Some Pioneers and Pilgrims on the Prairies of Dakota Part 3

The kind hosts did all they could to encourage and make comfortable the newcomers, sharing with them what accommodations they had. But we must remember that these first comers had not been here long themselves. The dwellings were small, without cooling porches, and in summer necessarily hot, and they had no screens to protect the inmates from the blood-thirsty fly and mosquito. So there was but little rest or comfort by day or night, especially for those unused to these conditions. This together with the unaccustomed food, which at first completely upset them, made some of the newcomers very discouraged with the new country.

One of these "blue" ones said to Father soon after their arrival: "Do you suppose you will ever get your money back which you loaned us for our pa.s.sage?" "That," replied father, "I do not know. But this I do know, that now I have no money either to take myself or any of you back again." "Then," rejoined the first one, "if now I could stand on the highway where we started, even with nothing but a shirt on my back, I should be the happiest man alive." Another said: "There is not even gra.s.s here such as one can cut with a scythe and, as for land I shall have none of it." And in his case it became so. He never homesteaded and later worked at his trade in Yankton and Sioux City, where he died many years later.

Father tried to take a brighter view and to cheer those complaining ones and said to Iver Sneve, who had just expressed the wish to be back on the old sod: "In three years you will be butchering your own pork, raised on your farm in this new land." Then Iver broke out into his characteristically loud, uproarious laughter, full of incredulity and almost scorn, and said: "Berhaug Rise, I have up till this time considered you a man of sense and good judgment, but now I am compelled to believe that your mind's eye is shimmering. I cannot even _keep alive_ for _three years_ in this man-consuming wilderness.

Unless some one takes pity on me and helps me to return home, the flies and mosquitoes alone will have finished me before that time. Oh, that some of us older men could have had sense enough to return even when we were as far as England," he added. This is a sample of many conversations, and these expressions were by no means uttered as jokes either. Nevertheless, this Iver Sneve lived some 35 years after this conversation and was worth $25,000.00 when he died.

However, these people were here and, with all bridges burned behind them, they realized that mere lamentations would not meet the situation. Something must be done to live and to keep their families, here or in the old country, as was the case with some, alive. So in a few days a party of the younger men set out afoot toward the present site of Parker to seek work on the railroad which was just being extended from that point westward toward Mitch.e.l.l. They found work with shovel and pick. But ten hours a day, in the hot sun and with an Irish boss over them to see that these implements kept constantly moving, was no soft initiation for these fair skinned men just out of a much colder climate. However, with true Norse and immigrant grit they "stuck it out" and earned a little money before the first winter of 1880-1 came on.

Berhaug Rise and Halvor Hevle, by the help of the good neighbors, got some lumber hauled from Vermilion, the latter for a dug-out and the former for a frame house 14 16 and 12 feet high. This house was built by John Rye and is still standing in the old homestead after nearly forty years. In this house made of one thickness of drop siding and paper, we spent the terrible snow winter of 80-81. It was the winter of the great blizzard which came in the middle of October. And the deep snow never left until nearly the middle of April, when the big flood of 1881 resulted. Luckily Father had filed without ever seeing it, as also Grandma, on some land traversed by deep ravines.

There had been heavy hardwood timber in these ravines, but it was now cut, with nothing left but young shoots--brush--and great stumps, some 4-6 feet in diameter. These stumps formed the winter's fuel, as also most of the winter's work. With such a house it became necessary to keep the stove about red hot in cold weather to have any comfort and, of course, everything froze solid during the nights. But if it had not been for the old oaken stumps and the warm woolen clothes we had brought with us, it is hard to see how we could have survived that first winter. Much better off, as far as the cold was concerned, were those who had a good dugout. But by a sort of special dispensation of providence there was no sickness requiring a doctor in our family or in the neighborhood. And this was well, for doctors were far away and expensive to get. We children waded and coasted in the deep snow, getting hands and feet thoroly wet, but never had a better time in our lives, as far as I can recall. There was yet no public school in that neighborhood, so there was lots of time for play--mostly coasting down the surrounding hillsides.

A word ought also to be said about the outbuildings, if we may call them such, for they were typical of what many others had. The stable, for three cows and two ponies, was an excavation in the side hill. The hill formed the full wall on the upper side and part of the wall on the other sides, the rest being filled in with straw, hay or sod. Over these walls was thrown brush with a little frame work of supports underneath, and then the whole was covered with hay or straw. For a door, in our case, Father took a bush, covered with an entanglement of grape vines, set it in the doorway and piled hay against it. This last, however, was an emergency measure as the notorious blizzard of 1880 above referred to, broke upon us before the structure was quite finished. But as there were many emergency appliances in those days, of every kind, this one was nothing out of the ordinary.

