Part 2

These facts were gleaned while spending the day with my mother in Lou Hazeltine’s home. Lou had said to my mother, as was customary at the time, “Bring the children and stay all day.” So we were duly scrubbed and dressed up for the occasion. I think Lou wanted to unburden herself. But how she could have thought the children would be interested in such topic of conversation is beyond me. True, there was her daughter Lizzie Massey, about my age, for company—but Lizzie behaved as though she thought she might miss something, and paid no attention to her mother’s frequent admonitions, “You children run along outside and play.” I think Lou was unduly worked-up over the matter. She would look at us children, and then put her hand up to the side of her mouth, come down momentarily off her “high-horse” almost to a whisper, and channel the choice bits to mother. I think my mother would have been satisfied with less than was said—and certainly, as a newcomer in town, she did not want to be the one to spread gossip. However, she repeated it all, with apparent relish, to my father, adopting Lou’s adept manner of, shielding it from the children with her hand.

The Massey women decided that Andy’s sympathies for his estranged sister-in-law were simply “outlandish”—and Mrs. Andy invoked the law on him.

Constable Lon Huff started to take him to Seneca, but when they came to the creek crossing, a ford, in my Uncle Nick Bristow’s timber, Andy slipped off his shackled boots, jumped out of the buggy and made his getaway, barefooted, over the snow-covered ground. My cousin, Burrel Bristow, followed Andy’s barefoot tracks through the woods and counted the trees barked by the constable’s gun.

That Alonzo—he was the shrewd one. Shot up the trees, he did—and brought home Andy’s shackled boots.

I liked Andy—and, though I was never to see him again, as glad that he had gotten away from the constable. I think that nearly all the other people here were glad it, too. And, moreover, I’ll bet Andy did not travel far without foot-protection.

You may be sure Andy did not come home to his wife. Lou Hazeltine told my mother that the arrest was big mistake. Charley Hazeltine, Lou’s Swede husband, said “The vimens was yust yumpin at collusions.” Elisha’s wife and Andy’s daughter May left Wetmore soon thereafter. Demmy remained here with his grandmother for several years—then went to his father at Spearfish, South Dakota, from which place Andy was then operating a stage line to Deadwood.

With Ursula Maxwell and Charley Hazeltine as long-range intermediaries, Andy Maxwell waived claim to farm equipment, livestock, and all other belongings, in favor of Lizzie Maxwell. All Andy asked—and received—were his children, and the promise of no contest in two divorces, Lizzie Massey Maxwell remained here. She sold the farm improvements to Dr. W. F. Troughton for $50. Troughton filed on the homestead in 1872.

In the meantime Andy, with his daughter May and Mrs. Elisha, traveling out of Miles City, Montana, in covered wagons, with four other men, were attacked by Sioux and Nez Perce Indians—the siege lasting for three days. The newspapers said at the time, it was the hardest-fought Indian battle of all times.

A three-column account of that Indian attack, written reminiscently by a correspondent of the Chicago Times seventeen years after it had taken place, found its way by mere chance into the Wetmore Spectator—right back to the old home of the defenders — through the medium of the Western Newspaper Union, Kansas City, Mo., from which auxiliary the Spectator then got its inside pages ready-printed. It was a hair-raising story—one that could be read with interest again and again.

Incidentally, Andy Maxwell had Indian blood in his own veins. His mother told me she was a quarter-breed. She had Indian features.

Then there was another Indian story having Wetmore connections. I have in my newspaper files Catherine German-Swerdfeger’s own story — nearly a full page written for the Spectator — of the slaying by the Indians of her father and mother, a brother and two sisters; and the capture of herself and three sisters—Sophie, Julia, and Addie. John German, from Blue Ridge, Georgia, with his family, was traveling by ox-team and covered wagon, through Kansas on the way to Colorado at the time of the attack.

