Transportation

Alexander Ramsey and Justus Ramsey

A former US Congressman from Pennsylvania, Alexander Ramsey was appointed Governor of Minnesota Territory in 1849. In this capacity, and as Governor and US Senator for Minnesota, Ramsey was a tireless promoter of US settlement.

In his inaugural address as state Governor in 1860, he said, “Give us the capital of more men, more people, and we will vivify, infuse the breath of life into, the dead capital of millions of acres now growing only prairie flowers.” In the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862, in which Dakota people tried to reclaim this “dead capital,” Ramsey is famously quoted as saying, "The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state."

Justus C. Ramsey, a railroad surveyor in Pennsylvania, joined his brother Alexander in Minnesota in 1849. The two immediately began investing in real estate. One building, purchased in 1849 for $2,500, was worth nearly half a million dollars when Justus died in 1881. Among Justus’ investments with leading St. Paul businessmen was the Blue Earth Settlement Claim Association, which started the city of Mankato.

Alexander Ramsey signed the two Dakota land cession treaties of 1851 and the “Old Crossing” treaty with the Ojibwe in 1863, and his brother signed the Bois Fort treaty in 1866.

Morrison and Kittson

The Morrison/Kittson family developed an intricate network of connections - business interests, political positions, and family ties - that spanned the entire treaty-making era for Ojibwe people in what is now Minnesota.

William Morrison and his brother Alan (who signed the Ojibwe treaties of 1847) were prominent fur traders who married into both Ojibwe and white families. (Morrison County is named after them.) Their mixed-blood children received "half breed" tracts in an 1826 treaty. Their white children became business leaders in Minnesota. Alan's son John, a signer of 1863 and 1864 Ojibwe treaties, became chief of police at White Earth. William's son D. G. Morrison, who signed treaties in 1863 and 1866, was one of the original incorporators of Fond du Lac, which became Duluth.

One of William's wives was a sister of Norman Kittson (for whom Kittson County is named), one of the most prominent early Minnesotans in the freight and transportation industries.

Alan Morrison and his nephew D. G., as well as Norman Kittson, were Territorial legislators.

Joseph, Nathaniel and A.M.A. Brown

Joseph Renshaw Brown came to Minnesota at age 14 as a drummer boy at Fort Snelling. He left the army at about age 20 and entered the fur trade. Marriages into two prominent Dakota/French/US families helped ensure his financial success, and he diversified his business interests into transportation and land speculation. He founded the Minnesota towns of Stillwater and Henderson, and co-owned the Dakota Land Company which founded Sioux Falls and other South Dakota towns. Brown County is named after Joseph Renshaw Brown.

His brother Nathaniel also engaged in Minnesota politics as well as in railroads and land speculation.

Joseph Brown led a delegation to Washington for the 1858 land cession treaties, signed a treaty with the Ho-Chunk in 1859, and signed the 1867 Sisseton Wahpeton treaty that established a Dakota reservation in South Dakota. Nathaniel accompanied Joseph to Washington for the 1858 Dakota treaty, and Joseph's son A.M.A. Brown signed the 1867 treaty.

Dousman and the Campbells

The Campbell siblings were children of a British fur trader and a Dakota woman. Some sources say that their grandmother was a sister of Little Crow, but which Little Crow is unclear. (The name was carried by generations of men.) Antoine Campbell signed the Dakota treaties of 1858). Scott Campbell was a long-time interpreter for Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro, and signed the multinational treaties at Prairie du Chien in 1825 and 1830, treaties with the Dakota in 1836 and 1837, and the Ojibwe land cession treaty of 1837.

Their sister Margaret had a long relationship with Hercules Dousman, who began working for the American Fur Company in 1826. By 1834, when Astor sold the company, Dousman was in a position to become a major stockholder in the fur trade, in partnership with the Chouteau family of St. Louis and Henry Sibley. Often working in tandem with Sibley, Dousman diversified his business interests as the fur trade declined, amassing a fortune through steamboats, land speculation, timber, and railroads. All of these businesses required obtaining the assets of American Indian people, and Dousman pursued his interests by signing treaties with the Ojibwe in 1837, with the Ho-Chunk in 1846, and with the Dakota in 1836 and 1851. In this last treaty, traders such as Dousman asserted their own interests so aggressively that he later said, “The Sioux treaty will hang like a curse over our heads for the rest of our lives.”

Two of Scott Campbell’s sons were hung for their involvement in the Dakota War of 1862: Baptiste, by the US military in Mankato; and John, by a lynch mob. Their fate stands in stark contrast to the financial benefits gained from US-Indian relations by their uncle Hercules.

Alexander Faribault and George Faribault

Alexander Faribault was the son of a mixed-blood Dakota and French woman and a prominent French fur trader. His father survived regime changes in the fur trade, working for the British Northwest Fur Company and later the American Fur Company, with whom Alexander became a clerk at the age of 12. Before he turned 20, he was a licensed fur trader and his marriage to Mary Graham, member of another prominent French-Dakota family, contributed to his very successful business enterprises.

Faribault eventually diversified his business interests to include banking (in partnerships that included Henry Sibley, Charles Oakes and Charles Borup); milling; and land speculation, founding the town of Faribault and one of the original partners in the establishment of Hastings. He accompanied the Dakota delegation to Washington for a treaty in 1837, but did not sign the treaty. In 1851, while a member of the Minnesota Legislature, he was one of a group of traders who helped engineer both Dakota land cession treaties and in that process received $13,000, roughly equivalent to $300,00 today.

