Old Rail Fence Corners Part 9

Mrs. Mary E. Dowling--1855.

As Miss Watson I came from Pennsylvania in 1855 and took a school to teach back of Marine. I got $36.00 in gold a month and so was well paid.

Had from five to twenty-five children who came to learn and so behaved well.

When I would walk through the woods I would sometimes see a bear leisurely sagging around. When I did, my movements were not like his.

All kinds of wild animals were very plenty. The foxes were the cutest little animals and so tame. They would seem to be laughing at you.

A band of Indians was encamped at a lake near. One brave all dressed in his Sunday best used to come and sit in the kitchen day after day. He used to talk to the men but never said a word to us. He could speak good English. One day the chief came in and went for him. Said he had been away from his tepee for days and his squaws wanted him. Like lightning he crossed the room to where I was and said, "Me got Sioux squaw. Me got Winnebago squaw. Me want white squaw. You go?" I was very earnest in declining.

Mrs. Robert Anderson--1854.

I was the first white woman in Eden Prairie. I came in 1854 with my husband and small children and settled there in one of the first log houses built. We paid for our farm the first year, from the cranberries which grew in a bog on our land and which we sold for $1.00 a bushel.

I had never seen Indians near to, and so was very much afraid of them.

One day a big hideously painted brave marched in, seated himself and looked stolidly around without making a sound. His long knife was sticking in his belt. I was overpowered with fright and for a few moments could do nothing. My children, one two years old and the other a baby, were asleep behind the curtain. Realizing that I could do nothing for them and that his anger might be aroused if he saw me run away with them, I fled precipitately in the direction where my husband was working. I had run about a quarter of a mile when my mother heart told me I might not be in time if I waited for my husband, so I turned and fled back towards the cabin. Entering, I saw my little two year old boy standing by the Indian's side playing with the things in his belt while the Indian carefully held the baby in his arms. In his belt were a tobacco pouch and pipe, two rabbits with their heads drawn through, two prairie chickens hanging from it by their necks, a knife and a tomahawk.

His expression remained unchanged. I gave him bread and milk to eat and ever after he was our friend, oftentimes coming and bringing the children playthings and moccasins. When he left, he gave me the rabbits and prairie chickens and afterwards often brought me game.

One day Mr. Anderson was at work in the field, a long distance from the house. He was cutting grain with a scythe and told me he would just about get that piece done if I would bring him his supper. I had never been over on this knoll which was on the other side of a small hill from the house. I got his supper ready, taking all the dishes and food in a basket and carrying a teapot full of tea in my hand. I had to pa.s.s a small cranberry bog and could see squaws at work picking berries. As I came to a clump of trees, ten or twelve Indians with their faces as usual hideously painted, the whole upper part of their bodies bare and painted, rose from this clump of trees and looked at me. I waited for nothing, but threw my basket and teapot and made for the house. As I got to the top of the hill I looked back and could see the Indians feasting on my husband's supper. Upon his return home to supper that evening, he brought the dishes and the teapot with him.

We had been in Eden Prairie about six years and had never been to church as there was no church near enough for us to attend. We heard there was to be preaching at Bloomington, and determined to go. We had always been church-going people and had felt the loss of services very keenly. We had nothing but an ox team and thought this would not be appropriate to go to church with, so, carrying my baby, I walked the six miles to church and six miles back again. The next Sunday, however, we rode nearly to church with the ox team, then hitched them in the woods and went on foot the rest of the way.

Mr. Anderson was always a devoted friend of Mr. Pond, the missionary and attended his church for many years. One of Mr. Anderson's sons took up a claim in the northern part of the State. When Mr. Pond died, he came down to the funeral. Upon his return, he saw a tepee pitched on the edge of his farm and went over to see what it was there for and who was in it. As he neared it, he heard talking in a monotone and stood listening, wondering what it could mean. He pushed up the flap and saw Indians engaged in prayer. He asked them who taught them to pray and they replied "Grizzly Bear taught us." He told them Grizzly Bear, which was the Indian name for Mr. Pond, was dead and would be seen no more. He took from his pocketbook a little white flower which he had taken from the casket, told them what it was and each one of them held it reverently with much lamentation. This was twenty years after these people had been taught by Grizzly Bear.

Mrs. Wilder--1854.

We settled on a farm near Morristown. There was an Indian village near.

We always used to play with those Sioux children and always found them very fair in their play. We used to like to go in their tepees. There was a depression in the middle for the fire. The smoke was supposed to go out of the hole in the top of the tent. An Indian always had a smoky smell. When they cooked game, they just drew it a little--never took off the feathers much or cut the head or feet off.

Some of our Indians got into a fuss with a band from Faribault and one of our Indians killed one of them. He brought a great knife that he had done the killing with and gave it to my father all uncleaned as it was.

He said it was "seechy" knife, meaning bad. As they were still fighting, my father took it just as it was and stuck it up in a crack above our front door in our one room. Then he sent to Morristown for Mr. Morris to straighten out the fight. He had lived among the Indians for a long time and knew their language. He brought them to time. Later they came and wanted the knife but my father would not give it to them.

