With the last weeks of 1852 fast disappearing, the government and the eastern Dakota still wrangled over the proposed land sale agreement. Finally, on November 8, Ramsey met with Wakute and Wabasha in St. Paul. The Mdewakanton leaders signed a receipt for $90,000.¹⁰
    Of that money, $70,000 went directly to traders, while the two Mdewakanton leaders received $20,000. Ramsey put a bag of gold in front of each chief. Then, mixed blood Jack Frazer, Wakute’s nephew and close friend, pushed the bags to a Ft. Snelling merchant. The chiefs never saw what was in the bags.
    All members of Wakute’s Red Wing band stayed near St. Paul during negotiations. After completion of the treaty work, villagers, in small groups, began their return home. The first families to reach Red Wing in late November found frigid weather, deep snow, and an already frozen Mississippi. Dr. Sweney witnessed their arrival, declaring, “a more squalid wretched looking set I never saw.  Bitter were the complaints against government officials.”¹¹
    Joseph Hancock conferred with the Mdewakanton during negotiations and understood their frustration with the land sale. Said the missionary, “The truth, I think, is that not one of the seven [Mdewakanton] bands concerned in that treaty [1851 land sale] would have given their consent to the same had they not felt compelled to do it.”¹²

Winter Isolation

    Winter cut Red Wing off from river traffic and isolated it and other Minnesota frontier towns. Weather-dependent mail delivery through Wisconsin to Stillwater and St. Paul still reached Red Wing, brightening the dark winter days. Getting a post office approved for Red Wing in 1852 was a great improvement, since the next nearest postal center was 25 miles away. Hancock became postmaster. Once the river ice became thick enough, supply convoys from the more populated areas to the south traveled up the frozen Mississippi.
    The small white community in Red Wing did not believe it proper to begin farming or put up more buildings until the Mdewakanton finalized the land sale. While waiting, they worried about finding and storing enough food to help them through the winter.¹³
    The settlers heard that Wilson Thing, a wood supplier to steamboats, had planted about five acres of potatoes near Trenton, Wisconsin, across the Mississippi from Red Wing. But Thing wouldn’t sell his valuable tubers. He had planted them under sod, so they were very hard to dig out. Since labor was in short supply, Thing said he would trade potatoes for work. He and the Red Wing men agreed that diggers would earn one bushel of every ten they dug.
    To get to the potato field, workers got up at 4 AM and made the long cross-river paddle to Trenton. Once there, they unloaded their digging equipment, cut through the thick, tough turf and began the hunt for potatoes. It was backbreaking work, but some men dug 100 bushels.
    That same fall the industrious settlers set up a fish-netting operation a mile above today’s Bay City, Wisconsin. They already had a net and built their own boat to get at the fish. The Red Wing fishermen hoped for a catch large enough for their own needs, but it became clear they would take much more. One haul of the net brought up more than eight barrels of fish. The white population valued catfish, carp and buffalo as a reliable source of food and oil. The crew sold 40 barrels of fish in St. Paul for $6 each.
    Settlers also depended on catching trout in the creeks near Red Wing. They fished Trout Brook and Hay, Spring and Bullard’s creeks, all which held fish in abundance. The Indians did not eat trout because it was taboo in their culture. Sweney reported that he could catch eight to ten pounds of trout in an hour or two.
    During the winter of 1852-53, business leaders paid for a raft of lumber to be floated downriver to Red Wing from Stillwater saw mills. They hired two young carpenters Hiram and Joseph Middaugh to build a hotel on the southeast corner of Main and Bush streets. It was the village’s first wood-framed business building. Andrus Durand ran the hotel, the Red Wing House, for about two years followed by Jacob Bennett who operated it under the name Tee-pee-tonka. The village would need hotel space for the settlers expected to crowd into the port once winter’s grip on the Mississippi melted away.
 

