Chapter 2

night. She told me that in one corner of the blue chest were bags of gold amounting to $10,000. Afterward I could understand that she felt too anxious to sleep and that in case of any foul deed, I could answer for her. In those days, however, men were honest and money plentiful. Many times has my father ridden to or from St. Paul with a sack of money in the buggy seat beside him.

About this time it was getting to be the custom in Washington and other large cities for ladies to receive gentlemen callers on New Year's Day, so the first year St. Anthony followed that custom, by Mrs. Camp's suggestions and help, I was the first to receive callers, with Mrs. Camp as chaperone. I am not quite sure who were our callers, probably Mr. Camp, T. E. B. North, J. B. Shaw and others. Pound and fruit cake with fragrant coffee and rich cream were served.

In our house was organized the first Masonic Lodge. I remember it perfectly well. My mother had arranged the house in such perfect order we children felt something unusual was to happen. Mother first was elected Tyler. I couldn't understand why we couldn't even peep through the key-hole. I saw Mr. John H. Stevens and Mr. Isaac Atwater pass into the parlor where they spent the evening with my father. Mother proved a faithful Tyler and all the satisfaction we got was that they had "Ridden the goat."

Father had told brother Abner wonderful stories about the country he was intending to take us to and one was that "sleds grow on trees" and he should have one when we got there. He did not forget. Maybe he was reminded, but some time before one Christmas day daddy brought home two strips of wood that he said could be bent into the shape he wanted it. It took some time and I do not know whether brother suspected what was coming until his own frame sled was brought to him, all completed but the steels--they came later. So he can claim having had the first real coaster, for the other boys had only board runners or barrel staves.

The mills (now burned) new then, with two upright saws, the people were as proud of as they are now proud of all the fine mills in Minneapolis. Ard Godfrey had reason for feeling proud. He had the management of the building of the first mill dam across the Mississippi River, had stood waist deep in its waters, half days at a time with his men to accomplish this work. He was owner to not over one-seventh and not less than one-tenth interest in the Mill Co. business--was agent for Franklin Steele, of whom he always spoke with the greatest respect. I can realize that he was a very busy man during the time he served there and that he needed the rest and quiet he found afterward in his Minnehaha home.

Our first nearest neighbors were Mrs. Marshall with her two sons, Wm. R. and Joseph, and her daughter, Rebecca. Their store was the first started in our neighborhood until John G. Lennon built his a little later. Mrs. Marshall impressed me when she said to my mother that "If one of her sons was foolish enough to get into a fight and get whipped she would whip him again when he came home." I thought of her in after years when I heard people speak of Wm. R. Marshall while he was Governor of Minnesota. Once on our first acquaintance, my mother sent my brother, then about six years of age, to Mrs. Marshall for an article from the store. She gave it to him with the change. The child was so interested in his play with some boys, he hurried home, gave mother the package and was hurrying off when she asked him for the change. He said he hadn't any and from his eagerness to get away she feared he had spent the money without leave, to treat the boys. I heard her say something about "Not letting this pass a first time, if it is an act of dishonesty now is my time," etc. So to sift the matter to the bottom, she took the reluctant boy to Mrs. Marshall, who said, "Don't you see, Mrs. Godfrey, he has done nothing wrong; he has the money; look again." Sure enough, under the wonderful things, balls and strings in his pocket, was the money just where Mrs. Marshall had put it herself and he was the most surprised one to see it. The tears were dried and Mrs. Marshall had saved him from punishment only that he had lost his noon hour for play.

One last remembrance is that of the great flood which came and spoiled so much of the work done in the beginning; I have still in my mind the grandest picture of Almighty God I ever saw. Man seemed but an atom against Him, when the waters rushed and roared in their strong surges over the ledges that made the Falls of St. Anthony; the long logs that had been, but a few months before, proud monarchs of the pine forests, sailed along toward this brink like sticks, then with their long ends balancing out over the rushing fall would tilt over and down into the rushing, curling, foaming torrent out of sight. But little else was thought of just then for we who were near were watching, watching the grandeur but dreading the effect. One thing I realized that drew my attention from this mighty picture, that was the anxious face of my father. Had he not foreseen the future possibilities of this great water-power? I am sure now that he had, and soon had the first stroke come and waived aside all that had been partly accomplished. A set-back because the work had been begun with rough tools and lack of material. I think he realized what might be--what has been. What we all can see now, power harnessed by inventions into monstrous manufactories, costing mints of gold, paying out mints of gold in return, costing more than half a century of time and labor.

Why do I think he foresaw all this? For several reasons. At that time he secured title to a small island outside the others just at the brink of the Falls, although by some re-survey. I think it was afterward considered a part of Nicollet Island, causing him to leave it, if I am right. Another reason seems indirect, but it was from what he said in regard to San Pedro Harbor in his first visit to California, that Los Angeles might become a city, but not what San Pedro could be with a harbor, a nucleous or center for business for all the surrounding country. It may take years enough to see all this, to make up its half century too, but when I see what is already the beginning I know he was right and knew what he was talking about. So as I now often sit and listen to the breakers of the grand old Pacific Ocean, I am given an old home-feeling, I am listening, in memory, to the roar of that might water-fall, the Falls of St. Anthony, as they sounded fifty years ago.

Abner Crossman Godfrey--1849.

In the early days, before we had street cars, or any of the present day improvements, the country was all new. New families and interests were pouring in from the East. We had to travel by stage coach and very often the roads were so muddy that the wheels of the coach would sink in to the hub. I remember the year so well that the first State Capitol was dedicated. That was the time of the pleasure trip that I am going to tell you about. They got a four horse lumber wagon and put in long seats on either side, and piled in heavy robes. This was to convey the people from Minneapolis to St. Paul for the very important services. There were three boys--Stillman Foster, Oat Whitney, Sam Tyler of the neighborhood and myself that chummed together. The rig started off from the old mill office, Main Street. That was the starting place for everything in those days, and is now Second Avenue Southeast. We boys decided that it would be a great lark to get in the wagon and hide under the robes and ride around to the St. Charles Hotel, where the passengers were waiting. Much to our surprise, we were not ordered to get out when we were discovered. We soon arrived at the old Des Noyer place half way to St. Paul. It was bitter cold, about forty-five degrees below zero. In St. Paul, I left the rig and wandered over to the old American House. My hands were frozen and I soon began to cry with the pain. My fingers were white to the first joint. A Frenchman who was standing near by, seeing my distress, took compassion on me, took me inside and put my hands into hot whiskey. That saved them.

Major Benjamin Randall--1849.

In 1860, to prevent conflict between the Indians and white settlers, a military post called Fort Ridgely was built one hundred and eighty mile northwest of Winona on the Minnesota River. Major Woods arrived soon after navigation on the river was demonstrated to be practicable by that veteran, Smith Harris and steamboats from the Ohio river were not infrequent visitors. Ridgely was in no sense a fort, but by general acceptation. It was not designed or constructed as a place of defense. It was built on a plain forty rods from the edge of a steep bluff of the river on the south and a gradual sloping bluff, less abrupt, to a creek running at right angles on the east about the same distance. A deep wooded ravine extended up through the river bluff to about one hundred yards of the southwest corner, while a considerable depression was continued some distance farther. The St. Peter road led up the creek bluff ravine along the north side of the fort, with a level stretch of prairie to the north. It was such a place as the Indians would have selected for the building, if they had contemplated its capture.

The Indians were frequent visitors at the fort and watched the Light Battery drill with wonder and surprise. The horses flying across the prairie like an Egyptian chariot race, the sudden changes of front and position, and the rapid firing, awed the savage. In the spring of 1861, all this was changed. The artillery were ordered south. One and sometimes two companies of volunteers were stationed for a short time, and others succeeded them. The Indians knew the country was claiming its able bodied and best men in its support, and watched with interest the departure of volunteers for its defence, and believed, as they talked, that only women and old men were left. The soldiers they respected and feared had gone from our frontier.

The anxiety to rush everybody to the front had left our posts without garrison, and people without protection, and protests to officials were unheeded or disregarded. The Indians felt that the time and opportunity was present when they could win back without resistance the inheritance they had lost. In furtherance of this scheme, on Monday morning, the 18th of August, 1862, an attack was made on the citizens at the lower agency, twelve miles above the fort. Those that could, tried to escape. J. C. Dickinson, who kept a boarding-house, with his family and others, in a two-horse wagon, was the first to cross the ferry, notifying the settlers as he made his way toward the fort. A little before nine o'clock in the morning, I was out about two miles from the agency in a buggy and met him. His team was jaded and I reached Capt. Marsh's quarters sometime in advance of him. A courier was sent after Lieut. Shehan, who with fifty men, was on his return to Fort Ripley. Capt. Marsh and forty-six men, started for the scene of the uprising, and were ambuscaded by the Indians, twenty-eight of the men being killed and Capt. Marsh drowned.

That night small parties of Indians that were raiding the settlements, were drawn together and celebrated their victory by dance and song, which gave us valuable time at the fort, saving hundreds of lives by the delay.

The fort was left under the command of Lieut. Gere, a young man of less than twenty years, without military or frontier experience. The situation would, have appalled the most experienced frontier officer. Fortunately the advice and experience of Sergeant Jones was available. The four Reike brothers, who had the contract for furnishing hay to the post, notified settlers, and hauled water, filling all the barrels that could be found. All the water used at the post was hauled from a spring at the foot of the river bluff, nearly half a mile distant, and near the ravine which the Indians went up two days later to make their attack.

After a day of preparation and suspense, Lieut. Shehan returned with his fifty men, who were welcomed with joy by those holding the post, and later, about forty-six men arrived from St. Peter, the Renville Rangers. There were enough men to post sentinels, to guard the salient points. I visited some of these posts with an officer and a lantern later in the night, and no one was sleeping on them; they were deserted. We followed to where they had taken shelter in the barracks among the refugees, and they were ordered from under bedsteads, to resume their guns and duties.

The ravine was between my house and the garrison, where my family had taken shelter. About twelve o'clock I was at the house, with a horse and buggy, when guns were discharged and sentinels shouting "Indians." Seeing them running, I was not long in reaching the fort, and had been there but a short time, when flames shot up from my dwelling and the ravine I had just crossed swarmed with painted savages.

Miss Sara Faribault.

My father, Oliver Faribault, built a house which was his home and trading post near "Little Six" or Shakopee's village in 1844. It was a fine point for a trading post, as three Indian villages were near; Good Roads, Black Dog's and Shakopee's. He was a very successful trader. I can well remember the great packs of furs. We used to play all around the country near. I could shoot an arrow as well as a boy. The hunting was fine.

We used often to go to the sacred stone of the Indians and I have often seen the Sioux warriors around it. It was on the prairie below town. There was room for one to lie down by it and the rest would dance or sit in council around it. They always went to it before going into battle. They left gifts which the white people stole. I can remember taking some little thing from it myself. I passed a party of Indians with it in my hand. One of the squaws saw what I had and became very angry. She made me take it back. She seemed to feel as we would if our church had been violated. This stone was stolen by a man from the east and taken there. This loss made the Indians very angry.

Little Crow was often at our house and was much loved by us children. He used to bring us candy and maple sugar. My father was fond of him too, and said he was always honest.

The Indians did not understand the white man's ways. When the white man had a big storehouse full of goods belonging to the Indians and the Indian was cold and hungry, he could not see why he could not have what was there, belonging to him, if it would keep him warm and feed him. He could not see why he should wait until the government told him it was time for him to eat and be warm, when the time they had told him before was long past. It was the deferred payments that caused the outbreak, I have often heard from the Indians.

One morning in the summer of '58 we heard firing on the river. Most of the Sioux had gone to get their annuities but a few who were late were camped near Murphy's. These had been attacked by a large band of the Chippewa. The fighting went on for hours, but the Chippewa were repulsed. That was the last battle between the Sioux and the Chippewa near here.

I have often seen Indians buried on platforms elevated about eight feet on slender poles. They used to put offerings in the trees to the Great Spirit and to keep the evil spirits away. I remember that one of these looked like a gaily colored umbrella at a distance. I never dared go near.

Mary Sherrard Phillips--1854.

At the time of the Indian massacre in Minnesota, August, 1862, John Otherday, who was married to a white woman, sent word to the agent's wife to leave the Agency within an hour. This was at half past nine at night. The trouble began at a small store a short distance from the agent's house. The shooting and fighting could be heard from the house.

Otherday, with a party of sixty-two refugees, instead of taking them to the fort, had them ford the Minnesota River and pass through the wild country, avoiding the main traveled roads. He was never with them, would be seen in the distance on a hill to the right, and then in the opposite direction. They came to the river at Carver, where they re-crossed, then to Shakopee, their old home, where I saw them.

When Major Galbraith was given the office of Indian Agent at Yellow Medicine, most of his employees went with him. Mrs. Galbraith and her three children, and Miss Charles, a teacher, went in a one-horse buggy. They took this at the time of the outbreak and were in Otherday's party. Part of the time they walked and let others ride to rest them. This little band of fugitives could make only a few miles in twenty-four hours. The Indians did not follow them, as they thought they would go to the fort, and then they would attack them as they neared the fort. Mrs. Galbraith and children came to father's house. They were a sorrowful looking band. Dr. Wakefield and Maj. Galbraith were at the fort.

The women told us this story. The day before the outbreak, Mrs. Wakefield and her two children, with George Gleason, started for Fort Ridgely. They saw some Indians coming. Mrs. Wakefield said: "I am afraid," but Gleason said, "They are our own Shakopee Indians, they will not hurt us." Then as soon as they passed, they shot Gleason in the back, and he fell out of the buggy, dead. They took Mrs. Wakefield and the children captives. She was saved by one Indian taking her as his squaw. For two days, he had them hid in a straw stack.

Mother asked Mrs. Galbraith if she saved any of her silver. She replied; "When life is at stake, that is all you think of."

When Col. Sibley and his men came to Shakopee, they came mostly by boat. They pressed into service all the horses and wagons in town to transport them to the seat of the Indian war. There was only one old white horse left, that belonged to Dr. Weiser. The Little Antelope that passed down the Minnesota did not have room for one more. The town was packed with refugees, every house had all it could shelter. The women did what they could to help the ones that had come there for shelter and safety, and carried them provisions and clothes. We had refugees from Henderson, Belle Plaine, St. Peter, Glencoe, and all through the country, fleeing from the Indians.

The Faribault House, covered with siding, is still standing.

Shah-kpa-dan, or Shakopee in English, was named after Shakopee Indian Chief, (Little Six), who with his band, had a village just across the river. He died and was buried there in the fifties. I saw the dead body in the winter, which they had elevated on a platform, held up by four slender poles, about eight feet high. In the trees near the camp, they had something that looked like a closed umbrella. They had a number of these to drive away the evil spirits.

The Sioux counted their money by dimes, which they called Cosh-poppy. Then they counted up to ten; One-cha, No-pah, Yam-any, To-pa, Zo-ta, Shakopee, Sha-ko, Sha-kan-do, Nep-chunk, Wix-chiminey. Then these numerals would be used as One-cha Cosh-poppy, No-pa Cosh-poppy, up to Wix-chiminey Cosh-poppy, which would be $1.

I saw some squaws the day after a battle, mourning. They had lost relatives. They sat on the ground and were moaning and rocking their bodies back and forth. The squaws always carried a butcher knife in their belts. They took the point of the knife and cut the skin of their legs from the knees down to the foot, just enough so it would bleed and a few drops trickle down these gashes. There were three or four of these squaws.

In 1854 fifteen hundred Winnebago Indians came up the Minnesota River to Shakopee, in their birch bark and dugout canoes, which lined the shore. They were on the way to their new agency. Their agent was to meet them at Shakopee with their government money and rations. He failed to come on the day appointed. They waited several days for him and were angry at the delay. The citizens found the Indians were being supplied with fire water and for their own safety, they hunted for it. They found three barrels of it in the kitchen of a dwelling. They took it and broke in the barrel-heads and flooded the kitchen. The agent came that evening, gave the Indians their money and rations, so they went on in their canoes early the next morning. I saw them off, I was in the canoes with some of them. They gave me beads and the little tin earrings, which they used by the dozens, as ornaments. The river was filled with their canoes, but their ponies and other heavy baggage went on land.

The Winnebagoes gave a money dance in front of the hotel. Their tom-tom music was on the porch. They formed in a semi-circle. They were clad in breech-clouts with their naked bodies painted in all the colors of the rainbow, put on in the most grotesque figures imaginable. They would sing and dance to their music, pick up the money that had been thrown them, give their Indian war-whoops and yells, then fall back to form the semi-circle and dance up again. This was an exciting scene with the side and back scenery made up of hundreds of live and almost naked redskins.

I saw one scalp-dance by the Sioux. They had a fresh scalp, said to be off a Chippewa chief. It was stretched on a sort of hoop, formed by a green twig, or limb. It was all very weird. This was in '54.

The Indians enjoyed frightening the white women. They often found them alone in their homes. They were always hungry, would demand something to eat, and would take anything that pleased their fancy. My mother, Mrs. Sherrard, was very much afraid of the Indians. Once one of the braves shook his tomahawk at her through a window.

I have seen a dog train in St. Paul, loaded with furs from the Hudson Bay Fur Company.

WENONAH CHAPTER

Winona

JEANETTE THOMPSON MAXWELL

(Mrs. Guy Maxwell)

Mr. H. L. Buck--1854.

In the spring of '54 Cornelius F. Buck and his young wife, located a claim and built a log cabin on the present highway just before it enters the village of Homer in Winona County. Homer at that time seemed a much more promising place than Winona. The few incidents I give are those I heard from my mother's and father's lips during my childhood. The country had been opened for settlement a year or two before, but few settlers had arrived at this time and everything that went to make a frontier was present, even to native Indians. They were peaceable enough but inclined to be curious and somewhat of a nuisance. One spring morning shortly after the cabin had been built, my mother was dressing, when, without warning of any kind, the door was opened and in stalked a great Indian brave. My father had already gone out and my mother was greatly frightened, but her indignation at having her privacy thus disturbed exceeded her fright and she proceeded to scold that Indian and tell him what she thought of such conduct, finally "shooing" him out. He took the matter good naturedly, grinning in a sheepish sort of way, but my mother had evidently impressed him as being pretty fierce, for among all the Indians of the neighborhood she became known as the "Little Hornet."

The second spring my father and another settler securing some brass kettles, went to a maple grove a mile below their homes on the river bank and commenced gathering sap for sugar. During the night their kettles were stolen and suspecting some Indians who were encamped on the Wisconsin side of the river, they armed themselves to the teeth with guns, revolvers and bowie knives and taking a canoe, crossed the river, entered the Indian camp and demanded to see the chief.