The place where the two pigs were kept was built on the same plan, only that it was divided into two stories--the chickens having roosts over the pigs. But this combination did not prove a success, for whenever the chickens fell down or ventured down to their room mates below, they were eaten up by the pigs.

Perhaps a word should also be said about two of the inmates of the stable, for they also were common types of those and even much later times. These were two Texas ponies which Father and Halvor Hevle had purchased out of a herd driven to Yankton. After picking their choices out of the herd in a large corral, and paying $20.00 apiece for their choices, the men in charge la.s.soed the animals and turned them over to the new owners, at the end of a fairly long new rope. It was well that the ropes were new and fairly long, for it took three days of both brave and skilled maneuvering to get these wild animals of the plains to the home of their new masters. And the masters were certainly tired and not over-enthusiastic over their new horse power when they at last arrived. Matters were not so serene as could be wished while these little savages were being picketed outside. But when winter came and the animals which had never known any roof lower than the blue sky, nor walls more confining than the far-flung horizon, were to be quartered in a hole in the ground, real excitement began. Whenever any one ventured into the stable he would no sooner open the door than he would see these creatures on their haunches trying to jump thru the roof, which feat they almost succeeded in accomplishing. At first it was a problem how to get near enough to tend to them. The hay could be poked down the roof to where their heads ought to be, but the water was not so easy. In spite of precaution they "got the drop" on Father once I recall, and he was in bed for some time, but lucky to escape with his life. It should be said to their credit, however, that by the help of Lars Almen, above referred to, they were in due time subdued and served many years, and faithfully, according to their size and strength, with only an occasional runaway. These wild horses filled a useful place in the needs of these scattered beginners far from each other and from towns.

But it was after all the ox who really helped subdue the soil and lay the foundations for farming and prosperity in general. But for the people we are now describing real farming had not yet begun, so more of that a little later.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PIONEER MOTHERS AND THEIR PART IN THE STRUGGLE

What we have said of the pioneers so far has reflected for the most part what the pioneer fathers said, did or thought. If any one should get the impression from this seemingly one-sided treatment that pioneer mothers bore any lesser part of the burdens and sacrifices incident to leaving the land of their birth, and beginning all over again the long struggle of re-establishing themselves, and that, too, on the bare prairie where there was absolutely nothing to begin with, such a one has been greatly misled. While the work, not to speak of the privations and feelings of our mothers, is more difficult to record on paper, it is not one whit less real or deserving of any less appreciation. We can only give a few outlines picturing their part of the life. Yet if any one has a little imagination he can easily fill in the picture with its various tints and shades. The shadows were often both deep and tragic.

For a woman, even more than for a man, the social ties of life mean a great deal. Our mothers left their home relations, kindred and neighbors close around them, to be set down on a lonely prairie, cut off from all the dear relationships of childhood and womanhood. Even where there were neighbors, or soon came to be, they were at first strangers and often spoke a strange tongue. So for them there were many long days and weary years of isolation and heart hunger for those whom they had known and loved long ago, but now could never again see.

Then, too, they had left homes, some of them very comfortable homes, where they had always had the necessary equipment for ordinary housekeeping. Here for years they had to do with little and in many lines nothing. The average newcomer's larder from which our mothers had to get the materials for three meals a day was generally confined to these articles: Corn meal with more or less of wheat flour, often less, and not seldom none at all; fat salt pork, at least part of the time; milk in considerable quant.i.ty both for cooking, drinking in place of tea or coffee and for making a number of dishes made almost exclusively from milk. b.u.t.ter they generally had, but as that was about the only thing they had to sell it had to be conserved and lard or a mixture of lard and mola.s.ses used instead. There were eggs, or came to be, but while used more or less, they, too, had to go toward getting such few groceries as could be afforded. These were coffee, sugar, a little kerosene for one small lamp, and last, but, for many of the men, not least--tobacco. Now let no pink tea scion or descendant of these men who had to be the breaking plows of our new state, hold up lilly fingered hands of horror at this last and often not least item in the grocery list of that day. For if you are a man child of this stock and you had been there and then, with all the physical discomforts of the climate, lack of suitable clothes and food, not to speak of the frequently loathsome drinking water, you might have felt justified in the use of a nerve sedative too. It shall be said to their credit, too, that while most of the men of that day used the weed, few of them used it in such beastly excess as is often seen today. But rightly or wrongly, they thought they had to have it.

