Chapter IV: Part 4

My home was where the old Union station stood. In 1853 my father, Mr. Keith, learned that the land near where the Franklin Avenue bridge now is was to be thrown open to settlement. He loaded his wagon with lumber and drove onto the piece of land he wanted and stayed there all night. In the morning he built his home. In the afternoon the family moved in and lived there for three years.

Mrs. Martha Thorne--1854.

We started from Davenport, Iowa, for Minnesota Territory in 1854. We had expected to be only two weeks on the trip to the junction of the Blue Earth and Minnesota rivers, but were six weeks on that terrible trip with our ox teams. There had been so much rain that all dry land was a swamp, all swamps lakes, and the lakes and rivers all over everywhere. Sometimes we worked a whole day to get one hundred feet through one of the sloughs. We would cut the tallest and coarsest rushes and grass and pile in to make a road bed. We would seem to be in a sea, but finally this trip ended as all trips, no matter how bad, must, and we came to Lake Crystal where we were to stay.

Such a beautiful spot as it was, this home spot! We camped for three weeks, living in our prairie schooner, while the men put up the wild hay.

We built a log cabin with "chinkins" to let in the air. We filled in the cracks except where these chinkins were, with mud. The roof was made by laying popple poles so they met in the middle and fastening them together. Over this we laid a heavy thickness of wild hay, and over that the popple poles again well tied with hand twisted ropes of wild hay, to those below. It was a good roof, only it leaked like a sieve. The floor was just the ground. Over it we put a layer of the wild hay and then staked a rag carpet over it. A puncheon shelf to put my trunk under, and the furniture placed, made a home that I was more than satisfied with. It took my husband over two weeks with a pair of trotting oxen to go for the furniture to St. Paul.

My baby was born three weeks after we moved in. There was no doctor within a hundred miles. I got through, helped only by my sister-in-law. What do you women nowadays, with your hospitals and doctors know of a time like this? When it rained, and rain it did, plenty, that October, the only dry place was on that trunk under the shelf and many an hour baby and I spent there. Whenever there was sunshine that carpet was drying.

We were much troubled with what the settlers called "prairie dig." It was a kind of itch that seemed to come from the new land. It made the hands very sore and troublesome. We did everything but could find no cure. The Dakota Sioux were our neighbors and were very friendly. They had not yet learned to drink the white man's firewater. A squaw came in one day and when she saw how I was suffering, went out and dug a root. She scraped off the outer bark, then cooked the inner bark and rubbed it on my hands. I was cured as if by magic. She buried all parts of the root, so I think it was poison.

The next year we raised the first wheat on the Des Moines River. We put the sacks in the bottom of the wagon, then our feather beds on top of them. The children were put on these and we started for the mill at Garden City, one hundred and thirty miles away. We had two yoke of oxen; the leaders were white with black heads and hoofs and great, wide spreading horns. They were Texas cattle and were noble beasts, very intelligent and affectionate. I could drive them by just calling "Gee and Haw". They went steadily along. My husband and I spelled each other and went right along by night as well as day. We were about forty hours going. The moonlight, with the shadows of the clouds on the prairie was magnificent. We never saw a human being. We had our wheat ground and started back. As I was walking beside the oxen while my husband slept, I started up a flock of very young geese. I caught them all and they became very tame. They once flew away and were gone three weeks, but all returned. When we got home, we had a regular jubilation over that flour. Twenty of the neighbors came in to help eat it. They were crazy for the bread. I made three loaves of salt rising bread and they were enormous, but we never got a taste of them.

The Indians were always kind neighbors. They learned evil from the whites. The father of Inkpadutah used to hold my little girl and measure her foot for moccasins. Then he would bring her the finest they could make and would be so pleased when they fitted. The Indians always had wonderful teeth. They did not scrub the enamel off. They used to ask for coffee and one who had been to school said, "Could I have a green pumpkin?" and ate it raw with a relish.

We had a carpet sack for stockings. An Indian orator used to look at it with covetous eyes. One day he came in, laid two mink skins on the table, took the stockings out of the bag and stepping right along with victory in his eye, bore that sack away.

We lived on salt and potatoes for five weeks that first winter. We paid $1.00 for three pounds of sugar and $18.00 for a barrel of musty flour that we had to chop out with an ax and grate. That was in the winter of '55. During the Inkpadutah outbreak, the soldiers ate everything we had.