George Faribault, the son of Alexander and Mary, also signed one of the 1851 Dakota treaties. He became Chief of Indian Police at the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota.

Beaulieu, Borup, Oakes

Brothers Paul H. and Clement H. Beaulieu were sons of a French fur trader and grandsons of a prominent Ojibwe leader. There were trading at La Pointe, Wisconsin when an Ojibwe delegation from present-day Minnesota arrived there to sign a treaty there, and soon followed the Ojibwe back to present-day Crow Wing to take advantage of trading opportunities.

Clement worked initially for the American Fur Company; by the time of the Civil War, he was the primary supplier of all trade goos to the Ojibwe. His former AFC associate Henry Sibley named him an officer in the Minnesota militia, and after the Civil War he became a Indian agent. Paul became a surveyor for the Stevens Expedition, an excursion on behalf of the Pacific Railroad. When the White Earth Ojibwe reservation was created, Paul was the first person on the Ojibwe rolls to move there.

Paul and Clement had two sisters, Julia and Elizabeth, who married respectively Charles Oakes and Charles Borup (who had been the AFC representative at La Pointe). These brothers-in-law entered business together, forming some of the earliest banking ventures in Minnesota. With Clement Beaulieu, they owned the Northern Fur Company (a successor to AFC), and presented claims for debt payments at the 1854 Ojibwe treaty.

Paul Beaulieu signed treaties with the Ojibwe in 1845, 1855, 1863 and 1864. Clement Beaulieu, Borup and Oakes all signed the 1842 Ojibwe treaty in Wisconsin. Clement also signed the 1855 treaty in Minnesota Territory, and Oakes signed an 1847 land cession treaty.

Henry Mower Rice (and Edmund Rice)

Henry Mower Rice (signer of Ojibwe treaties in 1847, 1854, 1855 and 1863) began his career selling goods to military forts and trading with the Ojibwe and Ho-Chunk. Arriving in St. Paul, he purchased land claims around the area of St. Paul. (The use of funds from his employer, Pierre Chouteau, for his own land speculation led to embarrassment when his books were audited.) He eventually parlayed his trading connections and political ambitions into a position of power in US politics and US-Indian relations.

In 1847, Rice became the spokesman for the Ojibwe at a land cession treaty in Washington. In 1851, he offed to secure Dakota signatures on a land cession treaty if he were paid $10,000. Fur traders put up the money, and the Dakota sold millions of acres of their land. "Just how he accomplished this masterstroke has never been fully determined." (Wingerd, North Country.) When Minnesota became a State, Rice became the State's first US Senator.

Henry and his brother Edmund (a US Representative from Minnesota) acquired extensive land holdings, directorships in railroads, and other interests that related to US-Indian relations, becoming the chief rivals of Henry Sibley in both business and politics.

Sibley and Trowbridge

One of the first acts of Congress under the Constitution was to “privatize” westward expansion. In 1787, a corporation called the Ohio Company of Associates was given land to settle in Ohio, with the idea that companies could sell land to settlers more aggressively and efficiently that the government could. With this act, corporate interests became a driving force in the US acquisition of Indian land.

The second-in-command for the Ohio Company was Ebenezer Sproat, whose daughter Sarah married Solomon Sibley. Sarah and Solomon moved from the Ohio settlement to what is now Michigan, where Solomon became the first mayor of Detroit and engaged in land speculation, signing a treaty with the Ottawa in 1821.

Solomon and Sarah had two sons and a son-in-law who signed US-Indian treaties:

• Henry Sibley, co-owner of the American Fur Company, business partner of the Chouteau family from St. Louis, military general and Governor of Minnesota, land speculator, owner of a gold mining company, etc., signed 10 treaties including the 1837 treaty at which the Ojibwe first ceded land in what is now Minnesota.

• Frederick Sibley, a fur trader, army contractor and inheritor of a lucrative limestone quarry and other real estate in Detroit, signed the 1851 Mdewakanton Wahpekute treaty by which the Dakota ceded 16,000,000 acres to the US.

• Charles C. Trowbridge, a banker, lawyer, lumber manufacturer and Indian agent who played a prominent role in US-Indian affairs in Michigan, signed a treaty with eastern Ojibwe in 1820 and the multinational treaty at Prairie du Chien in 1825.

Another brother-in-law of Henry Sibley was Franklin Steele, who controlled the water power at St. Anthony Falls.

Clark W. Thompson and Benjamin Thompson

A banker, land and railroad speculator and Minnesota legislator, Clark W. Thompson received a political appointment to the important position of Northern Superintendent of Indian Affairs, centered in Minnesota. His tenure, which began in 1861, was characterized by wide-scale fraud and contributed significantly to the Dakota War of 1862.

Clark’s brother Benjamin was placed in charge of selecting the place to which Dakota were forcibly removed after the War: Crow Creek in what is now South Dakota. He became the Indian agent there, a place characterized by “the lack of rain, the lack of timber, the dryness of the creeks, the isolation, and the unproductiveness of the prairie.” Under his direction, “rations were given on Saturday, eaten up by Sunday and the Indians starved for the rest of the week.”

Clark signed 3 Ojibwe treaties in 1863 and 1864, as well as treaties with the Omaha and Ho-Chunk in 1865. Benjamin signed Ojibwe treaties in 1864 and 1866, and a post-removal treaty with the Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota in 1867.