Thus Lars Almen, when he arrived at Yankton, had 50 cents in money left. He started to invest that last mite of the family resources in tobacco. His wife remonstrated, saying it would be more fitting to get a few provisions such as they could all partake of. The ever undaunted Lars replied: "If I have tobacco I know I can do something or other to make us a living, but if I have no tobacco I can do nothing". So he bought tobacco, and he also made good on the "living." Forgetting, then, the last named item in on the list of staple provisions, we find that salt pork, usually fried, corn meal in some form, such as mush or bread, more or less of wheat flour and milk or some dish made out of milk in whole or part, were the resources out of which our pioneer mothers had to provide three palatable meals a day, summer and winter.

This is not saying that these materials were always abundant, but rather that it was these or nothing. There were, of course, special occasions when a little pastry in the shape of home made cookies or fried cakes was on the table, but cake and pie and such like luxuries were not often seen the first years.

The fuel with which to prepare this food was, for most of them, hay, or in summer cow chips, and later on, when they began to raise corn, corn cobs. But hay was the princ.i.p.al fuel, and huge piles of it were required to do much cooking or for heating. For, as can be readily seen, one had to keep stuffing it into the stove almost continually to get any hot fire. Picture to yourself then a room--sod house, dugout or a frame house about 12 14 which was kitchen, sitting room, bedroom, and everything else combined. The hay, as was the case in winter time, would cover a large part of the floor and, of course, raise continual dust. The stove would get full of ashes in a short time, and if the hay was damp would, of course, smoke more or less. In such a place, with such conveniences and out of such materials, our pioneer mothers had to solve the problem of three meals a day and do all their other work besides. In summer, of course, it was not quite so bad, as they usually had a lean to or cook shanty of some sort, for use in warm weather. Is it strange that many of these women who came to find a new and, as they supposed, a better home, found instead an early grave, and what was worse, some even lost their minds? The men could get away, at least to be outdoors a part of the time, but the women had to live and move and have their whole being in these surroundings and conditions. So let us not fail to speak the word of appreciation to those of them who are still living or to cherish the memory of those who have made their final pilgrimage. So let there be flowers and kind words for the living and flowers and tears for the dead. For our pioneer mothers gave more for us than we can ever know.

CHAPTER IX

INDIANS AS OCCASIONAL GUESTS AND VISITORS

While still speaking of life and conditions in the Turkey Creek Valley and surrounding country as it was during the winter of eighty and eighty one, and even later, I ought to mention our occasional Indian visitors. They used to travel thru that country in considerable numbers at that time over the Sioux Falls road already mentioned. As a boy I have seen possibly twenty or thirty teams in a single procession. They sometimes camped near the brush bordering the ravine which was close by our house. The women would excavate the snow, sometimes several feet deep, and pitch the tepees, while the children scampered around them on the snow bank. The following incident may not be out of place as showing the heartaches and difficulties for the Indian incident to his transition from the free life of the plains to that of civilization. One day an Indian family consisting of a man and wife with some children, as also an old squaw which was evidently the grandmother of the children, camped near our house. The man and the younger squaw were trying to boil their kettle in the camp fire while the old squaw went out into the adjoining gulches, presumably to dig roots or hunt. The pot did not boil very fast and Father, by signs, invited them to come into the house and boil their pot. They seemed perfectly willing to do this, and coming inside they sat around our fire with the pot on the stove. But in a little while the old squaw returned, and not seeing her children by the fire where all good Indians would be supposed to be, she suspected something wrong and came into the house where she found her degenerate offspring located as above described. We could not, of course, understand the words she said, but we could easily make out that she was not complimenting them any on their new-found quarters, for the language was very emphatic and her face stern. She also got some immediate action. Having scolded them soundly for forsaking the firesides and ways of their fathers to enter the lodges of the palefaces, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the kettle from the stove and walked out followed by the now chastened son and daughter with their children.

We had many visits from the Indians and they never did us any harm.

However, I suspect that they were more welcome to us youngsters than to our mothers who never seemed quite at ease with them.

Most of those who came thru the country at that time had wagons. But some used the travaux, consisting of two rails lashed to the saddle of the pony, one on each side, and crosspieces behind the horse with blankets or skins covering. The ends of the rails, of course, slid on the ground. On this rude contrivance the Indian loaded his few belongings, sometimes the squaw and children, and journeyed over the country.

