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IVA. First frame house in Duluth, built by Robert E. Jef

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XVII. Map showing the territorial growth of the United

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XVIII. Portrait of Hon. Alexander Ramsey.

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XIX. Portrait of Gen. William G. Le Duc. XX. Portrait of Hon. Elias Franklin Drake. XXI. Portrait of Hon. Henry Mower Rice. XXII. Portrait of Charles Edwin Mayo...

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HISTORY OF TRANSPORTATION IN MINNESOTA.*

BY GENERAL JAMES H. BAKER.

Our present systems of transportation are the outgrowth of a method and order of evolution, not as slow as the Darwinian, but steadfast in the principles which have governed their development. From the carrier in the Soudan, with his load upon his back, or the Indian in his birch bark canoe, down to the modern splendidly equipped railway, or the superb ocean steamer, it has been a continuous development, and one that has caused and marked the progressive steps of man in trade and commerce, being, in itself, the highest mark of the best civilization. Safe and rapid transportation is the fruitful mother of material wealth. There seems to be no limit to its growth, and we wonder what next will quicken the movement of peoples and of products. In peace, or in war, safe and rapid transit has been the synonym of power. That upon China, a vast empire, but without the means of rapid or reasonable transportation, the very curtain of history should drop as blankly as if it belonged to some other planet, is perfectly apparent; while England, but a little island, by means of every modern system of transportation, has 'carried her arms, her commerce, and her power, into all the regions of the globe, gathering wealth in her movements as a universal carrier.

Rapid transportation sets in motion mighty tides of immigration, and is the spur to all commerce. It tunnels the mountains, it bridges the valleys, it deepens the rivers, it opens the wilderness, and builds new empires. It opened the Suez canal as a new gateway to the opulent East, and will yet cut An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society, Jan. 10, 1898.

its way through the Isthmus of Panama, bringing the two great western oceans together. It brings the most distant nations into familiar intercourse, and banishes the spectre of famine by the even and speedy distribution of every human necessity.

The annual export and import trade of the world has been estimated at $4,250,000,000, a sum so vast as to be practically incalculable; but it all turns upon the single pivot of transportation. Think of its currents and counter-currents, like millions of mighty shuttles, weaving the stately web of the world's trade and wealth! All lands and all seas are now open to the wondrous modern facilities of transportation, and if we can forefend the cataclysm of universal war, where will it all end? These gigantic movements call for merchants and statesmen, clothed with the highest faculties, to meet the weighty problems which this volume of trade, with its intricacies and complexities, is pressing for consideration over the whole sphere of the earth.

To trace the history of our own transportation in the domain of Minnesota is to mark, step by step, our growth and development, from savagery, to our present stature among the great powers of the world. From the "drag" of two poles tied to the pony of a Sioux Indian, to a modern steam engine, or from the birch bark canoe to a "whaleback," or steel steamer on lake Superior, is the very measure of our growth in power and civilization.

ABORIGINAL TRANSPORTATION AND TRAFFIC.

The North American Indians, as found by Columbus, were the earliest historic people who vexed our rivers and lakes with the paddle of the canoe. The Dakota nation and related tribes occupied the Missouri and upper Mississippi basins, while the Ojibways possessed our lake region, at the time of the advent of the French. Learning and research have not yet been able to unravel the mystery of the origin of the Indian race of North America. With their primitive modes of transportation, however, we are all familiar.

Preceding these, in the order of time, were the Mound Builders, a prehistoric race, who conducted traffic on our rivers and

lakes more than a thousand years ago, as proven by the fact that two forests of timber have grown over the tumuli, near the Mississippi river, each forest requiring five hundred years to complete its growth and decay. In these groups of mounds we find virgin copper, that must have come from mines in the region of lake Superior, which establishes the fact of that early traffic across our state. It is now fully substantiated, that they penetrated as far north as Itasca lake, and were on every branch of the Mississippi in its upper basin, and had even pushed their way across the continental divide into Canadian territory. It is also in evidence that the very portages used by our historic Indians were used by the Mound Builders, and that these shortest and most eligible routes between our water ways were discovered and occupied for centuries, and long prior to their occupation by our present Indian tribes.

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Who these people were, we know not; but that they were here is incontestable, and that they had modes of transportation is beyond doubt. Our aboriginal historic Indians, of whom we have some knowledge for about four hundred years, have even no legendary information concerning the people who built the mounds, nor have they themselves ever been mound builders. Our first transportation was conducted, therefore, by that prehistoric people.

But if we desire to be really curious and learnedly inquisitive, we can go back of all these. There are on deposit, in the vaults of this society, prehistoric clipped flints found at Little Falls, Minnesota, which date back probably five thousand years, according to the opinion of Prof. F. W. Putnam, the curator of the Peabody Museum. These implements, found by Miss Frances E. Babbitt, were under sand and gravel, which formed the flood plain of the Mississippi river in the closing stage of the Glacial period. They bring us face to face with Glacial man, existing upon the southern boundary of the great ice sheet which once enveloped the Northwest. Did these people possess the means of transportation of their persons and property? and if so, what? Without pursuing this inquiry, we know enough to be fully assured that a thousand years before the keel of Columbus plowed the waters of the Atlantic in quest of a new world, transportation was in active operation

on the lakes and rivers of Minnesota, by the strange and nameless people who left us the tumuli scattered over our state as the indubitable evidence of their occupancy and activity.

PERIOD OF FRENCH EXPLORATION.

Following the North American Indians, if we look for the first white men who navigated our waters, we find them in Peter Esprit Radisson and his brother-in-law, Sieur des Groseilliers. In their "fourth voyage" these intrepid Frenchmen visited the southwest portion of lake Superior, fourteen years before Joliet and Marquette explored the lower part of the Mississippi river. Radisson and his companion discovered the upper Mississippi in 1659. They coasted along the south shore of lake Superior, probably to the bay, Chequamegon, meaning a "long point of land," near Ashland, in Wisconsin. The Indian name of the bay was Sha-ga-wa-ma-kon. They probably passed to a point between Kettle and Snake rivers, not far from Hinckley, Minnesota, thence to Mille Lacs and thence to discovery and crossing of the Mississippi river, at an unknown and unascertainable point, probably between the mouth of Sauk river and the mouth of Rum river. They were the first white men who visited the country now embraced in our state and paddled the first canoe through our waters. They came, as they themselves state, "in search of fur-bearing countries." It was commerce and trade, therefore, which opened this region to the knowledge of the world.

I am well aware that I stood in this very place January 24, 1879, Henry Hastings Sibley being in the chair, and delivered the annual address, then as now, of this society. My topic being "Lake Superior," I then said: "Religion was the grand inspiring motive which first gave lake Superior to the knowledge of our era." The publication of Radisson's "Voyages,” by the Prince Society in 1885, constrains me to note, in contrast with the missionary labors of Marquette and others, that the earliest Frenchmen to explore the west part of lake Superior, to enter the area of Minnesota, and to see the Mississippi river, were led here for traffic and commercial gain.

There is no sufficient reason, in my judgment, even to attempt the impeachment of Radisson's quaintly told story. It

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