Hayward, Wisconsin History
Many interesting articles on Hayward area history appear in The Visitor, which is printed by The Country Print Shop, Inc. (P.O. Box 548, Hayward, WI 54843).
Books by the late historian Eldon Marple are invaluable to anyone interested in the history of Northwestern Wisconsin and particularly the Hayward area. The following are the four original compilations with their original publishing information.
- 1971. The Visitor Who Came to Stay. Legacy of the Hayward Area. Country Print Shop, Hayward, WI.
- 1976. A History of the Hayward Lakes Region...through the eyes of The Visitor Who Came and Stayed. Chicago Bay Grafix, Hayward, WI.
- 1979. The Hayward Lakes Region. A Century of History for the Visitor. The Book Store, Hayward, WI.
- 1984. The Visitor Writes Again. Country Print Shop, Hayward, WI.
Schoolcraft & Allen Expeditions – Mississippi, St. Croix and Brule Rivers
The following reference historical items relating to the source of the Mississippi River as examined by the Schoolcraft Expeditions of 1820 and 1832 and also the area of the St. Croix and Brule Rivers (and intervening portage) explored in 1832. One may find pdf copies of the original 19th Century books on the web. The "full titles" may be seen cited in part or in full wherever they may be referenced in publications. The recent books by Williams and Mason add journals, letters and notes by various participants and also some newspaper accounts.
- Schoolcraft, Henry R. 1821. [Full title:] Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes, to the Sources of the Mississippi River. Performed as a Member of the Expedition under Governor Cass. In the Year 1820. E. & E. Horsford, Albany, NY.
- Allen, James A. 1834. [Full title:] Schoolcraft and Allen – Expedition to North-West Indians. Letter from the Secretary of War transmitting a Map and Report of Lieut. Allen and H. B. Schoolcraft's Visit to the Northwest Indians in 1832. April 12, 1834. Read, and laid upon the table. Gales & Seaton, Washington. (Any of the following are also seen in citations: "23d Cong., 1st sess., House of Representatives Document 323.")
The publication in its original form (minus the map) is downloadable here. No report from Schoolcraft is included; he saves that for his 1834 book (next). From what I can surmise from various on-line sources, this "letter" was published in a black leather volume with the insertion of Lt. Allen's map which had been redrawn by Lt. Drayton. Drayton's revisions alter some of the terrain and eliminate Allen's carefully described pond that drained out both ends into the St. Croix and the Brule! (The Drayton map is shown here.) A map closer to Allen's original is in Schoolcraft's 1834 volume, and its St. Croix/Bois Brule portion is shown as Map 4 on the first maps page.
- Schoolcraft, Henry R. 1834. [Full title:] Narrative of an Expedition Through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake, the Actual Source of This River; Embracing an Exploratory Trip through the St. Croix and Burntwood (or Broule) Rivers; in 1832. Harper & Brothers, New York.
- Schoolcraft, Henry R. 1855. [Full title:] Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in 1820: Resumed and Completed, by the Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832. Lippincott, Grambo and Co., Philadelphia, PA. (Short title: Discovery of the Sources of the Mississippi River.)
This book summarizes the 1820 and 1832 expeditions and reproduces Allen's original sketch map of Lake Itasca (shown here); other Allen maps are redrawn by Capt. S. Eastman.
- Williams, Mentor L. (ed.). 1992. Schoolcraft's Narrative Journal of Travels. [1820 expedition.] Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI.
- Mason, Philip P. (ed.). 1993. Schoolcraft's Expedition to Lake Itasca. The Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi. [1832 expedition plus Schoolcraft's summary of his 1831 travels.] Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI.
The editor expounds upon the accuracy and detail of Lt. Allen's mapping efforts but does not include maps from any expedition participant in this book.
