Old Rail Fence Corners Part 17

Speaking of codfish, reminds me that one day we met a man and his family making their way to the river. I halted him and asked him what he was going back for. You see we met few "turnouts" on the road for all were going the same way.

"Well," said he, "I'm homesick--homesick as a dog and I'm going back east if I live to get there." "Why what's the matter with the west?" I asked. "Oh nothing, only it's too blamed fur from G.o.d's country and I got to hankering fer codfish--and I'm agoin' where it is. Go lang!" and he moved on. I guess he was homesick. He looked, and he talked it and the whole outfit said it plain enough. You can't argue with homesickness--never.

Arnold Stone and his good wife lived up there on the hill. One day in the early 60's an Indian appeared in Mrs. Stone's kitchen and asked for something to eat. They were just sitting down to dinner and he was invited to join the family. The b.u.t.ter was pa.s.sed to him, and he said, "Me no b.u.t.ter knife." "I told Arnold," said Mrs. Stone, "that when it gets so the Injuns ask for b.u.t.ter knives it's high time we had one."

ANTHONY WAYNE CHAPTER

Mankato

LILLIAN BUTLER MOREHART

(Mrs. William J. Morehart)

Mrs. Margaret Rathbun Funk--1853.

I came to Mankato in the year 1853 on the Steamer Clarion from St. Paul.

I was eleven years old. My father, Hoxey Rathbun, had left us at St.

Paul while he looked for a place to locate. He went first to Stillwater and St. Anthony, but finally decided to locate at the Great Bend of the Minnesota River. We landed about four o'clock in the morning, and father took us to a little shack he had built on the brow of the hill west of Front Street near the place where the old Tourtelotte Hospital used to be. Back of this shack, at a distance of a couple of blocks were twenty Indian tepees, which were known as Wauqaucauthah's Band. As nearly as I can remember there were nine families here at that time and their names were as follows: Maxfield, Hanna, Van Brunt, Warren, Howe, Mills, Jackson and Johnson, our own family being the ninth.

The first winter here I attended school. The school house was built by popular subscription and was on the site of the present Union School on Broad Street. It was a log structure of one room, and in the middle of this room was a large, square, iron stove. The pupils sat around the room facing the four walls, the desks being wide boards, projecting out from the walls. Miss Sarah Jane Hanna was my first teacher. I came from my home across the prairie, through the snow in the bitter cold of the winter. Oftentimes I broke through the crust of the snow and had a hard time getting out. One of the incidents I remember well while going to school, was about a young Indian whom we called Josh, who pretended he was very anxious to learn English. Most every day he would come to the school, peer in at the windows, shade his eyes with his hand and mutter "A" "B" "C", which would frighten us very much. The education the children received in those days had to be paid for either by their parents or by someone else who picked out a child and paid for his or her tuition. That was how I received my education. My parents were too poor to pay for mine, and a man in town, who had no children volunteered to pay for same. I went to school for a few years on this man's subscription.

The first winter was a very cold one and although we were not bothered much by the Indians as yet, they often came begging for something to eat.

Although the Indians had never harmed us we were afraid of them. When we came to this country we brought a dog, and when these Indians came begging we took the dog into the house with us and placed him beside the door, where his barking and growling soon frightened them away. They seemed afraid of dogs, as there were very few in this country at that time. One time when father was on his way home he saw an Indian boy who had been thrown from his horse. He picked him up and put him back on his horse and took him to his tepee. Later this same Indian remembered my father's kindness to him by warning us that the Indians were planning an uprising and telling us to leave the country.

My father was the first mail carrier through this part of the country.

John Marsh and his brother, George Marsh contracted with him to carry the mail, they having previously contracted with the government. He was to carry the mail from Mankato to Sioux City and return. He made his first trip in the summer of 1856. The trip took about three weeks. He made several trips during the summer. His last trip was in the fall of 1856, when he started from here to Sioux City. The government was supposed to have built shacks along his route at regular intervals of about twenty miles, where he could rest and seek shelter during cold weather and storms, but this had been neglected. He often slept under hay stacks, and wherever shelter was afforded.

On his way to Sioux City he encountered some very severe weather, and froze one of his sides. The lady where he stopped in Sioux City wanted him to stay there for a while before returning home, and until his side had been treated and he had recovered, but he would not have it so, and started on his return trip during exceedingly cold weather. He did not return on schedule time from Sioux City on this trip, and mother became very much worried about him. She went to the men who had contracted with father to carry the mail and asked them to send out men to look for him.

They promised to send out a Frenchman, and a dog team. This contented mother for awhile, but as father did not return she again went to these men and this time they sent out three men with a horse and cutter to look for him.

After traveling over the route for some time they came to a shack on the Des Moines river, near where Jackson, this state, now is and in this shack they found my father, badly frozen and barely alive. He lived but a few moments after shaking hands with the men who found him. They brought the body back to Mankato and he was buried out near our place of residence, at the foot of the hill. The weather was so extremely cold at that time that the family could not go out to the burial.