During the outbreak of '62 we moved to Mankato. I belonged to the ladies aid and we took care of the wounded and refugees sent from New Ulm. We made field beds on the floor for them. One poor German woman went to sleep while carrying a glass of water across the room to her husband, who was wounded. She just sank down in such a deep sleep that nothing could arouse her. I never could imagine such exhaustion. Old man Ireland had sixteen bullet holes, but had never stopped walking until he got to us. Mrs. Eastlake, that wonderful woman, was in this hospital. She was the woman who crawled all those miles on her hands and knees.

Mrs. Nancy Lowell--1854.

I came to Faribault in 1854 and boarded at the hotel kept by the Nuttings the first winter.

One evening I stepped to the door to throw out a washbasin of water and saw a large dog standing there. I put the dish down and was going out to call him. When my husband saw me going toward the door he said, "What are you going to do?" I said, "Call in a dog." It was bright moonlight. He said, "Let me see him." He looked and hastily closed the door saying, "The biggest kind of a timber wolf. Be careful what kind of pets you take in here."

The upper part of the hotel where we lived the first winter, was all in one room. I was the only woman, so we had a room made with sheeting. Sometimes there were twenty people sleeping in that loft. We did not have to open the windows. Most windows in those days were not expected to be opened anyway. The air just poured in between the cracks, and the snow blew in with gusto. It was not at all unusual to get up from under a snow bank in the morning.

I brought many pretty dresses and wore them too. Those who first came, if they had money and were brides, were dressed as if they lived in New York City.

We had a dance one night in our little log hotel. It was forty degrees below zero, and very cold anywhere away from the big stove. The women wanted to dance all the time and so set the table and put on the bread and cake before the company came. Five hours afterward when we went to eat, they were frozen solid. The dish towels would freeze too, as they hung on the line in the kitchen over the stove, while the stove was going, too.

One morning, after we were keeping house, my husband said, "I guess we have some spring company. You better go in and see them." I did and in the parlor was the biggest kind of an ox standing there chewing his quid. He had just come in through the open door to make a morning call. All kinds of animals ran at large then.

Mrs. William Dow--1854, Little Falls.

We came to Little Falls and built this house we are now living in in 1854. It was built right on an Indian trail that paralleled the Red River cart trail. You see that road out there? That is just where the old Red River cart road went. That is Swan River and it went between us and that. Our back door was right on their foot trail. You could step out of our door onto it. There is a big flat rock on the river up about four miles where the Chippewa and Sioux signed treaties to behave themselves. After this they were killing each other before they got out of town. You know our Indians were the Chippewas. They were woods Indians. The prairies belonged to the Sioux. They had always been enemies. Hole-in-the-Day was head chief here and a pretty good chief, too. His tribe got suspicious of him; they thought he was two-faced, so shot him, as they did his father before him. He had married a white woman, so the real chief now is a white man. I think he was on the square though. He used often to drop in for a piece of pie or anything to eat. He is buried upon the bluff here.

Swan River Ferry was three miles from Little Falls. It was on the direct road through Long Prairie to Fort Abercrombie. The Red River Cart Trail crossed the Mississippi River at Belle Prairie. There was a mill at that little place.

When the lumber jacks were driving logs they used to have their wamigans tie up in the river just outside that front door.

The Indians were camped all around here. They used to fill their moccasins with rabbit hair to take the place of stockings. Once I was standing by the river and I saw a squaw come out with a new born baby. She wasn't making any fuss over it. First she took it by the heels and plunged it in the river; then by the head and soused it in that way.

Mrs. Salome was a squaw who had married a white man. Her husband went to the war. I used to write her letters to him and she would sign them with her cross. She became very fond of me. At the time of the outbreak she said to me, "Kinnesagas?" meaning, "are you afraid?" I did not reply. Then she said "If you are, I'll hide you." She made a wigwam by the side of hers and wanted me to go into it with my children, but I would not. I liked her, but I remembered how when the Indians had had a scalp dance, I had seen her shake one of the scalps in her teeth. This was after she had married a white man. I asked her if she did not like the Indians better than the whites and she said in Chippewa, "If I do, why do I not stay with them?"

