Chippewa County, Minnesota

CHIPPEWA COUNTY

This county, established February 20, 1862, and organized March 5, 1868, is named for the Chippewa river, which here joins the Minnesota. The river was called Manya Wakan (of remarkable or wonderful bluffs) by the Sioux. Its present name was also given by the Sioux, because the country of their enemies, the Chippewa or Ojibway Indians, extended southwestward to the headwaters of this stream, at Chippewa lake in Douglas county. As the Chippewa river of Wisconsin received its name from war parties of this tribe descending it to the Mississippi, likewise the river in Minnesota was named for this tribe, whose warriors sometimes made it a part of their "war road" to the Minnesota valley, coming with their canoes from Leech lake and Mille Lacs by the Crow Wing, Long Prairie, and Chippewa rivers. The earliest publication of the name, Chippewa river, was by Keating and Nicollet, though only the other Sioux name, Manya Wakan, is given on Nicollet's map. Ojibway is more accurately the aboriginal tribal title, which is anglicized as Chippewa, with the final vowel long. The form Ojibway has been used in nearly all the publications of the Minnesota Historical Society. It is asserted by Warren, the Ojibway historian, that this name means "to roast till puckered up," referring to the torture of prisoners taken in war.

By the early French voyageurs and writers the Ojibways were commonly called Saulteurs, from their once living in large numbers about the Sault Ste. Marie. Their area, however, also comprised a great part of the shores of lakes Huron and Superior, with the adjoining country to variable distances inland. During the eighteenth century they much extended their range southwestward, driving the Sioux from the wooded part of Minnesota, and also spreading across the Red river valley to the Turtle mountain on the boundary between North Dakota and Manitoba.

William W. Warren, whose mother was an Ojibway, prepared, in 1851-53, an extended and very valuable "History of the Ojibway Nation," chiefly relating to its part in Minnesota and Wisconsin, which was published in 1885 as Volume V of the Minnesota Historical Society Collections. In Volume IX of the same series, published in 1901, Rev. Joseph A. Gilfillan, who during twenty-five years was a very devoted missionary among the Ojibways in the White Earth Reservation and other large parts of northern Minnesota, contributed a paper of 74 pages, vividly portraying the habits and mode of life of this people, their customs and usages in intercourse with each other and with the white people, their diverse types of physical and mental development and characteristics, and much of their recent history. The next paper in the same volume, 14 pages, is by Bishop Whipple, entitled "Civilization and Christianization of the Ojibways in Minnesota."

TOWNSHIPS AND VILLAGES

Information of the derivations and meanings of names in this county has been gathered from "History of the Minnesota Valley," 1882, in pages 913-937; from "History of Chippewa and Lac qui Parle counties," by L. R. Moyer and O. G. Dale, joint editors, two volumes, 1916; and from Frank E. Bentley, judge of probate, J. J. Stennes, county auditor, and Elias Jacobson, clerk of the court, also much from the late Lycurgus R. Moyer, court commissioner and editor of the recently published county history, each of these being interviewed during my visit to Montevideo in July, 1916.

ASBURY, a Great Northern railway station, was named, like the villages and postoffices of this name in nine other states, in honor of Francis Asbury, the first Methodist Episcopal bishop in the United States, who was born in England, 1745, and died in Virginia, 1816. He was sent by John Wesley as a missionary to the American Colonies in 1771.

BIG BEND township, first settled in July, 1867, organized April 7, 1874, received its name for the bend of the Chippewa river in the north part of this township.

CKARA CITY, a railway village on the line of Rheiderland and Stoneham, founded in 1887, was named in honor of the wife of Theodor F. Koch, one of the managers for a Holland syndicate buying farm lands and establishing colonies here.

CRATE township was at first named Willow Lake, for the lake, now drained, which was crossed by its south boundary. That name, however, could not be accepted by the state auditor, because it had been previously given to another township of this state. The present name was selected by the citizens July 23, 1888, in compliment to Fanning L. Beasley, an early homesteader in section 4, this being a nickname by which he was generally known. It had reference to his middle name, Lucretius.

