Before Mankato
Long before anyone ever thought of building a city at the joining of the
Blue Earth and Minnesota Rivers, before these rivers ever existed, the town
site of Mankato was buried under hundreds of feet of ice. This was during what
geologists call the "Great Ice Age". As the great glaciers advanced and receded
over a span of about two million years, they carved out many of the geographic
features that are part of Minnesota today: the hills, valleys and rivers. As
they receded, they also left behind fertile soil and exposed areas of limestone
and iron ore.
At the end of the Great Ice Age, the
glaciers melted and formed rivers. By some strange force of nature, one of
these rivers bent at the site that is now Mankato, and flowed northward to join
the mighty Mississippi River. Indians moved into the grassy, forested expanse
that was left behind. They traveled the rivers in canoes and sometimes they
camped near the bend. European explorers followed the Indians. They were
looking for the mythical Northwest Passage, which they thought would take them
from the Atlantic Ocean, through North America, to the Far East. They never
found this passage, but they did begin to explore the land that would become
Minnesota, and one day a Frenchman by the name of Pierre Le Sueur became the
first white man to take an interest in the area that would become Mankato.
Le Sueur and his men arrived at the site in October of 1700 after
canoeing up from Biloxi. He had journeyed in the area before and had observed
the people using a blue-green clay for war paint. He thought, from the color,
that this clay contained copper. When he learned that the clay was from the
area near the bend of the Minnesota River (called St. Pierre's River by the
French and St. Peter's River by the English), he put an expedition together. He
arrived as winter was approaching. Le Seuer and his party quickly erected
several rough cabins and a log stockade for protection. They named this Fort
L'Huillier, for the French official who assisted Le Sueur in outfitting his
expedition. The name was simplified to LeHiller by later settlers. All through
the winter, the party mined the blue-green clay and in the spring set sail for
France with a cargo of more than two tons. No records exist to show that it
safely arrived.
Over the next seventy-five years, only Indians and an occasional white
explorer journeyed to the bend of the Minnesota River. After the Revolutionary
War, this all changed. The newly born United States of America acquired the
part of Minnesota east of the Mississippi River by the Treaty of Paris in 1783,
and the land west of the Mississippi by the Louisiana purchase in 1803. After
the War of 1812, the British relinquished their claim to the remainder of the
upper Mississippi Valley. The government then established Fort Snelling at the
junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. This was all accomplished by
1819. Over the next few years, the government purchased land from the Sioux and
Chippewa and built the first of Minnesota's many cities: St Paul, St Anthony,
and Stillwater. In 1848, Congress created the Minnesota territory. Rapid
population growth followed as settlers poured into the new territory.
As a result of the large number of settlers coming to the territory, the
government needed more land. In 1851, the government negotiated two treaties,
the Treaty of Traverse de Sioux and the Treaty of Mendota with the Indians and
gained 24 million acres. This was a good portion of southern Minnesota. In
return, the government agreed to pay the tribes one million six hundred and
sixty-five thousand dollars in annuities and money. As the Indians moved out,
the settlers moved in.
Source:
Lundin, Vernard E. At The Bend In The
River. Windsor Publications, Inc. 1990.
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