CHRONOLOGY: MINNESOTA, 1830-1857. 81 



man), went to Fort Garry forty-five years ago (1830), and saw there for 

 the first time quantities of grasshoppers. They thickly covered both 

 sides of the river for some distance back, and the river was covered with 

 dead ones. Twelve years after the above-mentioned date (in 1842) he 

 came down from Fort Garry to Saint Paul ; there were then none at Fort 

 Garry and but few at Saint Paul, but the prairies between these two 

 points were full of them. He came by the way of the Minnesota Kiver." 



Still another reference is found in a letter to the New York Tribune, 

 dated June 9, 1857, from Medicine Lodge, Hennepin County, Minnesota, 

 and signed " J. H. H." "About six years ago, as I am informed by a 

 Frenchman who lived at Red Eiver at that time, they (the grasshoppers) 

 destroyed the crops so that the infant colony did not save their seed, but 

 were obliged to live by hunting and fishing." 



1849. — Such statements as these it is, of course, no longer possible to 

 verify, but that there is nothing intrinsically impossible, or even im- 

 i:>robable, about them may be seen from tbe following letter from Mr. J. 

 W. Burdick, of Willmar, Minn., an old resident in the Northwest, since 

 1856. As his letter refers to localities and dates about which it is now 

 difficult to collect or recall facts, I quote it nearly in full, giving the 

 different portions of it under the years to which they refer. 



Willmar, Minn., Septmiber 29, 1877. 

 Allen Whitman, Esq., Saint Paul, Minn. : 



Yours of September 25 is at hand. In reply I would say that I have no personal 

 knowledge of the grasshoppers visiting Minnesota prior to A. D. 1856 ; but was in- 

 formed by Indian traders and frontiersmen that they had made their appearance in 

 vast numbers along the prairie regions west of the big woods about A. D. 1849, and, as 

 far back as any trace could be made, always making their appearance in seasons of 

 great drought ; but as there were no cultivated lands previous to 1856 in all this vast 

 region, their depredations were confined to the natural herbage of the country. 



The year 1855 is sometimes included among the locust years of the 

 State of Minnesota. I know of no other authority^ for it than the state- 

 ment on page 203 of the Annual Eeport of the Board of Eegents of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, 1858. *' Every Western man remembers the 

 visitation of grasshoppers in 1855 and 1856 in Kansas, Nebraska, and 

 Mennesota Territories which caused such injuries to the crops of the In- 

 dians." But the press of the State for that year (1855), so far as I have 

 been able to learn, contains no allusion whatever to grasshoppers, 

 except in California and Utah. If there were any locust invasions in 

 Minnesota, all the State papers to which I have been able to have 

 access have totally failed to record it. 



In 1856-'57. — On the other hand, the State press for the summer and 

 autumn of 1856 is full of notices of invading swarms of locusts, while 

 numerous letters and replies to the circulars of the entomological com- 

 mission confirm the fact that it was not till 1856 that the invaders 

 reached at least the cultivated portions of the State, and principally the 

 region lying along the Upper Mississippi. 



8 We may add that Col. G. W. Sweet stated to us in Bismarck that locusts arrived at harvest time in 

 Saint Cloud, Minnesota, in ]855. They hatched out in 1856. 



6 a 



