05.IQFall11_32-37_Layout 1 9/27/11 3:51 PM Page 32 12,000 B.C. 10,000 B.C. 12,000 B.C.: Retreating glaciers leave behind the ancient Lake Agassiz. Draining the lake to the south, the rushing River Warren carves out the Minnesota River Valley and the Upper Mississippi River Valley as far as Prescott, Wisconsin. 10,000 B.C.: People begin moving through or into the Upper Mississippi River Source: University of Manitoba Libraries Map Collection Map Libraries Manitoba of University Source: Valley as hunter/gatherers or farmers. When Europeans enter Minnesota in the 1500s, they find the Ojibwe, or Anishinabeg, and the Dakota Sioux. 32 Initiative Quarterly Magazine IQmag.org 05.IQFall11_32-37_Layout 1 9/27/11 3:51 PM Page 33 By Martha Coventry 1500 1600 1700 1800 Late 1500s: The French begin traveling the waterways from Canada to the Mississippi River to exchange goods for pelts— 1805: On September 23, Army especially beaver—with Lieutenant Zebulon Pike and representa- Native people along the tives of the Sioux (Dakota) Nation sign the Mississippi and St. Croix Treaty with the Sioux, also known as Pike’s rivers. Using the term 1680: Father Louis Hennepin searches for the Purchase. The treaty gives the United “buck” for a dollar emerges Northwest Passage and the source of the Mississippi States two tracts of land on the Mississippi from fur trade slang. In River. While traveling with a group of Dakota war- for military posts. One is at the confluence 1800, the skin of a buck riors, he sees a great falls that he names St. Anthony with the Minnesota River and construction deer was worth one dollar. Falls after his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. of Fort Snelling begins in 1819. FALL 11 33 05.IQFall11_32-37_Layout 1 9/27/11 3:52 PM Page 34 1840: The traffic in beaver pelts, and the commercial fur trade on A raindrop falling at the Upper Mississippi River Lake Itasca (at the 1839: Logging begins on former Ojibwe lands. and the St. Croix all but Between 1835 and 1915, nearly all red and white ends. Beaver top hats are Mississippi headwaters) pine in Minnesota and Wisconsin of appropriate size out of fashion; silk hats are would arrive at the Gulf is cut and floated down the Mississippi to sawmills. now the rage. of Mexico in about 90 days. —NATIONAL PARK SERVICE The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile . the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 personal importance in the annals of the world. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1832: The Ojibwe 1837: In the man Ozawindib guides Treaty of 1837, Here in Minnesota, Henry Schoolcraft to the the Ojibwe cede source of the Mississippi all lands northeast we’re at the top of the River, a small stream of the Mississippi watershed. The water is 1823: The first steamboat, exiting a lake. River to the U.S. clean when it comes out the Virginia, arrives at Fort Schoolcraft had decided Government, Snelling from St. Louis. By earlier to name the retaining hunting of Lake Itasca and we 1850, a thousand steamboats a source, if he found it, and fishing rights. have a unique responsibility year are docking at St. Paul. Itasca—a combination of This treaty will be to send it downstream the Latin veritas (“truth”) heavily referenced and caput (“head”). in modern times across our border as during a 17-year- clean as when we got it. long battle for Ojibwe spear fishing rights in northern —WHITNEY CLARK Executive Director Wisconsin. Friends of the Mississippi River 34 Initiative Quarterly Magazine IQmag.org 05.IQFall11_32-37_Layout 1 9/27/11 3:52 PM Page 35 1856: The Washburn brothers begin milling flour on the Minneapolis riverfront. In 1877, they form the Washburn-Crosby Company with John Crosby. In 1928, the company will merge with 26 “To the Dakota and other mills to form General Mills. other Native Americans, the great river was as well known as a local freeway 1883: Railroad baron James J. Hill builds the Stone to an urban commuter. 1847: Arch Bridge over St. Anthony It was their daily and Businessman Falls in Minneapolis, which is seasonal highway. But it Franklin Steele used as a railroad bridge until constructs the first 1965. A National Historic was more. It was their front dam at St. Anthony Engineering Landmark, the and back yards. It was their Falls, marking the bridge gets a second life in 1994, supermarket and well as beginning of when a partnership of public human interference agencies turns it into a their superhighway. They with the falls. show-stopping thoroughfare fished, hunted, gathered for pedestrians, bicyclists, plants, planted crops, swam and the River City Trolley. and prayed in or near the river. The contrast between 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 European discovery and Native American familiarity could not have been greater.” 