Part 20

One day when I was alone at my father's, an Indian with feathers in his headband and a painted face and breast came quickly into the house, making no noise in his moccasined feet. He drew his hand across his throat rapidly saying over and over, "Tetonka-te-tonka," at the same time trying to drag me out. I was terrified as I thought he was going to cut my throat. Fortunately my father happened to come in, and not fearing the Indian whom he knew to be friendly, went with him and found his best ox up to his neck in a slough. It seemed "Tetonka" meant big animal and he was trying to show us that a big animal was up to his neck in trouble.

Afterward, I married Mr. Duncan Kennedy and moved to Traverse. I papered and painted the first house we owned there until it was perfect. I did so love this, our first home, but my husband was a natural wanderer. One day he came home announcing that he had sold our pretty home. We moved into a two room log house on a section of land out near where my father lived. The house was built so that a corner stood in each quarter section and complied with the law that each owner of a quarter section should have a home on it. It was built by the four Hemmenway brothers and was always called "Connecticut" as they came from there.

My husband worked for Mr. Sibley and was gone much of the time buying furs. Then he carried mail from Traverse to Fort Lincoln. Once in a blizzard he came in all frozen up, but he had outdistanced his Indian guide--you couldn't freeze him to stay--he was too much alive. He once traveled the seventy-five miles from Traverse to St. Paul in one day. He just took the Indian trot and kept it up until he got there. He always took it on his travels. He could talk Sioux French and English with equal facility. Mr. Cowen once said when my husband passed, "There goes the most accomplished man in the State."

They used to tell this story about Mr. Cowen. He had cleared a man accused of theft. Afterward he said to him, "I have cleared you this time, but don't you ever do it again."

When the outbreak came, my husband was storekeeper at Yellow Medicine. A half breed came running and told him to fly for his life, as the Indians were killing all the whites. Mr. Kennedy could not believe this had come, though they knew how ugly the Indians were. After seeing the smoke from the burning houses, he got his young clerk, who had consumption, out; locked the door, threw the key in the river; then carried the clerk to the edge of the river and dropped him down the bank where the bushes concealed him, and then followed him. The Indians came almost instantly and pounded on the door he had just locked. He heard them say in Sioux "He has gone to the barn to harness the mules." While they hunted there, he fled for his life, keeping in the bushes and tall grass. All doubled up, as he was obliged to be, he carried the clerk until they came to the plundered warehouse, where a number of refugees were hiding. That night, he started for the fort, arriving there while it was still dark.

A call was made for a volunteer to go to St. Peter to acquaint them with the danger. My husband had a badly swollen ankle which he got while crawling to the fort. Nevertheless, he was the first volunteer. Major Randall said, "Take my horse; you can never get there without one," but Mr. Kennedy said, "If the Indians hear the horse they will know the difference between a shod horse and an Indian pony. I will go alone." Dr. Miller tried to make him take half the brandy there was in the fort, by saying grimly, "If you get through you will need it. If you don't we won't need it." He started just before dawn taking the Indian crawl. He had only gone a short distance when the mutilated body of a white man interposed. This was so nauseating that he threw away the lunch he had been given as he left the fort for he never expected to live to eat it. He passed so near an Indian camp that he was challenged, but he answered in Sioux in their gruff way and so satisfied them. When he came near Nicollet village he crawled up a little hill and peered over. He saw two Indians on one side and three on the other. He dropped back in the grass. He looked for his ammunition and it was gone. He had only two rounds in his gun. He said, "I thought if they have seen me there will be two dead Indians and one white man." When he came to what had been Nicollet Village, the camp fires that the Indians had left were still burning. He reached St. Peter and gave the alarm.

Major S. A. Buell--1856.

