Mouth of the Saint Peter’s, July, 1846.

The scenery between Lake Pepin and the Saint Croix is not as lofty nor as picturesque as that we have already passed, but its interest is greatly enhanced by the greater number of Indians that we here meet. The Red Wing village is nearly midway between the two lakes mentioned, and contains about six hundred souls. A short distance from this village are two isolated mountains, whence may be seen a most magnificent panorama of the wilderness, and when viewed at sunset presents more the appearance of dream land than reality. These mountains from time immemorial have been used as the altars where Indian war parties have offered up their sacrifices, previous to going to battle. At the present time, however, their only inhabitants are rattlesnakes, which slumber on their sunny slopes or in the clefts of the rocks during the long summer. And thus is it throughout the world, in the wilderness as well as the city, death and the beautiful are ever linked together in an unbroken brotherhood.

I only remained at the Red Wing village one night, but such a night I hope never to pass again. A perfect outcast of a trader had furnished the Indians with “fire-water,” and the whole posse of them were perfectly mad, for spirituous liquor always makes the poor Indian miserably crazy. For want of a better place, I had to sleep in the cabin of this very trader. My bed was on the floor, while my host and his family occupied a couple of beds in opposite corners of the only room in the house. And such horrible yelling and screaming as I heard during the first half of that night, I can never forget. The noises were perfectly unearthly and devilish. Now, you might hear the clashing of knives, as some of the more desperate spirits came together in a fight; and now you might hear the sobbings and moanings of a miserable woman, as she exposed and mutilated her body, to perpetuate the memory of a dead husband or child.

But there was one incident which actually made my hair stand out like the quills of the porcupine. I should premise that the few white people of the wilderness never think of locking their doors at night; and also that the Indians of this region claim it as a privilege to enter and depart from your cabin whenever they please, and their intrusions are always looked upon as matters of course. It was somewhat after midnight, and the yelling of the savages had partly subsided. I had just fallen into a doze, when I was startled by the stealthy opening of our cabin door and the tread of a muffled footstep. It was intensely dark, but I knew it was an Indian, and thought that somebody was about to be murdered. The object in the room made just noise enough to rack my brain, and then was perfectly still. I listened, and with hardly a particle of breath in my body,—I still kept listening,—until I actually fainted upon my pillow with excess of fear. Finally I slept, and my dreams were of blood, and blood only. The first peep of day, however, awakened me, when lo! directly at my side, flat on the floor, was a huge black Indian, breathing in his deep slumber like a porpoise. The first intelligence that I heard on going out of the door was, that one Indian had been killed during the night, and that another was at that moment in the agonies of death. As may be supposed, I left the Red Wing village with pleasure.

Lake Saint Croix empties into the Mississippi, and its principal inlet is a river of the same name which rises in the vicinity of Lake Superior. This is the valley through which the traders and Indians have been in the habit of passing, for a century past, on their way from the western prairies to Lake Superior, and from the lake back again to the prairies. The river is only distinguished for one waterfall of uncommon beauty. The lake is about twenty-five miles long, from two to five wide, and surrounded with charming scenery. The water is clear but of a rich brown color, and well supplied with fish, of which the trout is the most abundant.

At the outlet of this lake, I visited another encampment of Sioux Indians, where I saw a noted chief, named Little Crow. He was a handsome man, but both of his arms had recently been broken by a rifle ball, which was shot by one of his own brothers,—who was envious of his station as chief. As a punishment for his wickedness Little Crow had ordered four bullets to be fired at his brother, which of course numbered him with the dead. I saw his new-made grave, and his youthful wife wailing over it, like one that was sorrowing without hope.

From Saint Croix to Saint Peter’s, the banks of the Mississippi are steep, but only about one hundred and fifty feet in height. The river is here studded with islands whose shadowy recesses are cool during the hottest weather;—and a more delightful region for the botanist to ramble cannot be found elsewhere on the face of the earth. The water is clear as crystal, and its bosom is generally covered with water-fowl, from the graceful snow-white swan to the mallard and wood-duck. Isolated Indian wigwams are frequently seen here, pitched on the margin of the stream, and at the foot of vine-covered precipices.

But there are three landscape views connected with this portion of the Mississippi, which I thought perfectly magnificent. I witnessed them all during a single afternoon, and in the light of a mellow sunshine. The first was of a rolling prairie that faded away to the western sky, until its outline was actually lost in the hazy atmosphere. Not a solitary tree did I behold, but a perfect sea of grass, that was delightfully relieved with flowers of every variety of shape and color. Occasionally a breeze would pass across the scene, causing unnumbered tiny billows to quiver over the surface of mightier ones, which seemed to be careering onward to some unknown shore. Covering the foreground of this picture might be seen an immense flock of grouse, feeding, or chasing each other in sport; and then, an occasional prairie squirrel as it sat at the entrance of its hole; while in the middle distance a robber wolf glided over one of the ridges of the prairie, with his form pictured against the sky. The lone lost feeling which possessed my heart, when I thought of the great prairie-world, then lying before me, I cannot describe; it was composed of delight and melancholy, of perfect confidence and tormenting fear.

Another picture which I witnessed from a commanding hill top, was of an untrodden wilderness of woods, reaching to the extreme horizon on the north. Owing to my elevated position the forest-world appeared perfectly level, and, excepting one barren ledge, was without a single object to mar the monotony of the scene. On that ledge, however, with the aid of my glass I could just discern the dead body of a deer, with a black bear reclining at its side, as if sated with his feast; while in his neighborhood were standing some thirty vultures in a state of delightful anticipation.

The other scene which I mentioned, was witnessed from the lofty bluff that fronts the mouth of the Saint Peter’s river. Far beneath my feet glided the majestic Mississippi;—on my right stood the handsome and commanding barracks of Fort Snelling, surmounted by the stars and stripes; on my left, the naked peak of the Pilot’s Nob, with a cluster of trading-houses at its base; directly before me, winding away like a mighty serpent between a multitude of islands, lay the deep and turbid Saint Peter’s river; and far beyond,—far as the eye could reach—the prairie land, whose western boundary is the Rocky Mountains.

The landscape was indeed glorious, and there was something to gratify my national pride in the flag that fluttered in the breeze; but when I thought of the business of that Fort and the end for which the people of the hamlet were living in the wilderness, the poetry of the scene was marred, and I longed to dive still deeper in the wild world which reposed so peacefully before me.