Minnesota’s spring melt in 1852 brought a trickle of newcomers to the frontier territory. They came despite the failure of the U.S. Senate to approve land sale agreements reached the year before with the eastern Dakota (see Part II of this series). This meant that those planning to establish claims on territorial land would be doing so illegally. Nevertheless, a few eager settlers began arriving to set up farms and organize townsites.
    In the Mdewakanton village of Red Wing, also known as by the Dakota name “Khemnichan,” Indians worked to keep their land free of settlers. John Day left his Trenton, Wisconsin, home and became the first to cross the Mississippi and claim land in Red Wing. He took over a former missionary building while building a log cabin on the river flats just west of today’s boathouse village.¹
    The Mdewakanton tore down Day’s dwelling, but he returned to rebuild. Again, the Indians demolished the small building. According to local historians, Day built, and the Dakota then destroyed, this cabin a half-dozen times. Day decided to wait for treaty ratification
    Sarah Day, John’s wife, showed—according to Joseph Hancock— “the kind of stuff…pioneer women were made of” during an encounter with a black bear. John failed in his try to shoot this 400-pound intruder as it neared their house in Trenton, but did drive it into the river. Sarah, seeing this potential source of food and oil escaping, took an ax, jumped into a small boat and rowed to John. He hopped in and the chase continued until the Days caught the bear and John killed it.
    Benjamin Young, a French-Indian mixed blood, staked a claim in the village so close to Day’s that the two argued about it. After settling that dispute, Young then sold his land to Dr. William Wilson Sweney, an Illinois emigrant living in St. Paul with his wife Maria and their children.²
    Dr. Sweney and his son William, Jr. would become two of Red Wing’s most noteworthy citizens of its first half-century. The Sweneys became interested in the rich archaeological history of the Red Wing area and were among the first to understand its importance to America’s pre-history.
    The Pennsylvania-born elder Sweney moved to Illinois at age 18, where he later became a physician and also married Maria Freeborn. After a short stay in St. Paul, Dr. Sweney, convinced that Red Wing had a bright future, moved to the village and a riverfront log cabin. He shared the crude home with another newcomer, James McGinnis. The men waited until July, when they were certain the village was a safe place for their families. ³
    Sweney and McGinnis, watched by curious Mdewakanton, hauled their household goods—stoves, bureaus, provisions—from the boat landing to their two-story cabin. Wrote Sweney, “Within the next twenty-four hours ninety-nine hundredths of the Indian population had called…and their various comments would, doubtless, have been edifying, had we been able to understand them.”
    The Mdewankanton accepted Sweney despite the fact his land claim was illegal. The doctor offered the Indians free medical care along with respect and friendship. A quiet, modest man, he also held a deep interest in his profession and wrote pioneering essays on Minnesota public health issues.
    Young William Jr. soon became a member of Red Wing’s first English as a Second Language class. He attended Joseph Hancock’s Sunday school that included 15 to 20 Mdewakanton students along with a handful of white children. Julia Bevans, whose storekeeper husband H. L. would soon become a county official, taught the white students in English, while Hancock worked with Indian children, using their native language.
    Hancock and Bevans held classes in one of the old mission houses that also served as home to the Bevans family. The Sunday school featured scary “fire and brimstone” lectures. Through these talks, students learned that they must live a moral life or later face, in the younger Sweney’s words, “satanic majesty, lakes of fire and everlasting torment.”
    The senior Sweney developed good relationships with individual Mdewakanton and numbered several as personal friends. He wrote about Chief Wakute, a frequent dinner guest at the doctor’s home (see Part I of this series for more on Wakute); Good Iron, an amiable, and politically adept leader; and Wakantape, the intelligent, story-telling, coffee-loving, camping companion of the doctor.⁴
    Disease, thought to be cholera, arrived in Red Wing with the warmer summer weather of 1852.  Previous outbreaks in 1846 and 1847 had taken a heavy toll,  “carrying [the Indians] off at a fearful rate” according to Indian agent Amos Bruce. Now, the contagion returned.⁵
    Among the 11 new victims was Iron Cloud, the second chief of the Mdewakanton and rival of the village leader Wakute. Missionary Joseph Hancock reported, “the voice of wailing for the dead—the conjurers rattle—[were] very common affairs at the village of Red Wing.”
    Iron Cloud’s death left Wakute the undisputed leader of the Red Wing Mdewakanton, with Good Iron becoming second chief. Good Iron had maintained friendly relationships with both sides in the Wakute-Iron Cloud disputes of the 1830s and 1840s. The small white community, who had considered Iron Cloud hostile to their interests, approved of Good Iron’s rise.
    Whites were not immune from the 1852 disease outbreak. A river steamer stopped at Red Wing that summer and its captain ordered a desperately ill immigrant woman from Maine off the ship. The captain did not want Mary Sampson, the likely carrier of cholera, on his vessel. Francis Sampson led his ailing wife and their five children ashore. Mary died within two hours of landing.
    Francis and his children buried her at midnight and went to stay at the home of John and Charlotte Bush. John worked for the government, teaching Indians farming techniques. The Bushes agreed to assume temporary care of the Sampson’s seven-month-old, while Francis took the rest of the children to St. Anthony. The child who stayed in Red Wing died that winter.