GRACE township, first settled in October, 1869, and organized August 9, 1880, was named in honor of Grace Whittemore, daughter of Augustus A. Whittemore, a homesteader in section 8, who was the contractor and builder of the court house in Montevideo.

GRANITE FALLS township, settled in 1866, set apart for organization March 9, 1880, received its name from the rock outcrops and falls of the Minnesota river here. This name is also borne by the adjoining city of Granite Falls, which is the county seat of Yellow Medicine county, and which extends across the river to include a part of section 34 in this township.

HAVELOCK township, settled in June, 1872, organized October 6, 1873, was named by John C. and Aaron J. Mullin, brothers, and other settlers from the eastern provinces of Canada, in honor of the English general, Sir Henry Havelock (b. 1795, d. 1857), the hero who in 1857 relieved the siege of Lucknow, India.

KRAGERO, first permanently settled in 1867-68, organized April 7, 1873, was named for Hans H. Kragero, a pioneer farmer here, whose surname was taken from his native town, the seaport of Kragero in southern Norway, on an inlet of the Skagerrak. He was born June 17, 1841; was a sailor, and afterward lived in Chicago, 1866-69; and came to Minnesota in 1870, settling in section 12 of the south part of this township.

The trading post of Joseph Renville, and the early Presbyterian mission for the Sioux conducted by Williamson and Riggs, 1835-1854, were in what is now section 13 in the southern corner of Kragero, nearly opposite the mouth of the Lac qui Parle river and close southeast from the foot of the lake. The site of the old mission station is marked by a granite block, inscribed "Lac qui Parle Mission, 1835."

LEENTHROP township, settled in 1870, organized January 20, 1872, has probably a Swedish name, anglicized in spelling.

LONE TREE township, organized August 5, 1878, received it name for a lone and tall cottonwood tree near the west end of Bad Water or Lone Tree lake, which tree was a landmark for the first immigrants.

LOURISTON, settled in 1867, organized September 18, 1877, was named in compliment for Laura Armstrong, daughter of Henry Armstrong, who was a homesteader on section 8, and who was elected in the first township meeting as one of its justices and a member of its board of supervisors.

MANDT, first settled in 1869 and organized June 13, 1876, was named in honor of Engelbreth T. Mandt, an early settler in section 30, at whose house the first town meeting was held, in which also he taught the first school in the spring of 1875.

MAYNARD, a railway village in Stoneham, was platted in 1887 by John M. Spicer, of Willmar, superintendent of this division of the Great Northern railway, and was named "in honor of his sister's husband."

MILAN, the railway village of Kragero, was platted December 1, 1880, and was incorporated March 15, 1893. This name of the great city in northern Italy is borne also by villages in twelve other states of our Union.

MINNESOTA FALLS, a railway station in the southern corner of this county, established in 1879, bears the name of a township and former village in Yellow Medicine county, on the opposite side of the Minnesota river, where on a fall or rapids of the river a dam and a sawmill and a flouring mill were built in 1871-72.

MONTEVIDEO, the county seat, was platted May 25, 1870, was incorporated as a village March 4, 1879, and as a city June 30, 1908. This Latin name, signifying "from the mountain I see," or "Mount of Vision," was selected, according to the late L. R. Moyer, by Cornelius J. Nelson, a settler who came here in 1870 from the state of New York, platted additions to the village in 1876 and 1878, and was its president in 1881 and 1885-7. The village and future city "was given its high-sounding appellation by its romantic founders, who were so delighted by the wonderful view gained from the heights overlooking the interlocking valleys of the Minnesota and Chippewa rivers at that point, that they translated their feeling into good, mouth-filling Latin." But this name, while very appropriate on account of the view here, was derived by Nelson from the large South American city, the capital of Uruguay, whence the mayor of that Montevideo about the year 1905 presented the Uruguayan flag to this municipality.

Another good reason for the choice of this name, in allusion to the grand prospect seen from the river bluffs, may have been found in the aboriginal Sioux name of the Chippewa river, before noted as Manya Wakan (meaning wonderful bluffs), quite probably so named by these observing people in their admiration, like our own, for the beautiful and noble panorama here spread around them.

