Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020
Thomas A. Holmes was stricken with “town-site fever.” When the Dakota were forced to leave the Minnesota River Valley area, Holmes and others knew that it was profitable to foresee towns. Holmes and others tried to be on the ground floor on their development.
The Shakopee Story noted that “(t)his was the first building in the original town site of Shakopee. It was a sort of block house, build with the help of John McKenzie, Emerson Shumway, and Daniel Apgar, who came with Holmes.”
John McKenzie was actually John Hamilton Mackenzie.
He was born on June 12, 1831 at Hoag’s Hollow, near Montreal, Canada. He descended from Scottish ancestry. His father took part in the Canadian rebellion, forcing him to flee to the United States in 1841 and was followed by his family. In 1850 he came to Minnesota with the John Stevens party by way of Wisconsin. The party settled in the area of Itasca. It was here that John was hired on with a Thomas Holmes, an Indian trader.
John helped build the Holmes Trading Post.
John became an Indian trader, and in 1852, he made a claim on section 34 and 35 in what was later Eden Prairie. He called the town Hennepin, and platted a portion of the claim into village lots. It failed to develop because of enterprises elsewhere in the township, and no traces remain.
In 1855 he went back to Illinois and married Mary Jane Trumble. It was about this time that John had lost all his possessions, including some 1214 lots in Minnesota. He returned to Minnesota that same fall.
Mary Jane Trumble Mackenzie died in 1870 at the young age of 34. They had a total of 12 children but only two lived to adulthood. Most died in their first five years. In 1874 John married Lavina Robinson, and that marriage resulted in four children, of which three lived to adulthood.
John moved to the Red River Valley in 1861 and settled on the route of the St. Paul-Breckenridge Stage.
When the U.S.-Dakota War started in 1862, John became a scout with headquarters at Georgetown, about sixty-five miles from Breckenridge.
When the Indians became a serious problem, the Selkirk settlement was used by the Georgetown locals for protection. John became a member of the United States Secret Service. In January 1864, John Hamilton Mackenzie ended up in Fort Garry, a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg.
“The snow was from eight to twelve inches deep and the bleak and desolate prairies were continually swept by blinding blizzards. Making their way over the frozen ground in forced marches half frozen and blinded by the pitiless storm, the little band reached Pembina on November 13, 1863. It was not until the middle of December, in 1863, that a little detachment of picked men started out to effect the capture of the murderous Indians.”
Ṡakpedaŋ and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ found shelter and protection under the British flag across the Canadian border and pitched their camp on the site of the old Selkirk settlement, about 25 miles up the Assiniboine River from Fort Garry.
John was secretly in cahoots with a U.S. Army major across the border in what would become Pembina, North Dakota. Mackenzie plied both Indian leaders with alcohol laced with drugs.
Ṡakpedaŋ, age 53, was dosed with chloroform and rendered unconscious. Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ, in his mid-30s, struggled longer but several men subdued him. Both Dakota men were tied to dog sleds and taken to Pembina, then Fort Abercrombie, en route to Fort Snelling.
Trials were held and both were convicted despite sketchy evidence. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press on November 10, 1865, “It would have been more creditable if some tangible evidence of their guilt had been obtained.”
Ṡakpedaŋ (Little Six) and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ (Medicine Bottle) were hanged on November 11, 1865. While Ṡakpedaŋ’s neck snapped immediately, Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ dangled for 10 minutes before dying.
The Minnesota Legislature forked out $1000 to Mackenzie as a bounty.
John then returned to Hutchinson, Minnesota where he lived for many years. Finally, he moved to Blue Jacket, Oklahoma.
John H. Mackenzie, 89 years old, died on February 25, 1920. On December 1,1919, he had a paralytic stroke as the result of an automobile accident, and this was the cause of his demise.
Bibliography
Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story. Shakopee, MN: Shakopee Heritage Society, 2009.
St. Paul Pioneer Press, 10 Nov. 1865.