WINTER CLIMATE BETWEEN MISSISSIPPI RIYER AND BASE OF MOUNTAINS. 
401 
For several years I had trading-posts extending from Lake Superior to the Red river of the 
North, from 46° to 49° north latitude, and never found the snow so deep as to prevent supplies 
being transported from one post to another with horses. One winter, north of Crow Wing, say 
47° north latitude, I wintered about sixty head of horses and cattle without giving them food 
of any kind except such as they could procure themselves under the snow. Between the 45th 
and 49th degrees north latitude, the snow does not fall so deep as it does between the 40th and 
45th degrees ; this is easily accounted for, upon the same principle that in the fall they have 
frosts much earlier near the 40th than they do near the 45th degree. I say this in reference to 
the country watered by the Mississippi river. Owing to its altitude the atmosphere is dry 
beyond belief, which accounts for the absence of frosts in the fall, and for the small quantity of 
snow that falls in a country so far north. Voyageurs traverse the territory from Lake Superior 
to the Missouri the entire winter with horses and sleds, having to make their own roads, and yet 
with heavy loads are not detained by snow. Lumbermen, in great numbers, winter in the pine 
regions of Minnesota with their teams, and I have never heard of their finding the snow too 
deep to prosecute their labors. I have known several winters when the snow at no time was 
over six inches deep. 
Very truly, yours, 
HENRY M. RICE. 
[Extraot from letter of Hon. II. II. Sibley.] 
Mendotah, M. T., June 6, 1S54. 
You desire me to state briefly some facts connected with our winters—“ the depth of snow, 
the drifting of snow, the temperature, the practicability of travelling with animals, the habits and 
the mode of subsistence of Indians during the winter, &c.” I have time at present to reply in 
very short terms to these inquiries. 
It is rarely the case that in this part of the Territory (45° north latitude) the snow reaches a 
depth exceeding fourteen or fifteen inches. Indeed, I have known two or three successive win¬ 
ters when there was not enough snow to make tolerable sleighing, but these were exceptions to 
the general rule. As our country is for the most part composed of prairie, it is of course much 
exposed to the action of the winds. It is, however, a peculiarity of our climate, that calms pre¬ 
vail during the cold weather of the winter months ; consequently the snow does not drift to any¬ 
thing like the extent experienced in New England or northern New York. I have never believed 
that railroad communication in this Territory would be seriously impeded by the depth or drift 
of snow, unless, perhaps, in the extreme northern portion of it. We have a few days of very 
cold weather in each winter, when the mercury falls as low as twenty-eight or thirty degrees 
below zero, but such weather never continues for any length of time. Generally speaking our 
winters are uniformly dry and clear, without rain or much thawing weather previous to the month 
of March. Navigation from St. Paul is usually open until the 15th or 20th of November, and 
boats are looked for about the first week in April. The Mississippi may, therefore, be regarded 
as closed by ice a little more than four months in the year. 
In the month of October, or earlier, as their crops of corn mature sooner or later, the Sioux 
Indians abandon their summer dwellings of bark, and betake themselves to their hunting grounds, 
living during the winter in their portable conical lodges, made of dressed buffalo-skins. They 
transport upon the backs of their women and horses as much corn and wild rice as can conve¬ 
niently be borne; but the main dependence of the camp is upon the meat of the buffalo, elk, 
deer, and bear, furnished by the hunters. This mode of subsistence is becoming more and more 
precarious as the game is destroyed or driven off, so that these Indians must resort to the cul¬ 
tivation of the soil to a much greater extent than they do, or perish. The annuities paid even to 
the most wealthy of the western tribes are utterly insufficient of themselves to support them. 
