The Canal (true story)

It was proposed that, by means of locks and canals, the Brule and St. Croix Rivers be made a passageway for barges carrying freight from the head of Lake Superior to the Mississippi River.  Promoters of this plan got a bill through Congress on August 17, 1894, appropriating $10,000 to survey the most favorable route for a waterway.

United States Engineers took the job and studied a route traversing the south shore of Lake Superior from Allouez Bay to the Brule River, then up that river to its source, over to Upper St. Croix Lake, and down the St. Croix River.  The estimate of the cost of canal construction was $7,050,000.  The Brule route was always problematical because a canal deep and wide enough for steamboats required more water than was available in the upper stretches of the river.

Rough plans for the canal called for a level waterway  extending from Allouez Bay across the flats to the Brule River near the present Cooperative Park, where a dam and lock were to be constructed.  There were also to be locks a short distance up the Brule and at the mouth of the Nebagamon Creek.  A dam at the Wildcat Rapids was to hold back the water to form a lake thirty-five miles long extending the entire length of the upper Brule Valley, Upper St. Croix Lake, and the St. Croix River to a place near the present dam at the lower end of the Gordon Flowage.  Dams further down the St. Croix  were to provide sufficient water to allow barges to complete the trip to the natural head of navigation at Taylor's Falls, MN.  Engineers estimated that the proposed canal would be 207 miles long, it would lift boats 420 feet from the level of Lake Superior to the summit at the Brule - St. Croix watershed; and that the barges would then descend 353 feet to the Mississippi River.

Had the canal received favorable action in Congress, the topography of the Brule Valley would be far different today.  The engineers contemplated excavating large sections in the upper valley tamarack swamps to provide the necessary depth for the barges.  Instead of a narrow, winding river, accelerating its pace as it flows north toward Lake Superior, there would have been a series of long lakes beneath which much of the lush vegetation of the valley would have been buried.  The scheme languished in the halls of the national legislature until interest finally died away.

The above text is an excerpt from Brule Country by Albert M. Marshall.  Story idea is from Scott Nielsen, and map courtesy of John Lindquist.

Hiawatha

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow developed an interest in Native Americans, having studied the subject, including the writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.  In a diary entry dated June 22, 1854, he wrote "I have, at length, hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one, and the only.  It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole."

On June 25, Longfellow noted in his diary, "I could not help this evening making a beginning of 'Manabozho,' or whatever the poem is to be called.  His (Manabozho's) adventures will form the theme, at all events."

But for lack of euphony (i.e., the name being an agreeable sound to the European American ear), Longfellow's poem might have borne the Ojibwe name for the superhuman and universal uncle, and have been called the "Song of Manabozho."  The Iroquois name "Hiawatha" was selected, however, as it better suited the poet's purposes.

In spite of the Iroquois designation given to Longfellow's great Indian saga, the "Song of Hiawatha" is essentially Ojibwe.  Its setting on the picturesque southern shore of Lake Superior unfolds the beauties of the winding Taquamenon River, the chiseled caverns of the Pictured Rocks, the bold, bare outlines of the Grand Sables.  Through its pages, the author calls the birds and the beasts, wind, cloud, and spirit by the names by which the Ojibwe had learned to revere them. 

The above text is an excerpt from Brule Country by Albert M. Marshall.