Old Rail Fence Corners Part 18

Mrs. A. M. Pfeffer--1858.

My father, Miner Porter had been closely connected with the early history of Fox Lake, Wis. He had conducted the leading hotel and store for years, was Postmaster, and did much by his enterprise and liberality for the town. He went to bed a wealthy man and awoke one morning to find everything but a small stock of merchandise swept away by the State Bank failures of that state. Selling that, he came to Mankato in 1857 and pre-empted a tract of land near Minneopa Falls, now our State Park. It was one half mile from South Bend, located on the big bend of the Minnesota River.

The following year, 1858 father started to build on our claim. There were sawmills in our vicinity where black walnut and b.u.t.ternut for the inside finishing could be bought, but the pine that was needed for the other part of the building had to be hauled from St. Paul by team. It took all summer to get the lumber down.

After our house was finished it came to be the stopping place for lodging and breakfast for settlers traveling over the territorial road towards Winnebago and Blue Earth City.

Pigeon Hill, a mile beyond our house was used as a camping ground for the Sioux all of that winter. We could see the smoke from their campfires curling up over the hill, although they were supposed to stay on their reservation at Fort Ridgely they were constantly coming and going and they and the Winnebagoes roved at will over the entire country.

One night mother was awakened by an unusual noise. She called father, who got up and opened the bedroom door. The sight that met their eyes was enough to strike terror to the heart of any settler of those days.

The room was packed with Indians--Winnebagoes--men, women and children, but they were more frightened than we were. They had had some encounter with the Sioux and had fled in terror to our house. After much persuasion, father induced them to leave the house and go down to a small pond where the timber was very heavy and they remained in hiding for two days. We were in constant terror of the Sioux. All the settlers knew they were a blood thirsty lot and often an alarm would be sent around that the Sioux were surrounding the settlement. Mother would take us children and hurry to the old stone mill at South Bend, where we would spend the night.

They became more and more troublesome until father thought it unsafe to remain any longer and took us back to our old home in Wisconsin.

Mr. I. A. Pelton--1858.

I came into the State of Minnesota in April, 1858 and to Mankato May 1, 1858 from the State of New York, where I was born and raised. This was a pretty poverty stricken country then. The panic they had in November 1857 had struck this country a very hard blow. It stopped immigration.

Previous to this panic they had good times and had gone into debt heavily, expecting to have good times right along. Everyone was badly in debt and money was hard to get. Currency consisted of old guns, town lots, ba.s.swood lumber, etc. These things were traded for goods and groceries. Money was loaned at three to five per cent per month, or thirty-six to sixty per cent per year. I knew of people who paid sixty per cent a year for a short time. Three per cent a month was a common interest. I hired money at that myself.

The farmers had not developed their farms much at that time. A farmer who had twenty to twenty-five acres under plow was considered a big farmer in those days. The summer of 1858 was a very disastrous, unprofitable one. It commenced very wet and kept raining during the summer until North Mankato was all under water and the river in places was a mile wide. The river was the highest about the first of August.

The grain at the time of this heavy rain was ripening causing it to blight, ruining the crop. Wheat at this time was worth from $2 to $3 per bushel. A great many of the farmers did not cut their grain because there was nothing in it for them. The man where I boarded cut his grain but he had little or nothing, and that which he did get was soft and s.m.u.tty. He took the same to be ground into flour and the bread the flour made was almost black, as they did not at that time have mills to take out the s.m.u.t.

The people in the best condition financially were mighty glad if they had Johnny cake, pork and potatoes and milk and when they had these they thought they were on the "top shelf."

At this time too, they had to watch their fields with guns, or protect them with scarecrows and have the children watch them to keep them clear from the blackbirds, which were an awful pest. There were millions of these birds and there was not a time of day when they were not hovering over the fields. These birds would alight in the corn fields, tear the husks from the corn and absolutely ruin the ears of corn; also feed on the oats and wheat when it was not quite ripe and in a milky condition.

During the winter they would go south, but come back in the spring when they would be considerable bother again, by alighting on fields that had just been sown and taking the seed from the ground. Farmers finally threw poisoned grain in the fields. This was made by soaking wheat and oats in a solution of strychnine. It was ten years before these birds were exterminated enough to make farming a profitable occupation.

Farming was more successful after that, for the reason that these birds did not need watching. During the summer of 1858 and all during the summer of 1859 the river was navigable. St. Paul boats came up often and sometimes a Mississippi boat from St. Louis. We had no railroads in the state at that time.

During the year of 1859 State Banks were put into the state but these did not last long. I know at that time my brother sent out $150 that I had borrowed of Harry Lamberton. He sent this money by a man named David Lyon from New York. He came to where I was boarding and left State Bank money. The people where I was staying gave me the money that night when I came home and told me about what it was for. I started for St. Peter the next day to pay the debt and during the time the money was left and when I arrived at St. Peter it had depreciated in value ten per cent and it kept on going down until it was entirely valueless. Money was very scarce at that time and times were hard. We had some gold and a little silver.