He was told that some of his cowardly "braves" had stolen the paleface's kettles. The chief denied the theft. My father, allowing all his weapons to be plainly seen, again demanded the return of his kettles, and said if they were not returned by the next morning he would make war on the chief's whole tribe and annihilate them. This was too much for the natives and the next morning the kettles were returned.

My mother, who had spent her childhood and youth in the prairie country, had never seen any hills worth mentioning. She told me that when she landed from the steamboat on which she had traveled from Galena and took up her abode under the overtopping bluffs that lined the banks of the river and the boat disappeared in the distance, she had an overpowering feeling that she had been imprisoned far from the world, that she was shut out from civilization and would never be able to get out of these "mountains" and for several years that feeling stayed with her. The river was the only highway over which came human beings. In the winter the river still was the main traveled road, but with sleighs instead of boats. It was a rare treat for her to go as far as La Crosse. In the winter this trip was often accompanied with danger, from the uncertainty of the strength of the ice. I recall one trip she and my father made going to La Crosse one day upon the ice in the month of February. They had planned to stay over night in the latter place and return in the morning. In the morning they hitched up the horse and drove to the river bank, but the ice had entirely disappeared during the night and the steamboating was again good.

In '62 when the Indian outbreak occurred in the west, while Winona was far removed from the danger zone, much excitement prevailed here. My father organized a company of men of which he became captain and the Winona Rangers marched west to help in driving back the Indian forces. They met thousands of settlers fleeing to the east. Assisting them in such ways as they might they continued westward until they reached Lake Shetek where they were stationed for several months. They met no Indians but were of assistance in restoring confidence in the returning settlers.

Mrs. Harriet Gleason--1854.

I was twenty-seven years old when I came to Minnesota, landing at a townsite on the Mississippi River then known as Manton, but now known as La Crescent. My brother, Samuel Spalding had come the year preceding and had taken a claim near that place and at his request I came and took a claim there also and kept house for him.

The country at that time was one almost unbroken wilderness. There were no roads of any kind, only "blazed trails" through the timber from one place to another.

There were wild animals in those days, and still wilder Indians, though there were some "Good Indians." One morning a "Good Indian" came to our place and wanted a needle and some thread, which I gave him. He said he was going away hunting and thanked me. In the evening he came back and I lost confidence in the "Good Indian" pretty quick. He had been drinking and wanted me to give him more whiskey. I told him that I had none, but that did not satisfy him. He kept asking for whiskey. I thought, "What must I do?" I gave him the camphor bottle which he threw away; also water, with which he did the same, repeating his request for whiskey and flourishing his tomahawk over my head. I was now thoroughly frightened but tried not to let him see that I was. I then gave him a loaf of bread, which he took and then he wanted me to go with him to his wigwam. I opened the door and told him to "Get out quick," which he did with a whoop and a run. From that time on the Indians did not trouble us.

Mrs. Bradley--1854.

When our family, the Grants, came to Winona, there were more Indians here than whites and to one who had never seen the Red Skins, a vivid impression which can never be forgotten was left. There were very few houses and the inhabitants were limited to a dozen families.

Mr. Oliver K. Jones--1857.

In the summer of '62 I enlisted in Company G of the Eighth Minnesota Infantry. Before the six regiments required of Minnesota were fully organized the Sioux Indian massacre occurred. As fast as a company was organized it was rushed off somewhere on the frontier to protect the white settlers and drive back the Indians. My company and Company D of the 7th Regiment were sent on a forced march to Fort Abercrombie, two hundred and fifty miles northwest of St. Paul on the Red River, twelve miles down the river from Breckenridge. This garrison was besieged by Indians. All the white people in that vicinity who had not been killed or captured had fled there for protection. There was but one company of soldiers there at this time under command of Captain Vanderhorck, who had himself been wounded. This fort was nothing but a few buildings located on the open prairie on the Dakota side of the river. Earthen breast-works had been hastily thrown up for the better protection of the people within. It required constant vigilance on the part of all the soldiers to hold the garrison for the three or four weeks before our arrival. The only water supply they had was the river, some rods outside of the fort embankment. Their supply of rations had become nearly exhausted, so that on our arrival about the middle of September, we found a very hungry and badly scared lot of people. There were some unburied dead, some badly wounded and some sick. One woman who had been wounded by the Indians at Breckenridge a few days before and left for dead, had regained consciousness and crawled on her hands and knees the entire twelve miles to the fort where she was taken care of and finally recovered. Two mornings some Indians concealed themselves among the willows which grew on the Minnesota side of the river and fired upon some teamsters who were watering their horses. One teamster died the next day; the other, although wounded, recovered after several weeks treatment at the fort hospital. These teamsters were citizen farmers who had been pressed into service to help haul the supplies of grain and provisions to the starving people and animals at the fort.

On our way to the fort, Sauk Center was the last place at which we found any settlers. Many from the surrounding country had assembled here for safety. A station with soldiers to guard it was established there and one also at Alexandria, some miles beyond.

We did not see any Indians until the day before our arrival when a few were seen by our scouts. A mile or so from the fort, before we came to the river, we found in the woods the mutilated remains of two soldiers who had been killed the day before by some Indians who attacked the escort of eight soldiers who were returning to the fort after taking a messenger through the woods on his way to Fort Snelling to officially notify the officers in charge there, of the conditions at Abercrombie. Other messengers had been sent but it was not known whether or not they had gotten through, communication having been entirely cut off between that garrison and the settlements below. The messenger, having met our expedition, returned with us to the fort.

Immediately after our arrival, details of men were set to work cutting logs to put a twelve foot stockade around the fort to provide better protection against the Indians. Scouting parties were sent out every few days to scour the country round about from ten to fifty miles in all directions. Our company remained at Abercrombie until the spring of '64. We never saw another Indian except the few captured by the scouting parties and brought to the fort for safe keeping.

About the middle of October when we had been at the fort about a month, a call for volunteers was made to form a guard to some thirty Indian prisoners and take some cattle to Sauk Center. I was one of the four from our company; not that I was more brave or reckless than many others, but I preferred almost anything to doing irksome guard and fatigue duties at a fort. So a little train of wagons in which to carry our camping outfit, our provisions and the few squaws and children, was made up. The guards, cattlemen and Indian men had to walk. While on this trip we did not suppose there was an Indian in the whole outfit who knew or could understand a word of English, so we were not at all backward about speaking our minds as to Indians in general and some of those whom we were guarding in particular. On the second or third day out I was walking along behind the wagons near one of the big buck Indians who was filling up his pipe preparatory to having a smoke. When ready for a light he walked up alongside of me and said, "Jones, have you got any matches?" Before this, no matter what we said to him or any of the others, all we could get from them would be a grunt or a sullen look. We arrived at our destination without seeing any Indians. We turned ours over to the officer in charge of Sauk Center post. Here we had to wait a long time for a train of supplies which was being made up at St. Cloud to be taken to Abercrombie. By this time winter had set in and there was no need for guards, so each man of our squad was assigned a six mule team to drive up to the fort. If anyone thinks it is all pleasure driving and caring for a six mule team from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie, one hundred and seventy miles, in midwinter, with nothing to protect him from the cold but an ordinary army uniform, including an unlined tight blue overcoat, let him try it once.

That spring our company was ordered to go to Fort Ripley, nobody ever knew what for. We stayed there until sometime in May when we were ordered to Fort Ridgely, to get ready for an expedition across the plains after the Indians who were somewhere between Minnesota and the Bad Lands of Dakota and Montana.

In the June battle of Killdeer Mountain '64, a cavalry boy sixteen years old, as soon as the Indians were in sight, put spurs to his horse. He rode in among the Indians, killing two with his sword, picked up the lariat ropes of their ponies and returned to our firing line leading the ponies, and never received a scratch of injury to himself. The boy hero said the Indians had killed his father and mother and he enlisted on purpose to avenge their death.

On August 8, 1864, General Sully was sick and turned the entire command over to Colonel Thomas. Before noon Indians were reported all around us. Colonel Thomas put strong guards in front, rear and on the flanks. Firing soon commenced on all sides, the soldiers having orders to fire at an Indian whenever one was in sight. The Indians always appeared singly or in small bands on the hills and higher ground. This mode of battle was continued until dark, when we were obliged to stop and go into camp with a strong guard all around. In the morning not an Indian was in sight. It was learned afterward that there were some eight thousand warriors engaged and that they lost three hundred and eleven killed and six hundred or seven hundred wounded. Our losses were nine killed and about one hundred wounded. The battle was named "Waho-chon-chaka" and was the last fighting we had with the Indians for that summer.

Mrs. Arabella Merrit--1859.

My father's family were among the early pioneers in Martin county, Minnesota. I well remember an emergency that tried our wits and I suppose was equal to golf for developing arm muscle in a young girl--it certainly developed patience.

Much snow had fallen during the winter of 1858-9 and the sloughs of which there were legions in that country, had frozen up in the fall, full of water. Toward the last of February, the snow began to melt. A heavy rain setting in on February 28th caused it to melt very rapidly until at last the whole prairie was flooded, making it impossible for us to leave our homes for any great distance. It was during this time that the flour and meal gave out. What could we do? Bread we must have! At last I thought of the coffee mill (one of the old fashioned kind, fastened to the wall.) I filled it with wheat and went to work. Never shall I forget those long hours of grinding to furnish bread for five in the family. Never bread tasted sweeter. Some of the time I would grind corn for a change and make meal, not, to be sure, the fine meal of today, but we pronounced it good then. Our coffee was parched rye. While I was grinding the wheat we had bread only twice a day. At noon, for three weeks, there was nothing on the table except baked potatoes and salt. Finally the salt gave out and for four meals we had only potatoes. At last the flood abated and my father started for Mankato, forty miles distant, to procure some provisions. The roads were something awful, but after three days he returned with flour, meal and other needed supplies. What a rejoicing to see him safely back! I was glad to be released from my job as miller.

On Aug. 21, '62 a messenger came through our little settlement situated on East Chain Lakes in Martin County, telling us there seemed to be trouble at the Indian Agency. It was feared it might prove serious. Our settlement consisted of six families. As there was scarcely any ammunition in the neighborhood one of the men started to Mankato, forty miles distant, to procure some. When he reached Gordon City, half way, he was told that it would not be safe to proceed. Even if he did he could get no ammunition, as Gordon City could not secure any and Minnesota was short. The massacre had begun on outlying country round New Ulm. Our little settlement awaited anxiously his return. He had left Saturday morning, Aug. 22nd. Late in the afternoon of that day my father and mother were away some little distance from the house. I was alone. Chancing to look out I saw twenty mounted men coming across the prairie. My heart stood still. Where could I hide? At last I decided to run to our nearest neighbor's about a quarter of a mile away, warn her and we could die together. She and her three little children were alone, as it was her husband who had gone for ammunition. I ran, glancing back once, I could see the horsemen were increasing their speed. I reached her house and rushing in said, "Mrs. Fowler, the Indians are coming!" Calmly, she stood up and with a white face said. "Well we can die here as well as anywhere." Just then her little girl of eight years with a child's curiosity ran out and peeped around the corner of the house. She came running back saying, "Why, they are white men." The reaction nearly took all our strength. I stepped out. Just then two of our friends from Winnebago City, twenty miles east of us, rode up. They had seen me running and hurried after me guessing my fear that they were Indians.

I went back home where there were twenty mounted men from Winnebago City, their objective point being Jackson, fourteen miles west of us where there was a small Norwegian settlement. My mother and I got supper for them and they went on their way. During the night a messenger came from Winnebago asking how long since they had left. He said there were orders for them to go to Madelia. He found them before morning and turned their course for Madelia. Had they gone to Jackson they would have been in time to prevent the massacre of fourteen persons which took place where they were holding church services. A few escaped and told that it was a band of five Indians that did that awful work of killing and mutilating. We were not aware of that cruel work so near us on that bright Sabbath day.

Early in the spring, a son of Dr. Mills of Red Wing came, bringing with him his pretty wife and two children, two and three years old. They had taken land six miles north of us and with the exception of an old trapper, who resided alone near them, our settlement was their nearest neighbors. On that morning my mother said to father, "I think it would be best to go up and bring Mrs. Mills and children down here for a few days." When father reached the Mills' home he found that Mr. Mills had gone out on the prairie that morning to look for his yoke of oxen that had strayed away during the night. Mrs. Mills left a note for him telling where she and the children had gone and gladly came to our home. About four o'clock our neighbor returned saying there was no ammunition to be had and that we must all leave our homes at once. It was not safe to stay. In those days every settler had hoops and canvas for his wagon, as those were what he had come into that part of the country with. So with all haste the "prairie schooners" were prepared. With true eastern forethought for her family my mother put in food enough for several days, a bed and trunk of clothes. One wagon, we found, would not hold all our goods and us too. Meantime no word came from Mr. Mills. We left our home just at dusk, a sad band of six families. We took Mrs. Mills and family with us, she not knowing what might have been the fate of her husband, but bravely and quietly going with us. Every farmer drove his herd of cattle and horses. It was all they could move.

One of our neighbors, Mrs. George Fowler, sister of the late Mrs. J. J. Hillmer, was confined to her bed with a babe two weeks old. She had to be carried on a bed in their wagon. Mr. Fowler's father, mother and sister from New Haven, Conn., were spending the summer in the west with their son. We started for Winnebago City, our nearest town east. We traveled all night to make that twenty miles, making slow progress with our heavy wagons, poor roads and herds. That country was full of sloughs at that time. Often during the night, the wagon would become stuck, and the men would unhitch the horses, we would walk out on the tongue of the wagon to more solid ground, then they would hitch chains to the end of the tongue and pull it out. We reached Winnebago in the morning and found the people had fled in fright like ourselves. There were only a few men left to guard the post office and store. We could not find safety there. We felt more fright. Thinking we were left behind to danger, we continued our course east all that day. From all cross roads wherever the eye turned we could see wagon loads of people and herds of stock coming. Ask anyone where they were going, the answer would be, "Don't know. Going where the crowd goes." On our second day out Mr. Mills found us and his wife and children. I often wonder how he did in that crowd.

At night the women and children slept in the wagons while the men lay under the wagons and kept guard. Every settlement we came to was deserted, every farm house empty, desolation everywhere. We traveled on until the afternoon of Aug. 25th when we reached the town of Albert Lea. Much to our joy we found this not deserted. There were five hundred of that frightened crowd camped near Albert Lea that night. We camped near a farm house on the outskirts of the town. We found there some fine people who kindly took Mrs. Mills and children into the house. Five days after our arrival at this farm house, Mrs. Mills gave birth to a fine boy. We stayed here several days when the news came that it was thought the trouble was over and it would be safe to return. Only, three families returned to our settlement, the others going to relatives farther east.

On the second night after reaching home we were awakened toward morning by our neighbor saying, "There are buildings burning on the farms west of us." We arose and dressed, lighting our lamps. My father and the neighbor, Mr. Holmes Fowler, said they would creep up carefully and see what it meant. Mother and I were left alone. Father returned shortly saying, "The vacant houses are all burned. I shall send you and mother, Mrs. Fowler and her three children to Winnebago to get men to come to our rescue. We will stay here and guard our stock." Four miles east and near our road leading to Winnebago lived two young men. Said father, "You stop there and send one of the neighbors for help." We started just at break of day. When two miles from home a sight met our gaze that surely froze the blood in our veins. There, a short distance from the road, quietly grazing in the tall slough grass, were three Indian ponies. Every moment we expected to see their riders rise from the grass and make a dash for us. Quietly we drove on feeling more dead than alive, expecting every moment to hear that awful Indian yell. But nothing happened.

During the winter, six months before, a band of one hundred Sioux braves, their squaws and papooses camped six miles west of our home. Often several of them at a time came down to the settlement. We always gave them food and never thought of being afraid of them. When they broke camp they camped one night near our house. How well I remember taking out a milk pan of doughnuts and passing them around. I wonder if those doughnuts left an impression! Two miles from Winnebago we had to ford the Blue Earth River. The banks were quite steep. One of our horses was a high spirited full blood Morgan mare. She always made it a point to kick when going down those banks, often coming down astride of the tongue of the wagon. My brave mother was the driver that day. We reached the bank. Carefully, with steady, dainty steps, head proudly raised, she slowly took us down that steep bank and across the river bringing us safely upon the other side. I say she, for so much depended upon her, for her good mate was always gentle. Fully she seemed to realize the situation and fully demonstrated her love, and realized the responsibility placed upon her one mate. Just before entering Winnebago we met a company of ten mounted men going to the help of the three men we had left. They returned that day accompanied by father and his two neighbors bringing their herds of stock. After being in Winnebago a few days we received word that a company of fifty mounted men from Winona were coming. They had enlisted for thirty days. They were called the Winona Rangers. After a few days they came and we were escorted home by them. They built a barracks in our settlement and guarded a portion of that section of country for their enlisted term.

The Government sent the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin regiment to Winnebago where barracks were built. Portions of companies were distributed throughout the adjoining counties, a company of them taking the place of the Winona Rangers when their time was up.

Owing to my mother's ill health we removed to Homer, where her brother lived. Two hundred and fifty miles we went in our covered wagon, through the cold and snow of November. My father had made the trip weeks before and driven our stock down. In our wagon was stored what little we could bring of our household goods, the rest was left. On Thanksgiving day of 1862 we reached my uncle's house in the neighborhood where we now live.

KEEWAYDIN CHAPTER

Minneapolis

MISS MARION MOIR

Mrs. Gideon Pond--1843.

On the twenty-third day of August, 1842, I was married to Robert Hopkins. He was preparing to come to the Northwest as an assistant missionary in the Dakota mission, and in March 1843, we started on our long journey from Ohio to Fort Snelling, sent out by the American Board. We came down the Ohio and up the Mississippi in a steamboat, stopping off for Sabbath and had to wait a long time for a boat at Galena after spending Sunday there. We reached Fort Snelling in May after a tedious journey. From Fort Snelling we started up the Minnesota River in an open boat propelled by oars. At night we camped on the banks and cooked our supper. In the party were Mr. and Mrs. Steven Riggs and their two children and his wife's brother. Dr. Riggs was just returning from the east where he had had some books printed in the Dakota tongue.