Major Buell eighty-seven years old, whose memory is remarkable says:--I came to Minnesota in 1856, settling in St. Peter and practicing law. Early in 1856, Mr. Cowen, one of the brightest lawyers and finest men Minnesota has ever known, came to Traverse de Sioux with his family, to open a store. He soon became a warm friend of Judge Flandrau who urged him to study law with him. He was made County Auditor and in his spare time studied law and was admitted to the bar. He was much beloved by all, a sparkling talker--his word as good as his bond. He had never been well and as time went on, gradually grew weaker. His house was a little more than a block from his office, but it soon became more than he could do to walk that distance. On the common, half way between the two, was the liberty pole. He had a seat made at this point and rested there. When he was no more, the eyes of his old friends would grow misty when they passed this hallowed spot.

Soon after I made the acquaintance of Judge Flandrau at Traverse de Sioux there was a young man visiting him from Washington. The judge took us both on our first prairie chicken hunt. We had no dog. On the upper prairie back of the town going along a road, we disturbed an old prairie hen that attempted to draw us away from her young. The Judge had admonished us that we must never kill on the ground, always on the wing, to be sportsmen. This hen scudded and skipped along a rod or two at a time. Finally, he said, "Fellows, I can't stand this, I must shoot that chicken, you won't tell if I do?" We pledged our word. He fired and missed. After we got home, we told everybody for we said we had only promised not to tell if he shot it. We never enjoyed this joke half as much as he did. We always joked him about making tatting.

Flandrau, dearest of men, true as steel, decided in character, but forgiving in heart, a warm friend--was one of the greatest men our state has ever known. He was a tall, dark man, and very active. He had often told me how he and Garvie, clerk for the Indian Trader at Traverse de Sioux used to walk the seventy-five miles to St. Paul in two days. He once walked 150 miles in three days to the land office at Winona.

In 1858 I built my own home in St. Peter and made my garden. The year before I had gone into a clump of plums when they were fruiting and tied white rags to the best. I had moved them into my garden and they were doing fine. One day I took off my vest as I was working and hung it on one of these trees. Suddenly my attention was attracted to the sky and I never saw a more beautiful sight. A horde of grasshoppers were gently alighting. Nothing more beautiful than the shimmering of the sun on their thousands of gold-bronze wings could be imagined. They took everything and then passed on leaving gardens looking as if they had been burned. When I went for that vest, they had eaten it all but the seams. It was the funniest sight--just a skeleton. Not a smitch of white rags left on the trees, either.

We people who lived in Minnesota thought there was only one kind of wild grape. A man by the name of Seeger who had been in Russia and was connected with a wine house in Moscow came to St. Peter. In the Minnesota valley were immense wild grape vines covering the tallest trees. Here he found five distinct varieties of grapes and said one kind would make a fine red wine--Burgundy. He told me how to make this wine from grapes growing wild on my own farm. I made about ten gallons. When it was a year old it was very heady.

Edward Eggleston belonged to a debating society in St. Peter and was on the successful side in a debate, "Has Love a Language not Articulate." He was a Methodist preacher here, but later had charge of a Congregational church in Brooklyn, N. Y. He said when the Methodists abolished itinerancy and mission work, he thought the most useful part of the church was gone.

In my boyhood days at home, a little boy in the neighborhood had the misfortune to drink some lye. Fortunately the doctor was near and using a stomach pump saved his life for the time being. However, the child's stomach could retain nothing. In a short time he was a skeleton indeed. One day his father who carried him around constantly, happened to be by the cow when she was being milked. The child asked for some milk and was given it directly from the cow. Great was the father's astonishment when the little lad retained it. Milk given him two minutes after milking was at once ejected. The father had a pen made just outside his son's bedroom window and the cow kept there, and here many times a day the cow was milked and the milk instantly given. After several months the child was restored to health.

One night in Minnesota just as I was going to sit down to supper my wife told me that a man who had just passed told her that a child that lived ten miles back in the country had drank lye some days before and was expected to die, as he could retain nothing. Without waiting to eat my supper I jumped on a horse and made the trip there in record speed. This child followed the same formula and was saved.

