the counties in the north-central parts of the state in the deep forests. This selection was by no means accidental, since the German agriculturist knew that heavy timber grows only on fertile soil. His progress could, of course, not be so rapid as on prairie land, but the results after laborious industry would be permanently good. R. G. Thwaites,' secretary and superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, makes the following statement concerning the distribution of the Germans in Wisconsin :

The Germans number seventy-five per cent of the population of Taylor County, sixty-five per cent of Dodge, and fifty-five per cent of Buffalo. They are also found in especially large groups in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Jefferson, Outagamie, Fond du Lac, Sauk, Waupaca, Dane, Marathon, Grant, Waushara, Green Lake, Langlade, and Clark counties. There are Germans in every county of the state and numerous isolated German settlements, but in the counties named these people are particularly numerous. Sometimes the groups are of special interest, because the people came for the most part from a particular district in the Fatherland. For instance, Lomira, in Dodge County, was settled almost entirely by Prussians from Brandenburg, who belonged to the Evangelical Association. The neighboring towns of Hermann and Theresa, also in Dodge County, were settled principally by natives of Pomerania. In Calumet County there are Oldenburg, Luxemburg, and New Holstein settlements. St. Kilian, in Washington County, is settled by people from Northern Bohemia, just over the German border. The town of Belgium, Ozaukee County, is populated almost exclusively by Luxemburgers, while Oldenburgers occupy the German settlement at Cedarburg. Three fourths of the population of Farmington, Washington County, are from Saxony. In the same county Jackson is chiefly

1 Preliminary Notes on the Distribution of Foreign Groups in Wisconsin, by Reuben G. Thwaites. (Extract from the Annual Report of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1890, pp. 58–59.)

settled by Pomeranians, while one half of the population of Kewaskum are from the same German province. In Dane County there are several interesting groups of German Catholics. Roxbury is nine tenths German, the people coming mostly from Rhenish Prussia and Bavaria. Germans predominate in Cross Plains, the rest of the population being Irish. The German families of Middleton came from Köln, Rhenish Prussia, and so did those of Berry, a town almost solidly German.

In Wisconsin, whose population is three fourths of foreign origin, the German element has always predominated. The industrial, agricultural, and commercial prominence of the state is due more largely to the Germans than to all other foreign elements combined. They have also been more successful in maintaining their social life than elsewhere, including their introduction of music, their singing-societies, their Turnvereine, their opposition to the Puritanic spirit. The traveler through Wisconsin is now and then impressed with a similarity in landscape to parts of Germany. This is particularly true of the eastern and north-central counties of the state, where, as before mentioned, the Germans are most numerous. The well-kept farms, the neat houses, commonly of light-colored brick, the generous barns, and the normal appearance of order, cleanliness, neatness, and substantial prosperity are as impressive as they are in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, while German traditions and German speech, owing to later settlement, are still more live in Wisconsin than in that earlier stronghold of German influence, the Keystone State.

Minnesota

The history of Wisconsin's neighbor on the west also exhibits an extraordinary development within a few years.

1 Cf. K. Lamprecht, Americana, p. 24 (Freiburg i, B. 1906): “An den schönsten Stellen scheint es, als seien wir nach dem Lande gekommen, wie es

Minnesota was organized as a territory in 1849. The census of the following year gives it 6077 inhabitants.' In the next decade came the record-breaking increase to nearly thirty times that number, viz., 172,023. By December 1, 1862, Minnesota' had sent 11,877 men into the Union army, and Governor Ramsey could truthfully say that Minnesota had sent a larger number of men into the field than it had had inhabitants in 1850; the fact is, she sent nearly twice as many.