At the beginning of the outbreak the Sioux were sending runners all the time to get the Chippewas to join them. One of our men, William Nichols, spoke the Indian language as well as English. He had lived with them when he was a fur trader. He used to disguise himself as an Indian and go to the councils, so we all knew just what was going on. Old Buffalo, a chief, said, "If you go to war, I'll be a white man; I won't be an Indian any more. I'll go away and stay by myself always." We knew at once when they fully decided not to join the Sioux.

Finally I yielded to the entreaties of my friends and went down to St. Cloud to stay with friends until the danger should be over. My husband was in the war. One day someone coming from Little Falls said, "There's someone living in your house." "Well," said I, "if anyone can, I can," so back I went. I found an old friend from further up the country there. We joined forces and lived there until the war was over.

One day in war time I looked out of my window and could see Mr. Hall milking his cow in the pasture. It had a rail fence around it. I could see what he could not--some Indians sitting in one of the corners of the fence stretching Sioux scalps over withes. When they finished, they got up all at the same time, giving a blood curdling war-whoop. The cow kicked over the milk and fled bellowing. I think that Mr. Hall made even better time and he never even looked around.

The squaws would often have ear rings made of wire with three cornered pieces of tin dangling all around their ears. It was not how good, but how much, with them. How these Indians ever lived through a winter the way they dressed, I don't see. They wore only leggings, shirts, breech clouts and a blanket. Their legs were no barer than a Scotchman's though. Our Indians used to tuck things in the bosom of their shirt, as well as in their belts. They used to tuck butcher knives in their leggings. If they were ever going to go on a tear and get drunk, when we first came, they would always get my husband to take charge of all their guns and knives.

When the squaws wore mourning, they were all painted black and always slashed themselves with knives.

During the last of the fifties, we never had any money. It would not do you any good if you had for if you took money to the store they would just give you an order for more goods instead of the change. The Red River carts used to camp in that little grove of trees over there. We used to sell them supplies and they would give us English silver money. Once we took some to the store and they were terribly surprised to see money. They could not understand how we came by it. Thought we must have hoarded it, but we told them that it came from the Red River drivers.

Mrs. William J. White--1854.

My husband, Mr. White, started for Lake Addie, Minnesota Territory, in May, to join some friends and take up a claim. Mr. Hoag had named this lake in honor of his daughter. The settlement, if you could call it that, was called Grimshaw Settlement. It is now Brownton. He got up his cabin and began clearing the land. He and his friends did their cooking and only had two meals a day--breakfast at eight and dinner at three. One hot day they had just cooked a big pan of apple sauce and set it out to cool. Some Indians on their way to a war dance at Shakopee came streaking along all painted up. First one and then another plunged his fist in that apple sauce and stuck it down his throat. It must have skinned them all the way down, but not one made a sound, only looked hard when they saw the next one start in.

My husband wrote for me to come to him. I had no pilot, so could not start at once. My boy fell and broke his arm and I thought he was badly hurt inside so I wrote for father to come home. It generally took so long for a letter to go through that when two weeks later I got a chance to go with company, I started, thinking I could get there before the letter would, as they were generally much longer in going than one could travel. When I got on the Northern Belle, a fine boat, one of my children was taken with croup. Dr. N----, a Universalist minister, got off at Dubuque and bought medicine for me. This saved the child, but he was sick all the way. We were stuck in Beef Slough for several days. I never left the cabin as my child needed me, but some time during the first day a boat from St. Paul was stuck there too, so near us that passengers passed from one boat to the other all day. It was only when I got to Hastings, where I had thought to meet my husband that I found he had been on that other stranded boat. Later, I learned that he had spent some time on my boat, but of course, did not know I was there. The letter I had written him had gone straight, as a man who was going to their settlement had taken charge of it from the first. I had to wait six weeks in Hastings until he went clear to Pennsylvania and back. Evangeline wasn't in it with me.

Finally he came and we went on to our new home. I thought I had never seen such wonderful wild flowers. Mr. Grimshaw came after us with his horses. We had supper at his house the night before we got to our home, and I never tasted anything so good--pheasants browned so beautifully and everything else to match. The most wonderful welcome, too, went with that meal.

