron Cloud, who led the Red Wing band after Walking Buffalo’s death, had traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet and negotiate with American officials.
    Ramsey soon discovered that Mdewakanton leaders, including Wakute and Iron Cloud, would provide the strongest opposition to his plans to buy Dakota land.

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