Mr. Frank Sloc.u.m--1856.
When we drove from St. Paul to Cannon Falls in "56 we only saw one small piece of fence on the way. A man by the name of Baker at Rich Valley in Dakota County had this around his door yard. He had dug a trench and thrown up a ridge of dirt. On top of this he had two cross pieces and a rail on top. You call it a rail fence. We called it oftener "stake and rider." We followed the regular road from St. Paul to Dubuque.
The original Indian trail which was afterward the stage road, started at Red Wing and went through Cannon Falls, Staunton, Northfield, Dundas, Cannon City to Faribault.
My father had a store in Cannon Falls. I was only thirteen and small for my age but I used to serve. One day a big Indian came in when I was alone and asked for buckshot. They were large and it did not take many to weigh a pound. He picked a couple out and pretended to be examining them. I weighed the pound and when I saw he did not put them back, I took out two. You never saw an Indian laugh so hard in your life. You always had to be careful when weighing things for Indians, for if you got over the quant.i.ty and took some out they were always grouchy as they thought you were cheating them.
The farmers used to come through our town on their way to Hastings with their grain on their ox drawn wagons. They had a journey of two hundred miles from Owatonna to Hastings and back. They would go in companies and camp out on the way.
During the years of "56 and "57 many people could not write home as they had no money to pay postage. Our business was all in trade.
In 1854 a man whom we all knew who lived up above Mankato took an Indian canoe and paddled down the river to St. Paul. There he sold it for enough money to pay his fare back on the boat. He was a man of considerable conscience in his dealings with white men but when a man was only "an injun" it had not caught up with him yet. Now for the sequel: The man who bought it had it under the eaves of his house to catch rain water. During a storm his window was darkened. He looked up to see an Indian with his blanket held high to darken the window so he could see in. The white man went out. The savage said, "My canoe. Want him." The man would not give it up, but the Indian and his friends went to the authorities and he had to. They had traced it all that long way.
We bought an elevated oven cook stove in St. Paul and it was in use every day for fifty years. We brought Baker knock down chairs with us and they have been in constant use for fifty-eight years--have never been repaired and look as if they were good for one hundred years more.
We made coffee from potato chips, sliced very thin and browned in the oven. Not such bad coffee, either.
Mrs. T. B. Walker--Minneapolis.
I remember going to market in the morning and seeing a wagon with all the requisites for a home, drive up to a vacant lot. On the wagon were lumber, furniture and a wife and baby. What more could be needed! When I pa.s.sed in the afternoon the rough house was up, the stove pipe through the window sent out a cheery smoke and the woman sang about her household tasks.
One morning I was at church in St. Anthony. The minister had just given out the text when the squeaking of the Red River carts was faintly heard. He hastily said, "To be discoursed on next Sunday," for nothing but this noise could be heard when they were pa.s.sing.
Mrs. Virginia Jones--1856.
I lived in St. Peter in 1856. The Sioux Indians were having a scalp dance at Traverse. Their yelling could be plainly heard in St. Peter.
All of that town went over to see them dance. They had a pole decorated with several scalps. These were stretched on hoops and painted red inside. The Indians danced round and round this pole, jumping stiff legged, screeching and gesticulating, while the tom-toms were pounded by the squaws. I was frightened and wanted to leave, but could not as I had been pushed near the front and the crowd was dense. Seeing my fear the Indians seized me by the hands and drew me into their circle, making me dance round and round the pole.
Some days later I started east to spend the summer with my mother.
Distances were long in those days as the trip was made by steamboat and stage coach. I took one of the steamers which then ran regularly on the Minnesota river, sorrowfully parting from my husband as I did not expect to see him again until fall. That anguish was all wasted for we stuck on a sand bank just below town and my husband came over in a boat and lived on the steamer for nearly a week before we could get off the sandbar.
Mrs. Georgiana M. Way--1856.
We moved to Minnesota from Iowa. Came with a prairie schooner. The country was very wild. We settled on a farm five miles south of Blue Earth. We brought along a cow and a coop of chickens. The roads were awfully rough. We would milk the cow, put the milk in a can and the jarring that milk got as those oxen drew that wagon over the rough roads gave us good b.u.t.ter the next day. Our first shack was not a dugout, but the next thing to it. It was a log shed with sloping roof one way. We had two windows of gla.s.s so did not feel so much like pioneers.
The rattlesnakes were very thick. We used to watch them drink from the trough. They would lap the water with their tongues just as a dog does.
Many a one I have cut in two with the ax. They always ran but I was slim in those days and could catch them.
We used prairie tea and it was good too. It grew on a little bush. For coffee we browned beets and corn meal. Corn meal coffee was fine. I"d like a cup this minute.
Once a family near us by the name of Bonetrigger lived for four days on cottonwood buds or wood browse as it was called.