We also had three men to row the boat. We suffered much from the myriads of mosquitoes. We baked our bread each day. It was simply flour and salt and water baked in a frying pan before a smoking camp fire. It was very distasteful to me and I determined to have a loaf of light bread. I had some home made yeast cakes in my luggage as bought yeast cakes were then unknown. I soaked one of them in a pail of river water, stirred in some flour and soon had some nice light yeast. I mixed a loaf of bread and set it where the hot sun would keep it warm. At night it was ready to be baked and I used a little Dutch oven which was on the boat to bake it in. The oven was like a black iron kettle flat on the bottom and standing on three little legs about three inches long. We placed coals under the oven and a thick iron cover heavier than any you ever saw, we heated in the fire and placed over the oven to bake the bread on the top, while to bake it on the sides we turned the oven around. I attending the baking of my bread with great solicitude and care.

While it was baking an Indian man came into the camp and sat down by the fire. I paid no attention to him but attended to my loaf, just as I would have done if he had not been there. Mrs. Riggs said, "You should not have let that man see your bread." I said, "Why not," and she answered, "He may come in the night and steal it," which I thought was preposterous. In the morning I fried some bacon, made coffee, spread the breakfast on the ground and went to get my bread and it was gone. So the breakfast had to wait until I could mix some of the bread I disliked so much and bake it. I remember well I thought "So this is the kind of people I have come to live among."

At the point called Traverse de Sioux we left the river and made the remainder of our journey nearly one hundred miles in wagons which had been sent from the mission at Lac qui Parle to meet us. A new station was to be started at Traverse and Mr. Riggs and two of the men remained there to build houses for us.

We were four or five days going from Traverse to Lac qui Parle and had many thrilling adventures. Dr. Riggs had been east a year and had taken with him three young Indian men that they might see and learn something of civilized life. They were returning with us on their way to their homes. The last morning of our journey two of them proposed to go ahead on foot and reach their friends, as they could go faster so, than in wagons. The other, being sick, remained with us. We had an extra horse and later he was told that he might ride on to meet his friends. After some time he came tearing back. He excitedly told us that his only brother had come to meet him and had been murdered by ambushed Ojibway Indians.

We soon came to where the scalped and bleeding body lay, right across the road. The men of our party carried the body gently to one side and covered it with a canvas. In a short time we met large numbers of Indian men armed and very much excited, in pursuit of those who had murdered their neighbor and friend. I could not understand a word they said, but their gestures and words were so fierce that I expected to be killed. They fired at our team and one of the horses was so seriously injured that we had to stop. Mrs. Riggs and I walked the rest of the journey, five miles, she carrying her fifteen months old baby. This was July 4, 1843. My first baby was born on the 10th of the following September.

On this last five miles of our journey, Indian women came out to meet us. Some of them had umbrellas and held them over us. They seemed to know that this was a terrible adventure for us. One of them put her arms around me and tried to help me on and was as kind as any white woman. They offered to carry Mrs. Riggs' baby, but the little thing was afraid of them and cried so that they could not. Mrs. Riggs kept saying over and over again, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

The Indians seemed to me very poor, indeed. They had for many years depended upon the buffalo but now these were growing very scarce and no longer furnished a living for them. The Indian women each year planted small patches of corn with only their hoes for plows. They raised only small amounts and they had no store houses. Sometimes they buried their supply of food for the coming spring in holes in the ground, but dared not mark the place for fear of having their supplies stolen, so they were not always able to find it when it was wanted. In the fall they gathered wild rice which they threshed by flailing it in buffalo skins. In the spring they made a little maple sugar. They were often very short of food and suffered from hunger.

One day I cooked a squash, putting the parings in a swill pail. An old Indian woman came in and made loud cries of dismay when she saw my wastefulness, saying, "Why did you throw this away?" She then gathered them carefully out of the pail and carried them home in her blanket to cook. Pies that were set out on the window sill to cool disappeared also.

This first winter was spent at Lac qui Parle, or Medeiadam, (med-day-e-a-da) "The lake that speaks," in both tongues. I was told that it was so named from a remarkable echo about the lake. I kept house in a little room on the second floor of a log house. Dr. Williamson and his family lived on the lower floor.

One day as I was alone sitting at my table writing, the door of my room opened and a hideously painted Indian came in. His face, as nearly as I can remember, was painted half red and half black with white streaks across. A band around his head contained a number of large feathers, indicating the number of enemies he had killed. He evidently hoped to frighten me terribly. I determined I would try not to let him know how frightened I was. I sat still at my table and kept on with my writing and in a short time he went down stairs again. This Indian was the famous Little Crow, the leader of the outbreak of 1862. Afterwards my second husband, Mr. Pond, tried to teach Little Crow to read music and he told me that he had double teeth all around. Little Crow learned to sing and had a fine voice. He was a fine looking fellow without his paint; tall, slender and strong looking.

In the spring of 1844, April 4, we started on our journey back to Traverse de Sioux. We had a snow storm on the way but reached our new home in peace and safety. This was a one room log cabin with a little attic above. The Indians here were not quite as friendly as those at Lac qui Parle and seemed to wish we had never come among them.

I had a class of all the little Indian girls that I could persuade to come to school. Their parents seemed very much opposed to having their children learn to read, sew, cook or anything else. I think they had an idea that in some way we would be paid for our trouble in teaching them and that it would be to their disadvantage when they sold their land. At any rate only a few girls came to school. In order to make my task of teaching them less unpleasant I provided basins, towels, soap and combs and requested them to use them each day as they came in. Contrary to my expectations they seemed to delight in these morning ablutions, especially if I brought a mirror so they might see themselves.

One of these girls was an especial favorite of mine. She came quite regularly and seemed interested in trying to learn all she could. She was about fifteen years old. The girls had to walk about a mile through the deep snow to reach the school. One day this favorite girl was absent. I asked why she was not there, but the other girls did not know. The next day again she was absent and the other girls told me the reason was because she did not wish to marry a man who had bought her and had three wives already. That day her parents went for food from a store of provisions which they had, leaving her at home to care for the younger children. While they were gone she committed suicide by hanging herself.

The Indian tents were heated by making a fire on the ground in the center, the smoke partially escaping through a hole in the top. On each side of this fire they drove a forked stick into the ground and laying a pole across these sticks hung on it their utensils for cooking. To this pole this poor Indian girl had tied a rope attached to a strap about her neck and, the pole being low, had lifted her feet from the ground and hanged herself rather than marry a man she did not love.

One day when I was alone in my house at Oiyuwega or Traverse de Sioux an Indian man came softly in and sat down by the stove. I soon saw that he was drunk, which frightened me a little. I said nothing to him except to answer his questions because I did not wish to rouse his anger. Presently he reached to the stove and lifted a griddle and I thought he was going to strike me. The griddles on the cook stoves then, each had its handle attached instead of having a separate handle. I slipped out of the door and soon he went away. Later he came back and said, "They tell me I was going to strike you the other day. I was drunk and that is my reason. I would not have done it if I had been sober." I accepted his apology, thinking it a good one for an unlearned Indian.

The treaty between the U. S. government and the Dakota Indians was made in July of 1851. The commissioners of the government three in number, came in June. Their chief was Luke Lee. There were no houses where the white people could be entertained, so they camped in tents on the bluffs of the Minnesota river near an old trading house, occupied at that time by Mr. Le Blanc. The bluff was not an abrupt one, but formed a series of terraces from the river to the summit. The camp was on one of these terraces. There was a scarce fringe of trees along the river but from there to the top and as far back as the eye could see, perhaps for two miles back on the bluff, there was not a bush or tree.

A great many white men assembled, Gov. Ramsey, Gen. Sibley, Hon. H. M. Rice, editors also from some of our newspapers, among them Mr. Goodhue of the Pioneer Press, were there. Traders, too, came to collect debts from the Indians when they should receive the pay for their land. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Chute of St. Anthony came. Accidentally their tent had been left behind and they found a boarding place with me. The Indians were there in great numbers. Many of them were from the far west and these were much more uncouth and savage looking than any who lived around us. Some of their women wore no garment but the skin of animals which formed a skirt reaching from a few inches above the waist to the knee and hung from the shoulders by straps. The Indians pitched their tents on different terraces of the bluff some little distance away from the white people's camp.

Daily the Indians had their feasts, dances and games of different sorts. They seemed a little afraid to treat, were afraid of being wronged and were very cautious. The commissioners were very kind to them and treated them with great respect. They prepared for a great celebration of the Fourth of July. The mission families, Hopkins and Huggins, were invited to be present. Mr. Hopkins was asked to make an address and lead in the opening prayer. He rose early that fair beautiful morning and went, as was his custom, for a bath in the river. I made haste to prepare breakfast for my family of seven. My youngest child was seven weeks old that day. But the father never came back and the body was found three days later.

There were four white women at the place at that time, Mrs. Huggins, the wife of the other missionary, Miss Amanda Wilson, a mission school teacher, Mrs. Chute, a fair, beautiful young woman visitor and myself. We were just a short distance from the old crossing called by the Dakotas, Oiyuwega, (O-e-you-way-ga) and by the French Traverse de Sioux.

In September I went back to my mother in Ohio with my three little children. Mr. and Mrs. Riggs were going east, too, for a visit, and again I journeyed with them. As there was a large party of us and the American board which paid our expenses was not wealthy, Mr. Riggs thought we ought not to travel first class, so we went in the second class coaches. The seats were hard, like benches. My daughter, Sadie, then two and a half years old, was taken sick and cried and begged for water but there was none. I was in the deepest distress at not being able to give the poor sick little thing a drink. In the night the train stopped somewhere for water and a young man whom I could not remember ever having seen before got off and bought a cup of water for twenty-five cents and gave it to the poor, sick baby. If I have thought of that young man once I have thought hundreds, perhaps thousands of times of him and wished that I could thank him again and tell him what a beautiful thing he did.

I remained with my mother till I was married to Mr. Pond in April 1854. Again this northwest became my home. The Indians had sold their land to the government and been sent farther west. The country was filling up with white settlers. Bloomington has been my home ever since.

When I came to Bloomington as a bride there were seven motherless children of the first Mrs. Pond, the eldest being about fifteen years old. I brought with me my three fatherless children, so our family numbered twelve. Our home was a log house of six rooms. There were no schools anywhere within our reach. Every morning our children and some of our neighbor's gathered about our long kitchen table which was our dining table as well, for their lessons taught by the mother or one of the older children. There were no sewing machines to make the numerous garments necessary for our family, no lamps, no kerosene. We made our own candles as well as our own bread and butter and cheese and soap. Our lives were as busy as lives could be.

In the summer of 1856 we made bricks on our own place with which we built the house where I have lived ever since. Mr. McLeod was our nearest neighbor. North of us I cannot remember that we had any nearer than Minneapolis. Down toward Fort Snelling lived Mr. Quinn in a little bit of a house.

One night Mr. Pond was at the Old Sibley House at Mendota when a number of traders were there. During the evening as they told stories and made merry, many of the traders told of the joys of sleeping out of doors with nothing between them and the starry sky; how they never minded how hard the bed was if they could only see the green trees around them and the stars above. Mr. Pond, who also had had experience in outdoor sleeping, said that he liked nature too, but he preferred to sleep, when he could, with a roof over him and a good bed beneath him. After some laughter and joking on the subject, the traders, one by one, stole out and gathering up all the feather beds the house afforded, heaped them upon the bed in the attic which Mr. Pond was to occupy, thinking that he would at once see the joke and return their beds to them. Instead, he climbed upon the mountain of feathers, laughing at the joke on his would-be-tormentors and slept comfortably all night while they had to spend the night on hard boards. He loved to tell this story of how the laugh was on them.

Mrs. E. R. Pond--1843.

After the Indian outbreak the different tribes were broken up and outside Indians called to the leadership. A little, wavy-haired Indian named Flute was one of these. He had never learned to wear the white man's foot gear. With a number of others he was taken to Washington. He went as a chief and soon after his return came one day to my door. He was a keen observer and, I knew, would have something interesting to tell of his journey, so I was glad to ask him about it. He began by saying that when he had seen the young Indians all dressed up in suits of store clothes, especially in long boots, he thought, they must be very comfortable. He was very glad when he reached Yankton, to put on a suit of white man's clothes. He said all those who were going on the trip were put into a car where there was not room to lie or sit down and were in it for two nights. When he got off at Chicago he found his feet and legs were very sore from his new boots. When he saw all the people in Chicago he thought, "It seems very strange that Little Crow should be such a fool as to think he could conquer the white man. Little Crow had been to Washington and knew how many men 'Grandfather' (president) had." He knew he had a great many soldiers but he also knew he was having a big war.

"There were so many people in Chicago that I thought he must have summoned the young men from all over the country that we might be impressed by their number. And they were all in such a hurry. No one had time to stop anywhere. We finally reached New York and were taken up, up, in a building and allowed to stay there and rest several days. We wondered a good deal what they would do in case of fire, but supposed they never had any. We asked the interpreter about it. One evening there was an unusual noise. It was always noisy, but this was everything noise. Then the interpreter came and said, 'Come quick now and see how grandfather fights fire.' We went downstairs quick and every man was calling as loud as he could. All of a sudden we heard a great bell ringing and there were a number of those little men with horses hitched to something that looked like buffalo's paunch with entrails rolled around it. They had a great many ladders and how they did it I don't know, but they went to work like squirrels and climbed, one ladder above another, until they reached the top. White men are wonderful. They ran up just like squirrels and took the buffalo entrails with them. Threw water, zip! Pretty soon, all dark! Fire gone!"

"We stayed in grandfather's country three or four weeks. Tobacco was plenty, very strong, no good! We walked about in Washington a good deal. One day we saw some red willow on little island. Little bridge led to island. We thought we could cross over and get some red willow to go with strong tobacco. Two or three went over to get it. After they began to cut it one looked up and said, 'Why grandfather didn't want us to come here,' and there were men with little sticks and they just made a few motions and broke the bridge. Then we saw a boat coming. As soon as it got through and the bridge was mended we thought we had better start back, so we started over and pretty soon a train of cars was coming. We couldn't go back, were afraid to stay on bridge, so dropped down and held on to beam while train went by. Bridge shook dreadfully. We hurried back and thought we would use white man's tobacco as it was."

All the while Flute was telling this story he was gesticulating with motions appropriate to the story and often reiterating "Little Crow is a fool," and crying, "Hey!"

Mrs. John Brown--1852.

The Sioux Indians did not often give a child to be brought up by white people, but Jane Williamson--"Aunt Jane" took little Susan and David, two very young Dakota children, to see what environment would do for the Indian. Later they were placed in other families.

Little Susan, though a Sioux Indian, was dreadfully afraid of Indians having always lived with the white people. One day in 1852 when all the men about the two places were busy plowing the field back of our house, Mrs. Whalen, with whom little Susan lived, felt nervous as a number of Indians had been seen about, so she took little Susan and come to spend the day with me, her nearest neighbor. The house was just a small temporary board one. Little Susan asked for a piece of bread and butter and went out and sat on the Indian mound by the house to eat it. Here the Indians must have seen her, for soon after she went back into the house, twenty Indians came into the yard and up to the open doorway--the door not yet being hung. Twelve Indians filed in and filled the room. My baby was in the cradle by the door. Little Susan, Mrs. Whalen and I were also in the room. The braves began to ask questions about little Susan, "Is she good squaw? We are Sioux and love little Sioux girl. We want to shake hands with her." They passed her along, one handing her hand to another, till the one nearest the door pushed her out. The Indians out doors shot her through the arm and breast and she fell forward. I seized my baby from the cradle and looking out the door, saw that five or six of the Indians had their feet on little Susan's breast, scalping her. I screamed for the men who were hidden from view by the trees between the house and clearing. When they reached the house the Indians--Chippewas, were gone. For months afterwards arrow heads and other things which they had dropped in their flight were found about the place. One large bundle was found in the yard. There is a stone in memory of little Susan in the Bloomington cemetery.

Often as I came up the hill from the spring with water, an Indian would softly cross the path in his moccasined feet and give me such a start that I nearly dropped my pail of water. This spring is the one from which the Minneapolis Automobile club, situated on the Minnesota river draws its supply. Just a little west of the club house is the place where little Susan was killed, also an Indian mound and the marks of an old trail.

One day an Indian walked into my house and asked me for a whetstone. I gave it, not daring to refuse him. He sat down and sharpened his knife, feeling its edge and pointing often and looking significantly at me.

A Shakopee Indian once said to Mr. James Brown, keeper of the ferry, "Our Pond's a good deal better man than your Pond. Your Pond preaches for nothing, but our Pond preaches for nothing and gives a good deal to the church."

Mr. Pond once met a Shakopee Indian on the trail and neither would turn out for the other. They ran into each other "bump." Indian said "Ho." Mr. Pond said, "Ho." Each continued on his way.

ROCHESTER CHAPTER

BELLE BOYNTON WELCH

(Mrs. E. A. Welch)

MISS IDA WING

Marion L. Dibble--1855.

After a tedious journey alternating between steam boats and railroad cars, we arrived at Red Wing. Here father left us and went on foot to his new home. Procuring a yoke of oxen from a kind neighbor, he returned to Red Wing and brought us there. Our first work was to cover our bark roof with sods taken from our future garden, and to build a stone fireplace to warm our house and cook our food.

The country was wild prairie with some strips of timber along the branches of Zumbro River, which ran about a mile east of our house, along the banks of which river could be seen the remains of Indian tepees and their paths crossed the country in all directions.

Game and fish were very plentiful. During our first winter, we had a deer hung on every rafter on the north side of the house. Our supply of meat for the first year or two depended upon our success as hunters and fishermen.

Mr. M. G. Cobb--1857.

In July 1857, I walked from High Forest to Austin to record a deed. The distance was thirty-five miles, and as there were no roads, I was guided by my compass. I passed only three houses on the way. I found no one at home, and was unsuccessful in my endeavor to get a drink of water. I made the journey on Sunday, and a hot July day. There was no means of getting water from the wells, as there were no pumps. Water was drawn from the wells by a rope and bucket. I looked into the window of one house and could see the bucket and rope in the kitchen, but the houses were locked. So I traveled wearily on until I reached Austin, when my tongue fairly hung out of my mouth, and was so swollen that I could not speak aloud for two hours. I made this trip in one day. I could have mailed the deed, as there was a stage coach carrying the mail once a week, but I was a young man and thought I could easily walk that distance, and then be sure that my business was attended to properly.

Two rival stage coach lines went from Chatfield to Winona. It took a whole day to make the trip, a stop being made for dinner at a village called Enterprise. The regular fare for the trip was $2.50. The stagecoaches started from Madarra Hotel, Chatfield. This hotel is still there, and is called by the same name.

Walker & Co. ran one of the lines. It was Mr. Walker who first accosted me and said, "If you will go with me, I will take you for 50c." I answered that I had a lady friend who was going on the same trip, and Mr. Walker at once agreed to take her also at the same price--50 cents.

