The Lars Hansen Schol Family

The Family of Lars Hansen and Karine Olsdatter (the Birth Family of the Editor's Paternal Grandfather's Mother) on the Skiøl Farm, Vestre Toten Parish, Oppland County, Norway. According to their Viede, 22-year-old Farmer Lars Hansen of Skiøl farm (the maternal grandfather of the editor's paternal grandfather) married 22-year-old Karine Olsdatter on October 28, 1844, in Vestre Toten parish. The record of their marriage contains the names of the bridegroom's father (Hans Davidsen) and the bride's father (Ole Paulsen), the parishes in which the couple were born, and their ages at the time of the marriage. It also includes the names of three witnesses of the marriage, one of whom was Hans Eid.

Almost three years later, on August 12, 1847, according her daughter's Døpte, 24-year-old Karine Olsdatter gave birth to Clara Larsdatter (the mother of the editor's paternal grandfather). Clara's baptismal witnesses were Ole of Qvaxrud farm, Lars of Finstad farm, and Anna Maria of Hammerstad farm. The editor believes the baptismal witness Ole of Qvaxrud was Ole Johannessen of Qvaxrud, the husband of Karen Hansdatter. Karen was Lars Hansen's sister.

Coon Prairie - Where, After 1852, the Family of Lars Hansen and Karine Olsdatter Made Their First Home in America. "Coon Prairie was between 1850-1875 one of the largest attractions to the future emigrants in Norway -- particularly in the areas west and north of Mjosen. Up until 1850 Koshkonong and the surrounding settlements had been the most important destination for immigrants. But now there was little room left. Then Coon Prairie was discovered. There one heard, was the same rolling prairie covered with rich mold. There were also large forests with small ponds here and there. And if that wasn't enough, there were sheltered, well-watered, forest-clad valleys, which reminded one so beautifully of Norway. Coon Prairie therefore became the redeeming name which was trusted by the disappointed immigrant when he came to Koshkonong and found that circumstances there were worse than in Norway, and Coon Prairie became the haven of hope that beckoned across the Atlantic Ocean and incited new thousands to trust one's luck in the new world. To Coon Prairie they came and spread out from there over Vernon, Crawford, Monroe, La Crosse and Trempeleau counties.

"Until 1848 this beautiful Coon Prairie with all its promising possibilities lay untouched and unvisited by white people. Its rich growth of grass which year after year had billowed under the caresses of the wind, fell where it grew, rotted there, promising fertility to future generations. The fascinating views across the heights and valleys were seen fleetingly by roaming Indians. Complete in its luxuriance and charm lay Coon Prairie as one of the many earthly paradises the Creator had prepared and held ready for needy people." Coon Prairie, p. 15

Even O. Gullord Heads for New Orleans. "...[Even O. Gullord] worked for a year at Koshkonong and paid the fare he owed. There were at the time a large number of boys at Koshkonong who found little work among working people. When he felt himself a free man again, he decided to go further to seek better luck. He had heard of New Orleans, that mighty city to the south, and decided to go there. He asked the way to Galena, Illinois, the nearest place where he could get passage on the Mississippi riverboats.

"At Galena he found work in the lead mines to provide new passenger fare. He remained there the following winter, 1847-1848. Work there was good, he gave up the journey to New Orleans, and decided in the spring to go northward after the floods to find land." Coon Prairie, pp. 20-21

Even O. Gullord Arrives at Coon Prairie. "There was very little land occupied north of Galena, on either the west or east side of the Mississippi River. He did not have to go far from the city before he found a promising place. But home in Biri he had many relatives and friends who thought of coming to America, and he decided therefore to make a longer journey to find a place suitable for a large settlement. He travelled therefore on a steamboat far northward.

"After a while the boat stopped at a place which was called Coon Slough (now Stoddard) to take on fuel for the boiler. Gullord had now traveled over 150 miles into the wilderness, and since this was the last stopping place for a long while, he disembarked here.

"He wandered up the whole length of Coon Valley, about 20 miles. Not a single settler had yet moved here, and Gullord saw many beautiful places which invited him to establish home and farm. At last he came up on large Coon Prairie, beautiful and bountiful as the best at Koshokonong, but quiet and untouched as on the morning of creation. Glorious was the sight which that magnificent prairie, with its swaying grass, its large forest groves and charming views, appearing before him. Poetic expectations rested over this landscape. Psalms of silence were sung across its expanse. No wonder that Gullord knelt down there and thanked God that he had brought him to such good land.