Later, after I was married, myself and husband came down to what is now the central part of town for the purpose of buying a lot for building a home, and we selected the lot where I now live, at the corner of Walnut and Broad streets. We purchased the same for $487. We could have had any lot above this one for $200, but selected this for the reason that it was high. The country around us was all timber and we had no sidewalks or streets laid out at that time.

At the time of the Indian outbreak I lived on what is now Washington street, directly across from where the German Lutheran school now stands. The Indians started their outbreaks during the Civil war. They started their ma.s.sacres in this neighborhood in July and August of 1862.

I can distinctly remember seeing, while standing in the doorway of my home, a band of Indians coming over the hill. This was Little Priest and his band of Winnebagoes. These Winnebagoes professed to be friendly to the white people and hostile to the Sioux. They claimed that a Sioux had married a Winnebago maiden, and for that reason they were enemies to the Sioux. To prove that they were their enemies they stalked the Sioux who had married a maid of one of their tribes and murdered him, bringing back to show us his tongue, heart, and scalp, and also dipped their hands in the Sioux's life blood and painted their naked bodies with it.

Mrs. Mary Pitcher--1853.

The old Nominee with a cabin full of pa.s.sengers and decks and hold loaded with freight bound for St. Paul was the first boat to get through Lake Pepin in the spring of 1853. The journey from Dubuque up was full of interest, but although on either side of the Mississippi the Indians were the chief inhabitants, nothing of exciting nature occurred until Pigseye Bar on which was Kaposia, the village of the never-to-be-forgotten Little Crow was reached. Then as the engines were slowed down to make the landing a sight met our gaze that startled even the captain. The whole village of several hundred Indians was in sight and a most frightful sight it was.

Everyone young and old was running about crying, wailing, with faces painted black and white. They did not seem even to see the big steamer. It was such an appalling spectacle that the captain deemed it best not to land, but there were two men on board, residents of St. Paul returning from St. Louis who got into a boat and went ash.o.r.e.

They learned that there had been a fight in St. Paul the day before between this band of Sioux and a party of Chippewas in which one of the Sioux was killed and several wounded. It was not a very pleasant thing to contemplate, for these people on board the boat were going to St.

Paul with their families to make homes in this far away west.

There were also on board some Sisters of Charity from St. Louis, one of them Sister Victorine, a sister of Mrs. Louis Robert. They all fell on their knees and prayed and wept and they were not the only ones who wept either. There were many white faces and no one seemed at ease.

I remember my mother saying to my father, "Oh Thomas, why did we bring these children into this wild place where there can be an Indian fight in the biggest town and only ten miles from a fort at that."

The excitement had not subsided when St. Paul was reached, but the first man that came on board as the boat touched the landing was my mother's brother, Mr. W. W. Paddock. The sight of him seemed to drive away some of the fear, as he was smiling and made light of the incident of the day before. He took us up to the Old Merchants' Hotel, then a large rambling log house and as soon as we had deposited some of our luggage, he said, "Well, we will go out and see the battlefield." It was in the back yard of our hotel, an immense yard of a whole block, filled with huge logs drawn there through the winter for the year's fuel.

The morning of the fight, a party of Chippewas coming into St. Paul from the bluffs saw the Sioux in canoes rounding the bend below and knowing they would come up Third Street from their landing place, just below Forbes' Store and exactly opposite the hotel, the Chippewas made haste to hide behind the logs, and wait the coming of the Sioux.

The landlady, Mrs. Kate Wells, was standing on one of the logs, hanging up some clothes on a line. Frightened almost to death at the sight of the Indians running into the yard and hiding behind the logs, she jumped down and started to run into the house. Instantly she was made to understand she could not go inside. The Indians pointed their guns at her, and motioned her to get down behind the logs out of sight, which she did and none too soon, as just then the Sioux came in sight and were met by a most deadly fusilade that killed Old Peg Leg Jim and wounded many others. Some of the Sioux took refuge in Forbes store and opened fire on any Chippewa who left his hiding place. Pretty soon the inhabitants began to come into hailing distance and the Chippewas concluded to beat a hasty retreat but not before they had taken Old Jim's scalp. When the Sioux ran into Forbes store, the clerk, thinking his time had come, raised a window and taking hold of the sill, let himself drop down to the river's edge, a distance of over fifty feet.

Between the Sioux and Chippewas ran a feud further back than the white man knew of and no opportunity was ever lost to take the scalp of a fallen foe.

The Indians mourn for the dead but doubly so if they have lost their scalps, as scalpless Sioux cannot enter the Happy Hunting Grounds.

One of the things about this same trip of the old Nominee was the fact that almost every citizen of St. Paul came down to see this welcome messenger of spring.

Provisions had become very scarce and barrels of eggs and boxes of crackers and barrels of hams, in fact almost everything eatable was rolled out on the land and sold at once. It didn't take long to empty a barrel of eggs or a box of crackers and everyone went home laden.

Mrs. J. R. Beatty--1853.