A little later I was accosted by Mr. Burbank, who had established stage lines on the most important routes in Minnesota and he was endeavoring to run out his rival, Mr. Walker. He asked me to go with him. I told him that Walker had agreed to take me for 50 cents, wherewith Mr. J. C. Burbank declared, "Well, I will take you for nothing and pay for your dinner besides."

Judge Lorin Cray--1859.

In the early spring of '59 my father and brother-in-law started with teams of oxen and covered wagons from our home near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to seek a location in the West, where homes could be had "Without money and without price," in the great new state of Minnesota.

In October of '59 all of the earthly belongings of my father, being my mother, seven children and a handful of household goods, were loaded into a wagon drawn by a pair of unbroken steers, and we started for our new home with great anticipations. Our two cows were driven behind the wagon. My elder brother drove the steers attached to the wagon, and we, the younger children drove the cows, and in the short period of precisely thirty days we reached our new home in the western part of Shelby county. Now we make the trip in twelve hours. But our loads were heavy for the teams we had, and through Wisconsin sand and good Minnesota mud, we made scarcely more than ten miles a day, camping at night in and under our wagons.

The year had been a peculiar one in Wisconsin. There had been severe frost at some time in every month during the entire summer and corn and other produce was badly frost bitten. By October first all vegetation was brown and dead. But there had been much rain in Minnesota, evidently preventing frosts, and when we crossed the great Father of Waters at La Crosse, much swollen and turbid, we were greeted by green foliage and the freshness of spring. Vegetation was rank, grass tender, crops good, foliage magnificent, and boy-like, I at once fell in love with Minnesota.

We entered Blue Earth county near the southeast corner, and went as nearly directly west as possible, passing Minnesota lake near the north shore, camping for the last time very close to the north shore of Lura lake, where we spent the night.

My recollection of the southern part of this county, is that it was mostly low and level, with a wonderful growth of wild grasses. The lands were nearly all taken and there were seen here and there settlers' shanties, and in some places quite comfortable homes, until we crossed the Blue Earth river west of Shelbyville, when, after leaving the settlers' cabins in or near the river timber, the picture was wild and dreary to the very limit. Save a few cabins and claim shanties in the vicinity of the Mounds, one could look from the river west, southwest and northwest, and not a sign of human life or habitation could be seen.

We were four miles from Shelbyville, and to get our mail we must go this distance, and cross the Blue Earth river, either in a canoe or by fording. I remember one occasion in the very early spring, when the river was scarcely free from ice, and was badly swollen, filling its banks, five or six of us, neighbors, started for Shelbyville on foot to get our mail, and to hear the postmaster read the news from the weekly St. Paul paper which came to him, there being at that time, I think, no newspaper taken west of the river. We reached the river. The ice had gone out, and the boat was on the other side. We agreed to draw cuts and decide who should swim the river and get the boat. The lot fell upon Jonah, and I have had chills ever since. I am not quite certain that the cuts were fairly held.

Father's claim was not a very desirable one. Soon after he had taken it a man named Sam Tait came into the country and "jumped" a claim which adjoined ours upon the east, and was the making of a much more desirable farm than ours. He succeeded in holding the claim. A few days after our arrival a prairie fire came from the west and with a brisk wind swept the whole country with a very besom of destruction. We came near losing everything we had. Sam was a loser, quite a quantity of his hay was destroyed. Very shortly after the fire he made us an informal call and in language not the most polite but very emphatic, declared his intention to leave the country at once and offered to sell us his claim. We bought it, one hundred and sixty acres of land, three acres broken, a small stock of hay not burned, his sod stable and board shanty. For the purchase price we gave him a shot gun and hauled two loads of his goods to Mankato.

This was my first visit to Mankato. We removed our shanty to our new purchase at once. Two years ago my brother and I sold the farm for $9600, and it was well worth it.

It seemed at first in those early days impossible to have social relations with anyone. Neighbors as we had known them, we had none. The nearest settlers were a mile distant from us, and there were but four or five families nearer than two or three miles distant. But we soon learned that we had neighbors even though the distance was considerable. First one neighbor and then another would extend to every family in the vicinity an invitation to spend an afternoon or an evening. Someone would hitch his oxen to his wagon or sled, and going from house to house, gather up a full load well rounded up and then at the usual gait for such conveyances, we rode and visited and sang until we reached the appointed place, where perhaps, eight, ten or a dozen persons spent the afternoon or evening, in the one little room, where the meal was being prepared and the table spread. There were no sets or clans, no grades of society, all belonged to the select four hundred, and all were treated and fared alike. Friendships were formed which were never broken, and when recalled always revive tender memories.

August 18th, 1862, the Sioux Indian troubles began. There were no railroads, no telegraph or telephone lines, but one stage line, and I could never understand how the reports of these troubles traveled as rapidly as they did. On August 19th this whole country had reasonably reliable information of the uprising. A neighbor came to our house in the night, neighbor went to neighbor and so the news traveled. The men were in a fury of excitement and anxiety, the women and children were quaking with fear. Wagons were hastily loaded with women and children, and a little food, animals were turned loose to provide for themselves; houses were left unlocked, oxen were hitched to the wagons, and a general stampede was started toward the east, with all eyes turned toward the west. No one knew whither they were going, they only knew that they dare not stay.

A halt was made at Shelbyville, the strongest buildings were selected for occupancy, the women and children were placed inside, and the men acted as pickets. In our whole country there were scarcely a dozen guns. The reports came worse and worse, and another pell-mell stampede began for the east, some stopping at Wilton, Owatonna and Rochester. After waiting two or three weeks, and hearing encouraging reports, some of the more venturesome returned to their homes with their families, only to remain a few days, and to be again driven away by the near proximity of the Indians, and the sickening reports of their savage murders.

This condition continued until late in the fall, when, under the general belief that the Indians would not move on the warpath in the winter, the greater number of settlers returned to their homes to save what they could of their nearly destroyed and wasted crops. Some never returned. With feelings of partial security, and encouraged by their escape from slaughter thus far, the settlers remained at their homes, under an intense strain of anxiety, but nearly undisturbed until 1864, when the rumblings and rumors of Indian troubles were again heard; but the settlers were not so easily terrified as before, and held their ground.

On the 11th day of August, 1864, after quite a long period of comparative repose and freedom from Indian disturbances, a party of six or eight Indians suddenly appeared in the edge of the timber on the east side of the Blue Earth, near the town line of Shelby and Vernon, and taking wholly by surprise Mr. Noble G. Root and his two sons, who were stacking grain, shot and killed Mr. Root and seriously wounded one, and I think, both of his sons. These Indians then crossed the river in a westerly direction, reaching the open country where the Willow Creek cemetery now is. On that day Mr. Charles Mack of Willow Creek, with his team and mower had gone to the farm of Mr. Hindman, a short distance southwest of Willow Creek to mow hay for Mr. Hindman, and in exchange Mr. Hindman had gone to the farm of Mr. Mack to assist Mr. Jesse Mack in stacking grain.

Mr. Mack and Mr. Hindman were loading grain directly across the road from the cemetery, when, on looking toward the road, but a few rods away, they saw some Indians coming directly toward them. They both hastily got upon the load and Mr. Mack whipped his horses into a run, when in crossing a dead furrow Mr. Hindman was thrown from the load, pitchfork in hand, striking upon his face in the stubble and dirt. Rubbing the dirt from his eyes as best he could so that he could see, he started to run and when he was able to open his eyes he discovered that he was running directly toward the Indians. He reversed the engines somewhat suddenly, put on a little more steam, and made splendid time in the other direction toward the creek bed, less than a quarter of a mile away. Once in the creek, the water of which was very shallow at that time, he followed the bed of the creek for nearly a quarter of a mile, and then stopped to rest and to wash the blood and dirt from his face. Soon he left the stream and started up the bluff on the opposite side, which was quite steep and covered thickly with timber and brush. When nearly at the top of the bluff he came to a little opening in the brush, and looking ahead about one hundred feet he saw those Indians deliberately watching his approach. Utterly exhausted and unnerved, he dare not run; he paused, and in a moment a burly Indian drew a large knife and started directly toward him. Concluding that his day of reckoning had come Mr. Hindman took the position of a soldier, with his pitchfork at "charge bayonets" and awaited the approach of the Indian. The Indian came to within a very few feet of Mr. Hindman and stopped. Each stood, looked, and waited for the other to open the meeting; finally the Indian turned as if to retreat, and Mr. Hindman turned again toward the creek.

He then followed the creek bed down to the house of Mr. Charles Mack, where he found a pony belonging to himself, which he had ridden there that morning, and started with all speed for his own home, where he arrived just before dark. His children were gone, his house ransacked, nearly everything broken or destroyed, and in the meadow a short distance from the house was the dead body of Mr. Charles Mack. By this time darkness had set in. His wife had gone that day about two miles to the house of Mr. Jesse Thomas to attend a neighborhood quilting. He again mounted his pony and started across the prairie for that place. When about one-half the distance had been made, his pony looked sharply through the semi-darkness in the direction indicated and there about three hundred feet away were the Indians; four of them were mounted, the remainder on foot. Mr. Hindman put whip and spur to his pony and ran him for about a mile, then he stopped in a valley to listen for the Indians, but he did not hear or see them.

On arriving at the house of Jesse Thomas he found it deserted, ransacked and nearly everything destroyed.

It proved that his children saw the Indians attack Mr. Mack, and ran from the house and secreted themselves in the very tall grass of the slough in which Mr. Mack was mowing, and escaped with their lives. The ladies at the quilting had a visit from the Indians; they saw them approaching from a belt of timber but a few rods away, and escaping by way of a back door to a cornfield which came quite up to the house, all of their lives were saved. The Indians secured the horses of Mr. Root, and also those of Mr. Charles Mack, and those of Mr. Stevens whose horses were at the place of the quilting.

No more honest men, kindhearted and generous neighbors, or hardy pioneers, ever gave their lives in the defense of their property and their families, than were Charles Mack and Noble G. Root.

A man was asked, why did you return to the west, after having gone back to New York and having spent two years there? His answer was. "Neighbors. Would you want to spend your life where the people twenty feet away do not know your name or care whether you live or die? We used to have neighbors in the west, but when our baby died in New York, not a person came near us, and we went alone to the cemetery. We thought we would come back home." How very many have had nearly the same experience. In the congested districts it seems to be everyone for himself. On the frontier a settler becomes ill, and his grain is sown, planted and harvested. Who by? Neighbors. A widow buries her husband and again the neighbors come. It is no light thing for one to leave his own harvest and go miles to save the crop of another, but it is and has been done times without number by those who are tried and true neighbors and the sentiment which prompts such kindly acts counts for something some time, and it means something in making up the sum total of happiness in this short life of ours.

What did we have to eat that first year? Potatoes and corn. No flour, no meat, some milk. I doubt whether there was a barrel of flour within three miles of our home. No wheat had been raised, no hogs had been fattened; corn and potatoes were the only food.

Mr. M. R. Van Schaick--1860.

I cast my vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 in New York and immediately after, with my family, started for Minnesota, arriving in Rochester late in the season. Our household goods were lost for some time, but were recovered at La Crosse and hauled by oxen to Rochester.

One night a man rode into Rochester bearing the news that a thousand Indians were on their way to massacre all the people west of the Mississippi river. Great excitement prevailed and most of the farmers and their families rushed into town. I sent my family into town, but my brother and I decided to stay in our homes.

After barricading the doors and windows and loading our muskets, we went to bed. About midnight, we heard a stealthy step outside and a moment later someone entered the loft overhead. We sat the rest of the night watching the stairs, but the Indian did not appear. Just at daylight, I saw him drop silently down by the side of the house and glide away in the shrubbery. The reason of his visit was never known.

Another time, my near neighbor, Mr. Jaffeney, who was living alone in a log house was visited by twelve Indians on a cold stormy night. At first he saw a dusky face appear at his window, then the form of an Indian who silently raised the sash and crept in. He was wet to the skin and his clothes were frozen to his body. He made no sound but sat down on the floor near the fire; soon eleven more followed his example. The man was much frightened, but felt more reassured when the Chief lighted a pipe passing it to each of the twelve, and then to the Pale Face.

At the first peep of day, they silently passed through the window and were lost in the shadows. In the early spring when they were breaking up their camp, they left a large deer on his door step to pay for their lodging.

Wolves and bears were plenty at this time, as well as Indians. Cattle ran at large, and once when I was yarding my cattle, I was followed for over a mile by wolves.

Mrs. Conrad Magnus.

Several homes near New Ulm had been burned by the Indians. The women and children left without homes were all sheltered in a warehouse in town. At night the men were on guard. They lacked ammunition, so I sat up all one night melting lead in a teaspoon to make balls.

During the night an infant cried incessantly until finally we were afraid it would cry itself to death. There was no milk to give it. At three o'clock in the morning I said I would go out and milk the cow if the men would guard me. Several men, with loaded guns, stood around the cow while I got a cupful of milk for the baby.

Mrs. Orin Pike--1864.

We left Buffalo late in September, 1864 for Rochester. As we went on, soldiers came on board the train returning to the country's service, as they said; after a brief furlough at home; votes were then taken from time to time to ascertain the most popular candidate for the presidency resulting, as I recall it now, each time in a large majority for Lincoln. This seemed to greatly disturb an elderly man and when apparently he could stand it no longer, he denounced the government as despotic, the draft unconstitutional, the Emancipation Proclamation as an effort on Lincoln's part to flood the whole North with "niggers," characterizing Lincoln as a tyrant, who ought to be shot.

Then there stepped out into the aisle a fine looking young man, who wore shoulder straps and in distinct tones said, "There are three things in this world that I hate--a thousand legged worm, a rattlesnake and a copperhead. A copperhead is the meanest of all." Then turning to the old man he went on, "Your gray hairs have been your protection while you abused the government. This is a land of free speech, but if you traduce Abraham Lincoln farther, I will not be answerable for the consequences." Votes were afterward taken but the old man was silent contenting himself with looking mad.

Our train was gone when we reached Chicago. We stayed all night, going on early in the morning, reaching La Crosse at dusk and leaving the cars to take the boat for Winona. The Mississippi was very low and the night was spent ere we reached Winona.

Monday morning we again took the cars for St. Charles. The railroad then called Winona and St. Peter, was not completed beyond that point. Looking from the car windows, we saw sleds and low looking wagons with one and sometimes two large barrels in them which those who knew, said were for hauling water. The stage took us safely to the "American House" at Rochester.

MONUMENT CHAPTER

Minneapolis

MARY FRANCES PARTRIDGE

(Mrs. M. E. Partridge)

ANNA MACFARLANE TORRANCE

(Mrs. Ell Torrance)

Mrs. Mary E. Partridge--1854.

The pioneers were brave souls, able to cope with emergencies of many kinds. In them, the adage was verified, "As thy days so shall thy strength be." In 1854 I left Wisconsin, a bride, with my husband, to begin life on a government claim in Minnesota. As we passed through what is now the beautiful city of Faribault, there was only one frame house, which belonged to a half breed from whom the town was named. We settled eight miles beyond in the township of Medford in a small log cabin with bark floors, as there were at that time no saw mills in that locality. Soon our simple house was crowded to the utmost with relatives and friends looking for claims in this rare section of the state. There was a scarcity of neighbors, no schools nor places for church or holiday meetings. It was years before I heard a sermon preached.

It was plain living in those years of self-denial. Only necessities could be gotten, but soon all this changed. Neighbors began to settle near. All were willing to share, ever solicitous for the other, all were on a level, simplicity and cordiality prevailed. There were hardships, hard labor and trials of many kinds, but these developed strength of character. All were in the prime of life, of strong manhood and joyous womanhood. "How beautiful is youth, how fair it gleams, with its illusions, aspirations, dreams." There were no complaints or murmurs. Children were welcomed gladly. To my home came three before the oldest was four years old.

In 1857 came the hard times. Indian corn was the staple food. Few things the farmer raised would bring money. We went without many comforts heretofore deemed indispensable.

A little later this first home was sold and another in a southern county better adapted to cattle raising was bought and thither we moved. With a good beginning in horses and cattle and an experience in farming, better than all else, the future held high hopes and bright promises, but, alas for human expectations, the Civil War come. Already one call had thinned the county of the younger and unmarried men. The second call sounded. The call was urgent,

"Cease to consult, the time of action calls. War, horrid war, approaches to your walls."

All able-bodied patriots enlisted, my husband among the number, with a promise from the stay-at-homes to take care of the crops and look out for the interests of the family.

Then came hardships and troubles to which pioneer life could not be compared. I was obliged to see crops lost for lack of help to harvest them; cattle and horses well nigh worthless as there was no sale for them, neither was there male help sufficient to cultivate the farm, which went back to former wildness. The government was months behind in paying the soldiers, who at best received only a beggarly pittance. One night, alone with my children, I was awakened by a knock on the window and a call, "Hurry! Leave at once. The Indians are upon us, scalping as they come." With the little ones I fled across the fields to the nearest house, a half mile away, later, to find this a false alarm. Another time the alarm was given and again it proved false, but was no easier borne for it was believed the truth. All night long we were kept to the highest pitch of terror expecting every minute to hear the awful war-whoop. The night dragged on without this culmination.

My husband died just before the war closed. His nurse at the hospital wrote me of his serious condition and I started at once for the hospital in Louisville. There were no railroads in the country at that time, stages and boats were the only means of reaching that point. To show the contrast between traveling then and now, it took me over two weeks to reach Louisville and when I arrived at the hospital found that my husband had been buried a week before my arrival. The nurses and officials at the hospital, while exceedingly busy, were most kind and sympathetic in relating to me pleasant recollections of my husband's last days.

I recall only two pleasant instances in the otherwise unhappy experience of our separation occasioned by the war. These were the furloughs which brought him home, one while he was stationed at Fort Snelling lasting for a few days, and later when he was sent home for two or three months as a recruiting officer for his regiment.

Does the luxurious life men and women of today enjoy, develop character, consideration for others, generosity and sympathy towards the less fortunate neighbor as did the trying pioneer days? If not, where lies the blame? What is the cure?

Judge Loren W. Collins--1852.

In 1853 my father visited Eden Prairie. On arriving they found a lynch court in session. A man named Gorman who had squatted upon a very desirable piece of land had gotten into an altercation with a squatter by the name of Samuel Mitchell. These men were Irishmen, Gorman a Catholic and Mitchell a Protestant. Gorman had filled Mitchell's left arm full of shot, and the court gave its judgment that Gorman must get out of the country with his family, within twenty-four hours. He had staked out the claim, had built a log house and had ready for crop about two acres of land. My father had $100.00 in gold with him, probably more money than any other man in the community possessed at that time. Gorman sold out to him for the $100.00 and father took possession.