"Gullord examined the whole prairie and found in every way it was excellently suited for a large Norwegian settlement. He chose for himself 160 acres in Section 5 of the present town of Virqua and wrote his name on the survey markers. This farm, the first on Coon Prairie, is now owned by R. M. Grimsrud and is truly as fine and good as can be found in the state. Thereupon he journey back to Galena, where he continued his work until fall." Coon Prairie, pp. 21-22

Even O. Gullord Returns to Coon Prairie. "In 1847-1848 a number of other people left Biri and some of them had on his advice come to Galena, where they got work. Together with these he travelled in September 1848 back to Coon Prairie to take up permanent residence in that new settlement...

"When Gullord came to settle on his claim, he found that an American by name Smith had taken residence there. Gullord did not make a fuss about it but chose instead another parcel of land nearby. This lies a half mile north of the Coon Prairie church and there he lived for many years. The others took land in the nearest surroundings.

"The settlers at Coon Prairie mostly came from Biri, Gudbrandsdal (especially from Oiers parish) Flekkefjord, South Land, and Upper Telemark. The greatest part was composed of those from Biri. Accelerated by Even Gullord's well-written, exhorting letters there soon was a large immigration of people from Biri, so that in a few years there were just as many people from Biri at Coon Prairie and in neighboring settlements as in Biri in Norway. On the 16 June 1849 came Even's father, Ole Tostensen Gullord with his fine sons, Tosten Olsen Vestboe (Westby) and Hendrik Olsen Gullord, Hans Knudsen Ramsrud together with Per and Matthias G. Evensen. After a journey of 15 weeks they arrived 1 October at Coon Prairie." Coon Prairie, pp. 22-23

1850

The Minnesota Territory Lay Across the Missippii River, West of Coon Prairie. The Lars Hansen and Karine Olsdatter family later (1858) moved to the Minnesota Territory, where they made a second home in America. They were the first of the editor's ancestral families to settle in America.

This population is given by counties as follows:

The Chippewa and Sioux Indians in Minnesota. "As far back as the seventeenth century, the Minnesota Sioux had been engaged in almost constant warfare with their traditional enemies, the Chippewa. After these foes obtained guns, they gradually pushed the Sioux from the northern part of the state into the Big woods and the Minnesota [River] Valley, where the white man found them." The Sioux Uprising of 1862, p.

"Provided with guns and gunpowder, [the Chippewa] spread south and west driving the brave but ill-armed Dakota before them. To put a stop to this drive and to incessant warfare, the United States in 1825 persuaded the Chippewa and the Dakota to sign a treaty of peace at Prairie du Chien and to draw between their respective countries a line not to be crossed by a road of war. This treaty left the Chippewa in undisputed possession of more than half of the area of Minnesota.

"The Chippewa bands represented at the council at Prairie du Chien had their homes and hunting grounds in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, all the way from the Sault de Ste. Marie to the Red River. They formed no confederacy of tribes, but held their right of possession in common. In later times this tenure in common was disregarded...and the United States dealt with separate bands of tribes as if they were high contracting powers competent to alienate without the consent of other groups..." A History of Minnesota, Vol. IV, pp. 296-97

The Dominant Plains Indians -- the Sioux. "The largest and most dominant of the tribes during the golden age of the Plains Indians was the Sioux. The nomenclature for these remarkable people, who are often called Dakota, is quite involved. They fall into three major groups, the Santee, Teton, and Yankton, distinguished by their three dialects, Dakota for the Santee, Lakota for the Teton, and Nakota for the Yankton. All came from the east, traveling by rivers, and were known as canoe Indians when they reached the Minnesota country. American History Illustrated, August 1973, p.

The Tetons (Nakota Dialect). "The Tetons, who comprised more than half the tribe, were the first to abandon their birch-bark lodges and move out upon the Plains to live in buffalo-hide tipis. They were the first of the Sioux to obtain horses and were among the best riders of the Plains.

"From the time of the American Revolution to the Indian Wars of the 1870's, the Teton Sioux ruled a vast area -- from Minnesota across the Dakotas into eastern Montana and Wyoming, and much of eastern Nebraska. Population figures are unreliable until after the Indian Wars, but at the height of their power, when all the Plains probably contained no more than 200,000 Indians, the Sioux numbered between 30,000 and 40,000, or about one sixth of the total. They were always considered handsome people, their pride showing in their behavior and their faces, their ways of walking and riding.

