g the attention of Willis A. Gorman, then governor of the
territory, and several other gentlemen, but none of them had ever been
up the valley, and reliable information was difficult to obtain. It was
true that Tom Holmes had laid out Shakopee, and Henry Jackson and P. K.
Johnson, with a syndicate behind them, had selected Mankato, and I think
there was a settler or two at Le Sueur, but the whole valley may be said
to have been at that time in the possession of Indians, Indian traders
and missionaries.

The St. Paul gentlemen who had been approached by Captain Dodd engaged
me to go up the valley of the Minnesota river, and follow out all its
tributaries, with the idea of reporting upon its general characteristics
and prospects, with reference to the founding of a city at Rock Bend. I
was delighted to do anything, or go anywhere, that promised work or
adventure. It was to me what the Klondike has been to thousands
recently. They furnished me with a good team, and away I went. It was in
the winter, but I succeeded in reaching Traverse des Sioux, where I
found a collection of Indian trading houses, where flourished Louis
Roberts, Major Forbes, Nathan Myrick, Madison Sweetzer and others, who
drove a trade with the Sioux. There was also at this point a missionary
station, with a schoolhouse, a church, and a substantial dwelling house,
occupied by the Rev. Moses N. Adams, who had been a missionary among the
Sioux, having been transferred from the station at Lac qui Parle, where
he had lived for many years, to this point. But the best find that I
made was a young Scotchman by the name of Stuart B. Garvie, who had a
shanty on the prairie about midway between Traverse des Sioux and my
objective point, Rock Bend. I think that Garvie went up there from St.
Anthony, under some kind of a promise from Judge Chatfield, that if ever
the courts were organized in that region he would be made clerk. Garvie
was delighted to discover me, and I being in search of information, we
soon fraternized, and he agreed to go with me on my tour of exploration.
We went up the Blue Earth, the Le Sueur, the Watonwan, and, in fact,
visited all the country that was necessary to convince me that it was,
by and large, a splendid agricultural region, and I decided so to report
to my principals.

When I was about to leave for down the river, Garvie insisted that I
should return and take up my abode at Traverse des Sioux. The
proposition seemed too absurd to m