Giacomo Constantino Beltrami
 Beltrami's published account of his 1823 travels through what is now the northern two-thirds of Minnesota (part of the work cited below) included a visit to the high ground between the Mississippi River and Red River drainage basins. (The latter river flows into Lake Winnipeg.) His determination that "Lake Julia" seeped into both watersheds led him to declare the lake to be the northern source of the Mississippi River. As the well-known (and occasionally visited by non-natives) "Lac La Biche" was recognized as the likely western source of the Mississippi, he anticipated that its geographic position would soon be correctly determined – as it indeed was in the Schoolcraft-Allen Expedition of 1832 where Lac La Biche was renamed Lake Itasca.
 Click on the image on the right for a full view of the portrait of Beltrami by Gian Antonio Micheli, reproduced on this site with permission of the Minnesota Historical Society.
- Beltrami, J. C. 1828. [Full title:] A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, Leading to the Discovery of the Sources of the Mississippi and Bloody River. Volume II. Hunt and Clarke, London. Both Volumes I and II are available as reprints from various publishers including Kessinger Publishing (for Vol. II).
- Hill, A. J. 1857. Constantine Beltrami. In: Collections of the Historical Society of Minnesota for the Year 1857, pp. 13-20. This appears to be his official biography, prepared for the establishment of Beltrami County in Minnesota.
This and the following section (which continues to grow) were added to this reference page several weeks in anticipation of my late August, 2009 expedition that was subsequently summarized in my first Mississippi River page. Needless to say, reading about these old explorations (and those of Schoolcraft & Co., above) provided enough inspiration to actually go see for myself some of the ultimate headwaters of the Mississippi (beyond Lake Itasca) and start filling up the web with photos and movies from repeated visits to the area.
Other 19th-Century Mississippi River Source Explorations
Had the Schoolcraft-Allen Expedition been willing and able to spend an extra day savoring their "discovery" – rather than the few hours they spent making superficial observations – they might have explored its tributaries to seek an ultimate source as Nicollet was to do a few years later. Returning to Allen's sketch map (referred to above), that pinched-off body of water to the south (with the tributary stream) looks suspiciously like a representation of what would become known as "Elk Lake." The Schoolcraft expedition did not travel in that direction, but had they done so, they would have represented the southwest arm of Lake Itasca more realistically. Perhaps the features on the sketch map appearing to the south of their travels were filled in from information provided by the natives whose assistance (with maps of their own!) Schoolcraft and Allen were privileged to have.
Jean-Nicolas Nicollet (also known as Joseph N. Nicollet) made note of five creeks that entered Lake Itasca, and found most impressive the one that has since been named for him. In his Report to both houses of Congress (published in 1843 and 1845; both editions cited below), he wrote extensively of the stream, its associated lakes, and the overall basin whose contributing streams poured out of the surrounding hills. To the east of his creek, he noted on his map a representation of the sizable lake (presently called Elk Lake) which enters Lake Itasca through a very short stream (presently called Chambers Creek), but there are no such details in the text of the Report. Lest it be thought that Nicollet passed over the lake and its feeders entirely and relied on local information for his map – and/or considered Elk Lake to be just a bay of Lake Itasca and not worth any special mention – one will find his descriptions of Elk Lake (and its inlets and outlet) plainly discussed in his more extensive Journals which were finally published in 1970 (cited below). As opposed to the Schoolcraft-Allen Expedition, Nicollet spent three days (at the end of August, 1836) in the Lake Itasca area. In his Journal, Nicollet had already (Aug. 5) commented on Allen's occasional carelessness in his mapmaking, stating "...good science cannot be accomplished by traveling a hundred miles a day. Why go to the trouble of mustering a national expedition and end up throwing confusion over the work done by the brave Major Pike thirty years earlier?" (I will have to add Pike to the list of publications below as I have recently added Nicollet's Journals.)
It was left to Julius Chambers in 1872 to make a more public mention of Elk Lake and its tributaries. Itasca and Elk Lakes (as they are now known) had been respectively called Elk Lake (French: "Lac La Biche") and Pokegama Lakes by the natives whose ancestors were of course the actual discoverers of any and all of the natural features in the area.