Geese and ducks covered the lakes. Later we had the most wonderful feather beds made from their feathers. We only used the small fluffy ones, so they were as if they were made from down. Wild rice, one of the Indians' princ.i.p.al articles of diet, when gathered was knocked into their canoe. It was often unhulled. I have seen the Indians hull it.

They would dig a hole in the ground, line it with a buffalo skin, hair side down, then turn the rice in this, jumping up and down on it with their moccasined feet until it was hulled. I could never fancy it much after I saw this.

We had great quant.i.ties of wild plums on our own place. Two trees grew close together and were so much alike we always called them the twins.

Those trees had the most wonderful plums--as large as a small peach. We used to peel them and serve them with cream. Nothing could have a finer flavor.

Just before the outbreak, an Indian runner, whom none of us had ever seen, went around to all the Sioux around there. Then with their ponies loaded, the tepee poles dragging behind, for three days our Indians went by our place on the old trail going west. Only a few of Bishop Whipple's Christian Indians remained.

Mr. Warren Wakefield--1854.

My father came to Wayzata with his family, settling where the Sam Bowman place now is. We had lived over a year in southern Minnesota. As the hail took all our crops, we had lived on thin prairie chickens and biscuits made of sprouted wheat. It would not make bread. The biscuits were so elastic and soft that they could be stretched way out. These were the first playthings that I can remember.

A trader came with cows, into the country where we were living, just before the hail storm and as there was nothing to feed them on, my father traded for some of them. He traded one of his pair of oxen for forty acres of land in Wayzata and the other for corn to winter the stock.

The first meal we had in our new home was of venison from a buck which my father shot. It was very fat and juicy and as we had not had any meat but ducks and prairie chickens in two years, it tasted very delicious. I have counted thirty-four deer in the swamps at one time near our house; they were so abundant. We lived the first winter in Wayzata on fish, venison and corn meal and I have never lived so well.

I was sixteen years old before I ever had a coat. We wore thick shirts in the winter and the colder it was, the more of them we wore. In the east, my mother had always spun her own yarn and woven great piles of blankets and woolen sheets. These were loaded in the wagon and brought to our new home. When there was nothing else, these sheets made our shirts. We never wore underclothing, but our pants were thickly lined.

My mother was a tailoress and that first year in Minnesota we could not have lived if it had not been for this. She cut out and made by hand all kinds of clothing for the settlers. My father used to buy leather and the shoemaker came to the house and made our shoes.

One spring we had a cellar full of vegetables that we could not use, so father invited all the squaws who lived near us to come and get some.

They came and took them away. In the cellar also was a keg and a two gallon jug of maple vinegar. Cut Nose, one of the finest specimens of manhood I have ever seen, tall, straight and with agreeable features in spite of the small piece gone from the edge of one nostril, was their chief, and came the next day with a large bottle, asking to have it filled with whiskey. Father said he had none, but Cut Nose said he knew there was a jug and keg of it in the cellar. Father told him to go and take it if he found any. He sampled first the jug and then the keg with a most disgusted expression and upon coming upstairs threw the bottle on the bed and stalked out. This maple vinegar was made from maple sugar and none could be better.

Cut Nose was often a visitor at our home. He was a great brag and not noted for truth telling. He was very fond of telling how he shot the renegade Inkpadutah. This was all imagination. He had an old flint lock musket with the flint gone and would ill.u.s.trate his story by crawling and skulking, generally, to the great delight of the boys. One rainy day my mother was sick and was lying in her bed which was curtained off from the rest of the living room. As Cut Nose, who did not know this, told his oft repeated story, ill.u.s.trating it as usual, he thrust his gun under the curtains and his face and shoulders after it to show how he shot the renegade chief from ambush. My mother dashed out with a shriek, but was no more frightened than Cut Nose, at the apparition of the white squaw.

One day my brother and I took a peck of potatoes each and went to an Indian camp to trade for two pairs of moccasins, the usual trade. We left the potatoes with the squaws for a moment and ran outside to see what some noise was. When we returned there were no potatoes to be seen and no moccasins to be traded. We began looking about but could see nothing. The fire was burned down well and was a glowing bed of coals in its depression in the center of the tepee. After a while, one of the old squaws went to the ashes and digging them with a stick, commenced to dig out the potatoes. As the fire was about four feet in diameter, the usual width, there was plenty of room for our half bushel of potatoes. They gave us some of them which had a wonderful flavor, but we never got any moccasins.

Among the Indians living at the lake one winter was a white child about three years old. My father tried to buy her, but they would not let her go or tell who she was. They left that part of the country later, still having her in their possession.

If it had not been for ginseng in Minnesota, many of the pioneers would have gone hungry. Mr. Chilton of Virginia came early and built a small furnace and drying house in Wayzata. Everyone went to the woods and dug ginseng. For the crude product, they received five cents a pound and the amount that could be found was unlimited. It was dug with a long narrow bladed hoe and an expert could take out a young root with one stroke. If while digging, he had his eye on another plant and dug that at once, he could make a great deal of money in one day. An old root sometimes weighed a half pound. I was a poor ginseng digger for I never noticed quickly, but my father would dig all around my feet while I was hunting another chance. The tinge of green of this plant was different from any other so could be easily distinguished. When we sold it, we were always paid in gold. After ginseng is steamed and dried, it is the color of amber.