Closing the Deal

    White settlement activity continued in Minnesota but still remained outside the law. U.S. Senate delays meant the 1851 land sale agreement with the Dakota languished in limbo. Finally, on June 23, 1852, the Senate approved sale of the Indian lands, and in August voted money to pay for it. Governor Alexander Ramsey needed to get Indian approval of Senate amendments to the new pact before the Indians left on their fall hunt. He worried that delaying until spring could complicate his plans to seal the deal.⁶
    Territorial officials asked the four eastern Dakota tribes to come to St. Paul for a treaty signing. Ramsey got quick acceptance to the agreement—including its payment plan for Indian debts to traders—from the Sisseton, Wahpeton and Wahpekute. The Mdewakanton, however, voiced strong objections. Wabasha and Wakute led the opposition, with solid support from members of their bands.
    Wabasha and Wakute demanded “hand money”—cash to be given to them in open council. The chiefs declared that they would pay tribal debts to traders, not Ramsey, who had convinced the other tribes that he should make such payments. Mdewakanton resistance led Ramsey to threaten to take the treaty money back to Washington. “Take it back,” replied Wabasha, “we will take back our land.”
    For years, Wakute and Wabasha had resisted the sale of their lands. One Indian agent suggested in 1841 that the government might need to relocate these bands by force. When land sale talks began in 1851, Hancock heard grumbling from Red Wing Mdewakanton who threatened to “shoot the first chief and or head man who signed the treaty.”⁷
    The Mdewakanton pressed Ramsey for better terms, even though they bargained from weakness. The Indians needed food desperately. The long treaty process had interrupted planting and hunting, and they were hungry. The Dakota counted on money ($45,600) owed them under the treaty of 1837, but territorial officials held onto those funds while negotiation continued. Many Indians believed the money owed them would not be paid until they signed the “new papers.” ⁸
    Continuing white immigration also put pressure on the Mdewakanton. In late summer 1852, government official Nathaniel McLean estimated that 5,000 whites lived illegally on Minnesota Territory Indian lands. Most were concentrated in areas controlled by Mdewakanton. Ramsey encouraged such settlement, announcing in a message to the territorial legislature, “These hardy pioneers…constitute the rank and file of that great army of peaceful progress…they make the country, its history, and its glory.”
    In Red Wing, Joseph Hancock witnessed the arrival of  “troops of claim hunters” and marveled at their talents in staking out land. Since no U.S. survey existed in 1852, each person paced off his own 160 acre claim. Hancock called settlers’ strides “astonishing” in their length. One farmer discovered he had walked off enough land for about three claims. Settling the land produced fights among those new to the area, but the missionary gratefully reported, “no lives were lost and none…seriously injured.” ⁹

¹ Here and below, History of Goodhue County (Red Wing: Wood, Alley, 1878) 206-08, 216-17.  Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, History of Goodhue County Minnesota (Chicago: H. C. Cooper, Jr., 1909) 121. For information about John and Sarah Day see Joseph Hancock, Goodhue County Minnesota: Past and Present (Red Wing: Red Wing Printing Co. 1893) 32-33 and Madeline Angell, Red Wing, Minnesota: Saga of a River Town (Minneapolis: Dillon Press) 2-4.
² Here and below, Curtiss-Wedge, History of Goodhue County, 121-23. Angell, Saga of a River Town, 60-63.
³ Here and below, History of Goodhue County (Wood, Alley) 1878, 218-19. Curtiss-Wedge, History of Goodhue County, 60-61. Angell, Saga of a River Town, 73-87. Maria Freeborn was a sister to William Freeborn, who moved to Red Wing in 1853 and became active in business and civic affairs. Freeborn County is named after him.
William M. Sweney, the doctor’s son, also became a Red Wing physician. He developed expertise on the archaeological and geological history of the Red Wing area. Some of the artifacts collected by the Sweneys more than 100 years ago are in the collections of Goodhue County Historical Society.
⁴Here and below: Dr. Sweney’s own accounts of individual Mdewakanton at Red Wing are sprinkled through Curtiss-Wedge, History of Goodhue County.  See 132-135 for some details on the men mentioned in the text.
⁵ Here and below, Hancock to Rev. S. B. Treat, Sept. 13, 1852; ABCFM Papers. Frederick L. Johnson, Goodhue County, Minnesota: A Narrative History (Red Wing: Goodhue County Historical Society, 2000). 25-26. See also John Aiton to wife Nancy, May 4, 1849, John F. Aiton Papers, MHS, for an account of a long talk he had with Iron Cloud.
⁶ Here and below, William Watts Folwell, A History of Minnesota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1956) I: 290-99. Gary Clayton Anderson, Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society) 1986, 67-68.
⁷ Joseph W. Hancock, “Missionary Work at Red Wing, 1849-1852,” Minnesota Collections, Vol 10, 1905, 177.
⁸ Here and below, Folwell, A History of Minnesota, I:297-98, 355. Ramsey’s words come from his 1851 message to the territorial legislature. Roy W. Meyer, “The Red Wing Indian Village,” manuscript in the collections of the Goodhue County Historical Society, 34.
⁹ Curtiss-Wedge, History of Goodhue County Minnesota, 533. Angell, Saga of a River Town, 64. Hancock, noting the problems with the claiming of land, also wrote “All this made business lively in our embryo city. Arbitrations and appeals to the court…were everyday occurrences.”
 

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