It was easy for youngsters to get at lye for every house had a leach for the making of soap. This lye was made by letting water drip over hard wood ashes in a barrel. A cupful would be taken out and its strength tried. If it would hold up an egg it was prime for soap. It was clear as tea, if it was left in a cup it was easily mistaken for it.

During the days when New Ulm was expecting a second Indian attack and the town was full of refugees, I was ordered to destroy some buildings on the outskirts. I started with a hotel and opened all the straw ticks that had been used for refugees beds and threw the contents all around. I believed all the people had left but thought I would go in every room and make sure of this. In one room I heard a queer noise and going to the bed found a small baby that had been tomahawked. Its little head was dented in two places. I took it with me and went out. Its grandmother who owned the place came running frantically and took it from me. Its father and mother had been killed and it had been brought in by the refugees. In the hasty departure it had been overlooked, each one supposing the other had taken it.

On the 25th day of August after the massacre of the 22nd, around New Ulm and in that vicinity, a little boy who had saved himself from the Indians by secreting himself in the grass of the swamps, came into New Ulm and said there were twelve people alive and a number of bodies to be buried sixteen miles from New Ulm. He said he had seen a man who was driving a horse and wagon, shot and scalped, but could not tell what had become of the woman and baby that were riding with him. The troops marched to the place, having the boy as a guide, buried a number of bodies and brought the twelve survivors to New Ulm. They could find no trace of the woman and baby, although the father's body was found and buried.

Later the troops marched to Mankato, stopping at an empty farm house sixteen miles from New Ulm for the night. This farm house was on a small prairie surrounded by higher land. The sentries were ordered to watch the horizon with the greatest care for fear the skulking Indians might ambush the troops. It was a night when the rain fell spasmodically alternating with moonlight. Suddenly one of the sentries saw a figure on the horizon and watched it disappear in the grass, then appear and crawl along a fence in his direction. He called, "Who goes there?" at the same time cocking his gun ready to shoot. At the answer, "Winnebago" he fired. At that moment there had been a little shower and his gun refused to fire. Later he found that the cap had become attached to the hammer and the powder must have been dampened by the shower. He dashed for the figure to find a white woman and baby and was horrified to think that if the gun had fired she would have been blown to pieces. This was woman for whom they had looked in the swamp thirty miles away. He aroused the troops, who took her in. She held out her baby whose hand was partly shot away, but said nothing about herself. Later they found that she had been shot through the back and the wound had had no dressing except when she laid down in the streams. Her greatest fear had been that the baby would cry, but during all those eight awful days and nights while she lay hidden in the swamps or crawled on her way at night, this baby had never made a sound. As soon as it became warm and was thoroughly fed, it cried incessantly for twelve hours. The mother said that for three days the Indians had pursued her with dogs, but she had managed to evade them by criss-crossing through the streams. She had said "Winnebago" as she thought she was approaching a Sioux camp and they were supposed to be friendly to the Winnebagoes. She would then have welcomed captivity as it seemed that the white people had left the earth and death was inevitable.

In May 1857, eggs were selling in St. Peter for 6c a dozen, butter at 5c per pound and full grown chickens at 75c a dozen as game was so plentiful.

Mrs. Jane Sutherland--1856.

Mrs. Cowan came to Traverse in 1856 when it was almost nothing. At her home in Baltimore she had always had an afternoon at home, so decided to continue them here. She set aside Thursday and asked everyone in town, no matter what their situation in life, to come. My maiden name was Jane Donnelly and she asked me to come and "Help pass things"--"assist"--as you call it now. She had tea and biscuits. Flour and tea were both scarce so she warned me not to give anyone more than one biscuit or one cup of tea. This we rigidly adhered to. She had the only piano in our part of the country and we all took great pride in it. I could sing and play a little in the bosom of my family, but was most easily embarrassed. Judge Flandrau was our great man. He dropped in, bringing his tatting shuttle, and sat and made tatting as well as any woman. Mrs. Cowan explained that he had learned this on purpose to rest his mind and keep it off from weighty matters. Mrs. Cowan insisted that I should sing and play while he was there. I resisted as long as I could, then was led still protesting to the piano where I let out a little thin piping, all the while covered with confusion. When I arose we both looked expectantly toward the Judge, but he never raised his eyes--just kept right on tatting.

