First of a two-part series
Surely praiseworthy were the pioneer settlers of southeast Minnesota, immigrants from Europe or those moving west from previously settled areas of the United States. Hard-working farm families and merchants established communities, built churches and schools and were even willing to leave their families to serve far from home as Civil War soldiers. But opportunity in the west also attracted characters with less-than-honorable character, with criminal intent, who preyed more than prayed. Among the most infamous were the Mississippi River pirates, including a band based in Houston County, Minn.
Well-known were the early-1800s exploits of pirate brothers Jean and Pierre LaFitte around New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta. As traffic moved farther up the Mississippi, so did the pirates. In 1823, a river boat first reached Prairie du Chien, Wis. By 1855, more than 2,000 steamers were active on the full length of the river.
On March 23, 1858, the first boat arrived at Brownsville. A few weeks later, south of La Crosse, a small cargo steamer had been stopped by a boat with armed men. When the captain protested the boarding of his boat, he was knocked unconscious with the butt of a musket. The intruders then transferred the cargo onto their vessel. The pillaged steamer, piloted then by one of its crew, continued on to McGregor, Iowa, where the piracy was reported.
The next morning, two constables and some outraged citizens boarded a boat and headed across the river to Big Island, reported to be the campsite of the thieves. High flood water made it easy to locate the high ground where they found a camp where two men and a nine-year-old boy, who after being were apprehended, told the searchers about a boat called the Dr. Bell, which was loaded with stolen items and moored in a slough on the island. Early the next morning, the boy led the McGregor men to the Dr. Bell, which at first appeared abandoned. But a barking dog aroused a man, who seeing the boy, assumed the men were fellow privateers. He asked them to be quiet so not to disturb his sleeping wife.
When an arrest was attempted, the thief grabbed a musket and fired but missed. S. L. Peck replied with a shot that wounded the man. Now awakened, the wife appeared while firing a double-barrel shotgun at the startled Iowans, who faced with superior firepower, were forced to retreat. When out of range, they watched the Dr. Bell depart and disappear into the fog.
After the return to McGregor, the citizenry organized a larger search party, which located the Dr. Bell but found only the woman and a small child. Aware of this woman’s recent violent reaction, they took great care in apprehending her and the child. Two more boats were found, both full of stolen goods. It was possible that the cargo from the heist south of La Crosse had not yet reached the main camp.
The wounded robber was never located, but a man of his description had stopped at a doctor’s home in Wyalusing, Wis. to have a musket ball removed from his head. However, 18 men were eventually arrested, charged as privateers. One account said they suddenly became willing to talk as ropes were being placed around their necks. They shocked the citizenry by implicating several respected residents, including John C. Bishop, who two weeks previous had sent a boat downriver to St. Louis with stolen goods worth $10,000 (equivalent to purchasing power in 2025 of approximately $410,000).
Locally notorious were the river pirates that operated out of a hideout in the southeast corner of Houston County. Known as Robbers Roost, it was once thought to be in section 36 of Crooked Creek Township, but a more likely location was just south in section 36 of Jefferson Township, the most southeastern township in the county. That early account also said Robbers Roost was directly across the Mississippi River from the mouth of Bad Ax Creek in Wisconsin, which would be five miles south of Crooked Creek Township into Jefferson Township.
And section 36 of Jefferson included the Minnesota Slough a large, secluded backwater a mile-and-a-half into Houston County with several outlets into the Mississippi River. On the 1853 plat map, this natural slough was 500 feet wide at one point and separated from the river by two nearly uninhabited sections – a perfect place to hide a steam-powered vessel.
Unlike luxurious excursion steamboats of later years, the steamers of the 1850s varied in size, including small ones designed to travel up tributaries of large rivers to deliver passengers and supplies. They might last only about three to five years due to fires, winter ice and snags. But the engines might be repeatedly transferred to replacement boats. These steamers were affordable and widely available for river pirates.
The Robbers Roost roster of pirates began river operations a few years after the demise of the McGregor crew of criminals. Historian David Klinski recognized the timing and geography raises the possibility that some of these men might have been “leftovers” from the Iowa group.
These Minnesota robbers were especially despicable while also targeting women and children of families where a man was away fighting in the Civil War (1861-’65). Klinski pointed out that these river robbers, like the Sioux of the great Indian Uprising of 1862, realized resistance would be minimal when many men were away at war.
Attempting to identify the years when the Robbers Roost piracy occurred, Klinski noted many farmers did not depart for the battlefield until the 1861 crops were harvested. During the following winter, river ice prevented piracy. Klinski wrote, “The years of 1862 or 1863 would have been more likely, because in 1864 a drought caused such low levels on the Mississippi that many of the steamboat companies had great difficulty keeping their boats afloat and not running aground. The log rafters had the same problem.”
What would be the fate of these outlaws? To be continued…
Source: “Robbers Roost” by David Klinski, originally published in a 2001 newsletter of the Houston County Historical Society and republished in the book, Caledonia Pride 1854-2004
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