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Title: Fifty Years In The Northwest
Author: William H. C. Folsom
Editor: E. E. Edwards
Release date: June 11, 2011 [eBook #36375]
Most recently updated: March 3, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36375
Credits: Produced by Mark C. Orton, Nathan Gibson, Josephine Paolucci
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIFTY YEARS IN THE NORTHWEST ***
Produced by Mark C. Orton, Nathan Gibson, Josephine Paolucci
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.
FIFTY YEARS IN THE NORTHWEST.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND APPENDIX
CONTAINING
REMINISCENCES, INCIDENTS AND NOTES.
BY W. H. C. FOLSOM.
EDITED BY E. E. EDWARDS.
PUBLISHED BY
PIONEER PRESS COMPANY.
1888.
TO THE OLD SETTLERS
OF
WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA,
WHO, AS PIONEERS, AMIDST PRIVATIONS AND TOIL NOT KNOWN TO THOSE OF
LATER GENERATION, LAID HERE THE FOUNDATIONS OF TWO GREAT
STATES, AND HAVE LIVED TO SEE THE RESULT OF THEIR
ARDUOUS LABORS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
WILDERNESS--DURING FIFTY YEARS--INTO A
FRUITFUL COUNTRY, IN THE BUILDING
OF GREAT CITIES, IN THE
ESTABLISHING OF ARTS
AND MANUFACTURES,
IN THE
CREATION OF COMMERCE
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR, W. H. C. FOLSOM.
PREFACE.
At the age of nineteen years, I landed on the banks of the Upper
Mississippi, pitching my tent at Prairie du Chien, then (1836) a
military post known as Fort Crawford. I kept memoranda of my various
changes, and of many of the events transpiring. Subsequently, not,
however, with any intention of publishing them in book form until
1876, when, reflecting that fifty years spent amidst the early and
first white settlements, and continuing till the period of
civilization and prosperity, itemized by an observer and participant
in the stirring scenes and incidents depicted, might furnish material
for an interesting volume, valuable to those who should come after me,
I concluded to gather up the items and compile them in a convenient
form.
As a matter of interest to personal friends, and as also tending to
throw additional light upon my relation to the events here narrated, I
have prefixed an account of my own early life for the nineteen years
preceding my removal to the West, thus giving to the work a somewhat
autobiographical form. It may be claimed that a work thus written in
the form of a life history of a single individual, with observations
from his own personal standpoint, will be more connected, clear and
systematic in its narration of events than if it were written
impersonally.
The period included in these sketches is one of remarkable
transitions, and, reaching backward, in the liberty accorded to the
historian, to the time of the first explorations by the Jesuits, the
first English, French and American traders, is a period of
transformation and progress that has been paralleled only on the
shores of the New World. We have the transition from barbarism to
civilization; we have the subjugation of the wilderness by the first
settlers; the organization of territorial and state governments; an
era of progress from the rude habits of the pioneer and trapper, to
the culture and refinement of civilized states; from the wilderness,
yet unmapped, and traversed only by the hardy pioneer in birch barks
or dog sledges, to the cultivated fields, cobwebbed by railways and
streams furrowed by steamers. It is something to have witnessed a
part, even, of this wonderful transformation, and it is a privilege
and a pleasure to record, even in part, its history.
I have quoted from the most correct histories within my reach, but the
greater part of my work, or of that pertaining to the fifty years just
passed, has been written from personal observation and from
information obtained directly by interview with, or by written
communications from, persons identified in some way with the history
of the country. To those persons who have so freely and generously
assisted me in the collection of material for this work, I hereby
express my thanks. I have relied sparingly on traditions, and, where I
have used them, have referred to them as such.