There were then a dozen or fifteen settlers in that vicinity, among them the Goulds, the Mitchells, Mr. Abbott and Mr. Gates. There came about that time, Mr. Staring, who lived immediately east of us.

During that summer some fifteen acres were broken up and the two acres which had been previously made ready for seed by Mr. Gorman, were planted to corn and potatoes. Father hired a yoke of oxen to use during the summer and kept one cow.

Father returned to Massachusetts and in the winter we came to Buffalo by rail. In early May we embarked on the steamer "Nominee," which was then the fastest boat on the river. At the head of the flagstaff was a new broom which indicated that the boat had beaten every other vessel then running on the river north of Galena. The Captain was Russell Blakeley who for many years commanded the best boats belonging to the Packet Company.

We reached St. Paul about ten o'clock on May seventh and I remember very well that the thing which attracted my attention more than any other was the newly trimmed cupola of the Territorial Capitol building. There were at least fifteen steamboats at the lower levee when we arrived there, all busy in unloading. They were packed with passengers and freight coming up the river, but going down they carried very little, for there was nothing to ship. The first shipments of any consequence were potatoes in the spring of 1855. For two or three years after that nearly all the flour and grain used in the territory was brought from Galena.

Father took a pair of oxen and his wagon from the boat and we made our way up a very steep hill from Jackson Street to Third. From there we went up Third to the corner of Wabasha, where father bought some flour and feed and we drove back to the boat. About five o'clock in the afternoon the Nominee steamed up the river as far as Fort Snelling, taking at least one-fifth of its passengers and freight. We tied up at the ferry boat landing, at the foot of the hill under the old fort, and began to take off our cattle and freight. The hill was very steep leading up to the fort and father, aided by the boys, began to take our goods in small wagon loads to the top of the hill, so that we could properly load them. Uncle William, my mother, Aunt Isabel and the small children had been transferred at St. Paul to a small steamboat called the "Iola," which was to take them up the Minnesota river to Hennepin Landing, a mile or two from our claim at Eden Prairie.

One of the wagons was left at the top of the hill while father went back for more of the goods. I was told to take care of the cattle. Among the cattle was a white heifer, a very wild animal. Father put a rope around her horns and gave me the rope to hold, while he went down the hill. I put the rope around one hind wheel of the wagon thinking I could hold the animal that way. While I was standing there in the twilight, six or seven soldiers came out of the fort for guard duty and when they passed me the heifer became frightened, gave a jerk upon the rope and necessarily upon the wheel. The wagon had not been properly coupled, and when the animal at one end of the rope and myself at the other brought pressure upon the wheel, the hind wheels separated from the front, and the wheels, the heifer and the boy, went very hastily to the foot of the hill. Part of the time the wheels were off the ground, some of the time it was the heifer, but it seemed to me it was the boy who filled air space the greater portion of the period consumed in the descent. This mishap created great consternation not only among the representatives of Uncle Sam, but among the people who had just left the boat. It was my first encounter with the United States Army and I was badly scared.

About ten o'clock after we landed, we started three wagons with a pair of oxen for each and about ten head of cows and young stock. It was a beautiful night, with full moon and after traveling a mile to what was known as Bloomington Creek, we stopped to graze the cattle and to rest. We all got more or less sleep and it was eight in the morning before we were able to start the cavalcade. We arrived in sight of our future home, under most auspicious circumstances. The weather was mild and the sun shining brightly when we came to a place from where father pointed out the log house in the edge of the woods, with a stovepipe through the roof and the smoke coming out. My uncle Sherbuel had remained an occupant of this house all winter, that he might hold this claim of my father's and the one next to it, which had been selected for my Uncle William. Uncle Sherbuel was something of a hunter and trapper, and had made good use of his time during the winter and had a good assortment of furs, otter, wolf, mink, fox and those of smaller animals. He had killed several deer and was tanning the hides at the time we arrived. He had also caught and salted several hundred pounds of bass, pike and pickerel.

Father had little money left and we were without seed, except potatoes, for about three acres of our land. Potatoes were of very little value and it was doubtful if it would pay to plant them, but as we had nothing else to put into the ground father concluded that he would seed the three acres with potatoes, of which he had plenty of the kind known as Irish Reds, a round potato of exceedingly fine variety. He sowed a few acres of wheat, two or three acres of oats and planted two or three acres of corn and of course, we had a garden. We had to build a yard for the cattle at night, some sort of shelter for them, and we also had to build pig-pens. Lumber was almost unobtainable so these structures were largely of logs. They had to be very well built, strong as well as high, in order to keep cattle and hogs out of the fields. I remember that we had one hog that would climb anything in sight and what she could not climb she would dig under. Many a time in the summer of '54 and '55 did I chase that animal and her offspring back into the pig-pen.

I had a most tremendous appetite. Our food consisted mostly of potatoes, bread, wheat or corn, beans and plenty of game. Ducks, chickens or fish could be had by going a few hundred feet in almost any direction. We had no well and all the water we used was hauled from the lake, nearly a half mile distant. Father rigged up a crotch of a tree upon which was placed a water barrel and this was dragged back and forth by a yoke of cattle. Starting from the lake with a full barrel we had good luck if we reached the house with half of it.

In the summer when the corn began to get into the milk stage, we had a great fight with the blackbirds. They would swarm down upon the fields and picking open the heads of the ears, would practically spoil every ear they touched. Scare-crows were of no service in keeping the birds off, and finally the boys were put into the fields, upon little elevations made of fence rails, with guns loaded with powder and shot. We killed hundreds of birds in order to save the corn and had good crops of wheat and oats and we also had a most remarkable yield of potatoes; so large in fact, that we had to build a root-cellar in the hillside out of logs. We dug potatoes and picked them up that fall until I was nearly worn out, but in the spring the demand for potatoes was so great that father sold bushels at $1.05 a bushel. This gave him a large amount of ready money and he bought a pair of horses.

There were plenty of Sioux Indians living in the vicinity of Shakopee. A reddish colored stone, about two feet high stood a half mile west of our place on the Indian trail leading from Minnetonka to Shakopee. Around this stone the Indians used to gather, engaged apparently in some religious exercise and in smoking kinni kinic.

My cousin William and I raised that summer a quantity of nice watermelons, the seeds having been brought from Springfield. In the fall we loaded up two wagons with them and with oxen as the motive power started one afternoon for St. Anthony. We had to make our way down towards Fort Snelling until we came within two miles of the fort. Then we turned towards our destination. It was a long and tedious trip. We camped out over night and did not reach the west bank of the Mississippi River opposite St. Anthony until three o'clock the next afternoon. We fed our cattle in a grove not far from where the Nicollet House now stands, then started for the ferry, which swung across the Mississippi River about where the stone arch bridge now is. The island was heavily timbered and the road ran across at an angle, coming out at a bridge on First Street South. We got up onto the street just about the time the men were coming out of the mills, sold our watermelons and went home with $10.00 each, the proceeds of our first farming. It was a three days trip and a very tiresome one for the boys as well as for the cattle.

A friend by the name of Shatto and I took up a claim but were hailed out. When the storm ceased, I crawled out and looked around. My stove was broken, everything was water soaked, except some provisions which I had in a bucket which had a cover and my cattle had disappeared. I considered matters for a few minutes and concluded that the only thing I could do was to start for the hotel at Kenyon, some three miles away. I was drenched. My boots, all wore boots in those days, were soaked with water and very soon hurt my feet so I had to take them off. I made my way into Kenyon and there saw the great destruction which had been done by the hail. There was not a whole pane of glass in the little village and the inhabitants were engaged in patching up their windows with boards and blankets, as best they could. The crops were entirely destroyed. Many people had suffered by being struck by hailstones, some of which were as large as hens eggs.

I had in my pocket $1.50, and I told the landlord, Mr. Bullis, my condition and that I wanted to stay all night.

When supper was ready I went to the table and much to my surprise met a Hastings lawyer with whom I had some acquaintance, our Seagrave Smith. Smith urged me to give up the idea of becoming a farmer and take up the study of law. So it was this hail storm that made me a lawyer.

In the fall of 1858 I secured a school and was initiated as a country school-master. The school house was a log building, about two and a half miles up the river from Cannon Falls. The neighborhood was largely Methodist and the pupils were all boys, about twenty-five in number. There was not at that time in the district a single girl over six years of age and under sixteen. Mr. Hurlbut had one boy Charles about fourteen years of age. Very soon after my school commenced for a four months term the Methodists concluded they would have a revival. They used the school house every evening for that purpose and on Sunday it was occupied all day. Nearly all of the pupils attended these meetings, began to profess conversion and in three or four weeks had become probationists.

I had adopted the New England custom of having each pupil read a verse from the New Testament at the opening of school in the morning, and in a short time Deacon Morrill and Elder Curray came to me with the suggestion that I open the school with prayer. I replied that it would not be just the thing for me to be very active in this for I was not a professor of religion but that I had considered the matter and if the boys were willing I should be very glad to call upon them in alphabetical order for a prayer each morning. I submitted this question to the pupils and found that, without exception, they were anxious to adopt the plan. I then said that if it was adopted it would have to be followed to the end of school, no matter what their wishes might be.

I made out a roll, putting the names down in order and called upon one boy each morning for prayer. This worked well for a few weeks, but one evening Mr. Hurlbut said to me that Charlie had told him, while they were feeding the cattle, that night, that he would refuse to pray next time I called upon him. I had found it unnecessary to inflict corporal punishment upon a single pupil up to that time, but had in my desk a good stout switch. A few mornings afterwards when it was Charlie's turn to open the school with prayer, I called upon him and met a point blank refusal. I directed his attention to what had been said at the outset about continuing this as a school exercise when once adopted, and he still refused. It became necessary for me to stop the insurrection without delay. I took the switch, seized Charlie by the coat collar, as he was attempting to get out of his seat, switched him around the legs pretty smartly and the rebellion was at an end. Charlie prayed briefly, but fervently. After that there was no more trouble but many of the boys had somewhat fallen from grace before school ended. Yet they kept up their devotional exercises without any urging on my part. Mr. Hurlbut was something of a scoffer at religion and my prompt action with his boy made me extremely popular in the district.

I boarded around as was the custom in those days and built my own fires in the schoolhouse. Some of the pupils are still residents of that neighborhood and I rarely meet one who does not remind me of my whipping Charlie Hurlbut until, as they say, he dropped on his knees in prayer.

For my four months teaching I received a school district order for $60.00 and in the fall of '59 with this as my sole asset, I commenced the study of law in Hastings, with the firm of Smith and Crosby. It is hardly necessary for me to say that we were all poor in those days. There was no money and no work except farming, but in this way we could earn enough to live upon in a very humble manner.

I first saw the late Judge Flandrau at Lewiston, he was then Indian agent and was making his way on horseback from Faribault to Hastings. He had a party of twelve or fifteen men with him, all full blood or mixed blood Indians, and they stopped for dinner. Judge Flandrau was very tanned and clad in the garb of the Indian as were his associates; it was with difficulty that I determined which one of the party was the white man Flandrau.

CHARTER OAK CHAPTER

Faribault

MISS STELLA COLE

Mr. Elijah G. Nutting--1852.

My father's hotel, the Hotel de Bush, as we derisively called it, was the first hotel in Faribault. It may perhaps be called a frame house by courtesy, rather than technically, as it was made by placing boards vertically side by side, battened together by a third board. On the first floor were the family apartments, separated from the dining room and the "office" by partitions of cotton cloth hung on wires. The office, ten feet by twelve, boasted an improvised desk, a stool and a candle. The second floor was called the "school section," a large apartment filled with bedsteads rudely made of boards and supporting straw, hay or coarse grass ticks. Here the fortunate early bird took his rest, fully clothed, even to his boots, protected from the snow, which blustered in at the unglazed windows by his horse blankets. Later comers took possession of the straw ticks on the floor and made no complaint next morning when, after a breakfast of salt pork, black tea with brown sugar and butter so strong it could seldom be eaten, they were presented with a bill of $2.00. In one corner of this "school section" was a tiny enclosure, screened with a cotton cloth partition, containing a bed and two soap boxes, one for a dressing table and the other for a chair. This was called the "bridal chamber" and was to be had at a suitable price, by those seeking greater privacy. We had bread and pork for breakfast, pork and bread for dinner, and some of both for supper.

A large sheet iron stove down stairs was kept red hot in the winter and a man was employed to prevent people, coming in from the icy out-of-doors, from rushing too near its heat and thus suddenly thawing out their frozen ears, cheeks or noses.

When in 1858 or '59 my father sold the hotel, its purchaser mortgaged it, paying an interest rate of twenty-four per cent a year.

On July Fourth, 1856 the Barron House was formally opened on such a scale of splendor that the days of the Faribault House were numbered.

The Scott brothers built the first saw mill in Faribault. It was located on the spot where the new addition to the shoe factory now is. The machinery was brought in from St. Louis and came up by boat to Hastings at an enormous cost and it took twelve yoke of oxen to haul the boiler from that point. They were a long time getting it from Cannon City, as they had to cut a road through the dense woods. A party whom they met after dusk, when he saw the huge cylinder, exclaimed, "Well that is the largest saw log I ever saw."

Mr. J. Warren Richardson--1854.

I came with my father and mother from St. Anthony where we had lived for a short time, to Faribault and settled in Walcott where we secured a log house and a claim for $75.00. This was on Mud Creek. While at St. Anthony my father had made us such furniture as we needed. From the saw mill he got plank fourteen feet in length, which he cut into strips. He then bored holes in the corners and inserted pieces of pine, taken out of the river, for legs, and thus we were provided with stools. For tables we used our trunks. We slept on ticks full of prairie hay on the floor. These were piled in the corner daytimes and taken out at night.

Our house on the farm contained one room twenty feet square and as my father used to say "A log and a half story high." We were ourselves a family of five besides three boarders and a stray family of three appearing among us with no home, my mother invited them also to share our scanty shelter. At night she divided the house into apartments by hanging up sheets and the two families prepared their meals on the same cookstove. We made our coffee of potatoes by baking them till there was nothing left in them but a hole, and then crushing them. It was excellent. In winter my father cut timber for his fences. He loaded it onto the bobs which I, a ten year old boy, would then drive back, stringing the logs along the way where they would lie till spring when father split them into rails and built the fence. I have often chased the timber wolves with my whip as I drove along. They would follow the team and then when I turned around to chase them they would turn and run in front of the team.

Finding that the snow blew in through our covered shake roof, we cut sod and covered the roof with it. The following summer, my father being away, I planted some popcorn, which we had brought from the east, in this sod roof. It grew about fourteen inches high and my father, upon his return, was greatly puzzled by the strange crop which he found growing on his roof.

When kindling was needed, my father would raise the puncheons which made our floor and hew some from these.

Our clothing consisted of Kentucky jeans and white shirts for best, with overalls added for warmth in winter. We also wore as many coats as we had left from our eastern outfit. These had to be patched many, many times. The saying always was "Patch beside patch is neighborly; patch upon patch is beggarly." I never had underwear or an overcoat until I enlisted.

One day I was plowing with a double yoke of oxen. I was driving while Mr. Whitney was guiding the plow. Mr. Whitney's brother was across the river hunting for a lost horse. For a long time we heard him shouting, but paid no attention until at last we saw him retreating slowly down the opposite bank before a big bear. He called for help. We got over there in short order. Mr. Whitney said that the bear had three small cubs up a tree, but when we reached there she had disappeared with one cub. He climbed the tree while his brother and I kept guard below. He caught the two cubs by their thick fur and brought them down and kept them.

In 1856, we came into town and I often played with the Indian boys, shooting with bows and arrows in "Frogtown," which was lined with Indian tepees. They always played fair.

Our log schoolhouse had rude desks facing the sidewall.

Mrs. Henry C. Prescott--1855.

My father, Dr. Nathan Bemis, came to Faribault where his father and brother had already settled when I was eight years old. We went first to the Nutting House, but as there was only the "bridal chamber" with its one bed for the use of women, Mr. John Whipple, although his wife was ill, invited my mother, with my baby sister, to stay at his house, which was across the street. My sister, and a young lady who had come with us, slept in the bed in the "bridal chamber." My father and brother laid their straw ticks on the floor outside and I occupied a trundle bed in Mrs. Nutting's room.

We soon moved out to the Smallidge House, east of town, where our family consisted of our original seven and four men who boarded with us. There was but one room, and only a small part of the floor was boarded over and on this, at night, we spread our cotton ticks, filled with "prairie feathers" or dried prairie grass, and the men went out of doors while the women went to bed. In the morning the men rose first and withdrew. The ticks were then piled in a corner and the furniture was lifted onto the floor and the house was ready for daytime use. Gradually by standing in line at the sawmill, each getting a board a day, if the supply held out, our men got enough boards to cover the entire floor.

The next winter General Shields offered us his office for our home, if we could stand the cold. He, himself, preferred to winter in the Nutting Hotel. This winter was a horror to us all. We all froze our feet and the bedclothes never thawed out all winter, freezing lower each night from our breath. Before going to bed my brother used to take a run in the snow in his bare feet and then jump into bed that the reaction might warm them for a little while. All thermometers froze and burst at the beginning of the winter so we never knew how cold it was. Someone had always to hold my baby sister to keep her off the floor so that she might not freeze. At night my mother hung a carpet across the room to divide the bedroom from the living room. Dish towels hung to dry on the oven door would freeze.

That winter my father's nephew shot himself by accident and it was necessary to amputate his leg. My father had no instruments and there were no anesthetics nearer than St. Paul, so my cousin was lashed to a table while my father and Dr. Jewett took off the leg with a fine carpenter's saw and a razor. He was obliged to stay in bed all winter for fear the stump would freeze.

Later we lived, for a time, in a log house. The rain penetrated the chinks, and I remember once when my sister was ill the men had to keep moving the table around, as the wind shifted, to screen her from the rain.

There was no butter, eggs, milk or chickens to be had; no canned things or fresh vegetables. My mother once bought a half bushel of potatoes of a man who came with a load from Iowa, paying $3.00 a bushel. When she came to bake them, they turned perfectly black and had to be thrown away. The man was gone. Again my father bought half a hog from a man who brought in a load of pork, but my mother had learned her lesson and cooked a piece before the man left town and, as it proved to be bad, my father hunted him up and made him take back his hog and refund the money.

The first Thanksgiving my mother said she was going to invite some young lawyers to dinner who boarded with "Old Uncle Rundle". What she had I can not remember, except "fried cakes" and rice pudding made without milk or eggs, but the guests said they never had eaten anything so delicious.

Judge Thomas S. Buckham--1856.