1884: German immigrant J.F. Boepple founds the — JOHN O. ANFINSON Mississippi River pearl button River of History 1851 industry in Iowa. Clammers in & 1858: Minnesota and Wisconsin take The Dakota cede thousands of tons of shells out all land south of of the Mississippi, St. Croix “We safely entered the Upper and Lake Pepin and send them Mississippi River downriver to Iowa. Misisipi on 17th of June, to the United with a joy I cannot express,” States in treaties writes Father James signed in these years. The white Marquette in 1673. population in Two Native guides had Minnesota soars 1862: After the Dakota Conflict given him the Algonquin from 6,000 in and the hanging of 38 Dakota at 1850 to 150,000 Mankato, 1,600 women, children and name for the body of water by 1857. old men are put in an internment camp he encountered—“misisipi,” on Pike Island below Fort Snelling. meaning “big river.” The following spring, they are moved away from the river and to reservations in the Dakota Territory and Nebraska. —FATHER JAMES MARQUETTE FALL 11 35 05.IQFall11_32-37_Layout 1 9/27/11 3:53 PM Page 36 The tiling and draining 1938: The Pig’s Eye Sewage Treatment Plant begins operating of farm land is the largest 1930: Congress authorizes the as the first such plant on the hydrological altering of Rivers and Harbors Act of 1930 Mississippi River. Eventually the landscape you can and asks the Army Corps of renamed the Metro Plant, it will Engineers to create and make significant strides in imagine. It’s across the maintain a 9-foot improving water quality, reducing entire Corn Belt and channel on the river phosphorus discharges to the river it’s totally invisible. through a series of by 80% between 1995 and 2005. 24 new locks and Most people looking at [the dams. Izaak Walton landscape] would have no League chapters idea what we’ve done to it. in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and —DAN ENGSTROM Illinois oppose the plan. Director The Corps prevails, St. Croix Watershed Research Station but environmental organizing has begun. When the two rivers join, you can see the clear 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 St. Croix water for more than a mile downstream before it is engulfed with the silt carried by the mighty Mississippi. I wish we could go back just two centuries and correct all the land management mistakes we settlers made to the upper Mississippi valley, so that the river’s water at the confluence with the St. Croix would be indistinguishable. I surely hope that the Wild & Scenic St. Croix River remains just that and I fervently hope that we don’t end up loving it to death. —JIM FITZPATRICK Executive Director 1903: Logging companies build a dam downstream from the newly estab- Carpenter St. Croix Valley Nature Center lished Itasca State Park. When rising water floods the headwaters, 24-year-old park superintendant Mary Gibbs challenges the logging company. A rifle-toting foreman warns he will shoot her if she touches the sluice gate, but with help, she opens the gate and lowers the water level by 18 inches. 36 Initiative Quarterly Magazine IQmag.org 05.IQFall11_32-37_Layout 1 9/27/11 3:53 PM Page 37 1968: Congress creates the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System and the Upper St. Croix River is one of the original eight rivers designated; the “…ten thousand Lower St. Croix River is added in 1972. The Act River Commissions, creates the St. Croix National Scencie Riverway, a national park protecting 255 miles of riverway along with the mines of the St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers. the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless 1999: The DNR launches the stream, cannot curb it Minnesota Statewide Mussel Survey or define it, cannot say to to document and conserve freshwater it ‘Go here’ or ‘Go there,’ mussels, the nation’s most threatened class of organisms. The section of the and make it obey.” Mississippi River near the Ford Bridge —MARK TWAIN between Minneapolis and St. Paul (from Life on the Mississippi) proves to be a good rearing ground to reestablish endangered mussels. “[The Mississippi River] Greg Seitz Greg was a magical place for a kid because it was a place 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 where adults never came. When you came over the riverbank and down on the shore, you were in a realm that belonged to 1988: The National Park 2010: The Urban Service establishes a new national Wilderness Canoe boys—and boys your age. park called the Mississippi Adventure begins as a That was what the river National River and Recreation partnership among the was all about, getting Area, encompassing 72 miles of National Park Service, the the Mississippi River stretching Mississippi River Fund, away from the grown-up from Dayton, Minnesota, to just the Wilderness Inquiry, world, school, and church south of Hastings.