2000
The Grand Circuit by Brand Frentz (a73)
"The Dakota chose this circle route to take the enemy by surprise and to wreak more destruction while passing through Ojibway lands."
The Voyageurs have been romanticized for their songs and clothing, their deeds and attitudes. Modern paddlers talk about walking the same portage trails that the Voyageurs once walked. We remember their historic routes. But we should also remember that the Voyageurs learned all those trails and routes from the Indians, who were here first. The Indians showed the Voyageurs how to make the canoes, how to paddle them, and where to go. Here is the story of a campaign in which Indians in the old days used their canoes to move across what is now Minnesota.
It was in 1768 that the Mdewakanton Dakota, having been driven out of their center at Kathio near Mille Lacs Lake some 30 years earlier, decided on a major campaign against the Ojibway in one final effort to take back their land, win honor, and get revenge. War parties were formed in the many Dakota villages of Southern and Central Minnesota in early summer. They met at St. Anthony Falls around the time of the solstice. Between 400 and 500 warriors started up the Mississippi, traveling three and four to a boat in 130-150 birch bark canoes.
The ultimate target of the campaign was the key Ojibway village at Sandy Lake near the west end of the Savannah Portage just upstream on the Mississippi from the present-day town of Palisade. That village had been the first Ojibway intrusion into Dakota country, and it was the Sandy Lake band with their allies who defeated the Dakota in the Battle of Kathio.
The canoe-borne army saw no enemy during the trip from St. Anthony to the mouth of the Crow Wing River. At that point, instead of continuing up the Mississippi on the shortest route to Sandy Lake, they turned up the Crow Wing. Their intention was to "make the grand circuit by Gull, Leech, Cass, and Winnepegoshish Lakes, and descending the Mississippi from its head," come upon the Sandy Lake Ojibway from an unexpected direction (Warren, 224). The Dakota chose this circle route to take the enemy by surprise and to wreak more destruction while passing through Ojibway lands.
The first portage was at the north end of Gull Lake, a long carry to Sibley Lake probably using Mayo for part of the distance. They then crossed the height of land to Upper Hay Lake. In the town of Pequot Lakes today, there is a historical marker about this in Sibley Park. It honors the passage of this enormous party of 400-500 armed Dakota warriors and their canoes in 1768. Imagine the congestion on that portage!
The Dakota moved north along a series of crossings and portages through Whitefish Lake, up the Pine River, past Ada, Hand, and Hay lakes. As they entered Ojibway territory the war party set out warriors on foot, to run the woods in search of the enemy. They drew their first blood in the next lake, killing an Ojibway hunter named Wabedo, which is the lake’s name today. In the next lake they killed three Ojibway boys on what is today called Little Boy Lake. The huge war party continued on, marauding as they went, down Boy River and into Leech Lake.
There are different opinions about the route taken by the Dakota next. Warren was told that they went west across Leech, took a short portage from Portage Lake into Cass Lake, and from there began descending the Mississippi (Warren, 225). It seems more likely, as Zappfe says, that they cut some 40 miles off by going down Leech Lake River to the Mississippi near present-day Deer River (Zapffe, 74).
Some distance downstream from what Warren calls the "Falls of Puk-a-gum-ah," where Grand Rapids is today, two Ojibway hunters spotted the huge Dakota party (Warren, 225). A desperate chase followed. The large Dakota war canoes were faster than the Ojibway tandem boat. But the Ojibway were able to escape because they knew the portages across the numerous long meanders of the river in this stretch and the Dakota did not.
Unfortunately, when the two Ojibway hunters arrived at Sandy Lake village that night they found that many warriors had gone south, ironically, on a campaign against the Dakota, and most of the rest were incapacitated by liquor. Nonetheless, Warren reports, the Ojibway were able by "desperate efforts" to hold off the Dakota and prevent a complete massacre (Warren, 226-227).
The attackers withdrew to continue down the Mississippi in triumph. They had done much damage and were bringing a large number of prisoners, including a group of 30 Ojibway women captured in the woods at Sandy Lake. Ojibway scalps mounted on poles adorned the lead canoes of the flotilla. Each night the warriors danced in celebration.
The victory procession did not last long. The band of some 60 Ojibway warriors who had gone south discovered where the Dakota had camped earlier at the Crow Wing confluence with the Mississippi. They determined that the war party had gone up the Crow Wing, so they reasoned that they would either come back by that same route or return down the Mississippi. If the Ojibway waited, they could meet them.