In 1856 three or four hundred Indians on their way to the annual payment, camped in the woods between town and Cannon City. One evening we went, in a body, to visit them and were entertained by dancing. However, too much "fire water" caused some fear among the guests.

We had several courses of lectures during those early years. One year we had as lecturers, Wendell Phillips, Douglas, Beecher, Tilton and Emerson; following them came the Peake family, bell ringers and last of all, a sleight of hand performer from Mankato, Mr. Wheeler, who astonished his audience by swallowing a blunt sword twenty-two inches long.

At another time we had a home-made "lecture course" in which Mr. Cole, Mr. Batchelder, Judge Lowell, myself and others took part.

One of our first celebrations of the Fourth of July ended rather disastrously. We had planned a burlesque procession in which everybody was to take part. It started out fairly well. Dr. Jewett delivered an oration and Frank Nutting sang a song called "The Unfortunate Man," but the enthusiasm was shortly quenched by torrents of rain which in the end literally drove most of the participants to drink.

After the panic of 1857-8, I was sitting idly one day in front of my office on Main Street, as there was absolutely no law business. No other man was in sight, and there hadn't been a dollar seen in the town in months, except the "shin-plaster" issued by banks, which must be cashed on the instant lest the bank in question should fail over night. Suddenly I saw a stranger walking down the street, and as very few strangers had come to town of late, I watched him idly. As he came up he asked, "Young man, do you know of a good piece of land which can be bought?" I spoke of a farm south of town of which I had charge, which was for sale for $2100.00 or $12.50 an acre. He said, "I'll go and see it." Two or three hours later as I still sat dreaming, as there was no other business of any kind for any one to do, the man returned and after asking about the title of the land which its owner had pre-empted, said that he would think about it and went into the bank. Having made some inquiries as to my responsibility, he shortly reappeared with a bundle of greenbacks of small denominations and counted out the $2100.00. They were the first government bank notes I had ever seen and such a sum of money as had not been seen in Faribault in many months. My client then said, "Now young man, you'll see that land worth $25.00 an acre some day." Today it is part of the Weston farm and is valued at $150.00 an acre and is the nicest farm in the county.

The first political machine in the State was organized in Faribault the year Minnesota became a State. Five or six of us young men decided to put a little new life into politics and we prepared a slate. It was five or six against a hundred unorganized voters and we carried the caucus and were all sent as delegates to the Convention. Here also our modern method produced a revolution, but such a fight resulted that the Convention split and some of them went over to vote the Democratic ticket. However, we elected a fair proportion of our candidates and defeated those who had been holding the offices by force of habit.

Mrs. Rodney A. Mott--1857.

We came to Faribault, I think, the nicest and easiest way. We drove from Illinois in a covered immigrant wagon. At first we tried to find lodgings at night, but the poor accommodations and the unwillingness to take us in, led us at last to sleep in the wagon, and we came to prefer that way. After we got away from the really settled country, everyone welcomed us with open arms and gladly shared with us everything they had.

We came up through Medford. I begged to stay there, but Mr. Mott insisted on going to Faribault as they had planned. Our first house was a little cabin on the site of the present cathedral and later we lived in a house where the hay market now stands, but this was lost on a mortgage during the hard times in 1857.

Mrs. Kate Davis Batchelder--1858.

As Kate Davis, a girl of ten, I came with my brother, a lad of eighteen and a sister fourteen, from New York to Wisconsin. Our father was in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where his business as a millwright had called him, and it was thought best to have us go out to be with him. We came in a wagon drawn by a team of spirited horses. We came over the thousand miles between New York and Wisconsin, fording unfamiliar rivers, stopping in strange cities, through prairie and forest, with only rough wild roads at best, never doubting our ability to find our father at our journey's end and perhaps because of that unquestioning faith, we did find him. What a journey to remember. We camped in Chicago when it was no larger than Faribault is now, on the spot near the Lake front where the Congress Hotel now houses the most exclusive of Chicago's mob of humanity. Milwaukee as we passed through it was a tiny hamlet.

When I went to visit my brother who had taken the farm on the east shore of Cannon Lake, I made the trip to Hastings in a boat, and from there in a wagon. As we were driving along, I saw coming towards us, three figures which instinct told me were Indians. On coming nearer, I saw each of them had scalps dripping with blood, hanging to his belt. They reassured me by telling me they were only Indian scalps.

Mr. Berry, afterward a Judge on the Supreme Bench, started out on foot from Janesville, Wisconsin with Mr. Batchelder and after prospecting around and visiting St. Paul, Shakopee, Mankato, Cannon Falls and Zumbrota, they finally walked in here. Fifty years afterwards Mr. Batchelder went out to Cannon Lake and walked into town over the same road that he had come over as a young man, and he said that while, of course, the buildings had changed things somewhat, on the whole it looked surprisingly as it had the first time he passed over it. Mr. Berry and Mr. Batchelder opened a law office in a little one story frame building in the back of which they slept. While coming into town, they had met O. F. Perkins, who had opened a law office, and business not being very brisk, he had turned a rather unskillful hand to raising potatoes. At $2.50 a bushel he managed to do well enough and eked out his scanty income from the law. It was while he was carrying the potatoes to plant that he met Mr. Berry and Mr. Batchelder and having become friends, they all, together with Mr. Randall and Mr. Perkins' brother, started bachelor's hall back of Mr. Perkins' office, where they took turns cooking and washing dishes. I have heard Mr. Batchelder say that "hasty pudding" or what we call corn meal mush, was his specialty and I believe, partly in recollection of those old days when lack of materials as well as unskillful cooks compelled the frequent appearance of this questionable dainty, partly perhaps, because he had learned to like it, "hasty pudding" was served Monday on his table for all the later years of his life.

During one winter I attended several dances in a rude hall whose walls were lined with benches of rough boards with the result that my black satin dress was so full of slivers that it took all my time to pick the slivers out.

We always wore hoops and mine were of black whalebone, covered with white cloth. One day, when at my brother's house, my hoop skirt had been washed and was hanging to dry behind the stove and I was in the little bedroom in the loft. My sister called to me that some young men were coming to call and I was forced to come down the ladder from the loft, to my great mortification without my hoops. There they hung in plain sight all during that call.

At Cannon Lake, near my brother's cabin was a place where the Indians had their war dances. One night after we had gone to bed in the little loft over the one down stairs room, I was awakened by my brother's voice in altercation with some Indians. It seemed the latch-string, the primitive lock of the log cabin had been left out and these Indians came in. They wanted my brother to hide them as they had quarreled with the other Indians. This he refused to do and drove them out. The next morning the tribe came by dragging the bodies of those two Indians. They had been caught just after leaving the house. The bodies were tied over poles with the heads, arms and legs trailing in the dust.

Mrs. John C. Turner.

The Nutting Hotel was the scene of many a dance when settlers came from miles around to take part in quadrilles and reels to the music of violin. We used to bring an extra gown so that after midnight we might change to a fresh one, for these dances lasted till daylight.

When sliding down the hill where St. James School now stands, it was rather exciting to be upset by barricades erected near the foot by mischievous Indian boys, who greeted the accident with hoots of joy.

JOSIAH EDSON CHAPTER

Northfield

EMILY SARGENT BIERMAN

(Mrs. C. A. Bierman)

Mr. C. H. Watson--1855.

One hundred and fifty soldiers were sent out from Fort Ridgely in 1862 to bury those in the country around who had been massacred by the Indians. I was acting as picket out of Fort Ridgely and was first to hear the firing sixteen miles distant at Birch Coolie. It was the Indians attacking the burial party. I notified those at the fort and a party was sent out for relief. As they neared Birch Coolie they found they were outnumbered by the savages and Lieut. Sheehan returned to Fort Ridgely for the rest of the regiment. Then I accompanied them. They finally came to the small band of soldiers, who had been attacked by the Indians, to find twenty-three dead, and forty-five wounded out of the one hundred and fifty-three men. The soldiers horses had been tied close together to a rope to feed. There many of them had been shot, and being so close together many were still standing, or had fallen down on their knees--dead, but they served as a breast-work for the men. The twenty-three soldiers were buried on the spot and the wounded taken to Fort Ridgely.

I was also at Camp Release, under command of Gen. Sibley, where a great many Indians were taken prisoners. These Indians had killed many whites, and had some sixty women and children, prisoners. The soldiers managed to secure the Indians' guns and then released the women and children, finally taking the Indians prisoners, placing them in a log house, where they were carefully guarded. These, together with others secured at Yellow Medicine were chained together and taken to Mankato, where, in December, thirty-eight were hanged.

The Old Trail afterward Stage Coach road, known as the Hastings-Faribault Trail, passed through Northfield along what is now Division Street. Going north it followed the Stanton road. At the entrance of Mr. Olin's farm it passed along in front of the house--and along through his pasture--east of the pond--on down onto Mr. Alexander's land--following between two rows of trees, still standing, and crossed the Cannon river just above where the Waterford dam now stands. Thence along what is still known as the Hastings road. Through Mr. Olin's pasture there is still about fifteen or twenty rods of the Old Trail and road left.

Mrs. Augusta Prehn Bierman.

In the spring of '55 several of us German families, consisting of the Prehn's, Bierman's, Drentlaws and Sumner's, came to Minnesota from a settlement fifteen miles west of Chicago. We settled on claims near the present city of Northfield. We were on the way eleven and one-half weeks. We came by way of Joliet, forded the river at La Crosse and came up here by way of Rochester and Kenyon. We carried enough provisions with us to last most of the trip. We had some sixteen yoke of oxen, many cows, calves, and six colts. We slept in the wagons and we baked bread in iron kettles by burying them in hot ashes.

Our first home and the Prehn's was built in this way: We dug down in the earth four feet, very much as we would today for a cellar, but into a side hill. Above these four feet, logs were built up, plastered together with mud. For a roof, logs and branches of trees were placed across the side walls and then plastered together with mud.

Coming up through Kenyon we saw many Indians camping along the road. The colts and oxen were deathly afraid of them and would turn way out of the road when passing, keeping just as far away as possible.

Among the earliest marriages recorded in Rice county is that of William Bierman and Augusta Prehn 1857.

Mrs. Ann Alexander.

My husband with his father and a brother, Jonas, came in '54 and took up claims adjoining the present site of Northfield. They drove two ox teams and brought cattle, a couple of sheep and some pigs.

My husband's parents kept boarders and had some sixteen or eighteen all of the time and each day brought many extra from the stage coaches plying between here and Hastings and here and St. Paul.

Every mouthful of food consumed that first year was brought from Hastings, twenty-eight miles away, and it kept one man and an ox team on the road all the time.

Pork was purchased by the barrel and it would seldom last a week.

By the following spring, '55, when I was married and came to Minnesota some of the land had been broken, so small gardens were planted and potatoes and other vegetables raised. I believe it was about the time of the civil war that butter sold as low as 5c a pound and eggs 3c a dozen.

In these early days the Indians received annuities at Red Wing and on their yearly pilgrimages they would often camp in this vicinity as long as five or six weeks. The chiefs spent their time in hunting and fishing. The west side of the river was then not settled at all and there they had their camps. The squaws would come to the settler's homes, set their papooses up against the side of the house and walk into the house to beg. I have seen the large living room of mother's boarding house lined with Indians, smoking one pipe--each man taking a few puffs and then passing the pipe along. In those days the mosquitoes were very thick and if anyone was out doors they would literally be eaten alive. Mother's boarding house would be filled and people would be begging to be allowed to come and sleep under the tables--anything to get in away from the pests.

Mr. J. W. Huckins.

I enlisted from Minneapolis in Captain Strout's company which was sent to guard the frontier at the time of the Indian outbreak. We went up the Mississippi, then west to Litchfield, then to Glencoe and Hutchinson and were finally at Acton, where the first blow fell. The place was thirty-five miles northwest of the Lower Sioux agency, in Meeker county.

We soldiers found that our cartridges were not the right calibre. Some of the men had personal rifles, and one was found who had a pair of bullet molds of the right size. We took the bullets from the cartridges and busied ourselves, making them over the right size, using the powder and balls separately. During the engagement near Acton, the Indians managed to completely surround the soldiers. The captain ordered his men to dash through the Indian lines. The men ran for their lives, and those on horseback were ordered, at point of guns, to wait for men on foot. This sudden action took the Indians unawares and they were so surprised they forgot to keep up the fire. Most of us effected an escape. Out of sixty men but three were killed, though some twenty were wounded. We fell back to Hutchinson where there was a stockade. The Indians were getting quite fearless and would come in closer and closer to the stockade. One man had a very rare, long range gun and killed an Indian at the distance of a mile, after which the Indians kept a better distance.

Mrs. C. W. Gress--1855.

We landed in St. Paul in April '55, making the trip in about three weeks. We started on the boat, Minnesota Belle, but because of low water our household effects had to be transferred at Davenport, Iowa, to a small boat. There was a siege of cholera on the first boat, and two bodies were taken ashore and buried in the sand.

During the time of transferring the baggage, I had to carry the money for safe keeping. I made a wide belt with pockets of different lengths suspended from it. Here, and in the pockets of my skirt was gold of all denominations and some silver, of such weight that for three days I was ill from carrying it. After spending a few days in St. Paul we moved to Minnetonka Mills where we bought a relinquishment for $600 and paid $200 to prove up--making $800 for one hundred and sixty acres or $5 an acre; that land fifty years later was well worth $100 an acre. For three years we were eaten out by grasshoppers.

While here at Minnetonka Mills I often had Indians come to my house. On one occasion I stood churning when an Indian stepped in and took the dasher from me indicating that he wanted some of it. I was not afraid of him and took the dasher from him and pushed him aside with my elbow. I had just finished baking and so gave him a large slice of bread, spreading it generously with butter. He dug the center out of the piece crowding it into his mouth, throwing the crust on the hearth. This angered me as my crust was soft and tender and I picked up a broom and started toward him yelling "puck-a-chee" (get out) and he rushed for the door and disappeared.

We then concluded, after such bad luck with our crops, we would move back to St. Paul, where Mr. Gress could work at his trade, that of a shoemaker.

Mr. Gress would bring home work at night when I would assist him. We made a very high, cloth, buttoned shoe, called a snow shoe. I would close the seams, front and back, all by hand, as we had no machine; open seams and back, stitch down flat, and would bind the tops and laps and make fifteen or twenty buttonholes, for 50c a pair. The soles would then be put on in the shop. For slippers I received 15c for closing and binding the same way. During the war I made shirts and haver-sacks for the soldiers. The shirts were dark blue wool and were well made and finished. I broke the record one day when I made six of these garments and took care of four small children.

Mr. Alvin M. Olin--1855.

We came to Minnesota in 1855. We brought with us four yoke of oxen, thirty-five head of cattle and three hogs. We, with a family of three sons and a daughter, were four weeks on the way. We crossed the river on a ferry at Prairie du Chien and came up through Rochester and Cannon Falls and camped at Stanton while I went to a claim near Kenyon, that I had taken up the fall before, to find it had been jumped so I came on to Northfield and took up a claim on the Cannon River. We had with us two covered wagons--known as prairie schooners. In these we had our provisions, composed of flour, smoked meats and a barrel of crackers. We also had our furniture, chairs and chests and two rocking chairs for the mother and daughter. Here all of their leisure time, while on the move, was spent industriously applying their knitting needles, meanwhile singing to themselves to the accompaniment of the thud, thud of the oxen.

Each day was opened with the family prayer, after which we had the morning meal and then the boys took turns starting on ahead with the pigs, this extra time being needed because of the pigs' obstinacy. One morning the boys found they had started back in the same direction from which they had come and had traveled six miles before they found it out. We purchased a barrel of crackers in Milwaukee and our noonday meal consisted of crackers and milk, and as milk soured, we fed it to the hogs. Butter was made on the way, and bread and biscuits were baked in a kettle.

When we staked out our claim, we laid a floor and placed a tent over it where we lived till logs could be procured. These we got on the west side of the river, then government land. For shingles we drove to Trim Mill ten or twelve miles the other side of Prescott, Wis. At one time that summer two hundred Indians were camped near our farm for two days on their way to St. Paul.

Mrs. Pauline Hagen.

I was four years old when my parents settled in Hastings. Mother was obliged to return to Wisconsin to see about our goods which were delayed in coming, and father wintered here and took care of us three small children. Our house had no floor and very little furniture, and this hand-made, save for a small sheet iron stove through the cracks of which the fire could be plainly seen.

At bed time father placed us in sacks, firmly tied around our little bodies, and put us on straw beds on the ground and then covered us with straw for warmth. We had no other covering. Our food that first winter consisted mostly of corn meal, made up, in a variety of ways. But mother on her arrival in the spring with our lost household goods, found her family fat and rugged and none the worse for the severe winter of '55-'56.

Mrs. Catherine Meade.

We were at Fort Ridgely at the time of the outbreak. At the fort were gathered all the women and children of the settlers for protection. We could hear the Indian war whoops in the distance. The confusion was terrible and twelve of the women were prematurely confined during the first twenty-four hours. I helped Dr. Miller, post surgeon, and for forty-eight hours I had no sleep and hardly time to eat. Finally, completely exhausted I fell asleep on the floor, with my little daughter by my side. When aroused by my husband, saying "The Indians are near at hand," I declared I might as well die one place as another. I could not go on and remained where I was. The alarm was a false one and we were all saved.

One woman by the name of Jones told me she took part of her children into the stockade and returned for the rest. She found herself confronted by two stalwart Indians. She rushed into a small closet, and bracing herself between the wall and the door kept it closed in this way until help came. She was nearly exhausted and gave birth to a child before morning.

Another woman told me that instead of going into the stockade she fled with her two children into a corn field, pursued by an Indian. He lost track of her and as one child started to scream she almost smothered it in her effort to conceal their hiding place. The Indian after half an hour gave up the search.

The stockade at Fort Ridgely had four entrances--one at each corner, at which a cannon was placed. There was but one man who could load the cannon, Sargeant Frantzkey, and as he had only unskilled help he was kept very busy running back and forth between the four guns. Ammunition was scarce and we had to use everything; nails, screws, sharp pieces of iron and steel were saved and the cannons loaded with this mixture called Sharp Nails. This was considered much more deadly than cannon balls, for when fired, it would scatter and fly in all directions.

The block house--where the ammunition was stored--was located outside the garrison and stockade, as a protection from fire. The only way to replenish the supply was to make a trip to the block house. So a guard was stationed at each end, and one man ran as fast as he could, secured a supply and ran back, of course at the risk of his life. The women also helped secure this ammunition, filling their aprons, while men filled gunny sacks.

After the first fight, when the excitement had calmed down, the women busied themselves making bullets and were obliged to remain until help came from St. Paul--nearly two weeks.