We drove forty-five miles to Mankato to get our first baby clothes. When we got in our first crop of wheat, I used to stand in the door and watch it wave as the wind blew over it and think I had never seen anything so beautiful. Even the howling of the wolves around our cabin did not keep us awake at at night. We were too tired and too used to them. The years flew by. I had three children under five when my husband enlisted. I was willing, but oh, so sad! He had only three days to help us before joining his company. Our wood lot was near, so near I could hear the sound of his ax as he cut down all the wood he could and cut it into lengths for our winter fuel. You can imagine how the sound of that ax made me feel, although I was willing he should go. When he was gone, I used to put the children on the ox sled and bring a load of wood home.
Pretty heavy work for a woman who had never seen an ox until she was married. I was brought up in New York City, but I did this work and didn"t make any fuss about it, either. I did all kinds of farm work in those days for men"s help wasn"t to be had, they were all in the war.
When I needed flour, there was no man to take the wheat to mill. The only one who could, wanted to charge $1.00 a day and I did not have it, so I left my darlings with a neighbor, got him to hist the sacks aboard for me, for says I, "I"m not Dutchy enough to lift a sack of grain," and long before daylight I was beside those oxen on my way to the nearest grist mill, fifteen miles away, knitting all the way. It was tough work, but I got there. I engaged my lodging at the hotel and then went to the mill. There were a number there, but they were all men. The miller, Mr.
Goodnow, said "It"s take turns here, but I won"t have it said that a "soldier"s widow" (as they called us) has to wait for men, so I"ll grind yours first and you can start for home at sunup, so you can get home by dark; I want you to stay at our house tonight." After some demurring, for I wan"t no hand to stay where I couldn"t pay, I accepted his most kind invitation. In the morning, when he saw me start, after he had loaded my sacks of flour on for me, he said, "Get the man living this side of that big hill to put you down it." I said, "I came up alone, alright." He said, "Woman, you had grain then, you could have saved it if it fell off and your sacks broke, but now you have flour."
When my boy was three weeks old, I drove fourteen miles to a dance and took in every dance all night and wasn"t sick afterward either. Of course, I took him along.
When I came to sell my oxen after my husband died in the army, no one wanted to give me a fair price for them, because I was a woman, but Mr.
S. T. McKnight, who had a small general store in Blue Earth gave me what was right and paid me $2.50 for the yoke besides.
We had company one Sunday when we first came and all we had to eat was a batch of biscuits. They all said they was mighty good too and they never had a better meal.
We all raised our own tobacco. I remember once our Probate Judge came along and asked, "Have you any stalks I can chew?" It was hard to keep chickens for the country was so full of foxes. Seed potatoes brought $4.00 a bushel. We used to grate corn when it was in the dough grade and make bread from that. It was fine.
In 1856 and 1857 money was scarcer than teeth in a fly. We never saw a penny sometimes for a year at a time. Everything was trade.
Mrs. Duncan Kennedy--1856.
My father moved from Canada to Minnesota. He was urged to come by friends who had gone before and wrote back that there was a wonderful piece of land on a lake, but when we got there with an ox team after a two days trip from St. Paul, our goods on a lumber wagon--we thought it was a mudhole. We were used to the clear lakes of Canada and this one was full of wild rice. It was near Nicollet Village. The road we took from St. Paul went through Shakopee, Henderson and Le Seuer. They said it was made on an old Indian trail.
The turnips grew so enormous on our virgin soil that we could hardly believe they were turnips. They looked more like small pumpkins inverted in the ground.
The wild flowers were wonderful too. In the fall, the prairies were gay with the yellow and sad with the lavender bloom.
The first party we went to was a housewarming. We went about seven miles with the ox team. I thought I would die laughing when I saw the girls go to their dressing room. They went up a ladder on the outside. There were two fiddlers and we danced all the old dances. Supper was served on a work bench from victuals out of a wash tub. We didn"t have hundred dollar dresses, but we did have red cheeks from the fine clear air.
One day when I was alone at my father"s, an Indian with feathers in his headband and a painted face and breast came quickly into the house, making no noise in his moccasined feet. He drew his hand across his throat rapidly saying over and over, "Tetonka-te-tonka," at the same time trying to drag me out. I was terrified as I thought he was going to cut my throat. Fortunately my father happened to come in, and not fearing the Indian whom he knew to be friendly, went with him and found his best ox up to his neck in a slough. It seemed "Tetonka" meant big animal and he was trying to show us that a big animal was up to his neck in trouble.
Afterward, I married Mr. Duncan Kennedy and moved to Traverse. I papered and painted the first house we owned there until it was perfect. I did so love this, our first home, but my husband was a natural wanderer. One day he came home announcing that he had sold our pretty home. We moved into a two room log house on a section of land out near where my father lived. The house was built so that a corner stood in each quarter section and complied with the law that each owner of a quarter section should have a home on it. It was built by the four Hemmenway brothers and was always called "Connecticut" as they came from there.