We passed fields just red with wild strawberries and in places where the land had been cultivated and the grass was sort of low, they grew away up and were large with big clusters, too. We did just revel in them. They were much more spicy than any we had ever eaten. The wild grass grew high as a man's head. When we came in sight of our home, I loved it at once and so did the children. It was in the bend of a little stream with stepping stones across. I knew at once that I had always wanted stepping stones on my place. About two feet from the floor a beam had been set in the whole length of the room. It was roped across and a rough board separated it into two sections. These were our beds and with feather beds and boughs, made a fine sleeping place. Wolves used to howl all around at night but with the stock secure and the home closed up tightly, we were happy. Our walls were plastered with mud and then papered by me with paper that was six cents a roll back east. We made a barrel chair and all kinds of home-made furniture out of packing boxes. Our rooms looked so cozy. Father was a natural furniture maker, though we never knew it before we came here.

Game was very plentiful and as we never had enough back home, we did not soon tire of it. My husband once killed a goose and eleven young ones with one shot.

The first year our garden was looking fine when the grasshoppers came in such swarms that they obscured the sun. They swooped on everything in the garden. There was no grain as the squirrels, black birds and gophers had never tasted this delicacy before and followed the sower, taking it as fast as it fell. We planted it three times and we had absolutely no crop of any kind that first year.

We bought four horses later and had them for the summer's work. They came from Illinois and were not used to the excessive cold of Minnesota. That winter it was forty degrees below zero for many successive days. It seems to me we have not had as much cold all this winter as we had in a week then. Christmas time it was very cold. We wanted our mail so one of the men rode one of the horses twelve miles to get it. When he arrived there the horse was very sick. He was dosed up and was seemingly all right. When the man wanted to start for home, he was warned that it would be fatal to take a horse which had been dosed with all kinds of hot stuff out in the terrible cold. He took the risk but the horse fell dead just as he entered the yard. We lost two others in much the same way that winter.

We then bought a yoke of young steers. They were very little broken and the strongest animals I ever saw. Their names were Bright and Bill. Once the whole family was going to a party at New Auburn, a kind of a city. My husband had made an Indian wagon. He held them in the road while we all got in. They started up with such a flourish that everything that could not hold itself on, fell off. The road was full of things we wanted with us. They ran on a keen jump for nine miles until we came to the house where we were going. It was the first house we came to. When they saw the barn, they must have thought it looked like home for they ran in there and brought up against the barn with a bang. As soon as Mr. White could, he jumped out and held them, but their fun was all gone and they stood like lambs.

I never saw anything funnier than those steers and a huge snapping turtle. They found him near the creek when they were feeding. They would come right up to him (they always did everything in concert) then look at him at close range. The turtle would thrust out his head and snap at them; then they would snort wildly and plunge all over the prairie, returning again and again to repeat the performance, which only ended when the turtle disappeared in the brook.

Wolves were very fearless and fierce that winter. They ran in packs. They would look in at our windows. Once we sent a hired boy six miles for twenty-five pounds of pork for working men. When he was near home a pack of wolves followed him, but he escaped by throwing the pork. Mr. Pollock and Mr. White were followed in the same way.

Once one of our friends killed a steer. We were all anxious for amusement so any pretext would bring on a party. All the neighbors had a piece of the meat but we thought the friends who had killed the steer should have a party and have roast beef for us all, so we sent word we were all coming. Mrs. Noble, my neighbor worked all day to make a hoop skirt. She shirred and sewed together a piece of cloth about three yards around. In these shirrings she run rattan--a good heavy piece so it would stand out well. I made a black silk basque and skirt. My finery was all ready to put on. One of the neighbor's girls was to stay with the children. The baby had been quite restless, so according to the custom, I gave her a little laudanum to make her sleep. I did not realize that it was old and so much stronger. Just before going, when I was all dressed, I went to look at the baby. I did not like her looks, so took her up to find her in a stupor. Needless to say there was no party for us that night. It took us all to awaken her and keep her awake. I never gave laudanum after that, though I always had before.

Mrs. Paulina Starkloff--1854.

My name was Paulina Lenschke. I was twelve years old when I came to Minneapolis in 1854. We intended to stay in St. Paul but were told that this was a better place, so came here and bought an acre and a half just where the house now stands, Main Street N. E. The town then was mostly northeast. The St. Charles hotel on Marshall Street, northeast, was just below us and so were most of the stores. Morgan's foundry and Orth's brewery were just on the other side of us. We paid $600.00 in gold for the land and half of it was in my name, as my mother paid $350.00 that I had made myself. I think I was probably the only twelve year old child that came into the state with so much money earned by herself. It was this way.