Catherine’s description of the abandonment of her two little sisters, aged five and six, after two weeks on the move by the roving band of Indians, on the then uninhabited plains somewhere between southwestern Kansas and the main Cheyenne camp in Texas, in the midst of a big herd of buffalo, where, after following on foot until well nigh exhausted, as mounted Indians forced the two older girls on ponies away from the scene, the little girls lived—no, existed—for six weeks, in October and November weather, with no shelter other than a clay bank, on the leavings of soldiers, (cracker crumbs, scattered grains of corn, and hackberries), in a deserted camp, by a creek, would wring your heart.

Catherine’s personal explanation to me was that the little girls, when down to the last morsel of edible scrapings, had difficulty in deciding which one should eat it. The little one thought the older one should have it—that it might enable her to live to get away. It would appear that the little one had already resigned herself to her fate. The older one decided it rightly belonged to the baby. And neither of them ate it. It was only a dirty kernel of corn, Catherine said in her article: “God had a hand in that work, and I believe you will agree with me when I say He wrought a miracle.”

And I, for one, certainly do agree.

Several inaccurate accounts of the fate of this unfortunate family have been written—one by a professor, who evidently did not have the full facts, as text for the Wichita schools. And another one, as told to a reporter for the Kansas City Journal by “Uncle” Jimmy Cannon, an interpreter on Government pay-rolls, stationed in Kansas (the rider of “Little Gray Johnny”) in which he himself, in a daring dash on a band of Indians, rescued one of the little girls — which, in fact, he didn’t do at all, according to Catherine.

Actually, it was this story of “Uncle” Jimmy’s that caused Catherine to write the true story of the massacre and of their captivity, for my paper. Catherine said it was soldiers under Lieutenant Baldwin of the Fifth Infantry who found her little sisters, sick, emaciated, on the verge of starvation, in that same deserted camp, which was really no camp at all—only an overnight camp site. And though soldiers were constantly on the trail of the Indians, there was no spectacular dash by the military in the rescue the two older girls. When first taken into the main Cheyenne camp, in Texas, Chief Stonecalf told Catherine, who was then nearly eighteen years old, that he was grieved know that his people would do such a deed; that he would, Soon as possible, deliver them to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency—and that he did. Catherine had much praise for Chief Stonecalf, and General Nelson A. Miles, their efforts in liberating them. Under Indian custom, girls were regarded as loot, and had to be bought from their captors.

Jim Smith, now living in the west part of Wetmore, went to school — at the Porter school house on Wolfley-creek—with the two younger German girls. Pat Corney, living on a farm adjacent to the J. P. Smith farm, was guardian of the girls.

Addie—Mrs. Frank Andrews—is still living, or was a few years ago, at Berwick in Nemaha county. A few years back, Mrs. Andrews was invited to appear on a radio program in New York, with all expenses paid—but she did not go. Amos Swerdfeger, husband of Catherine—and son of Adam Swerdfeger, who was among the first settlers here—died at Atascadero, California, Nov. 12, 1921, age 73. Catherine died in 1932, age 75.

These two Indian stories would make good reading now—and while they are in line with my endeavor to give a true picture of the old days, they are not included in this volume. Nothing but my own writings, since my retirement from the newspaper field appears in this book. However, slight reference to those two Indian attacks were made in my more recently published stories, which are reproduced in this book—just as they were written at the time. Many changes have taken place in the meantime.

After it became generally known here that the defenders of that fiercely fought Indian battle in Montana were former Wetmore citizens, many of our people came in from time to time to read the story. That page of the old files is pretty well thumbed.

About fifty years ago, a family by the name of Cummings came here and lived for a short while in the northwest part of town. Mrs. Cummings said she was the daughter of Andy Maxwell. I did not learn her given name, but supposed she was May. She called at the Spectator office, and read the story.

Then, in February, 1939, Mrs. Nettie E. Rachford, Westwood, California, wrote the Spectator asking for a copy of the story, saying she was the daughter of Andy Maxwell. I then copied the story from my files, and W. F. Turrentine printed it again in the Spectator, February 1939.