"Like all peoples, the Sioux varied in their physical appearance from thin to fat, from short to tall, but most of them -- both men and women -- were tall and lithe until middle age brought heaviness to their bodies. Their strong faces, with wide-spread, deep brown eyes and aquiline noses gave them a combination of dignity and handsomeness beyond that of most other Indian peoples.

"In his study of the Sioux, Royal Hassrick found that their ideals of conduct placed bravery as the highest goal a member of the tribe could seek. From earliest childhood, the courage of a Sioux was constantly tested by older members of the tribe. The stories they told, the games they played, all held an underlying theme of fearlessness. Next in importance was the ability to endure discomfort and pain without flinching. To cry out from suffering, or even to show too much outward sign of any feeling--even friendship or affection--was considered unworthy of a Sioux. A third ideal was generosity. Members of the tribe who owned material things were expected to share them with those who owned nothing. It was not how much an individual owned that gave him status; it was how much he gave away, especially to orphans, the crippled, and the old." American History Illustrated, August 1973, p.

The Yanktons (Lakota Dialect). "The Yanktons followed the Tetons to the Plains, keeping close to the Missouri River where their early contacts with explorers and fur traders were mostly peaceable." American History Illustrated, August 1973, p.

"The 7000 [Santees]...who lived in the southern Minnesota Territory outnumbered all the settlers in Minnesota in 1850. The pioneers feared the Indians then. Often in the night they imagined the savages attacking them as they lay terrified in their isolated cabins. Most encounters between white man and Indian however ended amicably enough. Although the settlers believed that God Is the Refuge of His Saints (a hymn that was popular then), the whites were haunted by fear for they knew in their hearts, they were trespassing on Indian hunting grounds.

1851

The Santee Sioux Treaties of 1851. "On July 23, 1851, [at Traverse des Sioux] the Wahpeton and Sisseton bands of the Upper Sioux ceded to the United States their lands in southern and western Minnesota Territory, as well as some in Iowa and Dakota. The price for this magnificent empire was $1,665,000 in cash and annuities. On August 5 at Mendota the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of Lower Sioux signed away their lands, which embraced most of the area in the southeast quarter of present-day Minnesota. For this, the government was to pay $1,410,000 in cash and annuities over a fifty-year period." The Sioux Uprising of 1862, p.

"...the Santee Sioux were losing their homeland forever...The Santees were of four divisions -- the Mdewakantons, Wahpetons, Wahpekutes, and Sissetons. They were woodland Sioux but kept close ties and shared a strong tribal pride with their blood brothers of the prairies, the Yanktons and the Tetons. The Santees were the people of the farther end, the frontier guardians of the Sioux domain...As the result of two deceptive treaties, the woodland Sioux surrendered nine-tenths of their land and were crowded into a narrow strip of territory along the Minnesota River." Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

"In all, the Sioux ceded almost 24,000,000 acres of rich agricultural land, which was opened to white settlement a year later. The treaties left these Indians -- numbering some seven thousand -- two reservations, each twenty miles wide and about seventy miles long, bordering the upper Minnesota River. There the federal government established two administrative centers known as the Upper (or Yellow Medicine) and Lower (or Redwood) agencies. That serving the Upper Sioux was placed near the mouth of the Yellow Medicine River below present-day Granite Falls, while the Lower Sioux Agency was erected about thirty miles down the Minnesota near what is now Redwood Falls.

"The Upper Sioux considered the land assigned them -- from Lake Traverse to the Yellow Medicine River -- acceptable as a reservation, since it included the sites of their old villages. The Lower Sioux, however, voiced some dissatisfaction with their new domain, which stretched from the Yellow Medicine some sixty miles down the Minnesota River to Little Rock Creek about eight miles northwest of present-day New Ulm. The reserve was on the prairie, far from their favored woodlands, and they moved to the tract reluctantly.

"Besides resenting the location of the reserves, the Indians believed that they had been cheated in other ways during the transactions in 1851. At Traverse des Sioux, they asserted, the whites had tricked them into signing a traders' paper which had never been explained to them. It gave to traders and half-breeds for claims against the Indians some four hundred thousand dollars, which would otherwise have been paid to the tribes in cash." The Sioux Uprising of 1862, pp.2-3

1852

The Lars Hansen Schol Family Emigrates From Norway. While attending St. Olaf College in 1946-47 the editor's sister, Dona Christine Renne Meland, wrote My Family History in which she describes the emigration of her father's paternal grandmother's family -- the Lars Hansen Schol family:

"In the year 1852 a small sailing vessel left Toten, Norway, for America. On board this boat was my great grandmother Renne, then just a five year old girl, and her parents and two of her uncles."

