.

On February 12th, 1861, the school funds apportioned to Oneota and Duluth school districts, in the hands of the county treasurer, were $75.40 for the Oneota district, and $37.70 for the Duluth district. Those old days were the days of small things. Contrast the receipts and disbursements of the Independent school district of Duluth, which now embraces the territory of those first six school districts, as shown by its treasurer, for the year 1897, namely, total receipts in the general fund, including teachers' wages, $348,250.73; besides the building fund, $28,856.09, and the sinking fund, $107,043.32. The number of pupils enrolled in 1897 was 9,613; and the total value of school buildings and furniture, $1,800,700.

LOCATION OF THE COUNTY SEAT.

From the year 1855 to the year 1862 the fact of any location of the county seat of St. Louis county was a disputed question. There was no law locating it, nor any existing record that it had ever been located by the board of county commissioners, that body having been empowered to do so by the law. It was contended by the Duluth people that it was located on Nettleton's claim, on the main shore at the base of Minnesota point, by the board of county commissioners, but no record of such fact was ever found. If any such action was ever taken, it may have been by the board of county commissioners of Superior county, of whose acts, if they ever held a meeting, no record was preserved.

For a number of years, persons who were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be elected to any county office were not questioned as to their right to hold their office at their homes, wherever they lived. For two years a majority of the county offices were held at Oneota. For four years the clerk of the district court held his office at his home at Fond du Lac. The county commissioners were a rambling body in their places of meeting.

After the year 1862, it was generally conceded that Duluth was the county seat. Now, even if Duluth's undisputed possession of the county seat for thirty-six years should be questioned, there is no point at the head of the lake that can raise an objection, because she has spread the county seat over twenty-five miles, embracing all the towns, from Clifton, in

the old county of Superior, to the "Grand Portage of the Fond du Lac," the head of navigation on the St. Louis river.

BEGINNINGS IN THIS COUNTY AND THE CITY OF DULUTH.

The first county auditor of St. Louis county, Mr. Edwin H. Brown, was elected in October, 1858, receiving only one vote, and that vote was his own. On November 1st, 1858, he appeared before the county board of supervisors, then in session at the house of E. C. Martin in Portland, and was recognized as the clerk of the board. He was, at that meeting, required to give an official bond in the sum of $1,000. He held the office for fourteen months and received only $32.20 for his services. The first yearly salary fixed by the county board for the county auditor was on July 12th, 1861, at $200.

On January 14th, 1861, the board of county commissioners, in session as a board of equalization, equalized real estate values for taxation as follows: "The land on the shore of the lake and bays of St. Louis and Superior and their immediate vicinity" was fixed at $3 an acre, and "land farther back" at $2 an acre, and townsite lots were left as the assessors valued them, at $1.25 a lot. In September, 1862, the same board fixed the values of the same classes of land at $2 and $1.25 an acre, respectively, and fixed the values of all platted lots in the towns of Duluth, Rice's Point, Oneota, and Fond du Lac, at $1 a lot.

In the year 1860 the total valuation of personal property in St. Louis county was $9,620; in 1861 it was $4,726; in 1862, $5,000; in 1863, not reported; and in 1864, $2,179. The total real estate values for 1860 were $96,836.76; and for 1864, $108,927.00.

In the year 1870 the population of St. Louis county was 4,561, of which number Duluth had 3,131. Carlton county had 286 inhabitants; and Lake county, 135. In the same year the total valuation of real and personal property in St. Louis county was $220,693; the total taxes levied, $7,955; and the total debt, $5,212.

The first deed recorded in the office of the register of deeds of St. Louis county was a quitclaim deed from Rion H. Bacon to Edmund F. Ely, for the townsite of Oneota. It was recorded on June 6th, 1856, and the consideration was $1,500.

The record of the first couple married in Duluth is typical of the union of Duluth and Portland: "By Rev. J. M. Barrett (of Superior, Wis.), on April 12th, 1859, William Epler, a resident of Portland, and Jennie A. Woodman, resident of Duluth," in the presence of J. B. Culver and E. C. Martin.