Establishing the beginning of the longest continuous course of water that continues into the Mississippi River (which begins to act like a coherent river at the mouth of Lake Itasca) was apparently accomplished by the detailed and scientific explorations of J. V. Brower. His originating streams are (1) a tributary of Nicollet Creek which in turn flows into the southwest arm of Lake Itasca and (2) Mary Creek which flows through an extended valley and Mary Lake and eventually empties into the eastern arm. It appears that the Nicollet Creek system has the edge. Most importantly, it was determined in his studies that the inlet bearing the greatest volume of water entering Lake Itasca is Nicollet Creek, beating out Chambers Creek which connects with Elk Lake. Indeed, Nicollet had called his creek "the infant Mississippi" and "a cradled Hercules" in his Report.
The Microsoft Research Maps (formerly Terraserver-USA) site shows aerial photos in stunning detail along with topographical maps which label corresponding roads, elevations and section numbers; click here and type in "Lake Itasca" and "Minnesota." For one thing, you will see that Elk Lake takes up most of Section 22.
The following are listed chronologically as to the explorations of the subject matter – not according to publication date. One can utilize a search engine to find copies of any of them on the web, but nothing beats an authentic hard copy. Nicollet's Report and Journals include his Mississippi and St. Croix/Brule explorations of 1836 and 1837, respectively. Chambers had indeed preceded Glazier and published his results in newspaper articles in the 1870s. Glazier was to receive condemnation for rampant falsification of information, and it was his notoriety that instigated the thorough researches of Clarke and Brower who each include in their reports a denouncement of Glazier's falsehoods and an examination of Nicollet's three lakes and associated creeks and springs.
Clarke and (especially) Brower – and also Chambers who subsequently went along with Brower's arguments – apparently got confused about Nicollet's descriptions and locations of his three lakes. Instigating this confusion was their insistance that Nicollet was writing about tracing the course of his three lakes while going upstream, while Nicollet made clear (especially in his Journals) that, while keeping his stream in view, he took a hike some miles away from Lake Itasca and then looped back, closely following his creek (and the three lakes) downstream. Furthermore, the editor of Nicollet's Journals recognizes Whipple Lake as Nicollet's upper lake.
- Nicollet, J. N. 1843. Report Intended to Illustrate a Map of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River. (26th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate Document 237.) Blair and Rives, Washington, D.C. This report accompanies Nicollet's map (published in 1843), and the map and Report were reissued in 1845 for the House (see next in list). The Senate Document can be read in its original form (without the map) here.
- Nicollet, J. N. 1845. Report Intended to Illustrate a Map of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River. (28th Cong., 2nd sess., House of Representatives Document 52.) Blair and Rives, Washington, D.C.
- Bray, Martha Coleman (ed.). 1970. The Journals of Joseph N. Nicollet. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.
- (An analysis by an amateur historian/geographer of Nicollet's observations in the valley of his "Infant Mississippi" – with a side-by-side comparison between his Journal and Official Report – is here.)
- Chambers, Julius. 1910. The Mississippi River and its Wonderful Valley. The Knickerbocker Press, New York.
- Glazier, Williard. 1894. Headwaters of the Mississippi. Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago and New York. Reprinted by the University of Michigan University Library.
- Various authors including Hopewell Clarke. 1887. [Full title:] The Source of the Mississippi Comprising I. Letter from Messrs. Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, & Company; II. Report of Hopewell Clarke, Chief of the I. B. T. & Co. Expedition to the Headwaters of the Mississippi, October 1886. Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., New York & Chicago. This is a reprint of an article in Science (Dec. 24, 1886) and can be read here.
- Brower, J. V. 1891. The Source of the Mississippi River. The Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, Vol. VII, pp. 301-310.