Dona erred in saying the vessel left Toten. Toten is not a seaport. It is a church parish which was established in 1695, in Norway's Oppland County. Toten was divided in 1831, into Ost (East) Toten and Vestre (West) Toten.

In 1852, the Lars Hansen and Karine Olsdatter family of Skiøl farm emigrated from Norway to America where they acquired the surname Schol.

Ringsaker Church, Lake Mjösa, and Toten Parish. Doris Briggs -- whose ancestors emigrated from Norway in 1851 -- went to Norway in 1968, in search of ancestral roots. In Briggs' book, From There to Here, she describes a visit to the Ringsaker Church on July 18, 1968, as follows:

"We had driven our rented car from Oslo that day through intermittent rain showers towards the north where there were dark, shadowy shapes rising in the far distance. Ringing our destination, the mountains were beckoning us to the land of Sigrid Undset and Peer Gynt...

"The next stop would be the village of Ringsaker...Suddenly we came upon the sign Ringsaker Kirke and we looked toward the left. We were thrilled to see a beautiful old spired church, white and starkly dramatic with its stand of tall pine trees and large cemetery, facing the sparkling blue of the lake. As we stopped the car we exclaimed over the spire. Medieval figures of cattle, birds, and ships were fashioned out of bronze. They were mounted on all four sides of the spire. The entrance of the church faced Lake Mjosa [say: Me-u-sah]. As we approached, we noted the walls of the church were very thick, probably 12 to 18 inches. The walls were faced with some cement-like material. Windows were small and set deep toward the inside. The door was huge, made from thick wooden planks, covered with bronze on the outside and secured with a massive lock...

"The Ringsaker Kirke was a fortress cathedral, said the young lady who waited for us in the vestibule. We would be her last tour before closing, but she made us feel welcome to stay as long as we liked. She handed out the bulletins and cards about the old place and told us in faultless English that it was built in 1150. One of Norway's earliest Christian churches, it was one of the first to be built according to the European plan after the period of the stavkirke. The figures on the spire were derived from worship symbols of the pre-Christian era.

"We passed through into the nave. We were impressed with the hand-hewn pews and supports. They looked very old and sturdy and very well-worn. Stained-glass windows lent a soft glow in the dim interior. On the altar were gold appointments: candlesticks, communion cup and crucifix. The cover was all finely embroidered white linen. On the back ledge of the altar sat a 16th century Flemish Triptych. Its three panels painted in somber rich colors showed scenes of the Crucifixion. The small baptismal font, covered in gold leaf, was a little jewel shining there in the dim light of late afternoon. The pulpit, elaborately carved, and also overlaid with gold leaf, rose appropriately to the right of the altar and at the correct heavenly height from whence the minister or 'press' could deliver his exhortations. I went to sit down by myself.

"As I gazed at the baptismal font, I could almost see someone holding a babe. I could see worshippers taking communion. They were shadowy figures. I had hazy views of loose peasant garb, kerchiefs on the women's heads. I thought of couples standing before the altar exchanging marriage vows. All at once in the stillness of the church, I felt my life was somehow touching the lives of those shadowy people who had gone before. These were the great-grandparents of my great-grandparents, people about whom I had never even thought until this moment. I was seized with a longing to know more...

"Leaving the church, I walked around the churchyard looking for names on the tombstones. Aside from one fairly recent stone..., there were no names I could claim. The churchyard faced Lake Mjosa, with the west shoreline in the background.

"This area to the west was Vardal...Toten! I remember hearing both Grandma Tillie and Grandma Pauline chuckle, Jeg er ifra Toten, jag (I am from Toten, I)...The words were echoes from childhood...I remember being told that Grandpa Andreas...was from Vardal. Now I could see the relationship between Vardal where Andreas was raised and the land where...Anna Maria was raised. My [cousin's]...story about their courting came back to me...they had been known in Norway for their habit of calling to one another as Andreas rowed his fishing boat on the lake and Anna Maria waited on the part of the Vardal shore where her home is still standing. Both had relatives in Ringsaker. There must have been much going back and forth, in the summer by boat, in winter by sleigh or skis across the frozen water.