Mrs. Leroy Sampson--1854.

Six families of us came together from Rhode Island and settled on Minnewashta Lake in '54. There was only a carpenter shop in Excelsior.

We spent the first few months of our stay all living together in one log shack which was already there. The first night the man who had driven us from St. Paul sat up all night with his horses and we none of us slept a wink inside that little windowless cabin on account of a noise we heard.

In the morning we found it was the mournful noise of the loons on the lake that had kept us awake, instead of the wolves we had feared.

Mrs. Anna Simmons Apgar--1854.

When our six families got to the springs near Excelsior it was near dark and we struck the worst road we had found in the swampy land by it. The mosquitoes were dreadful, too. How dreadful, no one today can ever believe. One of the tiredout men said, "This is h.e.l.l!" "No," said another, "Not h.e.l.l, but Purgatory." The spring took its name from that.

When my father had put up his cabin he made our furniture with his own hands out of ba.s.swood. He made one of those beds with holes in the side piece for the ropes to go from side to side instead of our springs of today. They used to be very comfortable. When father got ready for the rope he had none, so he made it by twisting ba.s.swood bark. Then mother sewed two of our home spun sheets together for a tick and my uncle cut hay from the marsh and dried it, to fill it and we had a bed fit for a king. Our floor was of maple split with wedges and hewed out with a broadax. Father was a wonder at using this. A broadax was, you know, twelve or fourteen inches wide and the handle was curved a little. A man had to be a man to use one of these. It took strength and a good trained eye to hew timber flat with one of these axes.

When I was playing I tore my clothes off continually in the woods.

Finally my mother said, "This has gone far enough!" and made me a blue denim with a low neck and short sleeves. Has anyone ever told you how terrible the mosquitoes were in the early days? Think of the worst experience you ever had with them and then add a million for each one and you will have some idea. My little face, neck, arms, legs and feet were so bitten, scratched and sunburned that when I was undressed I was the most checkered looking young one you ever saw. Those parts of me might have been taken from a black child and glued on my little white body.

Such huge fish as overrun the lakes you have never seen. We thought the Indians numerous and they had fished for ages in those lakes, but they only caught what they wanted for food. It took the white men with their catching for sport to see how many they could catch in one day, and write back east about it, to clean out the lakes.

Father hewed a big ba.s.swood canoe out of a log. Eight people could sit comfortably in it as long as they did not breathe, but if they did, over she went! We used to have lots of fun in that old canoe just the same and the fish got fewer after it came into commission.

When we six families first came we were all living in one little cabin waiting for our homes to be built and our furniture to come. One of the women was very sick. Dr. Ames came out to see her and cured her all right. It took a day to get him and another day for him to get home. He wanted to wash his hands and my aunt, who was used to everything, said she thought she would drop dead when she had to take him the water in a little wooden trough that father had hewed out. He made such cute little hooded cradles for babies, too, out of the forest wood.

Mrs. Newman Woods--1854, Excelsior.

When we made our tallow dips or rough candles, we took the candlewicking and wound it around from our hand to our elbow, then cut it through. We held a short stick between our knees and threw one of these wicks around it, twisting it deftly, letting it hang down. When we had filled the stick, we would lay it down and fill another until we had wicks for about ten dozen dips. My mother would then fill the wash-boiler two-thirds full of water and pour melted deer or other tallow on top of this. Two chairs had been placed with two long slats between them. She would dip one stick full of wicks up and down in the boiler a number of times, then place it across the slats to cool. This was continued until all the wicks were dipped. By this time, the first would have hardened and could be dipped again. We would work hard all day and make eight or ten dozen dips. Later we had candle molds made of tin. We would put a wick in the center where it was held erect and then pour these molds full of tallow and let them harden. Later the molds were dipped in hot water and then a spring at the side, pushed the candle out. This was very simple.

We had our first kerosene lamp in '61. We were terrible frightened of it. It did smell terrible but this did not keep us from being very proud of it.

Once mother was frying pancakes for supper. A number of Indians going by came in and saw her. They were all painted or daubed. They kept reaching over and trying to get the pancakes. Finally one of them stuck out his leg acting as if it was broken. I ran madly to the back clearing where father and uncle Silas were working and told them there were Indians trying to get our pancakes and that one of them had a broken leg. They were not frightened for they knew the Indians and their customs. I just waited to see father give them a pancake apiece and that leg settle down naturally, then ran and got under the bed.

The Indians were very fond of father who had a very heavy beard. It used to be stylish to shave the upper lip. The Indians used to watch him shave with great interest. The neighborhood was full of them, generally all painted for the war dance. They used to bother father to death wanting to be shaved. One morning he did shave one of them and you never saw such a proud Indian, or more disgusted ones than those who were left out. Nearly all of the Indians who came were Sioux and fine looking.