Meet them they did, resulting in a great battle in which the Ojibway were far outnumbered but had the decisive advantages of surprise and position. The massive confusion when the ambushers opened fire was worsened by the fact that the Dakota canoes were carelessly traveling in close formation, some even holding each others’ gunwales. This made them especially vulnerable to gunfire, and to the captive Ojibway women, who capsized the boats they were in as soon as they saw their own tribesmen.
Regrouping after the initial disastrous losses and confusion, the Dakota came back and fought hard. But they could not dislodge the entrenched enemy. In the night after the third day of fierce fighting the Dakota withdrew, paddling their remaining canoes on down the Mississippi.
After the battle at Crow Wing the Dakota survivors, about half of the original war party and just a few captives, continued to St. Anthony Falls and on to their various villages (Zapffe, 76). The Grand Circuit Campaign of 1768, a canoe trip of impressive dimensions, ended. After this decisive defeat the Dakota moved their villages further south, into the Minnesota River valley.
A canoe trip of impressive dimensions?
The main journey, not counting travel to the assembly point, which could have added 50-100 miles on each end, started and finished at St. Anthony Falls. How many miles did they travel? It is about 140 miles from St. Anthony to the mouth of the Crow Wing River, and maybe 20 more up that river and Gull River to Gull Lake. In other words, the Dakota warriors began the trip by paddling some 160 miles against the current. Good warm-up exercise.
Going from Gull Lake to the Upper Mississippi involved numerous portages as well as many miles on the water, about 100 by the assumed route (140 if they went by Cass and Winnie). After this point, having traveled some 260 miles to reach the Upper Mississippi at the mouth of Leech Lake River, the Dakota could tell themselves that it would all be downstream now. The paddle to Sandy Lake village was 105 miles, and the happy victory trip from there to the mouth of the Crow Wing was another 116 miles.
As the Dakota drifted unknowingly into the ambush at Crow Wing, they had some 480 miles of canoe travel behind them. After the bitter battle they limped home, repeating the 140 miles to St. Anthony and rounding out their total trip at 620 miles (1,000 kilometers!). Just the bare outline of this journey is remarkable. And of course, they had no maps, no compasses. They knew the land and the water and the routes from first-hand experience, from walking it and paddling it before they were driven south. They made a huge loop through Minnesota’s northern lake country—the "Grand Circuit." The Dakota army moved by canoe, and it moved very effectively across Minnesota.
Questions & Answers
Was this the largest canoe flotilla ever?
No. In the early 17th Century an Ojibway fleet of some 700 canoes went east from Sault St. Marie and fought the dread Iroquois on Lake Ontario near present-day Toronto! (Zapffe, 115)
How fast did the Dakota war party go?
It is impossible to say from the written records, which are based on the oral traditions of people who marked time by moons. My estimate is that the round trip from and back to St. Anthony Falls took the Dakota party around two months. The Indians, it is reported, knew the loop from Crow Wing around through Sandy Lake and back as a seven-day paddle (Zapffe, 72). That trip is 340 miles, which would be nearly 50 miles a day, with a swarm of portages in the first leg. Who knows? They were most likely very efficient and certainly tireless paddlers.
Could the same trip be made today?
Yes, but the Lakes Region near Brainerd would be tricky. It would certainly be noisy and dangerous crossing Highway 371 on the portage between Sibley and Upper Hay Lakes through the town of Pequot Lakes. But the Big River, the Father of Waters, would be a satisfying challenge going upstream, pretty in the northern reaches, and interesting coming back into settled country, passing through St. Cloud, the outer suburbs, and then into Minneapolis itself. And after this trip we would have a better appreciation of the first canoeists in Minnesota. Their feet made the portages.
Note:
My account is based on two historical records, close study of maps, and personal familiarity with the country and waters described. The first book is the famous "History of the Ojibway People" by William Whipple Warren, written in the 1850s by a brilliant Minnesota frontiersman of half-Ojibway background on the basis of interviews with Ojibway elders. The second is "Indian Days," written by the late Dr. Carl Zapffe of Nisswa, a gifted and iconoclastic engineer and metallurgist who loved history. The most impressive site to visit is Crow Wing State Park, where the Ojibway ambush occurred. Every detail is easy to imagine as you stand on the steep slope where the Ojibway warriors lay hidden, looking down at the waters of the Great River swirling around the bend, waiting for 150 heavily loaded, triumphantly decorated Dakota war canoes to appear.
Works Cited
Warren, William Whipple. History of the Ojibway People, 1984, St. Paul MN, Minnesota Historical Society, 411 pp.
Zapffe, Carl Andrew. Indian Days in Minnesota’s Lake Region, 1991, Pequot Lakes MN, Echo Publishing Company, 220 pp.