My husband worked for Mr. Sibley and was gone much of the time buying furs. Then he carried mail from Traverse to Fort Lincoln. Once in a blizzard he came in all frozen up, but he had outdistanced his Indian guide--you couldn"t freeze him to stay--he was too much alive. He once traveled the seventy-five miles from Traverse to St. Paul in one day. He just took the Indian trot and kept it up until he got there. He always took it on his travels. He could talk Sioux French and English with equal facility. Mr. Cowen once said when my husband pa.s.sed, "There goes the most accomplished man in the State."
They used to tell this story about Mr. Cowen. He had cleared a man accused of theft. Afterward he said to him, "I have cleared you this time, but don"t you ever do it again."
When the outbreak came, my husband was storekeeper at Yellow Medicine. A half breed came running and told him to fly for his life, as the Indians were killing all the whites. Mr. Kennedy could not believe this had come, though they knew how ugly the Indians were. After seeing the smoke from the burning houses, he got his young clerk, who had consumption, out; locked the door, threw the key in the river; then carried the clerk to the edge of the river and dropped him down the bank where the bushes concealed him, and then followed him. The Indians came almost instantly and pounded on the door he had just locked. He heard them say in Sioux "He has gone to the barn to harness the mules." While they hunted there, he fled for his life, keeping in the bushes and tall gra.s.s. All doubled up, as he was obliged to be, he carried the clerk until they came to the plundered warehouse, where a number of refugees were hiding. That night, he started for the fort, arriving there while it was still dark.
A call was made for a volunteer to go to St. Peter to acquaint them with the danger. My husband had a badly swollen ankle which he got while crawling to the fort. Nevertheless, he was the first volunteer. Major Randall said, "Take my horse; you can never get there without one," but Mr. Kennedy said, "If the Indians hear the horse they will know the difference between a shod horse and an Indian pony. I will go alone."
Dr. Miller tried to make him take half the brandy there was in the fort, by saying grimly, "If you get through you will need it. If you don"t we won"t need it." He started just before dawn taking the Indian crawl. He had only gone a short distance when the mutilated body of a white man interposed. This was so nauseating that he threw away the lunch he had been given as he left the fort for he never expected to live to eat it.
He pa.s.sed so near an Indian camp that he was challenged, but he answered in Sioux in their gruff way and so satisfied them. When he came near Nicollet village he crawled up a little hill and peered over. He saw two Indians on one side and three on the other. He dropped back in the gra.s.s. He looked for his ammunition and it was gone. He had only two rounds in his gun. He said, "I thought if they have seen me there will be two dead Indians and one white man." When he came to what had been Nicollet Village, the camp fires that the Indians had left were still burning. He reached St. Peter and gave the alarm.
Major S. A. Buell--1856.
Major Buell eighty-seven years old, whose memory is remarkable says:--I came to Minnesota in 1856, settling in St. Peter and practicing law.
Early in 1856, Mr. Cowen, one of the brightest lawyers and finest men Minnesota has ever known, came to Traverse de Sioux with his family, to open a store. He soon became a warm friend of Judge Flandrau who urged him to study law with him. He was made County Auditor and in his spare time studied law and was admitted to the bar. He was much beloved by all, a sparkling talker--his word as good as his bond. He had never been well and as time went on, gradually grew weaker. His house was a little more than a block from his office, but it soon became more than he could do to walk that distance. On the common, half way between the two, was the liberty pole. He had a seat made at this point and rested there.
When he was no more, the eyes of his old friends would grow misty when they pa.s.sed this hallowed spot.
Soon after I made the acquaintance of Judge Flandrau at Traverse de Sioux there was a young man visiting him from Washington. The judge took us both on our first prairie chicken hunt. We had no dog. On the upper prairie back of the town going along a road, we disturbed an old prairie hen that attempted to draw us away from her young. The Judge had admonished us that we must never kill on the ground, always on the wing, to be sportsmen. This hen scudded and skipped along a rod or two at a time. Finally, he said, "Fellows, I can"t stand this, I must shoot that chicken, you won"t tell if I do?" We pledged our word. He fired and missed. After we got home, we told everybody for we said we had only promised not to tell if he shot it. We never enjoyed this joke half as much as he did. We always joked him about making tatting.
Flandrau, dearest of men, true as steel, decided in character, but forgiving in heart, a warm friend--was one of the greatest men our state has ever known. He was a tall, dark man, and very active. He had often told me how he and Garvie, clerk for the Indian Trader at Traverse de Sioux used to walk the seventy-five miles to St. Paul in two days. He once walked 150 miles in three days to the land office at Winona.