I landed in Mankato on my twelfth birthday, May 26, 1853. We came from Ohio. My father, George Maxfield and his family and my uncle, James Hanna and family and friend, Basil Moreland, from Quincy, Ill. We took the Ohio River steam boat at Cincinnati. Somewhere along the river we bought a cow. This cow started very much against her better judgment and after several days on the boat decided she wouldn't go west after all and in some way jumped off the boat and made for the sh.o.r.e. We did not discover her retreat until she had reached the high bank along the river and amid great excitement the boat was turned around and everybody landed to capture the cow. She was rebellious all along the way, especially when we had to transfer to a Mississippi boat at St. Louis, and when we transferred to a boat on the Minnesota river at St. Paul, but she was well worth all the trouble for she was the only cow in the settlement that first summer. She went dry during the winter and not a drop of milk could be had for love or money in the town.

The want of salt bothered the pioneers more than anything else. Game abounded. Buffalo herds sometimes came near and deer often came through the settlement on the way to the river to drink. The streams were full of fish, but we could not enjoy any of these things without salt.

However, our family did not suffer as much inconvenience as some others did. One family we knew had nothing to eat but potatoes and maple syrup.

They poured the syrup over the potatoes and managed to get through the winter. Sometimes flour would be as high as $24 a barrel. During the summer when the water was low and in the winter when the river was frozen and the boats could not come down from St. Paul, the storekeepers could charge any price they could get.

Our family had a year's supply of groceries that father had bought at St. Louis on the way up. We had plenty of bedding and about sixty yards of ingrain carpet that was used as a part.i.tion in our house for a long time. There was very little to be bought in St. Paul at that time.

Father bought the only set of dishes to be had in St. Paul and the only clock.

There were only a few houses in Mankato and the only thing we could find to live in was the frame of a warehouse that Minard Mills had just begun to build on the south end of the levee, where Otto's grocery store now stands. My uncle purchased the building and we put a roof on and moved in. We were a family of twenty-one and I remember to this day the awful stack of dishes we had to wash after each meal. A frame addition was put along side of the building and in July my cousin, Sarah J. Hanna (later Mrs. John Q. A. Marsh) started a day school with twenty-four scholars.

It was the first school ever held in Mankato.

In 1855, a tract of land twenty four miles long and twelve miles wide was withdrawn from civilization and given as a reservation to two thousand Winnebago Indians who took possession in June of that year against the vigorous protest of the people. Everyone in the town was down to see them come in. The river was full of their canoes for two or three days. As soon as they landed, the Indians began the erection of a rude shelter on the levee of poles and bark, perhaps twenty feet long and twelve feet wide. The squaws were all busy cooking some kind of meat and a cake something like a pancake. We soon discovered that they were preparing a feast for the Sioux who had come down in large numbers from Fort Ridgely which was near New Ulm to meet them. After the shelter was finished the feast began. Blankets were spread on the ground and rows of wooden bowls were placed before the Indians, one bowl to about three Indians. The cakes were broken up and placed near the bowls. After the feast was over, the peace-pipe was pa.s.sed and the speaking began. The first speaker was a Sioux chief, evidently delivering an address of welcome. He was followed by several others all very dignified and impressive.

We had heard that the Sioux would give a return feast on the next day and when we got tired of watching the speakers, we went down to the Sioux wigwams to see what was going on there and found an old Indian squatting before the fire. Dog meat seemed to be the main article of food. Evidently it was to be a ceremonial feast for he had a large supply of dog beside him on the ground and was holding one over the fire to singe the hair off. When we came near, he deftly cut off an ear and offered it to me with a very fierce look. When I refused it, he laughed very heartily at his little joke.

The Winnebagoes were sent to the agency four miles from town soon after.

The agency buildings were where St. Clair is now located.

One day at noon the school children heard that the Indians were having a squaw dance across the river. It was in the spring, just as the snow was beginning to melt. We found about twenty-five squaws dancing around in a circle and making a fearful noise in their high squealing voices. They danced in the same way that the Indians did, and I had never seen any other form of dancing among them. They were wearing moccasins and were tramping around in the water. The Indians were sitting on logs watching them. One was pounding on a tom-tom.

One day when we were eating dinner, about twenty-five Indians came to the house and looked in the window. They always did that and then would walk in without knocking. They squatted down on the floor until dinner was over and then motioned for the table to be pushed back to the wall.

Then they began to dance the begging dance. In their dances they pushed their feet, held close together over the floor and came down very heavily on their heels. There were so many of them that the house fairly rocked. Each Indian keeps up a hideous noise and that with the beating of the tom-tom makes a din hard to describe. The tom-tom is a dried skin drawn tightly over a hoop and they beat on this with a stick. After they were through dancing they asked for a pail of sweetened water and some bread which they pa.s.sed around and ate. This bread and sweetened water was all they asked for. It is a part of the ceremony, although they would take anything they could get.

The Sioux were the hereditary foes of the Chippewas who lived near the head waters of the Mississippi and during this summer about three hundred Sioux on their way to Fort Ridgely where they were to receive their annuity, pitched their wigwams near our house. They had been on the war path and had taken a lot of Chippewa scalps and around these b.l.o.o.d.y trophies they held a savage scalp dance. We children were not allowed to go near as the howling, hooting and yelling frightened everybody. It continued for three nights and the whole settlement was relieved when they went away.