The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1905-09-29
Drummer Boy.

'To notice the history of this fort
without the mention of Major Joseph
Brown, whom | so well know would be
to omit one of the most conspicuous and
| imperial characters there introduced into
Brown came to Fort Smelling in 1919
as a drummer boy of a detachment of
troops. Without education, but with
vigorous intellect, strong common
sense, measureless energy and boundless
frontier days Living with the unlearn-
ed, he became a ruler; but had he been
bred in Boston he would have been one
of the foremost men of the Athens of
America Whether as soldier, trad
er, a politician, legislator or a journa-
list, he was positive power. A self
cultivated and elf-organized power he
laid his forming hand on everything in
the territory. Others may have had
more shining qualities, but Brown was
the greater man. He was the Warwick
of his day, and Outwitted politicians
called him Joe, the Juggler,' His cul
ture was what was shed upon him from
the fort. If in the wigwam he was a
barbarian, in the capital he was a
! ~, ho T.,
primitive Minnesota by way of the fort,
in point of force, tact, influence, vigor
of intellect and diversity of power, pre-
cedence must ever be given to Joseph
Renshaw Brown.
with this portrait should go a com
panion picture. And yet the man J
shall mention was totally unlike Brown.
Henry Hastings Sibley came to Mendoza
in 1885, and at once established himself
near Fort Smelling. Young, tall, strong,
with fine intellect, speaking French
| like a Partisan, he came to assert him
self in the surroundings of a purely saw
age life, an era which tested his individ-
uality. Soon his force and power were
! felt in the grand drama there being
enacted. He was the annex to the fort
near by, supplementing it as a rea}
| force in the work of delivering over the
| wilderness to civilization. Refined by
the very nature of his constitution, hi
home became the court-life of the from,
tier. He was, in fact, the baron of the
border, and the stone houses, still stand
| ing, at Mendoza, were the castles where
as cavalier he dwelt and dispensed a
most generous hospitality.
eve must ever admire the nobility of
his character, his integrity, his OPEN
frank, and understanding manner, his
cultured taste, the soundness of his
Judgment, his uniagging industry, and
Hastings Sibley out of our early life,
would be like dropping Adams or Frank
IN HUN IllC pCIiou VI OHc III.
He stood for all that was good rein
ing and forceful in our formative period
''He was one of the noblest of the au
gust fathers of the state. In his great
ness and usefulness he was ranked by
no man save it was Alexander Ramsey
And these two stand in our history as
correlative Corinthian pillars, sustain
ing and adjoining the creative period of
our commonwealth.
81 should do wrong TO this occasion
were | to omit the name of Mrs. Char
lotte o.. Van Cleve. Her father was
Maj Nathan Clark of the regular army
She was born July |, 1919, at Fort
Crawford, while her parents were on thu
way from Detroit to this place She
spent eight years of her earliest life on
these historic grounds. She witnessed
the arrival of the first steamboat, the
Virginia" which visited the fort. Her