THE EARLY YEARS

In late June of 1851 Governor Alexander Ramsey and General Henry Sibley traveled to a trading post three miles down river from St. Peter. There they called a conference and summoned the Sisseton & Wahpeton bands of the Dakota tribes by courier to assemble. It took 18 days for all to arrive. There were the many chiefs and braves dressed in full attire of colored beaded shirts, blankets, and feathered head gear, also squaws with papooses and French and Scotch traders and missionaries.

Some 7500 Sioux were present. By July 23, 1851 negotiations were completed and the Traverse des Sioux treaty was signed. Thus millions of acres were transferred to the whites, except 10 miles either side of the Minnesota River and then to the headwaters of the Big Stone.

Pope County laid within these boundaries. The lakes, the streams, the rolling hills and valleys, all relinquished reluctantly by the natives. They had given up most of their fishing, hunting and trapping grounds. The many trees and fields were now the property of the State.

In 1849 Captain John Pope led an exploration group to the Red River by way of a trail that passed through Pope County. Called the Plains Trail, it came from St. Cloud, passed near present day Paynesville, skirted the north shore of Lake Minnewaska, crossed through Douglas County, then branched at Elbow Lake, one fork heading to the Red River at Breckenridge and then following the river to Pembina. The other, the Woods Trail, went north up the Crow Wing and east of Ottertail Lake, on to Detroit Lakes, and on to Pembina.

Later, in 1853, a number of explorers used the Plains Trail to survey a route for the Pacific Railroad.

Pope was a graduate of West Point, born in 1822 and died in 1892. He was a lieutenant in the Mexican War. During the summer of 1849 he was a member of an exploration expedition that left Fort Snelling, heading up the Mississippi River to St. Cloud then along the Plains trail passing by what was then called White Bear lake, Minnewaska, and up the ‘Red’ and on to Pembina. The overall journey to Pembina and back was some 1000 miles. A captain at the time of this expedition, he was later, 1853-59, a commander of several survey expeditions for the Pacific Railroad. In the Civil War he was commissioned a major general and in Sept. of 1862, shortly after the Sioux uprising in Minnesota he was appointed commander of the Northwest and headquartered in St. Paul.

Olaus Olson Grove a trapper and hunter, living just outside the county, near the present site of Brooten, used the Territory of Pope County as his game grounds as early as 1859. In 1861 he squatted on Lot 1, section 2 of what is now the present township of Barsness. [Builders of Pope County-1930 by Daisy Ellen Hughes]

Later in the spring of 1862 Grove was instrumental in bringing four of his friends with their families to Lake Johanna Township. They were Ole Kittleson Ovretvedt, Salve Oleson Gakkestad, Gregar Halvorson Stordahl and John Johnson Sandvig. [For more information read – ‘The Cradle of Pope County’ – Historical Sketches by Hannah Tvedt Sanders]

John C. Hutchins settled in Leven Township on July 3, 1862, with his family.

Thomas Van Eaton and Dean Stabler, with their families settled at Grove Lake also in 1862.

A Mr. Garrison, wife and young son, had a cabin on the shore of lake Minnewaska. He was a trapper and never homesteaded and left during the Sioux uprising in 1862 and never returned.

These are presumably the only white settlers in the county in 1862. [Builders of Pope County]

The Lake Johanna families went to the stockade at Paynesville during the uprising. The settlers were told of the approaching danger by a group of men that were coming from Paynesville to bury 17 settlers that had been killed by the Indians near Norway Lake.

George Stabler, of St. Cloud, had heard of the killing and headed to Grove Lake on Sunday afternoon to warn his brother, Dean and family. The neighboring Van Eaton family was there as well and they all left for the safety of Sauk Centre. On Monday Thomas Van Eaton returned to fetch some family belongs and was overtaken and killed some 6-8 miles from Sauk Centre by the Indians. His body was found the next spring.

The Garrisons had been warned by a friendly ‘half-breed’ and left immediately for ‘Sauk’. They stopped at the Stabler cabin early Monday morning on the way, only to find it pillaged and no sign of life. Thinking that all had been killed, they hid in the neighboring woods. There they climbed the trees and spent the night. The next day they left for Sauk Centre, seeing several Indians across the prairie, but fortunately none came their way.

Stabler a lieutenant in the Maine Militia, helped build a more fortified stockade and it was used until Governor Ramsey sent more troops and a more durable fort was built. He and his family never returned to the county following the outbreak.

Hutchins and his family were told only a few hours before the arrival of the natives. They escaped and later returned to Grove Lake. Descendants still lived in the area in the 1930’s.

Like Olaus Grove, all of the Lake Johanna settlers returned by 1864, when the government had deemed it safe for them and their families to resettle. Many descendants of these families still to this day [2005] live in the area. Because by this time Fort Lake Johanna had been built, and along with several other small military posts that were established throughout the frontier, the authorities were now allowing the settlers to return to their homesteads.

At this time, 1864-65 the county slowly began to grow. Other families were moving in and the areas around Gilchrist, Chippewa Falls, Barsness and Lake Minnewaska saw increasing settlement and activity.

Now, the potential and beauty of the area was known to many. In June of 1864 a detachment of Untied States troops were enroute to the west. In the June 18, 1904 – Special edition of the Glenwood Gopher, G. W. Thacker wrote. “I visited the site on which the village of Glenwood now stands. I can never forget the impressions that came to my mind as we approached the brow of the hill and beheld for the first time the magnificent grandeur of the scenery below us!”

“It was a perfect June day. The air was laden with the perfume of spring and the poetry of nature was written on every tree and flower and shrub. I withdrew from the noisy clamor of my companions to the shade of a spreading oak, that I might gaze and ponder and dream.”

“Here indeed, was a land fresh from the hand of the Creator. No white man’s bark had ever floated upon the bosom of the lake, no woodsman’s axe had woke its echoes in these forests and groves, no plow had traced furrows through these plains, no flocks and herds had ever cropped the herbage that grew in wild profusion around us. Could it be the will of providence that this beautiful land, with its amazing fertility should longer remain the home of wild animals and savage men?”

“I tried to picture the scenes familiar to us today- of populous communities, of happy homes, of cities and villages made prosperous by a friendly rivalry in commercial pursuits – but my revere was broken by a bugle call, and with the mechanical promptness of a soldier I mounted my horse and joined the cavalcade already wending its way to the westward.”

Some years later Thacker returned. “The vision of that June day” beckoned him to do so. After being discharged he collected a team of oxen, an axe, some camping utensils, a plow and struck out for the land of promise. Like so many others this land of ‘plenty’, their homesteads would become “heirlooms” for generations yet to come. [Builders of Pope County by Daisy Ellen Hughes, 1930]