This reprint of the Maxwell story caused Dr. LeVere Anderson, born and reared on a farm five miles southwest of Wetmore—now established in Miles City, Montana—to bring the matter of that Indian fight to the attention of the Miles City Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber was at that very time sponsoring a homecoming jubilee—and after an exchange of letters between Miles City and Wetmore, Andy Maxwell, then living in Santa Ana, California, was invited to be the Chamber’s honored guest—but he was unable to make the trip. Andy Maxwell died at Santa Ana in 1941, at the age of ninety-nine.

Our New Temporary Home Earlier in this writing I mentioned the fact that our family had three years on the Hazeltine farm. My older brother, Charley, contracted “quick consumption.” There was a prevailing notion that the scent of new pine lumber and fresh country air would be helpful in effecting a cure. So my father made a contract with Charley Hazeltine for the erection of a new house under the cottonwoods on the hill near the old log-house which had been the home of father of the Hazeltine brothers—with a three-year lease on 40 acres of farm land.

The new house had plenty of exposed pine lumber and fresh air all right. It was a box-house made of barn-boards, unplastered, with sleeping quarters in the loft, comparable to the hay-mow in a barn, reached by a ladder from one corner of the ground-floor room. On occasions, snow sifted through the cracks in the loft, covering my bed completely. The lower room was more closely built, which was living room, kitchen, and sleeping quarters for my parents—and the babies. There was a standard sized bed, and a trundle bed—the latter shoved under the regular bed in the daytime, and pulled out to the middle of the room at night. It was a replica of many another home of that day, only the others could have added protection of plastered walls. Then too, it was Dr. Thomas Milam’s belief that Charley would show improvement in the new home with the coming of spring. But, come time for the swelling of the buds of those old cottonwoods in the spring of 1879, the “Grim Reaper” beat the carpenters to the finish. Charley had died before the new house was ready for occupancy. And that made long lonesome hours for me on the farm. Charley had an enviable record as an exemplary boy—and, try as I might, I have not been able to follow wholly in his foot-steps. But I am sure that my memory of him has helped to make me what I am.

Roses The Girls Didn’t Get Reference has been made to my Rose Garden. I have grown them, you might say, as a hobby—and for the pleasure of giving the flowers to my friends. Bushels of them have gone in the past to the Cemetery on Memorial Day, and not a few to sick rooms, to churches, and to local society functions.

The fame of my Rose Garden has traveled far—to California and to Florida. Proof: The two little girls of Shady Mitchell, a Tennessean, who conducted a general store in Wetmore some years back and lived across the street west from the school grounds in the house now owned and occupied by Prof. Howard V. Bixby—in their school work at their new home in Orlando, Florida, wrote in collaboration a theme, beginning: “There was a man living in our town in Kansas who grew roses just to give them away to his friends—” This is the extent of the essay which has been relayed to me—but I’ve no doubt that Verda Bess and Marjorie Lou acknowledged having been the recipient of roses from my garden. I don’t think I ever permitted a little girl—nor a big one either, for that matter—who stopped by to admire my roses, to go away without a bouquet.

And particularly have I been pleased to supply the girl graduates of our splendid Wetmore High School at Commencement time. Last year—spring of 1947—the garden did not show promise of early bloom of quality flowers, and I got the girl graduates some beautiful long-stemmed “Better Times” red roses, ($7.85 per doz.), from Rock’s in Kansas City. I planned to make this an annual contribution, whether at home or away, as a sort of commemoration of the fine Rose Garden I once owned. The garden is now owned by Raymond and Marjorie McDaniel.

Before leaving in the fall for California, I told the girls I would send them roses by air mail—but, through an oversight of someone, I was not apprised of the date of the 1948 Commencement. And this was one time when the girls, through no fault of their own, (except possibly trusting another than a member of the class to do the notifying), missed getting some really high-class graduation roses—roses grow to perfection in California—which I think was more of a disappointment to me than perhaps to anyone else, unless it should have been my niece, Alice Bristow-Tavares, who was to have supplied two dozen extremely beautiful long-stemmed Etoile de Hollande red roses from her climbers. A Fresno florist had been engaged to pack them for mailing.

LITTLE FILLERS In this volume will be found several “Little Fillers”—sayings of children, which have no connection with the various articles. They have been prepared to fill out the pages where the ending of a story leaves unused space—so that all articles may have a top-page heading.