GREYSOLON DU LHUT CHAPTER

Duluth

MARIE ROBERTSON KEITH

(Mrs. Chas. Keith)

Mr. Glass--1848.

I came to Minnesota in 1848 and was later purveyor to the Indians. An Indian trail extended from Fond du Lac to St. Paul. It ran from Fond du Lac by trail to Knife Falls, Knife Falls by canoe on St. Louis river to Cloquet, from there to Hoodwood, from there to Sandy Lake, portage from there to Grand Rapids, from Grand Rapids by way of the Mississippi river to St. Paul.

Mr. John W. Goulding of Princeton.

My first knowledge of Indians was when I was about ten years of age. We lived on Rum river about three miles above St. Francis, where a canoe load of Indians landed and camped near us. Mo-zo-man-e who was then a chief, was said to be sick and his squaw came to our house asking by signs for pills, of which my sister gave her a box. She was afterward afraid that the Indian would take the entire box at one dose and we would be killed in consequence. The taking of the whole box at one dose was probably the fact, as the empty box was at once returned and the patient reported to be cured, but no evil results came to us.

In 1856 my father, who had been engaged with McAboy in the construction of the Territorial road through Princeton to Mille Lacs Lake, thought it best that the family remove to Princeton and we came with a six ox team. Princeton at that time with the outlying settlements of Estes Brook, Germany and Battle Brook, had perhaps one hundred and fifty people. Indians in blankets and paint were a daily, almost hourly sight.

They outnumbered us many times, but gave us no trouble. In the summer of '57 two Sioux warriors came in by the way of Little Falls to the falls in Rum river just above the mouth of Bradbury brook, where they shot and scalped "Same Day" brother of Kay-gway-do-say and returned home to the Sioux country south of the Mississippi. Soon after this occurrence one hundred and twenty-five Chippewas came down Rum river on foot armed and painted for war. They stayed with us in Princeton over night and had a war dance where Jay Herdliska's house now stands, which was witnessed by the entire population then here.

Among the Indians were Mo-zo-man-e, Noon-Day, Kay-gway-do-say, Benjamin, Keg-wit-a-see and others. The next morning they killed Dexter Paynes' cow for beef and took their departure down the east side of the river. In about twenty days they came back in a hurry somewhat scattered and badly licked. They had found the Sioux at Shakopee and had been defeated, it was said with the aid of the whites living near there, which was probably so, as we should have aided the Chippewas under similar circumstances.

I remember nothing more worth repeating until 1862, the year of the Sioux massacre. We, at Princeton, had heard of that outbreak, that the Chippewas had been urged to join, that "Hole-in-the-day" had been sending runners to Mille Lacs asking that band to join with him in extermination of the whites, and we were all getting nervous. Finally all the people in the outlying settlements came into Princeton and camped in and about the old log hotel near the big elm (which still stands, the largest and most beautiful tree in the city). Captain Benedict Hippler, an old soldier who had seen service in Germany, took command, and men and boys armed with all sorts of guns were drilled continually by the Captain, who was a martinet and at one time threatened to shoot me and a companion for sleeping on our post. It was found that Stevens the Indian trader at Mille Lacs had a large stock of powder, and H. A. Pemberton was sent to haul it away, which he did with Stevens mules, bringing it to Princeton where it was stored in my brother's cellar. About this time it was determined to build a stockade fort. I hauled the poplar logs from which it was built with my father's oxen from just across the East Branch, and I made many loads in a day. We moved a small house within the enclosure for the women and children and had the fort, such as it was, about completed when one day as Captain Hippler was putting us through one of his drills an Indian face appeared at a port hole and Kay-gway-do-say said, "What you do here, this no good, pooh!" He then told us that Hole-in-the-day had sent his runners to Mille Lacs urging war and that the Mille Lacs band had held a council and that "some young men" had urged war but the older heads led by Mun-o-min-e-kay-shein (Ricemaker) and others had counseled against it and that there would be no trouble.

This eased our minds somewhat and the settlers gradually returned to their homes. Soon we were reinforced by Co. F. of the Eighth Minn., who stayed with us two winters in "The old quarters" across the river, but, save their effect in overawing the Indians, their mission was peaceful. That same fall, '62, the Government concluded to make a display of force at a delayed payment to be made to the Chippewas at Mille Lacs and an Iowa regiment was sent with several cannon to accompany the paymaster to Mille Lacs.

Stevens, the trader at Mille Lacs had a large stock of Indian goods at Princeton and just before the payment my father sent me, then sixteen years of age, with four oxen and a wagon to haul these goods to Mille Lacs some fifty miles over what was then and for twenty years afterwards, was one of the worst roads in the state. After several days on the road I was reaching the trading post at night and as I neared there, was puzzled by the great number of lights to be seen. Finally as I approached the post I passed through a line of torches on each side, held by Indians who had heard that oxen were coming for beef and were ready to make beef of my team, had not the trader Stevens explained to them that their share would come later.

The next morning I set out on my return. Night found me at the upper crossing of Rum river where I drew my wagon a few rods out of the road, tied my oxen and tried to sleep, but was disturbed all night by drunken Indians "going to payment." The next day I met the paymaster and an escort, who, after inquiring if I were not afraid passed along up river. That evening I met the troops at the lower crossing of Rum river encamped on the east bank.

The quartermaster at once told me that in the morning I must turn about and help draw his supplies to Mille Lacs and upon my refusal I was placed in a tent under guard. The next morning after we had again discussed the matter, I partially assented and gained permission to drive my oxen unyoked to the river for water, which, as soon as they had drank, they waded and struck out for Princeton and no one could head them. The quartermaster then used my yokes and wagon for four of his beef oxen and went his way allowing me to come home. After some days, with much labor the troops reached Mille Lacs, where, it was said, the discharge of the cannon into the lake made a great scattering among the Indians, it being the first cannon they had ever seen. Upon the return of the troops to Princeton the quartermaster returned my yokes and wagon and paid for the use of them.

I have spoken several times in this story of Kay-gway-do-say, who was always a great friend of mine and of the whites in general. During the Sioux war he served with others, as a scout, was always a great friend of Captain Jonathan Chase, whom he always spoke of as "Me and Jock." He visited in my father's family many times and one of my sisters tried to teach him to read. It was not a success but he was much amused at his own mistakes. A few years before he died he visited me, inquired for my sisters, hunted them out and visited them, and on his return said to me "Be-she-ke-o-ge-ma," my Indian name, "you and your sisters seem just like my own folks." Poor old "Kaig," like about all his associates has gone to the "Happy Hunting Ground." Peace to his ashes.

Mrs. Colbrath.

My father, Roswell P. Russell came to the region of Mendota as a boy and was employed by Gen. Sibley. At one time, Mrs. Sibley sent him on an errand to St. Paul and he ventured to make the trip on the ice, with a horse and cutter. Coming suddenly upon a crack in the ice, he lashed the horse, thinking he might spring over it, but the poor animal was caught and swept under the ice, while he and the cutter remained on the ice and were saved. This narrow escape made a great impression, naturally and the story was handed down to his children.

My father married a Miss Patch of an old family of pioneers and they were the first couple married at the Falls of St. Anthony.

CAPTAIN RICHARD SOMERS CHAPTER

St. Peter

MISS EMILY BROWN

Mrs. Mary B. Aiton.

When the treaty was made at Mendota in 1851, the Indians who ceded the land gave up their settlement at Kaposia, (South St. Paul), leaving behind them their dead, buried on the hill, and the land endeared to them by association. With them, when they moved westward to Yellow Medicine, went their faithful missionary and teacher, Doctor Thomas Williamson. That same year his sister, familiarly know as "Aunt Jane," made a visit to her old home town in Ohio, where I lived, and her interesting accounts of her experiences so filled me with missionary zeal that I went west, with her, as a teacher to the Indians.

With "Aunt Jane," I landed at Kaposia, and after a short rest, we began the overland journey to Yellow Medicine. The last night of our journey, two of our horses strayed away, and in the morning the ox-teams with the freight, and us women went on, leaving Dr. Williamson to search for the runaways. When we rode down into the valley, we saw ahead of us, the missing horses. We two women volunteered to go back to tell Dr. Williamson, and the rest of the party went on. We found the doctor, and to save us fatigue, he suggested that we take a short-cut across country to the agency, while he followed the road to rejoin the travelers.

Somehow we failed to follow directions and traveled all the rest of the day, coming at night to a river. Here on the bank we decided to rest. In the distance we could see a prairie fire, gradually eating its way towards the river; but we felt safe near the water and lay down to sleep. Just after we fell asleep, I was awakened by a loud call, and I realized the joy of knowing that we were found. The men who had been sent in search of us were calling, in hopes that we would answer and we continued our journey without further incident.

One morning in the spring of 1851, our little mission house at Kaposia was full of bustle and confusion, for we were busy preparing for an Indian wedding. The prospective bride was a pretty Sioux maiden, and her fiance was a white trader. Everything was in readiness for the ceremony, but no groom appeared. The hours wore on; the bride wept; but no news of the groom came until late in the afternoon a rumor reached us that he was celebrating the occasion by a drunken revel, and was not in condition to take his part in the ceremony. A white mother would have wept over daughter's grief, but not this Indian mother. When told that the ceremony must be postponed, she replied with stoical Indian patience: "It is well; I like his white skin; but I hate his drunken ways."

Dr. A. C. Daniels.

When I was agency physician at Lac qui Parle, I often saw the humorous side of Indian life. One day when the Indians had received their government allowance, a party of them too freely indulged their appetites for liquor; and one, a big brave, who had adopted the patriotic name of George Washington, led a band of Indians to the home of the Catholic sisters, and demanded food. The sisters saw the Indians' condition, barred the door, and told the braves to go away. George, however, was insistent in his demands, and finally put his giant strength against the door, and splintered the upper part. He had put his head into the opening, and was about to crawl through it, when one of the sisters seized a rolling pin, and rained sturdy blows upon his head and shoulders. He raised a yell that brought me to the spot just in time to see a funny sight. Just as George was about to beat a retreat, his squaw came running up and began to belabor him from the rear, while the nun continued the assault. There he was with part of his body in the house and part of it out, crying out in a manner most unseemly for an Indian brave. When the women desisted, he was both sober and repentant.

In early days, the Indian agent at Lac qui Parle hoisted the American flag each morning over the agency. During a serious drought, the Indians conceived the idea that the Great Spirit was displeased at the sight of the flag, and begged the agent to take it down. The patriotic agent tried to reason with them but to no avail, so one afternoon he took the flag down for a time. In a little while, a black cloud appeared and then a heavy downpour of rain followed. The Indians, as you know were very superstitious, and they were firmly convinced that the flag was a true barometer, so the agent had to be cautious in his display of the flag.

Mr. Z. S. Gault.

One morning as I rode a horse down to the Minnesota River to water it, I noticed a stolid looking Indian, with a gun by his side, sitting on a boulder by the river bank. Just as my horse began to drink, the Indian raised his gun and fired; the horse kicked up his heels, and I promptly became a Baptist by immersion. I can still show you the boulder, but you will have to imagine the Indian.

When I was a small boy, a party of Sioux Indians returned to Traverse from an attack upon the Chippewas at Shakopee, and proceeded to celebrate the event with a scalp dance. This dance and the whoops of the Indians attracted spectators from Traverse and St. Peter; and with boyish curiosity, I was as near as possible to the dancers. Suddenly I spied one brave, dancing about, with a skunk skin tied to his heel and trailing on the ground behind him. Obeying a mischievous impulse, I jumped upon the trailing skin, and stopped the wild dancer. The savage wheeled, quickly raised his tomahawk, and was ready to strike; but when he saw a white boy, he merely kicked me out of the ring, and kept on with the dance.

Mr. J. C. Bryant.

When Governor McGill, came to St. Peter as a young man, he was obliged to practice strict economy to make both ends meet. The revenue he derived from teaching was so very meager, that he had to do without some of what we regard as actual necessities. Late in the fall he was passing Jack Lamberton's store, when the warm-hearted proprietor noticed that the school-master wore no overcoat. He guessed the reason; but he asked Mr. McGill why he wore no overcoat. "Well, I haven't one, and I am not able to buy one yet," he replied with sturdy honesty. "Just come right in, and help yourself to one, and pay for it when you can," said Mr. Lamberton with characteristic generosity. This kindness was a bond that made the two men friends for life, although later they were often arrayed against each other politically.

When certain men in the state were trying to steal the Capital from St. Peter for St. Paul, Captain Dodd is said to have traveled on foot from St. Peter to St. Paul between sunrise and sunset in the interests of St. Peter. This feat would seem to me a physical impossibility, but it was a story current when I was a boy in St. Peter. It is a matter of history, too, that all the attempts to save the Capital were futile, and the indomitable Captain Dodd had his long walk in vain.

Captain Dodd was considerable of a mimic and an actor. During a political campaign, he took the platform against a certain Tom Corwin of Ohio, who was considered a great political orator. On one occasion Corwin was the first speaker, and to emphasize his speech, he danced about on the stage, gesticulated freely, and made a great impression. When Mr. Dodd's turn to speak came, he arose, and without a word, gravely gave a pantomimic reproduction of the orator's acts and gestures. Then he sat down amid roars of laughter, that completely spoiled the effect of his opponent's speech.

Mrs. Nancy Kiethley Bean.

When Edward Eggleston, the author of the "Hoosier Schoolmaster," was obliged to come west for his health, he was, for a number of years, a resident of Traverse, and St. Peter. Here on week days he engaged in the humble occupation of soap-making, and on Sundays he went out to the country communities to preach the gospel. His church was often the one room of some farmer's log cabin, and he missed the pulpit upon which to pound, to emphasize the points in his sermon in the good orthodox style of the exhorter. One Sunday early in his ministry, he came to our home near Cleveland, to preach, and that day he strongly felt the need of a pulpit. "Why can't you make me a pulpit?" he asked my father after the service. "I can and I will before you come again," father replied. Father went to work, and from the trunk of a tree, he hewed out a rough pulpit! The young preacher exhorted with such fervor from his new pulpit that I was the first convert of the man who afterwards became famous.

In the fall of that same year, the annual Methodist conference was held at Winona, and Mr. Eggleston prepared to go. Before he went my father met him, and asked him whether he was going to the conference. "Yes," was the reply, "I am going." Now father knew that money was scarce and that Mr. Eggleston's preaching and soap-making yielded him little revenue, so he went to one of the brethren, a certain Mr. Arter, who had recently come from the east, bringing with him gold coin, and told of Mr. Eggleston's desire to go to Winona. Mr. Arter was interested and offered Mr. Eggleston five dollars to help defray the expense of his trip, but was met with a polite but none the less firm refusal.

"I shall not need money," said Mr. Eggleston. "I can walk part of the way, some one will give me a lift now and then and the brethren will give me food and lodging when I require it."

However, Mr. Arter insisted that he should take the gold, and he finally prevailed, but Mr. Eggleston started on foot for the conference. Upon his return, he gave the gold to its original owner, for with sturdy pioneer independence, he had traveled the distance to Winona on foot, except for an occasional lift from some traveler, driving a slow ox team.

Mrs. Mary Davis Fenton.

One summer morning in 1852, a man on horseback rode rapidly up to the door of our farm house, shouted the news of the uprising of the Indians, and then rode on to warn others of the danger. We hastily gathered together a few necessary articles, and fled to St. Peter. When we returned home after the danger was over, we found that our house had been looted, and father discovered that his pet razor had disappeared.

"I will never shave again," he declared, "until the man who stole my razor, brings it back."

Naturally the thief failed to return, and to the day of his death in 1911, father wore his patriarchial beard, and kept his vow never to shave again.

NATHAN HALE CHAPTER

St. Paul

GRACE RANDALL LYMAN

(Mrs. G. C. Lyman)

GERTRUDE KAERCHER

(Mrs. A. B. Kaercher)

Mrs. Frederick Penny.

We lived about four miles from Shakopee, at what was called Eden Prairie. My father was William O. Collins. The Sioux Indians' old camping ground and home was on the river bottoms at Shakopee. Three miles below our place was Hennepin Landing where the boats landed coming from St. Paul. The trail of the Sioux led directly past our house, so we saw a great deal of the Indians.

At one corner of my father's land was a big boulder called Red Rock, held sacred by the Indians. Whenever the Sioux were going into battle against the Chippewas, they came to this rock and if they were successful, they brought their trophies of war and placed them on the rock. There was room for one Indian to lie down close to the rock. The others would dance around or sit in council. As soon as they had gone, the white settlers would take everything of value.

One thing we were taught was never to show fear of Indians. They knew very quickly and loved to scare anyone who showed they were afraid. Chaska and five of his men had been out duck hunting and stopped at our house for supper the night before the outbreak in 1862. The Indians were always friendly with all members of my father's family, and never asked for a meal unless they were willing to pay with ducks or in some way. Next morning after Chaska had supper with us, a man came riding from St. Peter telling everyone to flee. Twenty families (ours among the others) remained.

My oldest brother had enlisted and the very day after Chaska was at our house, he was ordered back from Fort Snelling to go to Fort Ridgely.

The most disgraceful thing to an Indian is to be struck with a whip or a stick. One day I was holding the baby in my arms when an Indian put his head in through the window close to my face before I knew anyone was near. I was so frightened I ran to my mother. The Indians thought we were afraid so started for the garden to destroy the melons, squash and pumpkins growing there. My mother put on father's coat, took a big cane and went after them saying, "Get out, these are to feed papoose" over and over. There were forty in the party but they went without further trouble.

One day on my way to school, I heard the children calling to me to run, but the grass was so high I could see no one and did not know an Indian was near. When I saw him, I was not afraid. I went on to the school house door, but the teacher was so frightened she had locked the door and I could not get in. I stood waiting, and the Indian patted me on the head and said, "Heap brave papoose" and went on down the trail.

One family by the name of Dorr and another by the name of Horner were both very well to do. When a man rode to their places at the time of the outbreak telling them the Indians were coming, they took what they could in wagons and started for Eden Prairie where the Dorr family stayed with the Neals. Mrs. Dorr was a Neal girl. The Horners stayed with us until the trouble was over. The Dorr house and barns were burned to the ground, but the soldiers stopped the Indians before they reached the Horner place. Both families went back and rebuilt what had been destroyed, living there for many years.

Mr. James Clark of St. Peter.

I came to St. Peter in March 1856. I was in the livery business, so was among the Indians more or less until the outbreak in 1862. I made the first trip from the Agency to Faribault with Bishop Whipple. Also the last when we took a number of Indian girls from Faribault to the Sioux Agency in August 1862.