"The spire of the Ringsaker Church was always in view from Anna Maria Andersdatter's porch...The sound of its bell, wafting across the lake at the appointed hours, was uplifting to the spirits of the hard-working 'husmenn' or cotters. No wonder Anna Maria spoke with nostalgia about the Kjerke and the lake to her children. She, and Andreas too, must have known many times of homesickness for such a beautiful place." From There to Here, p.

Stimulating Scandinavian Emigration. "From the beginning a question was raised: Did the owners and skippers offer transportaion to people who had decided to emigrate, or did they stimulate emigration to fill their ships? They might, for example, advertise that the rapid sailing ship Richard Cobden would leave in mid-April, that the ship was copper-sheathed and had a high, airy room between decks, well suited for passenger traffic...But the skippers sometimes went further, for the newspapers did not always reach their customers. In winter, agents traveled up the valleys and into the fjords to sign up passengers. In the spring of 1843 the newspapers in Bergen accused several captains in the town of regularly carrying on emigrant recruiting -- soul buying they called it." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, p. 56

Preparing for the Voyage. "The trip that faced the emigrants in the days of the sailing ship was a long one, and many preparations had to be made before they could leave. A farm owner had to sell his farm with all its stock and tools, with house and chattels, most of it at auction. The emigrants also had to equip themselves with provisions for the entire voyage -- non-perishables like dried pork and mutton, salted meat and herring, peas, grain, potatoes and flatbread...,flour for porridge, butter, whey cheese, possibly even sour milk and beer. Then they had to have sheepskin coverlets and blankets, since they furnished their own bedding, and they had to have enough cooking utensils to prepare food for eight, ten, or twelve long weeks.

"In the early years...they brought a number of objects they thought they might need after they arrived...a spinning wheel, an iron griddle, a good harness, or an axe.

"All this baggage...had to be freighted down through the valleys [to the city where the emigrant boat was docked] and out through the fjords." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, pp. 57-58

The Lars Hansen Schol Family Departed Norway from Oslo. The vessel which carried Dona's great-grandmother's family -- the Lars Hansen Schol family -- in 1852, most likely, departed Norway from Oslo (previously named Christiana).

Lars Hansen and Karine Schol were both 31 when they left Norway with their two children -- Ole Larsen (the first born) and Clara Larsdatter, who celebrated her fifth birthday on August 12th, 1852.

Sailing from Oslo to Quebec in the Mid-19th Century. "Skilling-Magazin carried a story...about the emigrant traffic in Christiania. The journalist found a motley collection of boxes and chests down on the quay. They were marked with Norwegian names and American addresses: Milwaukee, North America, Chicago, Madison, or Minnesota. He saw sacks of potatoes, kettles and pans, mattresses and sheepskin coverlets, jugs of brandy and kegs of herring in a profusion he described as chaos. Ice still covered the fjord, and two large ferries conveyed one load after the other to the firm edge of the ice. From there the provisions were pushed out to the ship on long sleds, hoisted on board with block and tackle, lowered into the hatches and distributed. What the emigrants needed on the journey went to the room between the decks; the rest was stored in the hold.

"The journalist also inspected the room between the decks where the emigrants were busy arranging themselves. He noted that two rows of bunks were fastened to the walls on the starboard and port sides of the ship from aft to fore, with space for five persons in each bunk. He saw children's heads projecting from these family bunks, while the adults were busy dragging their belongings around hammering in nails and pegs for their bags and legs of mutton, filling two bunks with straw, and putting their blankets and coverlets in place.

"...the emigrants were merry and happy at their departure and...old folks talked as if they would be rejuvenated once they got to America. Other reports tell of sadness and solemnity, of last speeches, often by a pastor, and the distribution of religious tracts. undoubtedly excitement and expectation characterized the young more than the adults, who must have believed that their departure was for the good but who knew they would never again see what they were now leaving behind. They sailed through the fjords and the sounds, the coast disappearing into the sea behind them after some hours or days. Many of them were now at sea for the first time in their lives, with ocean as far as the eye could see." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, pp. 58-59

On Board. "The emigrants lived on the ship for at least two months. They prepared their food and ate on the chests that served as tables and chairs. They tried to keep themselves and their children reasonably clean. They rested and slept in the straw between decks, and came up for fresh air and a minimum of exercise on the deck.