We went to Australia to dig gold in 1847. We drove an ox team into the interior with other prospectors doing the same until we came to diggings. The men would dig and then "cradle" the soil for the gold. This cradle was just like a baby's cradle only it had a sieve in the bottom. One man would have a very long handled dipper with which he would dip water from a dug well. He only dipped and the other man stirred with a stick and rocked. Most of the soil would wash out but there would always be some "dumplings" caused by the clay hardening and nothing but hard work would break them. The miners would take out the gold which was always round, and dump these hard pieces. After a day's work there would be quite a pile that was never touched by them. I would take a can and knife and go from dump to dump gathering the gold in these dumplings. One day my father went prospecting with a party of men and was never seen again. After months of fruitless search my mother took me and my little tin can of nuggets back to Germany. She sold them for me for $350.00 in gold. Then we came to Minnesota and bought this place.

The Red River carts used to be all day passing our house. They would come squeaking along one after another. Sometimes the driver would take his wife and children with him. These carts had no metal about them. One man would have charge of several.

Mrs. Anna E. Balser--1855, Ninety-four years old.

I was the only girl in our family that ever worked, but when I was ten years old I laid my plan to get myself out of my mother's tracks. She had so much to do with her big family. I could cry when I think of it now. So, when I was fourteen, my father, scared for me and holding back every minute, took me to the city to learn the trade I had chosen. I was through in six months and could do the heaviest work as well as the finest. I wish you could see the fancy bosomed shirts I used to make when I was fourteen! No one could beat me. I always had a pocketful of money for I got two and six a day. That would be 38c now. I went from house to house to work and always had the best room and lived on the fat of the land. It was a great event when the tailoress came.

I came to Lakeland in 1855. The prairies around there looked like apple orchards back home. The scrub oak grew just that way. I would bet anything I could go and pick apples if I had not known. I had thought of buying in Minneapolis, but my friends who owned Lakeland thought it was going to be the city of Minnesota, so I bought here. I was a tailoress and made a good living until the hard times came on. Money was plenty one day. The next you could not get a "bit" even, anywhere. Then, after that, I had to trade my work for anything I could get.

I brought a blue black silk dress with mutton leg sleeves among my things when I come. It was the best wearing thing I ever see. Cheaper to wear than calico because it would never wear out. I paid $1.00 a yard for it. It was twenty-seven inches wide. It took twelve yards to make the dress. For a wrap we wore a long shawl. I had one of white lace. We got three yards of lace webbing and trimmed it with lace on the edge. Or we would take one width of silk and finish that fancy on the edge. The ruffles on everything was fluted. When you shirred them you would hold them over the first and third finger passing under the second finger. That would make large flutings. If you had an Italian iron you could do it fast, but there wa'n't many so fortunate. An Italian iron was a tube about as big as your finger on a standard. Two rods to fit this tube come with it. You could put these heated, inside then run your silk ruffle or whatever you were making over it and there was your flute quick as a wink.

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 pass 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' principal 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 quantities 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 illustrate 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, illustrating 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 Hell!" "No," said another, "Not Hell, 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 basswood. 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 basswood 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 basswood 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.

One of the greatest pests to the pioneers around here was the thousand legged worms. They were very thick around where we were and very poisonous. My little sister nearly died from getting one in her mouth when she was lying on a quilt on the floor.

Mother used to make mince pies by soaking pumpkin in vinegar. We dried the wild grapes for raisins. My, but those pies were good. Everybody bragged on "Aunt Hannah's mince pies."

My father and brother frequently went hunting for deer. They used to run their bullets, which were round, by melting lead in a ladle in the stove. Such a looking kitchen as they would leave! Ashes from the ladle all over everything. It wasn't much of a trick to shoot deer, they were so thick and so tame. They used to come right near the house. I did not like venison for it seemed to me like eating a friend.

All six of us families used to wash at the lake in summer. We used soft soap that we made ourselves and boiled the clothes in a big kettle. They were beautifully white.

Mr. Chester L. Hopkins--1854, Hopkins.