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    Minnesota officials expected more settlers in 1853 despite the lack of a proper survey of the newly acquired lands. Federal law required that the land be surveyed before potential buyers could reserve it. But Congress had bypassed that regulation with its 1841 Preemption Act. That law permitted settlers to make claims on federally-owned land before it came up for sale.¹⁴
    On March 5, 1853, the territorial legislature divided the massive Wabashaw County, which included Red Wing, into smaller units. The lawmakers created nine counties from old Wabashaw, including one named for recently deceased St. Paul newspaper owner James Madison Goodhue.  In a year’s time, Red Wing would become the Goodhue County seat.
    National elections also affected Minnesota government. Democrat Franklin Pierce’s election in November 1852 meant a wholesale shift in territorial political leadership. The Pierce administration chose Democrats to take office and appointed Willis Gorman to be the region’s new governor. Well-connected Democrats William W. Phelps of Michigan and Christopher C. Graham of Indiana were chosen to head the new land office in Red Wing as register and receiver. They wouldn’t reach the city until fall, 1854. ¹⁵
    Politically, Red Wing would remain largely a Democratic-leaning city in its early years. Solid Democrats like Phelps, Graham, Dr. Sweney, Frederick F. Hoyt, and William Freeborn—a civic leader who stayed briefly in the city—loyally supported the party. In the late 1850s, backers of the new Republican Party began asserting political control.
During the winter of 1852-53, the Red Wing Mdewakanton moved, as usual, to winter hunting areas in nearby sheltered, wooded areas. Upon their return to Red Wing in the spring, they discovered their village had undergone shocking changes.

A New City

    The cry of  “Fire!” roused white settlers enjoying noon lunch in Red Wing. They raced from their meals and immediately spotted smoke rising from the bark lodges owned by the Mdewakanton Dakota. Flames burst through the roof of each home and they collapsed. All were gone in less than an hour. Those watching the fire that marred this beautiful early spring day in 1853 believed it the work of arsonists.¹⁶
    Joseph Hancock, witness to the blazes, reported that “Nobody seemed to know what to do,” and that all stood “paralyzed.” The Mdewakanton had not yet returned from their winter hunt and were unaware of the destruction of their lodges.
    With the white community in Red Wing now numbering about 60, including children, the list of suspects would have been short. Considering that a number of fires needed to be set at almost the same time, it seemed likely that more than one person was involved. And, unless strangers managed to sneak unnoticed into the village at mid-day and set the fires, the arsonists almost certainly lived in Red Wing.
    Hancock makes no mention of any attempt to determine the culprits or of discussions among community members about suspects. He noted that those starting the fires were not found and cited the lack of police and  judges as the reason. The settlers—knowing the selling of the Mdewakanton lands, including Red Wing, was complete—might have believed that the Indian homes would soon be destroyed anyway. Perhaps the arsonists used that same rationalization.
    Hancock said the Indians looked “somewhat disappointed at the change, but took it all as a matter of course…”. Chief Wakute’s people “went and rebuilt in other places where the whites would not use the land.” The lack of anger shown by the Red Wing Mdewakanton after the destruction of their homes did not seem to surprise Hancock and other settlers. They were used to the Indians treating them without hostility, even after provocations.¹⁷
    The Mdewakanton’s non-violent behavior towards whites in the region was well-known. Hancock and Rev. J. C. Johnson both later wrote that Indians did not attack whites in the Red Wing area before or after the sale of Suland. Wrote Johnson, “Our women, although alone generally through the day, were not disturbed in those early days by the visits of the redmen.” Noted Hancock, “The Dakotas were a kind people to those who were kind and friendly to them,” and  “The people of this country, (Red Wing area) since its early settlement, can congratulate themselves that they were never seriously molested by the former inhabitants.”¹⁸
    Dr. William W. Sweney, among Red Wing’s first white settlers, said of his Mdewakanton neighbors and his time with them, “I was never more kindly treated by any people, nor did I ever enjoy myself better.” Lawrence Taliaferro, government Indian agent at Ft. Snelling, wrote that Indians had killed no white people during his years in office, 1819 to 1840.¹⁹
    “The former inhabitants” of Red Wing moved by September to camps near Little Crow’s Kaposia, south of St. Paul. Wabasha’s band, always closely allied with the Red Wing Mdewakanton, lived nearby. Some members of the Red Wing group asked Hancock to continue his missionary work among them.
    Hancock thought over the offer but declined. In a letter he recorded his hopes that the land treaty would improve “the circumstances of this people.” Yet, he added ominously, “Their future prospects [are] dark indeed, both for this world and the next.”²⁰