I had enlisted and was with my company in line at Fort Snelling, being sworn in when a man came riding in to tell us the Indians were on the war path. We were ordered to St. Peter at once and found the families all sheltered in stone houses and the men barricading the town with cord wood and digging rifle pits in the bluffs. But none of the families was molested within a radius of about seven miles. Everyone who was left in town had to help. All the lead pipes were taken out of the wells and slugs were cut from pieces of iron.

Jim Powell, a young man left in charge of the cattle at the Agency, waiting for the Indians to receive their pay, said to me when I came up on my last trip, "Jim, I am afraid there will be trouble. The Indians are getting ugly. They shot an ox and skinned it and we can't say a word." When the outbreak came Jim Powell was sitting on a mule at the Agency. Five Indians shot at him. He tried to make his mule go down to the ferry. He would not go, so Jim slipped off and ran for the ferry. The boat had started across to Fort Ridgely, but he swam out and climbed on. He went across, then the twelve miles to the fort and enlisted. Before this the Indians were driven to beg for food, their rations had been so slow in coming from the government.

I often think there is many a man that should have a monument to commemorate his brave deeds. There was Duncan Kennedy of St. Peter, one of the bravest men I ever knew. During the outbreak he carried messages back and forth from St. Peter to Fort Ridgely, alone. When asked why he did not take someone with him, he said it was safer alone for if he saw an Indian he would know what to do; he would lie down and be quiet. If some one was with him, he would have to tell them to be quiet.

Mrs. John Crippen[4] was an early settler in the country, coming here by way of the Morris trail. There were two trails, one by way of Hutchinson, and the other following along the Minnesota River, the latter being the trail used during the Sibley Expedition.

[Footnote 4: Mrs. Kaercher's work begins with Mrs. Crippen.]

Mr. and Mrs. Crippen, with a baby about a year old, came to their homestead, not far from Big Stone lake where they endured many privations the first few years. The first year the grasshoppers took all the garden and grain. After the first year new settlers began to come in and Mr. Crippen assisted them in locating claims, and in that way managed to live until another crop was raised. In relating some of the experiences Mrs. Crippen states that they had a house 10x12 and the first shingled roof in this country at that time. At one time, two gentlemen from Minneapolis, Messrs. Hyde and Curtiss, had occasion to stay over night with them so they gave these parties their only bed, making one on the floor for themselves, hanging a curtain between. While preparing breakfast she heard one of the gentlemen say--"Hello, little fellow, what are you doing with my toe?" Her baby had awakened and gone over to their bed. It was over a year before they had any chickens or cow; she used to hunt plover's eggs and several times was without flour, having to grind wheat and corn in a coffee mill. The nearest railroad town was Morris forty miles northeast.

The first 4th of July celebration was held near the lake at a place now called "Point Comfort." The flag staff is still where they placed it. A Mrs. Tyler roasted a small pig, which they used as a center piece at the picnic dinner, minus the apple in its mouth.

One of the young gentlemen, whose father was a minister in Minneapolis, had him send him sermons which he read on the Sabbath in the schoolhouse.

C. K. Orton, the founder of Ortonville took a homestead adjoining Big Stone Lake. In the spring he returned for his family consisting then of his wife and child, Clara, together with several neighbors. They started in the month of July, following the old trail via New Ulm, thence to Montevideo. When they reached Montevideo they discovered the bridges had washed away, so they were obliged to ford the Chippewa river which was very deep and rapid. Mr. and Mrs. Orton rode side by side, he carrying a sack of flour which he lost while endeavoring to hold her, but which he afterward recovered. It took the party several days to get their belongings, which consisted of cattle, horses, oxen, etc., on the west side of the river.

They were badly frightened a few months later, which was after they had settled in their new home, by a Mr. Movius, of Big Stone City, who came to them with a report that the Indians, five hundred in number, from the Sisseton reservation were on the war path and were headed their way. Mrs. Orton and another woman, being alone with the children, say that they had a flat bottomed boat which they had planned to get in and get out into the middle of the lake and that if overtaken by the Indians, rather than be tortured as they had seen other people near New Ulm and other towns, would drown themselves and children, but luckily it was a false report.

Mr. Orton was the first postmaster of this place, the mail being brought once a week from Appleton, twenty-five miles east, by Mr. Lathrop, who had a wagon train hauled by oxen by which he carried flour and provisions to the settlers along the lake shore.

There is a log cabin still standing in Big Stone City, which was built in the year 1857.

A. B. Kaercher has in his possession the Government Patent given in 1855 and signed by Franklin Pierce to his father, John Kaercher, for 160 acres of land in Fillmore County, Minnesota, where John Kaercher founded the Village of Preston, and erected the second flouring mill in the Territory of Minnesota.

Lyman R. Jones of Ortonville has a stove door taken from the ruins of the Presbyterian mission, built in 1838 and which was destroyed by fire March 3, 1854.

Mr. Roberts, an old timer here, has the powder horn which Little Crow carried through the Sioux massacre.

DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY CHAPTER

Duluth

FRANCES ANGELINE POOLE WOODBRIDGE (Mrs. W. S. Woodbridge)

Mrs. Nettleton.

My husband and I came to this region in 1854. At first we lived in Superior, Wis., but in September of that year we went down to Madeline Island to the Indian payment when the government bought the Duluth property from the Indians. My husband got title to the best of Minnesota Point. This was the same payment where they gave Chief Buffalo his four square miles of land in Duluth.

Minnesota Point is a narrow neck of land seven miles long and about a quarter of a mile wide projecting from the mainland in Duluth and separating Lake Superior from St. Louis Bay. One day we had a picnic party of Superior people over on Minnesota Point. Among them were Mrs. Post, Orator Hall and his wife, my husband and the Rev. Mr. Wilson from somewhere near Boston and a number of others. During the picnic various names for the new town started on Minnesota Point were proposed and Mr. Wilson at last proposed "Duluth." He named the city in honor of the first navigator and explorer who ever came up here. When the other proprietors came here and made preemptions and had obtained land they wanted to call it "Portland." My husband said "No that his property was in Duluth and it should stay in Duluth." I had never been in Duluth at that time unless it was for a picnic on Minnesota Point.

We moved across the bay to Duluth in 1858. My husband and his brother William had a contract for carrying the mail from Superior to St. Paul. Sometimes the mail was carried by team and sometimes the men packed it on their backs. In the spring and fall the roads were so bad that the use of the team was impossible. Letters were delivered once a week and papers once a month, perhaps. The military road had been commenced but not finished.

Mrs. W. S. Woodbridge.

While the experiences of the early days could be considered a hardship for the men it was ten times more annoying to women. The hardships of housekeeping, for instance and home making, keeping the home tidy and comfortable, not to say attractive, were much greater than any hardships the men were called upon to endure. The first year or two, there was no mirror at the head of the lakes. Those who were fortunate enough to have a new tin boiler, or new tin dishes could get along very well. One of the early settlers has told me that he had frequently seen the women combing and arranging their hair by their reflection in the wash boiler or dish pan. Ribbons, perfumes and fancy articles were wholly unknown. An old settler who came with his family told me "Our whole outfit comprised a feather bed and a lunch basket in which were a knife, fork and two small china dishes. I also bought a single mattress and a pair of blankets in Cleveland on my way to Duluth. We built our bedsteads out of green tamarack poles peeled, using the bark for ropes to hold it together and made a table of two boards which were found floating in the Bay. Bed clothing consisted of Indian blankets and moccasins answered for shoes, while curtains, carpets and upholstered furniture were unknown."

The postoffice was in a small building on First Street and First Avenue East. The postmaster, Mr. Richard Marvin was a member of the Fire Brigade. His friend, Mr. Melvin Forbes, who had just started in the paper and stationery business opposite, spent the night with him. The milkman was in the habit of bringing milk to the door in the morning. A lady who had come up by boat and was leaving by train in the early morning for St. Paul knocked on the door of the postoffice to inquire if any mail had been forwarded to her there. Mr. Forbes, supposing the milkman was at the door, leaped out of bed, caught Mr. Marvin's fireman's helmet and put it on his head, opened the door wide with a flourish and making a profound bow in his short white night shirt said, "Good morning." Not until he raised his head did he see the lady. I have often wondered what opinion she formed of Duluth in her short stay here.

I used to watch the Indians who were a common sight in those early days in Duluth, especially in the winter, when they would come into town with their dog teams, the sledges laden down with skins which they exchanged for provisions. The dog teams were very interesting with their intelligent well trained Indian dogs. There were usually three or four dogs driven tandem with a simple harness consisting of a collar and a strap around the body of each. The driver always ran or walked by the side of the sledge never sitting on it. We see pictures of dog teams in Alaska, for instance, with a dozen or more dogs, but that would have been impossible in a heavily wooded country as this was in those days.

The Indians did not know the use of a door bell, neither did they stand on ceremony, but if they found the door of a house unlocked they walked in without knocking. I remember that one New Year's Day we found on going into the sitting room after dinner, that six Indians had quietly taken possession, two men and four squaws. They advanced, offering to shake hands and saying, "'Appy New Year, ten cents." "'Appy New Year, ten cents." It was all the English they could speak but they knew well what it meant and did not leave until each one had received a gift. We were glad enough to see them go and to open the windows.

I well remember a funeral which occurred in the early days. The coffin was placed in a wagon which was drawn by one horse and the mourners followed on foot. I also remember how very muddy the roads were, consisting of sticky, tenacious red clay which clung to our rubbers and sucked them off our feet as we walked.

We bought water by the pailful which was carted up from the Lake and placed in a barrel in the kitchen and often on a cold winter morning, we were obliged to chop it out and melt it in the tea kettle. The windows in our house were always covered with half an inch of frost. I remember on one very cold night I was awakened by a fire bell. The windows were red with light from some burning dwelling near and I rushed from window to window trying in vain to see out and locate the fire.

ST. PAUL CHAPTER

MISS K. MAUDE CLUM

Mrs. Martin Jay Clum.

I accompanied my husband, Martin Jay Clum, a member of Company "D," Second Minnesota Volunteers to Fort Ridgely in 1862. There were left at the fort but few men to guard it, as the greater number of them had been ordered to the frontier to quell the Indian outbreaks.

My daughter, Victoria Maria, nine months old, was ill, getting her teeth and although the night was hot and sultry the windows of our quarters had to be kept closed on account of the mosquitoes. It was impossible to obtain any mosquito bar so I walked the floor nearly all night with her on my arm fanning her constantly as the heat was almost unbearable.

Toward morning, I paused for a few seconds to look out of the window and as I did so, fancied I saw tiny dark objects moving around a huge straw stack some distance away. You can scarcely imagine my horror as the dawn disclosed the truth of my fears.

I put down my dear baby--rushed outside--called to a herder to go at once and find out what those objects were, moving about the stack. Hastily mounting a mule he made a detour of the straw stack and reported. "If there's one Indian there, there's fifty with their ponies buried in and around the stack." He at once gave the alarm but before the guard reached the stack there was not an Indian to be seen. Interpreter Quinn soon sent his son, Tom, to warn me not to leave the garrison as I had been in the habit of taking walks with my baby in her carriage.

Later in the day, the pickets and scouts came in and reported a large camp of over four hundred Indians on the opposite bank of the river, waiting, no doubt, as Interpreter Quinn said, a chance to make a raid, capture and maybe massacre everyone of us. He also told me that while the Indians might not perhaps harm me they would be likely to take my baby and it would be as bad to be frightened to death as to be scalped.

Mr. August Larpenteur--1843, Ninety-three years old.

The first day I came, in 1843, I had dinner with Mrs. Jackson. It was a fine one--ducks, venison, and vegetables raised by the Selkirk refugees. Here I first tasted pemmican. It was most excellent. The bread was baked in a Dutch oven.

New Year's Day, Mr. Jackson, Luther Furnell and I took a yoke of oxen to make some New Years calls. We first went to Mr. Gervais' where we talked, took a drink, kissed the girls and then to Vital Guerin's. Next we went up to Mrs. Mortimer's where we made a sedate call. She lived where the police station now stands. Last, near present Seven Corners, we called on the Irvine's. By this time the OXEN were tired. We began to feel drowsy, so we returned and took a rest.

The Indians always called on us on Christmas, went through much handshaking and expected a present.

INDEX

Aiton, Mrs. Mary B., 307

Alexander, Mrs. Ann, 296

Anderson, Mrs. Robert, 91

Apgar, Mrs. Anna Simmons, 97

Balser, Mrs. Anna E., 89

Batchelder, Mrs. Kate Davis, 291

Berry, Mrs. Helen Godfrey, 222

Bean, Mrs. Nancy Kiethley, 311

Beatty, Mrs. J. R., 165

Bierman, Mrs. Augusta P., 295

Black, Mrs. Mahlon, 29

Bohanon, Mr. Charles, 67

Bradley, Mrs., 240

Buell, Major S. A., 122

Burdick, Mrs. C. A., 104

Buckham, Judge Thomas S., 289

Buck, Mr. H. L., 237

Brown, Mrs. John, 260

Bryant, Mr. J. C., 310

Brackett, Mr. George A., 139

Chute, Mrs. Richard, 65

Clark, Mr. Edwin, 136

Clarke, Mr. Edwin, 136

Clifford, Mrs. Elizabeth, 64

Clum, Mrs. Martin J., 323

Cooper, Peter, 105

Cobb, Mr. M. G., 262

Colbrath, Mrs., 306

Connolly, Colonel A. P., 212

Collins, Judge Loren W., 275

Curtis, Mr. Theodore, 110

Cray, Judge Lorin, 176, 263

Daniels, Dr. A. C., 308

Dibble, Marion L., 262

Dorr, Mr. Caleb, 27

Dowling, Mrs. Mary E., 90

Dow, Mr. D. E., 62

Dow, Mrs. William, 81

Dresser, Mrs. Samuel B., 48

Dunsmoor, Mr. Irving A., 184

Ellison, Mr. William W., 58

Faribault, Miss Sara, 232

Farnham, Mrs. Rufus, 50

Farnham, Mrs. Silas, 39

Farnsworth, Mr. Austin W., 70

Farnsworth, Mrs. Austin W., 110

Favel, Mr. Henry, 103

Fenton, Mrs. Mary Davis, 312

Fisher, Mrs. George E., 107

Foster, Doctor Lysander P., 38

Funk, Mrs. Margaret Rathbun 160

Gault, Mr. Zuriel S., 309

Gilpatrick, Mrs. Martha, 143

Gilman, Ex-Lieutenant Gov., 110

Gillespie, Miss Nancy, 75

Gillespie, Mr. James M., 75

Gleason, Mrs. Harriett., 239

Glass, Mr., 302

Goulding, John W., 302

Godfrey, Abner Crossman, 229

Godley, Mrs. Charles M., 111

Gress, Mrs. C. W., 297

Hagen, Mrs. Pauline., 300

Hanks, Captain Stephen., 24

Harrison, Mrs. Mary, 55

Heffelfinger, Major C. B., 142

Hern, Mrs. Margaret, 143

Hoefer, Mrs. F., 199

Hopkins, Miss Florinda, 101

Hopkins, Mr. Chester L., 101

Horton, Mrs. Helen, 132

Huckins, Mr. J. W., 297

Huston, Mrs. Anna Hennes, 103

Ingenhutt, Mrs. Mary, 152

Jones, Mr. Oliver K., 240

Jones, Mrs. Virginia, 116

Jones, Mr. John A., 173

Keysor, Captain Clark, 178

Keysor, Mrs. Clark, 175

Kennedy, Mrs. Duncan, 119

Kimball, Mrs. Edmund, 188

Layman, Mr. Isaac, 75

Ladd, Mrs. J. W., 102

Larpenteur, Mr. August, 324

Lapham, Mr. L. L., 159

Le Duc, General William, 40

Loring, Mr. Charles M., 153

Lowell, Mrs. Nancy, 80

Longfellow, Colonel Levi, 216

Massolt, Mrs. Mary, 134

Maxwell, Mrs. Delilah, 202

Magnus, Mrs. Conrad, 271

Meade, Mrs. Catherine, 300

Merrit, Mrs. Arabella, 243

Merrill, Mrs. E. A., 77

McMullen, Mr. James, 31

McMullen, Mrs. James, 36

McCormack, Captain L. L., 153

Mott, Mrs. Rodney A., 290

Moulton, Captain Isaac, 138

Neill, Miss Minnesota, 157

Niemann, Mrs. W. L., 196

Nettleton, Mrs., 319

Nutting, Mr. Elijah, 72, 284

O'Brien, Mr. Frank G., 190

Olin, Mr. Alvin M., 299

Paine, Mrs. J. M., 156

Partridge, Mrs. Mary E., 273

Pelton, Mr. I. A., 170

Penney, Mrs. Frederick, 313

Pettijohn, Mr. Eli, 9

Pettit, Mrs. C. H., 103

Pfeffer, Mrs. A. M., 169

Phillips, Mary Sherrard, 233

Pike, Mrs. Orin, 272

Pitcher, Mrs. Mary, 163

Plummer, Mrs. Rebecca, 104

Pond, Mrs. Gideon, 22, 250

Pond, Mrs. E. R., 258

Pratt, Mrs. James, 52

Pratt, Mrs. Missouri Rose, 16

Pribble, Mrs. Mary, 186

Prescott, Mrs. Henry C., 287

Rochette, Mr. Stephen, 106

Rochette, Mrs. Stephen, 106

Robinson, Mr. Reuben, 47

Randall, Major Benjamin, 230

Robinson, Mrs. Mary, 129

Rye, Mr. Charles, 73

Richardson, J. Warren, 285

Slocum, Mr. Frank, 114

Starkloff, Mrs. Paulina, 88

Sampson, Mrs. Leroy, 97

Sutherland, Mrs. Jane, 126

Snyder, Mrs. Margaret A., 130

Smith, Mrs. Mary Staring, 133

Smith, Mrs. C. A., 140

Stewart, Doctor, 155

Stratton, Miss Carrie, 182

Shaver, Mr. B. F., 206

Turner, Mrs. John C., 293

Todd, Mrs. Anna, 135

Thorne, Mrs. Martha, 78

Teeter, Mr. Michael, 192

Van der Horck, Captain John, 51

Van Sant, Ex-Governor Samuel R., 199

Van Schaick, Mr. M. R., 270

Wakefield, Mr. Warren, 94

Watson, Mr. C. H., 294

Woods, Mrs. Newman, 99

Weeks, Mrs. Mary, 76

White, Mrs. William J., 84

Wilder, Mrs., 93

Winter, Mrs. James A., 107

Walker, Mrs. T. B., 115

Way, Mrs. Georgiana M., 116

Woodbridge, Mrs. W. S., 320