CHAPTER X

THE GREAT SNOW WINTER OF 1880-1 AND THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1881--BUILDING A BOAT

We have already referred to this winter of 80-81 as the terrible snow winter. May we add a few words on that in order to understand what followed in the spring.

The snow, a three days' snow storm or blizzard, came on October 15th, and the snow never left, but kept piling up without thawing out to any extent until April. Railroad connection with the outer world, as far as the few towns in the state were concerned, was cut off, completely in many instances, after the 1st of January. This, of course, made coal as well as other provisions un.o.btainable in many cases. The people in some towns, as for instance Watertown, had to take what they could find to preserve life. So many empty buildings and other property made of wood were taken for fuel.

In the outlying country places the settlers could not get to them, even when some provisions were available. In not a few cases, too, there was nothing to sell and no money for buying. So barred by one or all of the circ.u.mstances, the settlers had to get along and try to preserve life as best they could. As for the few groceries which they might ordinarily have used, they dispensed even with them for the most part. Many lived on corn meal, ground on the coffee mill. But there was one privation which for many proved the "unkindest cut of all"--tobacco. Many and sore were the lamentations because of the lack of this one commodity and many the devices to get it. A man can live without coffee, sugar and wheat-bread, not to speak of less necessary things, but tobacco--well, you can't do anything more to him after that.

As can easily be seen, when this vast quant.i.ty of snow began to go out, especially going out so late in the spring, it created a flood.

Every creek became a raging river, the rivers became more like vast moving lakes. So if communication with towns had been difficult before it became well nigh impossible now. The whole Missouri bottom, for instance, became one vast and roaring sea, coming up to the bluffs of the present Mission Hill and Volin. But yet, can such a little thing as fourteen miles of roaring water and floating debris stand between a man and his tobacco, or a woman and her cup of coffee, especially when the latter is the only thing approaching a luxury that she has? No! By the shades of all our Viking ancestors, No! After looking over their possible resources of men and materials for the undertaking of defying the angry flood, they found that Ole Solem, who then lived on Turkey Creek, had a few remnants of lumber. They also found that Anders Oien had had a little experience in boat building, and Ole Johnson was an ex-fisherman and thus could row a boat if they had one. So with the help of those mentioned and others, such as Ingebricht f.a.gerhaug, who was a carpenter, and Steingrim Hinseth, the boat was built. It was crude, of course, and leaky, yet counted seaworthy because the situation was getting desperate. It should be said in fairness that mere personal and private needs were not the only motive with these men. For instance, some of the leaders of this enterprise, like Solem and f.a.gerhaug, had no need or use for tobacco, but needing other things and realizing the general needs they joined with heart and hand.

When the craft was finished Steingrim Hinseth hauled the boat and the men, Ole Solem, Ingebricht f.a.gerhaug, Th.o.r.e Fossem and, I believe, Ole Johnson, to the foot of the bluffs, a couple of miles northwest of Volin, where the boat was launched. The cargo was all that the little craft could carry, consisting of very many different parcels of b.u.t.ter and some eggs. These, belonging to many different parties and being the only things they had to sell, were to be exchanged for a few necessities such as mentioned above.

When the cargo was all in and the crew embarked there was about two inches left of the boat above the water line and the boat a little leaky besides. But with true Viking spirit they struck out over the twelve or fourteen miles of angry flood towards Yankton. There they were able to do the necessary shopping for the whole neighborhood, and in three days from the time of starting they were back without mishap and all errands carried out. It goes without saying that they were welcomed by the many expectant ones in the whole neighborhood and that there was great rejoicing on the part of both men and women, for the women got their coffee and the men got--well--whatever was coming to them.

CHAPTER XI

BEGINNING THEIR REAL STRUGGLE WITH THE EARTH

The long and memorable winter of '80-'81 had at last come to an end.

The resulting flood, too, as in the time of Noah, at length subsided, and now our new comers must begin their first real struggle with the earth in the new land. Without tools or draught animals, and even any knowledge of farming conditions on this new soil, and without means to buy tools, this struggle became for many both hard and prolonged. They had had during the winter their baptism in self-denial and privation.

They were now to learn further that while the new land might possibly flow with milk and honey, yet if it was to flow for them, they would have to do the milking and gather the honey.

As an ill.u.s.tration of how the struggle in subduing the soil began for these people, may I again refer to my Father as an ill.u.s.tration of many others. I refer to him merely because I can recall these circ.u.mstances better in his case than in that of others and, also because the experiences of others were similar and in many cases much worse.

