The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1898-06-23
CLEvELAND's STRING.

REDWOOD FALLS, June IL, 1898.
CLEvELAND'S STRING.
Thinks that Mankato Will Not Per-
manently Exist.
Harold l. Cleveland, an old St. Paul
newspaper man, and later manager
of spicy paintings for syndicate of
firms in various cities of the United
States, and also son-in-law of the
late E. P. Freeman of Mankato, at one
time register of the land Office in this
city, recently wrote quite lengthy
article for the Chicago Times Herald
on the statement that no town built
upon the banks of river could per-
manently exist, and dwelt on Mankato,
where he married his wife, at length:
Here is what he wrote:
'In Minnesota there is town called
Mankato. It is built on part of the old
bottoms of the Minnesota river. Into
that river empty the Rapidan, the LIE
Sueur, the Blue Earth called in 100
by LIE Hitler, the Terre de Bleu.
Mankato might not be upon the map
if it were not for the fact that thirty
eight Indians we're hanged there and
that in 1871 the grasshoppers ate up
everything interesting in the COM
munity. Only the inhabitants and the
houses we're left. The Younger boys
once planned to raid the place, but
owing to the penuriousness of por-
ton of the population changed their
plans and entered the State pen
itentiary for life.
"Mankato was laid out before the
Indian massacre in just about such q
pocket or trap as Shawneetown was in.
High bluffs on the east and west,
bluffs to the north and south, save
where the river entered the pocket and
left. Before the whites made the set
Element the Sioux Indians and the
Winnebagos, who inhabited the coun-
try, recorded year after year the foods
that swept the pocket; and noted in
their way of chronicling things that
once in every forty or fifty years
the waters swept from bluff
to bluff surrounding the pocket-a
distance across of from two to
three miles. The legend existed
that in one of these flood periods, u.s.
ually coming in leafy June Qeafy in
that country, an entire band of In
dams had been destroyed. The place
was marked as Inflated by the alb
origines. They thought the evil spirits
we're in charge of it, and that whatso-
ever dwelt there was doomed to
destruction.
"The early pioneers, among whom
we're John G. Weiss, one of the most
lovable men that ever lived, and an
early discoverer of West Superior;
Wilkinson, the friend of Lincoln, and
afterward in the national senate;
Bishop. the railroad builder; Hubbell,
a pioneer, who did wonders ior the new
West; Freeman, Yale man of promi-
nence; Thomas Marshall, one of the
noted forerunners of Presbyterianism
for the new country, gave little heed
to the gloomy threatenings of the In
dams or their prophesies of evil if the
flood land was settled upon. They took
up the land, built their homes, chased
Little Crow until he was killed, rescued
New Ulm from the savages, and prayed
when the grasshoppers came until
they went away.
"But the river and the shifting
banks, June after June the waters from
Traverse, from the Bots des Sioux
country, from the Redwood Falls,
rolled up and swept down to that poe
ket in the Minnesota hills. Farm lands
were overlooked, cattle swept away,
wolves driven to the highlands, men
and women drowned, houses and
stores, barns and outplaces, carried in