In the year of 1859 we had the latest spring I ever experienced. We did not do any farming of any kind until the first week in May and this made it very late for small grain. We had a short season, but the wheat was very good. We had an early frost that year about the third of September and it killed everything. I saw killdeers frozen to death the third day of that month. Corn was not ripe yet and was ruined. It would have been quite a crop. It was dried up afterwards and shrunk, but was not good.

Oats and wheat however were good and it made better times.

The country was gradually developing. In the spring of 1860 we had an early spring. The bees flew and made honey the seventeenth of March. We commenced plowing on the sixteenth of March. I brought down potatoes that spring and put them in an open shed and they did not freeze. This summer was a very productive one. Wheat went as high as forty bushels to the acre, No. 1. All crops were good.

The fall of 1860 was the time they held presidential election and Lincoln was elected that fall. We had very many speakers here at Mankato and excitement ran high. General Baker, Governor Ramsey, Wm. Windom, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury and other prominent men spoke.

After the war commenced and the volunteers were called out, most of the able bodied men joined the army. These men sent their pay home and afterward business began to get better and conditions improved. Early in August of 1862 Lincoln called for five hundred thousand men and those men in this immediate vicinity who had not already joined, went to war, leaving only those not able to join to protect their homes and property.

Mr. John A. Jones.

We were among the very earliest settlers in the vicinity of Mankato and came from Wisconsin. I had come in April and pre-empted a claim at the top of what is known as Pigeon Hill. Two other families came with us.

Traveling across country, we and our teams and live stock made quite a procession. We had five yoke of oxen, several span of horses, and about forty head of cattle, among them a number of milch cows. The wagons, in which we rode and in which we carried our household goods were the real "prairie schooner" of early days. We found our way by compa.s.s and made our own road west, traveling over the soft earth in which deep ruts were made by our wheels. The following teams were compelled to proceed with care in order not to get stalled in the ruts made by the first wagons.

We made the trip in four weeks, fording all rivers and streams on the way. At La Crosse we hired both ferries and took all day to cross.

During the difficult journey we averaged about twenty-two miles, some of us walking all the time driving the large drove of cattle. No Indian villages were pa.s.sed although we met a number of friendly redskins. At night we slept in the wagons and cooked our meals as all emigrants did.

We brought a large store of provisions and on Sat.u.r.days would set a small stove up in the open and do our weekly bread baking. We pa.s.sed through eighteen miles of heavy timber beyond what is now Kasota, coming out from the forest about three miles this side onto a very nice road.

We finally arrived at the homestead. We set our stove up in the yard by a tree and lived in the shanty until our new log house was completed.

The shanty was covered with seven loads of hay to make it warm inside and a quilt was hung over the door. Here we lived for two months, suffering at times from rain penetrating. At one time a heavy cloud burst nearly drowned us out.

The first winter in our new home was a severe one. For three weeks the cold was very intense, and what was known as three "dog moons" at night and three "dog suns" during the day heralded the cold weather, the moon and sun being circled with these halos for the entire three weeks.

Provisions began to run low. The prices were very high and Mr. Jones went to St. Paul to lay in a stock of provisions. Among other things he brought home sixty barrels of flour and eight barrels of salt. The superfine flour was $16 a barrel and the second grade $13. The provisions were brought by boat to Kasota, where they were stranded in the sand and were brought the rest of the way by team. There was also a barrel of sugar and one of apples. Sugar in those days sold at the rate of six pounds for $1.00.

The families used this flour until they raised their own wheat and after that they used graham flour. The Jones' planted five acres to wheat the following spring.

Mrs. Clark Keysor.

After my husband had enlisted and went to Fort Snelling, I was quite timid about staying alone and got a neighbor girl to stay with me. The third night I thought I might as well stay alone. That night a rap came at the door. A neighbor was there and wanted to know if Mr. Keysor had a gun. He said the Indians had broken out and they wanted to get all the guns they could. Of course we were paralyzed with fear. From that on the trouble began.

As soon as the rumor reached Fort Snelling my husband's company was sent back. On the day they arrived I got a good dinner for them. I knew they would be tired and when he arrived he looked worn and haggard, having marched all the way from Fort Snelling to Mankato. We could not eat much dinner, we were so excited. He left right away for the frontier. The last thing he told me before he went away was, "Fight 'til you die, never be taken prisoner."

The bluest day of all was one Sunday. Everyone who could get away was packing up. Women and children were walking the streets and crying. They expected the Sioux to start from Fort Ridgely to kill all the whites, but when they got to Birch Coolie where the Winnebagoes were to join them, the Indians found a barrel of whiskey there. They became intoxicated and had a big fight, so they did not come to Mankato. That was one time when whiskey served a good purpose.