CONSIDERATE KID Having bought little three-year-old Karen McDaniel a 5-cent cone, and also one for her to take home to her little brother Harry, I laid a couple of nickels on the counter at the restaurant; and then put down a dime, and picked up the two nickels—this twenty-cents representing the sum total of my cash as of the moment. Karen said, “What you do that for?” I told her that I was going to purchase a 5-cent lead-pencil from Charley Shaffer at the drug store, and that I wanted to keep the nickels, as it would save time of waiting to get back the nickel in change, were I to keep the dime. She said, brightly, “He might not have a nickel.” I said, “That’s just it.” Not realizing the risk which I myself was cooking up at the moment, I said, “It’s never wise to take a risk when it can just as easily be avoided.” Placing the two nickels beside the little dime, I told her the dime was worth as much as the two bigger nickels. Thinking to see if she had caught on, I said, (rather badly stated), “Now, what you think—which would you rather have?” She smiled, almost saucily grinned, and reaching for the dime, said, “I’ll take the little one—you want to keep the big ones.”

THE BOY OF YESTERYEAR Published in Wetmore Spectator

May 29, 1931

By John T. Bristow

It was a lazy October afternoon. The woods were still in full leaf and the tops of the trees, touched by early frost, had turned to reddish brown and golden yellow. It was a fine day for squirrel hunting. But this is not strictly a hunting story.

There were six in the party—three men of widely varying ages and, as the college youth would say, three skirts — but, for convenience, all wore trousers that afternoon. It was a sort of boarding-house party out for recreation and game. They were: Mrs. Edna Weaver, Miss Genevieve Weaver, Miss Thelma Sullivan, Milton Mayer, Raymond Weaver and the writer.

Our wanderings carried us into the heavily wooded section near the head of Wolfley creek. I had no hunter’s license and, being a law-loving citizen, carried no gun. The hunters, alert for game, went deep into the woods. And I trailed along, not noticing, not caring, where we were going. Having passed the stage of life when one normally gives a whoop where he is or what he does, to me, one place was as good as another.

And then, of a sudden, I became tremendously alert. We were now coming near to my father’s old farm—the home he had blazed out of the wilderness, so to speak, on first coming to Kansas—oh, so many years ago. That farm is now owned by Mrs. Worley.

A few of the many letters commenting on my published stories are printed in this volume—in all cases, blocked in the story to which the letter refers. They help to attest the authenticity and worthiness of the article. It’s most stimulating to have one’s friends write in and say, “I know that to be true.” It’s like the “Amen” to a fervent prayer.

The regret is that so few of the old ones are left.

For sentimental reasons I wanted to hunt that old place — to live, briefly, again the days of my youth. As we came to the line fence between the Worley farm and the Brock pasture lands on the east, my companions balked at wire—wanted to turn back. My suggestion that we go on was regarded as “idiotic.” The Worley timber was un-inviting. There were lots of weeds over on that side, and probably snakes, too. I know rattlesnakes infested that place when I lived there as a boy.

I climbed over the fence, anyway, and was soon racing toward a mammoth elm tree—a tree that had budded and leaves more than sixty times since the day I last saw that place. The hunters came over on the bound. “It went up this tree,” I lied. There was no squirrel. I was in truth a boy again—a very small boy—resorting to childish subterfuges.

E D WOODBURN

Lawyer

HOLTON, KANSAS

October 19, 1931

Mr. John Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas

Dear John:--

I want to express to you my appreciation for the opportunity of reading your article, “The Boy of Yesteryear” published in the Wetmore Spectator May 29, 1931.

I have never understood and have always regretted the fact that you quit the newspaper field. It has always seemed to me that with your ability to write, you could have been useful as a newspaper man. You have the happy faculty of getting and holding one’s attention from beginning to end.

