Early Maps of Mankato, Minnesota

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/24/2020

Maps of Mankato, Minnesota, includes "MANKATO" 38"x24", 1852, by Simon Folsom, with ink manuscript at bottom margin "Town of Makato according to survey of E.D. Bruner in 1857 is same as survey of S.P. Folsom in A.D. 1852." Fine condition...plus; "Map of the City of Makato, Blue Earth Co. Minn, 1874"27"x13-1/2" color. Clean fold split separation. Good condition. (2 items)Mankato Township was not settled by European Americans until Parsons King Johnson in February 1852, as part of the 19th-century migration of people from the east across the Midwest. New residents organized the city of Mankato on May 11, 1858. The city was organized by Henry Jackson, Parsons King Johnson, Col. D.A. Robertson, Justus C. Ramsey, and others. A popular story says that the city was supposed to have been named Mahkato, but a typographical error by a clerk established the name as Mankato. According to Warren Upham, quoting historian Thomas Hughes of Mankato, "The honor of christening the new city was accorded to Col. Robertson. He had taken the name from Nicollet's book, in which the French explorer compared the 'Mahkato" or Blue Earth River, with all its tributaries, to the water nymphs and their uncle in the German legend of Undine.'...No more appropriate name could be given the new city, than that of the noble river at whose mouth it is located." While it is uncertain that the city was intended to be called Mahkato, the Dakota called the river Makato Osa Watapa (meaning "the river where blue earth is gathered"). The Anglo settlers adapted that as "Blue Earth River". According to Frederick Webb Hodge, in his "Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico," Volume 1, page 801, the town was named after the older of the two like-named chiefs of the Mdewakanton division of the Santee Dakota, whose village stood on or near the site of the present town.

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