"They had to organize their existence in a floating, temporary, miniature society, had to adjust to each other and find modes of cooperation and coexistence within the constricted space allotted them, physically as well as socially. No doubt the restrictions on their activities were felt more acutely by the men than the women, at least the married ones, who might be more troubled by lack of space than by lack of tasks. It was helpful that whole companies were often from the same communities and neighborhoods: they knew each other and had common customs. But their migration had begun; from day to day, almost without their being aware of it, they were gradually changing. They were no longer the same people." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, pp. 60-61

Clara Larsdatter Schol Wants to Return to Grandma. "...[Clara] did not want to come to America with her parents...She said if they would throw her in the water she would get back to her Grandma." The Krogstads: A Book of Memories, p.

The Passage was Sometimes Easy, Sometimes Difficult. "To judge by letters and other accounts the passage was often remarkably easy. Once seasickness had been mastered, and when the winds were not too stiff, spirits were gay and lively...

"But the weather was not always good, and when the wind blew up, the passengers had to stay below decks. The hatches were battened down, and the room became dark and close, the air bad. If this lasted a long time, it could have dire consequences for the passengers' health. There was a doctor on board only if a Norwegian physician happened to be going to America to study or settle there. The skipper usually had a medicine chest and prescribed what he thought would be useful when anyone complained of headache or loose bowels.

"The latter symptoms could be a danger signal and might mean that a dysenteric fever was about to break out. Another much feared contagious disease was called ship's fever, probably paratyphus or typhoid fever. Such diseases were hard to control, for the ships were poorly equipped with toilets, and rarely were there sickrooms where the infected could be isolated. Old people and little children had the least resistance to the strains and hardships of the voyage.

"And so the deaths began. Caskets were nailed together, the skipper performed the rites, the flag was lowered to half mast, and the corpse was lowered into the sea. The emigrants seem to have taken the deaths, at least when it was not their kin, as something one had to expect. Everything went well and happily for the passengers aboard, wrote one in 1851, if we except that we had seven deaths on the trip over." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, pp. 58-61

The Lars Hansen Schol Family Arrives in Milwaukee. "...[The Larsen Hansen Schol family] sailed for ten weeks and finally landed in Quebec, Canada -- from there they went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin." My Family History, p. 4

The Journey Was Not Over When The Emigrants Landed. "...the journey was not over when the emigrants landed in New York or Quebec. They still might have a thousand or more miles to go, using the most varied means of transportation. From New York they moved by steamer, by canal boat, and again by steamer. From Quebec they had to take various steamboats up through the Welland Canal and across the Great Lakes. During the 1850s the Canadian railroad network was developed, and when direct connections were established by rail from Quebec to Detroit, most of the emigrants shortened their travel time considerably by using it." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, p. 62

"When the Norwegians in the 1850s had come as far as Milwaukee or Chicago, they felt they had virtually reached their goal. Here they might be met by people they knew, who had come to transport them in a cart or wagon hitched to a team of oxen." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, p. 63

"In this way, after three or four months of strenuous travel, a company of Norwegians would find themselves in a Norwegian pioneer settlement, bearing a strange-sounding name like Muskego or Koshkonong. For most of them the journey had been a great strain. I'll never do it again, wrote one of them to his family back home. Others sent useful advice for those who might come later. When the emigrants had conveyed all the greetings from family and friends, when they had reported all the news from the old home community, and when they had had a chance to rest up, they began the workaday life in the new land." Norway to America, A History of the Migration, pp. 63-64

White Men Invade Minnesota's Suland. "No sooner was the signing of the treaties with the Sioux in 1851 noised abroad then enterprising white men began to cross the Mississippi and invade the Suland. They made their claims, opened roads, cut timber, and built houses and even mills. They naturally followed up the valleys of the streams flowing into the Mississippi, that of the St. Peter's [By joint resolution on June 19, 1852, Congress ordered that the St. Peter's River be designated in public records as the Minnesota River] being best known through traders and missionaries. There is a tradition that some impatient immigrants actually staked out their claims to cover the garden patches of the Indians. The Indian agent exerted himself in vain to prevent this unlawful occupancy of the Indian country, [but] the military at Fort Snelling refused to cooperate."

"In his report, dated September 1, 1852, [Indian agent] Nathaniel McLean states that there could not have been less than five thousand white intruders resolved to occupy the country, treaty, or no treaty.

"...the treaties were not concluded till the fall of 1852 when the Indians consented to the Senate amendments..."