He had hired a man to break five acres the first summer. This was an ordinary amount of plow land, largely because the government required this much to be broken in order to comply with the homestead regulations. During the winter he had made a small harrow and in the spring sowed most of this ground to wheat and tried the best he could to harrow it with the ponies already mentioned. The year was not very favorable, as I can recall it, and with such equipment the results can be surmised. I do not recall just what they were, but I am quite sure we did not eat much wheat flour the following winter. He had one acre of corn, which he worked with the hoe. He bought, like most of the others, or, rather went into debt for, a pair of steers that spring. These he, with the help of Lars Almen, who worked together with him, as also Halvor Hevle, tried to "break" for work purposes.

These animals proved themselves notoriously stubborn and fractious and made their drivers earn most of what they got out of them in the way of work. This, however, may have been due to the inexperience of the drivers. For, as already said, the ox, next to the cow, was the beginner's best friend, and without him it is hard to see how the pioneers could have gotten along at all. To be sure, some of these animals did not take kindly to the yoke and many were the sc.r.a.pes they got their owners into, running away and breaking up both wagons and tools. Yet when you consider the lot of the ox you cannot be too hard on him for his occasional bad humor. As a boy I have driven him many a day, and often lost my patience with him, for which I now humbly apologize. We worked him on the plow, both stubble and breaking plow, drag, stoneboat and the heaviest work that was to be done. At noon or night we unyoked him and let him go to get a little gra.s.s or hay for himself. No oats for him, only the long kind you administer with a whip; no thanks to him when the long, hot day of pulling a breaking plow at last is done, but very likely a parting kick. We have not given the ox his well-earned place among the foundation builders of our land, and I propose that even at this late date we should repent and build in South Dakota a monument to the ox, our early, faithful and indispensable friend.

The first few years after arriving were required by our pioneers for making temporary shelters for themselves and their few animals; also in providing some way of obtaining the bare necessities of life while they could lay the foundations for a larger prosperity and more comforts. As already indicated, the first resource and dependence for getting a little money was eggs, b.u.t.ter and hay. These commodities were sold to get the few groceries and small necessities which they could not well do without. Some of the men worked out to supplement their meager income.

By 1885, roughly speaking, these hardy men really began to wrestle with the soil in earnest and thus make possible something more than a bare existence. From about '83 to '90 a picturesque and ever recurring scene, when spring and early summer came, was the breaking rig moving slowly but majestically over the long furrows. There were from four to six oxen to each plow and most generally it took two men to hold the plow and keep the oxen in the straight and narrow way. The country I am describing was very stony and there was many a hard lift and aching back before these stones could be pried out of the ground and hauled away sufficiently to make breaking possible. Even after spending many weeks at this clearing work there would still be many stones left which the plow would strike with such violence as to almost fell the man at the handles. With the plow out of the ground and the load suddenly lightening the oxen would make the most of this relief by starting on a trot so that often the plow could not be gotten back into the sod for a rod or two. Two neighbors would often go in together in breaking, each furnishing one yoke of oxen.

This sod would be put into corn or flax the first season and the next into wheat. The returns were generally quite meager compared with what that ground is producing now. But even a little meant much then.

Drought was the princ.i.p.al drawback. Then, too, these early beginners did not have the modern machinery either for putting in, harvesting or threshing grain, and this fact was also a large cause for small yields. However, they kept on breaking up a little more each year, and after a few years the ground was subdued enough to begin to raise corn and consequently hogs. The beef cattle as a source of income had been good earlier, but the price of cattle went so low during this period that there was not much inducement. Then, too, as the country came to be settled and broken there was less possibility of keeping herds of cattle. I recall that during this depression in the latter eighties good milch cows sold for $10.00-$15.00 and other cattle in proportion. Of course, in the panic or notorious depression of 93-4, even grain and hogs went down with everything else. Corn was sold for eight cents per bushel and wheat as low as 35-40 cents. But generally speaking, in the period we are describing, when these path-finders were laying the foundations for permanent homes and farm equipment, corn and hogs became their corner stone of prosperity, with milk and b.u.t.ter a close second.

There arose an industry in the latter '90's which came to be of considerable economic importance--the creamery. These men at first located a considerable distance away and the cream had to be transported in hired wagons. Some of these creameries "failed" and left the farmers to whistle for their long expected and much needed cream checks. Later a co-operative creamery was organized and successfully operated by Sven Vognild on the S. Hinseth place. This was the first real co-operative enterprise in the vicinity.

Returning to early farm conditions, we find that for several years many of the new settlers did not have enough grain to have a threshmachine on the place, but hauled what little they might have to some nearby machine.