The first issue of a newspaper published at Duluth was the Duluth Minnesotian, April 24th, 1869, with Dr. Thomas Foster as editor. He came to Duluth the year before from St. Paul, where he had for some years edited the St. Paul Minnesotian. The office of publication of the Duluth Minnesotian was an old building on the westerly side of Lake avenue, about a block north of where the canal now is. The paper soon passed from the doctor's control, and in a few years it ceased to exist.

The remarkable growth of Duluth dates from its first city charter, granted by an act of the state legislature, approved March 6th, 1870.

At the first city election, held on April 4th, 1870, there were 448 votes polled, of which Col. J. B. Culver, Democrat, had 241, and John C. Hunter, Republican, had 205, for mayor, with two scattering votes. George C. Stone was elected as the first city treasurer; Orlando Luce as the first city comptroller; and Henry Silby as the first city justice. All the other officers were appointed by the mayor and city council.

This paper has extended far beyond the limit at first designed by the writer, when he undertook the task. It records portions of the early history of Duluth and northeastern Minnesota which may be of interest to coming generations.

For the time since the birth of the new city of Duluth in 1870, the writer hopes that some one of the many of its residents who have lived in the city from that date, having better qualifications for the work than he, will write the history of its struggles during its first ten years, and of its steady and substantial growth since 1880 to the present time.

THE EARLY SETTLEMENT AND HISTORY OF

REDWOOD COUNTY.*

BY HON. ORLANDO B. TURRELL.

The act creating Redwood county was passed by the session of the legislature of 1862, and a second act changing and defining its boundaries and providing for its civil organization was passed in 1865. This area had previously formed a part of Brown county, and earlier of Blue Earth county. The boundaries of Redwood county, as established by these acts, reached to the west line of the state and northwest to Big Stone lake. At later dates, the counties of Lyon, Lincoln, Yellow Medicine, and Lac qui Parle, have been formed from the territory originally included in this county. Its present area, which it has had since 1871, comprises nearly twentyfive townships of the government surveys, including five fragmental townships on the northeast adjoining the Minnesota river.

In the organization of most counties in the state, the fact of prior ownership and occupation by Indian tribes is taken for granted; but in the case of Redwood county, because a part of its territory had already been occupied by farms with houses, plowed lands in crop, and a fairly developed agricultural industry, it is necessary to revert to previous conditions in order to have a full understanding of its history.

In the years 1856 to 1858 the United States government, under the influence of those who believed that the Indian should be given the opportunity to become a citizen, and that the true policy for the management of the wards of the nation was through their adoption of habits of industry which should *Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, May 9, 1898.

lead to self-support and independence, inaugurated the policy of building houses, breaking up land, and furnishing teams, implements, and such other supplies as were necessary to enable the Indian to have a fixed home and adopt the habits of civilization. Among the reservations set apart for this purpose was the Sioux Indian reservation on the west bank of the Minnesota river, a strip of an average width of ten miles and extending from a short distance above New Ulm to Big Stone lake.

There were over 6,000 Indians on the reservation at the time of the outbreak in 1862, known as the "Annuity Sioux Indians," divided between the upper agencies at Lac qui Parle and Yellow Medicine and the Lower Sioux Agency in what is now the town of Sherman in Redwood county. There was a superintendent at each agency, and a thorough system of farming had been established prior to the outbreak, which gave promise at an early day to make the Indian both self-respecting and independent. At the Lower Agency the government buildings, with the trading posts of Messrs. Robert, Forbes, and Myrick, formed quite a village. In that vicinity about 800 acres of land had been broken up, comfortable brick houses had been built, and altogether the outlook was promising for the success of the effort to lift the red man to a higher plane of existence. "The hopes of the philanthropist and Christian beat high. They believed the day was not far distant when it could be said that the Sioux Indian as a race not only could be civilized, but there were whole tribes who were civilized, and had abandoned the chase and the war path for the cultivation of the soil and the arts of peace; and that the juggleries and sorceries of the medicine man had been abandoned for the milder teaching of the missionaries of the cross." How their high hopes were blasted by the uprising and massacre of 1862 it is not the purpose of this paper to recite, as the subject is only introduced to show that, previous to its settlement by the white man, Redwood county has a history of settlement and cultivation as well as of rapine, plunder and blood.

Redwood county took its name from Redwood river, which rises in Lincoln and Pipestone counties and flows easterly across this county into the Minnesota, below Redwood Falls.