An earlier settlement on the opposite side of the Chippewa river had been platted and named Chippewa City in the autumn of 1868, and the county seat was there until 1870, when it was changed to the new town of Montevideo by an act of the state legislature.

RHEIDERLAND township, organized August 15, 1887, was named by early settlers from Holland, probably taking this name from Rheydt or Rheidt, a city of Rhenish Prussia, about twelve miles east of the Holland boundary, which had a population of 34,000 in 1900.

ROSEWOOD, first settled in 1869, organized September 2, 1871, was named for a village in Ohio, whence several German settlers of this township came.

SPARTA, settled in 1868-9, organized March 22, 1870, was earliest called Chippewa, for the river; was renamed by petition of its people, several of whom had come from Sparta in Wisconsin. The name belonged to a renowned city of ancient Greece, extremely heroic in wars, and it is retained by a modern city partly on the same site, which has about 4,000 people. This township "received the first permanent white settlement in the county, it being within its limits that Chippewa City was situated, and a little later Montevideo."

STONEHAM, organized August 9, 1880, was so named on the suggestion of a settler who came from the town of Stoneham, Mass., near Boston. A further motive for adoption of this name was to honor another of its citizens, Hammet Stone.

TUNSBERG, first settled in the spring of 1865, organized March 21, 1870, is thought to have been named for a locality or a farm in Norway.

WATSON, the railway village of Tunsberg, platted in August, 1879, was named by officers of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railway company.

WEGDAHL, a railway village in the southeast corner of Sparta township, was named in honor of the pioneer farmer on whose land it was platted, Hemming Arntzen Wegdahl, who was the first postmaster there. His surname was probably derived from the farm of his native place in Norway.

WOODS township, settled in 1876, was organized in 1879. "Most of the odd sections were sold to a land syndicate headed by Judge William W. Woods, of Ohio. It was for him that the township was named." (History of Chippewa County, vol. I, page 214.)

STREAMS AND LAKES.

The origin and significance of the name of the Minnesota river, adopted by the state, are presented in the first chapter; the lake of this river, named Lac qui Parle, will be considered in the chapter for the county of that name; and the Chippewa river, giving its name to this county, is fully noticed at the beginning of the present chapter. Hawk creek is translated from the Sioux name, "Chetambe R.," given on Nicollet's map.

Palmer creek was named for Frank Palmer, one of the first settlers there in 1866, and Brofee's creek was likewise named for an early settler, these being tributary to the Minnesota river between Granite Falls and Montevideo.

Spring creek, Dry Weather and Cottonwood creeks, flowing into the Chippewa river, need no explanation.

Shakopee creek and lake, in the north part of Louriston, flowing to the Chippewa river in Swift county, received their name, the Sioux word meaning six, from the Six Mile grove, which borders the river along that distance and reaches from the mouth of Shakopee creek northward into Six Mile Grove township at the center of that county. Another name of the Shakopee lake, in somewhat common use, is Buffalo lake. Black Oak lake, which was mostly in section 12, Sparta, four miles east of Montevideo, has been drained. It was mapped by Nicollet with its equivalent Sioux and English names, "Hutuhu Sapah, or Black Oak L." A grove of about forty acres bordered it, as stated by the late L. R. Moyer, comprising many large bur oaks, but no black oaks, although the latter is generally a common or abundant species of southeastern Minnesota.

Willow lake, previously mentioned in connection with Crate township, as now drained, was named for its willows, of which eight species or more are found frequent or common throughout the state, ranging in size from low shrubs to small trees. Three shrubby willow species and one of tree size are listed in Chapter III of the History of Chippewa County, by the late L. R. Moyer, entitled "The Prairie Flora of Southwestern Minnesota."

Lone Tree lake, which gave its name to a township, as before noted, has also been known as Bad Water lake, being somewhat alkaline.

Epple lake, in sections 20 and 29, Woods, and Norberg lake, in section 26, Stoneham, bear the names of adjacent pioneer settlers.