Yours very truly,

E D WOODBURN

But my “idiotic” idea wasn’t so bad. The hunters a got a nice bag of squirrels on that side of the fence and in passing the spot again an hour later one of party thought she saw my mythical squirrel go into a hole in one of the top-most branches of that old monarch of the woods. So that was that. Kindly forget the ethics involved. We hunted the timber the full length of that place Dad’s old farm. Now there were big trees—and some tall trees. As I remember, there were big tall trees on that place when we lived there more than a half century ago. My father split rails from that timber to fence the farm, And as ex-woodsman he was he was inordinately proud of that rail fence, of his excellent craftsmanship. In his native state, with the straight-splitting birch and poplars, it would have been a simple matter. Here it was an accomplishment.

In that day there were two kinds of rail fences in general use. The “leaner” fence was constructed with posts set on top the ground in a leaning position and supported by stakes on the under side, with the rails nailed onto the posts. The “stake and rider” fence, also sometimes called the “worm” fence, was made by laying the end of one rail on top of another, in zigzag fashion, at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, so that the ends would lap, with a ground chunk under each section, and when built up to the desired height — usually seven rails—two cross-stakes were set in the ground at the junction of the panels, with another rail on top the cross-stake. My father’s fence was of the latter type. It took a lot of rails.

Also I recall seeing my father shoot a squirrel out of the top of a very tall tree with his Colt’s revolver. That six-shooter was presented to him by Federal officers during the Civil War for protecting himself against a band of guerrillas. More about the guerrillas later.

And on this October day I saw the spot where the old house stood on the south flank of that woodland—the house around which I played with my brothers as a care-free child, and where my mother almost cried her heart out because of loneliness. Also, it was here where my mother told me a story one day—a story of my father, of herself, of why we had left our home in the Southland. Our tears mingled over the telling of that story then. And there was sadness in my heart that October afternoon as I paused, reverently, for a moment in passing.

Although I was born in the sunny South where magnolias bloom and mockingbirds sing all winter long, my first vivid recollection of life was upon this bleak Kansas farm, hot and wind-swept in summer, cold and desolate in winter. The rigid climate of this new plains country home was in such marked contrast to the mild and even temperature of my mother’s native heavily timbered state as to her long to go back to her old home.

It was eight wilderness miles to Powhattan, the post-office; five miles to Granada, the trading post; and one mile to the nearest neighbors—Rube and Anne Wolfley.

The mill that made our sorghum molasses—nearly every farmer grew a patch of cane for making molasses to go with corn-bread, the staple diet—one mile off from Powhattan, was owned by Charley Smith, the same Charley Smith who had in earlier days, been keeper of a station (his home ) on the old John Brown “underground railroad,” where runaway Negro slaves, being transported to Canada, were in hiding through the day. I know it was the Charley Smith place, for Ben Summers, our hired man, said it still smelled of “niggers.” But of course it didn’t. That was Ben ’ s way of opening a sizeable tale about Mr. Brown and his underground railroad.

And I wouldn’t know how far it was to the mill that ground our corn-meal, but I do know there was one—for we had no bread other than cornbread for months on end. Only on rare occasions would we have “lightbread”—made of wheat flower, of course. The cornbread my mother usually made was not the cornpone customary in the South. Cracklin ’ bread and seasoned cornbread was much better—that is, for most palates. I wish I could have some of it now. But there was one traveling salesman, Hugh Graham, who preferred the cornpone. He would wire the hotel here of his expected arrival, which meant that for breakfast, dinner, or supper, he wanted cornpone. I think the cornpone was made of cornmeal, salt, and water.

I recall that Ben Summers had gone “acourtin” Betsy Porter that evening, when my parents were shelling corn, by candle-light, on a sheet spread upon the kitchen floor, to take to the mill—probably the Reiderer mill east of Holton — when a big bullsnake which had crept in through a displaced chink in the log house, slithered across the sheet, gliding over the corn, and out an open door. The matter was debated, seriously—then it was decided the hogs should have that corn.

My father and mother, with their three small children, came to Kansas from Nashville, Tennessee, in 1865. They came by steamboat on the Cumberland, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to Atchison. The family was met there by my uncle Nick, father’s only brother, with an ox-team, taking most of two days to drive us to his home on Wolfley creek. That farm is now owned by William Mast.