  IN about 1855 Mr. W. H. Grimshaw came to live in Minneapolis where the Plaza Hotel now stands. Then Loring Park and the vicinity was farm land, and an Indian named Keg-o-ma-go-shieg had his wigwam at the corner of Oak Grove and Fifteenth streets. Mr. Grimshaw learned from him that Indians had lived on this spot for generations, but that since the land had come under government control, most of the Indians had gone. Keg-o-ma-go-shieg, because he loved so much the spot where he was born, returned every summer to fish in the lakes and hunt in the woods of his beloved birthplace. There is no tablet or monument to this last Indian in Loring Park, but there is one to Ole Bull facing Harmon Place. Would it not be more fitting to have a statue of Sitting Bull? Also there used to be an old, well-traveled Indian trail through the Park, of which there is no trace now, although some people have searched carefully for it. According to Mr. Grimshaw there used to be countless passenger pigeons, which in the migratory season roosted in the trees of Loring Park. At noon the sky would be darkened by a cloud of these birds, the air would be filled with the sound of their wings, and they would alight on the branches of the trees, nearly breaking them down by their great weight. Then there was the old brook that flowed out of Loring Park lake, across Harmon Place, under the present automobile buildings, and emptied into Basset’s Creek. The old military road from Minnehaha Falls to Fort Ridgley ran through this section, roughly along Hennepin Avenue. West of Hennepin Avenue was Ruber’s pasture, where cows and horses used to graze, and where the Parade Grounds, the Armory, the Cathedral, and Northrop School now are. Mr. J. S. Johnson was the first white settler in this part of Minneapolis. In 1856 he bought one hundred and sixty acres, of which a part is now Loring Park, for one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. |
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