- Brower, J. V. 1893. The Mississippi River and its Source. Harrison & Smith, State Printers, Minneapolis. This is Volume 7 of the official Minnesota Historical Collections. A reprint by the University of Michigan University Library left out a key map whose page is reproduced here.
- Coues, Elliot. 1897. Historico-Geographical Notes on the Mississippi River, from Cass Lake to Lake Itasca. In: Annals of Iowa, Vol. 10, pp. 20-31. This interesting article is a good summary of the explorations of the area with additional observations and opinions of the author.
- Brower, J. V. 1904. Itasca State Park – An Illustrated History. McGill-Warner Company, St. Paul. This is Volume 11 of the official Minnesota Historical Collections.
More on the St. Croix and Brule River Area
The references given above relating to the Schoolcraft-Allen Expedition of 1832 and also to Nicollet's Journals and Report contain extensive notes concerning the state of these rivers and the intervening portage in the 1830s.
The following three books give interesting historical and contemporary information about the St. Croix and Brule Rivers and include stories of noted individuals who utilized the portage over the years – including Daniel Graysolon du Lhut who cut trees and broke dozens of beaver dams as he charged up the Brule in 1680, and Lt. James Allen in 1832 who was the first to record the presence of brook trout on the Brule. The Marshall book discusses the proposed Lake Superior to Mississippi River canal which is mentioned on this site here. A web page on the subject with a map can be found here. Ross summarizes the evolution of the Great Lakes as they emerge from the retreating glacier, indicating the St. Croix River as a major outlet during the Lake Duluth Stage – a little more of which is discussed here. Ross also provides a close-up map of the St. Croix-Brule portage area, but the major theme of his book concerns historical and geographical details about the Apostle Islands.
- Dunn, James T. 1993. The St. Croix: Midwest Border River. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
- Marshall, Albert M. 1954. Brule Country. North Central Publishing Company, St. Paul, MN.
- Ross, Hamilton N. 2000. La Pointe: Village Outpost on Madeline Island. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison. Originally published in 1960 by North Central Pub., St. Paul.
Here is an excellent overview of the geography and history of the Brule region with lots of illustrations, chronological lists, and directions where one can drive and/or walk through the area and see where people lived and traveled so many years ago:
- Wisherd, Nan. 2005. Pathways – The Earliest History of Northern Wisconsin's Brule Region. Waino Publishing, Brule, WI.
For the Apostle Islands, these references (in addition to Ross and the 1855 Schoolcraft volume, above) are also noted on the Apostle Islands pages (here & here) and the Steamboat Island page:
- Nelson, Charles R. 2001. On Thin Ice – Windsleds at Madeline Island. This is available from the Windsled Museum website.
- Nuhfer, Edward B. 2004. A Guidebook to the Geology of Lake Superior's National Lakeshore. Eastern National, Fort Washington, PA. Book includes poetry by Mary P. Dalles.
- Strzok, Dave. 2003. The Visitor's Guide to Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. This is available at the Keeper of the Light in Bayfield, WI.
- Turner, J. M. 1888-90. Lake Superior Region. Privately published.
Evolution of the Northwest Territory
The following contain valuable information regarding the evolution of territories, states and counties from the old Northwest Territory. The volumes edited by Long (part of a series intended to cover the entire U.S.) trace the entire history of county boundaries in detail and include interesting details about counties "attached" to other counties for judicial and other purposes as they become fully "organized" and eventually "independant." A brief history of county creation in Michigan is given here.
- Wisconsin Highway Planning Survey (ed.). 1947. A History of Wisconsin Highway Development, 1835-1945. Official state publication, Madison, WI.
- Thorndale, W. and W. Dollarhide. 1987. Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790-1920. Geneological Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, MD.
- Long, J. H. (ed.). 1997. Michigan – Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
- Long, J. H. (ed.). 1997. Wisconsin – Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
- Long, J. H. (ed.). 2000. Minnesota – Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
- Lanegran, D. A. 2008. Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, MN.
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