WINONA

is in view. This is the most populous town in the State of Minnesota
south of St. Paul. It occupies a low, level tract projecting from the
base of the bluffs, which circle its rear in the shape of an ox-bow,
and, in times of high water, becomes an island, owing to its great
depression at its junction with the bluffs. The town stands on the front
of this low plateau, along the channel of the river, and has a
population of nine thousand people, counting the nomadic lumbermen, who
live half the year in the piny woods many hundred miles to the north,
and the other half are floating on the rafts down the river; a rough but
useful people, who betimes will lose their heads and winter's wages in a
single drunken fray, which they seem to consider the highest pleasure
vouchsafed to them each season as they return to the walks of civilized
life.

The pleasant sounding name of Winona is one of the many Dakota words
abounding along the river and over the State, and was the appellation of
the beautiful Indian girl who so tragically ended her life by leaping
from the top of Maiden's Bluff, bordering the eastern shore of Lake
Pepin above, and of which we shall presently speak more in detail.

It is a name always given by the Dakotas to the first-born female child
of a family. As was the maiden, celebrated in song and story, so is the
town, quite handsome and interesting in many points of aspect. It is the
objective point for great quantities of freight by boat up the river, to
be from thence distributed through the whole southern section of
Minnesota by means of the important railway line extending from this
city to the interior, tapping the St. Paul and Milwaukee road at
Owatanna, and the St. Paul and Sioux City at St. Peter's and Mankato;