One night not very long after the Indians broke out, there were four of our neighbors' families came into our house, as they felt safer together. There were twelve children in the house. About midnight we heard the town bell begin to ring and one of the women got up and went to the door to see what the trouble was. When she opened the door, she saw a fire, which was Seward's Mill, but she cried out, "The Indians have come, the town is all on fire." The children began screaming and we were all nearly frightened to death but it proved it wasn't Indians at all. Someone had set the mill on fire.

A few of the men who were left thought that we had better pack a few of our best things and go to Leeche's old stone building for protection.

What few men there were could protect us better there than at different homes. This old building was three stories high. Some women were sick, some screaming. It was a scene of trouble and distress. It was the worst bedlam I ever got into.

Mr. Hoatling was then our best friend and helped me get my things over to this store building. We stayed one night. The cries of women in pain and fright were unbearable, so the next day I went back home thinking I would risk my chances there.

Judge Lorin Cray--1859.

While at St. Peter and in the early part of December, 1862 a few of us learned, by grapevine telegraph, late one afternoon, that an effort was to be made the following evening, by the citizens of Mankato, New Ulm and vicinity, to kill the Indian prisoners, three hundred and more then in camp at Mankato near the present site of Sibley Park. As no admission fee was to be charged the select few determined to be present at the entertainment. The headquarters of the blood-thirsty citizens was the old Mankato House located where the National Citizens Bank now stands, where liquid refreshments were being served liberally, without money and without price.

I have never seen a correct history of this fiasco in print. A very large crowd congregated there, and there seemed to be no great haste to march on the Indian camp. Several times starts were made by a squad of fifty or one hundred persons, who would proceed for a few hundred feet, and then halt and return for more refreshments.

Finally at nearly midnight the supply of refreshments must have been exhausted for the army moved. Several hundred citizens started south along Front Street for the Indian camp, straggling for a distance of several blocks. When the head of the column reached West Mankato it halted until the rear came up, and while a rambling discussion was going on as to what they should do and how they should do it, Capt. (since governor) Austin with his company of cavalry, surrounded the whole squad and ordered them to move on towards Colonel (since governor) Miller's headquarters, right at the Indian camp. They seemed reluctant to go, and refused to move. Capt. Austin ordered his men to close in, which they did--crowding the citizens and yet they refused to move. Finally Capt.

Austin gave the command to "draw sabers" and when a hundred sabers came out in one movement, the army again moved on Colonel Miller's headquarters at the Indian camp.

The scene here was supremely ridiculous. Colonel Miller came out from his tent and spoke kindly to the citizens and asked why they were congregated in such large numbers. He finally ordered their release and suggested that they go home which they hastened to do.

The next morning these Indians were removed, under guard of all the troops in the city, to log barracks, which had been built for them on Front Street diagonally across the street from where the Saulpaugh now stands. The Indians remained in these barracks only about two weeks.

They had been there but a short time when the officer of the day, making his morning inspection, which was very formal, thought that he saw a hatchet or knife under the blanket of one of the Indians. Without a change of countenance or a suspicious movement he proceeded with the inspection until it was completed, and retired from the barracks, and at once caused to be mustered around the barracks every soldier in the city with loaded guns and fixed bayonets. Then with a squad of soldiers he entered the barracks and searching every Indian, he secured a large number of hatchets, knives, clubs and other weapons. These weapons, it was learned had been gotten at the Winnebago agency about twelve miles away by several squaws, who prepared food for these Indians and who were allowed to go to the woods to gather wood for their fires. Immediately after this discovery the Indians who were under sentence of death were removed to a stone building near by where they were kept under heavy guard. A few days after this incident, Dec. 26, 1862, my company came from St. Peter to act as guard on one side of the scaffold at the execution of the thirty-eight Indians who were then hanged on what is now the southerly end of the grounds of the Chicago and Northwestern freight depot, in Mankato. A granite monument now marks the place.

Captain Clark Keysor.

I served as first Lieutenant, Co. E, 9th Minnesota of the frontier extending from Fort Ridgely through the settlement at Hutchinson, Long Lake and Pipe Lake. At the latter place we built a sod fort and I was in charge. Mounted couriers, usually three in number, traveling together, reported daily at these forts. I was stationed along the frontier for more than a year and we had many encounters with the Indians, and I soon learned that a white man with the best rifle to be bought in those days had a poor chance for his life when he had to contend with an Indian with a double barrel shot gun.

The Indian, with one lightning like movement throws a hand full of mixed powder and shot into his gun, loading both barrels at once and takes a shot at his enemy before the white man can turn around, and when the Indian is running to escape, he jumps first to this side and then to that, never in a straight line, and it is an expert marksman, indeed, who can hit him.