The German population of Minnesota has always been large, though not maintaining the same ratio to the remaining population as in Wisconsin. According to the last census, the total foreign population of Minnesota in 1900 was 1,312,019. Of these 289,822 were of German parentage. The German population was larger than that of any other nationality, but second to the Scandinavian element if Norway and Sweden be taken together as one people.3

Excepting the men in military stations the earliest pioneers of Minnesota were a company of German Swiss, who migrated from the Red River settlements in British America. In 1822 five families went with the American cattle-drivers who returned from the north to the United States. The Swiss received aid at Fort St. Anthony (later called Fort Snelling), at the confluence of the Minnesota

sich der deutsche Landwirt träumen mag : ein verbessertes Deutschland, eine Gegend, von der der Dichter ahnend sagte: Und wie ein Garten war das Land zu schauen. Das ist deutsches Farmerland, Land deutschen Fleiszes." They were located almost without exception on the Mississippi River, as far as it was navigable.

2 Minnesota was admitted as a state in 1858.

Sweden numbered 211,769; Norway, 224,892. The total population of the state, including the native element, was 1,751,394, the population of foreign and mixed parentage being 74.9 per cent of the whole. Cf. Twelfth Census of the United States, vol. i (Population, part 1, pp. 806, 808, 810).

and the Mississippi rivers. There they remained for the winter, and the next spring settled on the military reservation, selling their farm products to the garrison.' In the spring of 1823 thirteen other colonists with their families from the Red River country braved the raw climate, the trackless woods, and hostile savages. They used for transportation the so-called Red River carts, constructed without iron, untanned hides being drawn over the rudely fashioned wooden wheels, in place of tires.' They tarried for some time at Lake Traverse, about two hundred miles from Fort Snelling, and then went on, descending the St. Peter (Minnesota) River, in dug-outs. After a journey of twelve hundred miles through a country, part of which had never been traversed by white men, they reached the Mississippi, and at length St. Louis. The end of their wanderings, however, had not yet come, for they found the climate of St. Louis unsuitable, and decided to settle farther north. They finally located about fifteen miles northeast of La Pointe, where they found employment in the lead-mines. The large migration of the Swiss colony on the Red River did not come, however, until 1826. The severe winter of 1825-26 and the terrible floods of the succeeding spring destroyed the property and food-stores of the Red River colonists and threat.

3

1 The names of the first pioneers of Minnesota were : Louis Massie, Jacob Falstrom, Antoine Pepin, Joseph Rösch, Joseph Bisson. Cf. Der deutsche Pionier, vol. xi, p. 15.

2 Such carts were frequently seen in St. Paul before the opening of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Cf. Der deutsche Pionier, vol. xi, p. 15 (illustration).

The location is about the present town of Galena, in the northwestern corner of the state of Illinois. A number of others of the Red River colonists settled the towns of Bern and Zurich, in Hay Township, Ontario. The leaders of this group of about ten families were: Christian Hay, Georg Hess, and Johann Rothermühl. Cf. Der deutsche Pionier, vol. xi, p. 18.

ened them with famine. In June, 1826, two hundred and forty-three people left Fort Garry, and followed the path of their predecessors by way of the Red River to Lake Traverse, thence to Fort St. Anthony, and then by steamer on the Mississippi to their destination, La Pointe, where they were warmly received by the earlier Swiss settlers. They settled mostly as agriculturists, but some became miners. In the Black Hawk War, six years later, almost all of the men volunteered under Captain Schneider. Their descendants spread over the Northwest, but are to be found in the greatest numbers in the lead districts.

The Red River Swiss, though the first settlers, did not select Minnesota for their permanent homes. The German element had numerous other representatives, however, who pushed the frontier line of Minnesota to the westward. There was the German settlement at Henderson on the St. Peter (Minnesota) River, forming a nucleus for log houses scattered through the forests and over the prairies. But the most interesting settlement, historically, was one farther west, called New Ulm, which to-day is a prosperous town of over 5400 inhabitants. An organization of workingmen in Chicago was responsible for the settlement. Their membership having grown to eight hundred in 1854, their ambition was to leave the city's labor market and establish farm homes on cheap land on the western frontier of Minnesota. The pioneers that were sent to settle had some difficulty in finding their destination, but they were fortunate finally in obtaining a good location on the Cottonwood River, a tributary of the Minnesota. They measured off their land in 1855, but their coming occasioned great wrath among the Sioux, who pulled up the surveyors' stakes and annoyed the whites until the latter drove them off. The dispute was referred to the governor