Finally Mrs. Cowan asked, "Don't you like music, Judge?" He looked up with a far-away look in his eyes and said, "Yes, martial music in the field." Then we knew he had never heard a thing, for, as Mrs. Cowan explained to me as we were making a fresh pot of tea, "He is the kindest man in the world. If he had noticed you were singing he would have said something nice."

Shortly after this we took a claim out at Middle Lake and moved out there to live. The first time I came into town was on a load of wild hay drawn by my father's oxen. The man I later married saw me, a girl of sixteen, sitting there and said he fell in love with me then. A few days later he drove past our farm and saw me out in the corn field trying to scare away the blackbirds. I was beating on a pan and whooping and hollering. That finished him for he said he could see I had all the requisites for a good wife, "Industry and noise."

During the outbreak of 1862, after my husband went to the war, we were repeatedly warned to leave our home and flee to safety. This we were loath to do as it would jeopardize our crops and livestock. We often saw the Indian scouts on a hill overlooking the place and sometimes heard shots. One day I was with my children at a neighbor's when a new alarm was given by a courier. Without waiting for us to get any clothes or tell my parents, the farmer hitched up and we fled to Fort Snelling. It was two months before I ever saw my home or parents.

There were three grasshopper years when we never got any crops at Middle Lake. When I say that, I mean just what I say; we got nothing. The first time they came the crops were looking wonderful. Wheat fields so green and corn way up. The new ploughed fields yielded marvelously and this was the first year for ours. I went out to the garden about ten o'clock to get the vegetables for dinner and picked peas, string beans, onions and lettuce that were simply luscious. The tomatoes were setting and everything was as fine as could be. I felt so proud of it. The men came home to dinner and the talk was all in praise of this new country and the crops. While we were talking it gradually darkened. The men hastily went out to see if anything should be brought in before the storm. What a sight when we opened the door! The sky darkened by myriads of grasshoppers and no green thing could be seen. Everything in that lovely garden was gone. By the middle of the afternoon, when they left, the wheat fields looked as if they had been burned, even the roots eaten. Not a leaf on the trees. My husband's coat lying outside was riddled. Back of the house where they had flown against it they were piled up four feet high. They went on after awhile leaving their eggs to hatch and ruin the crops the following year. And enough the second for the third, though we did everything. The last year the county offered a bounty of three cents a bushel for them and my little boy, four years old, caught enough with a net to buy himself a two dollar pair of boots. You can perhaps get an idea how thick they were from that. The rail fences used to look as if they were enormous and bronzed. The grasshoppers absolutely covered them.

We lived only a short distance from my father's farm. One afternoon I saw smoke coming from there and could hear explosions like that of cannon. I caught our pony, jumped on bareback, and dashed for their home. We trusted the Indians and yet we did not. They were so different from the whites. I thought they had attacked the family. I don't know how I expected to help without a weapon of any kind, but on I went. When I got there I saw my father and mother tearing a board fence down. A swamp on the place was afire and the fire coming through that long swamp grass very rapidly. The swamp had a number of large willows and when the fire would reach them they would explode with a noise like a cannon. I don't know why, but I have heard many of the old settlers tell of similar experiences. I jumped off the pony and helped tear down the fence.

Governor Swift had paid me $5.00 to make him a buffalo coat. I had put it all into "nigger blue" calico and had the dress on. When we went into the house mother said, "What a shame you have spoiled your new dress." I could see nothing wrong, but in the back there was a hole over twelve inches square burned out.