Part 23

The prairies were perfectly lovely with their wild flower setting. There had been a fire two years before and great thickets of blackberry vines had grown up. I never saw such blackberries. They were as large as the first joint of a man's thumb. The flavor was wild and spicy. I never ate anything so good. Cranberries by the hundreds of bushels grew in the swamps. We could not begin to pick all the hazel nuts. We used to eat turnips as we would an apple. They were so sweet, they were as good. We made sun-dials on a clear spot of ground and could tell time perfectly from them.

We children made dolls out of grass and flowers. I have never seen prettier ones. We kept sheep and mother spun and wove blankets and sheets. We had bolts and bolts of cloth that we made and brought with us from Sweden. Here, we raised flax and prepared it for spinning, making our own towels.

Nothing could be cozier than our cabin Christmas eve. We had brought solid silver knives, forks and spoons. These hung from racks. Quantities of copper and brass utensils burnished until they were like mirrors hung in rows. In Sweden mother had woven curtains and bed coverings of red, white and blue linen and these were always used on holidays. How glad we were they were the national colors here! We covered a hoop with gay colored paper and set little wooden candle holders that my father had made all around it. This was suspended from the ceiling, all aglow with dips. Then, as a last touch to the decorations, we filled our brass candle sticks with real candles and set them in the windows as a greeting to those living across the lake. A sheaf for the birds and all was done.

The vegetables grew tremendous. We used to take turns in shelling corn and grinding it, for bread, in a coffee mill. Mother would say, "If you are hungry and want something to eat of course you will grind." We made maple sugar and fine granulated sugar from that.

My sisters used to walk from Watertown to Minneapolis in one day, thirty-seven miles, following an Indian trail and then were ready for a good time in the evening. How many girls of today could walk that many blocks?

The lake was full of the biggest fish imaginable. We used to catch them, and dry and smoke them. They made a nice variety in our somewhat same diet. We used to fish through the ice, too.

Major C. B. Heffelfinger--1858, Minneapolis.

Well I remember the St. Charles hotel as it was when I first boarded there. The beds were upstairs in one room in two rows. Stages were bringing loads of passengers to Minneapolis. They could find no accommodations so no unoccupied bed was safe for its owners. Although my roommate and I were supposed to have lodging and were paying for it, the only safe way was for one to go to bed early before the stage came in and repel all invaders until the other arrived. If the sentry slept at his post the returning scout was often obliged to sleep on the floor, or snuggle comfortably against a stranger sandwiched between them.

The strangers who arrived had made a stage coach journey from La Crosse without change and spent two nights sitting erect in the coaches, and were so tired that they went to bed with the chickens. On lucky nights for us they were detained by some accident and got in when the chickens were rising.

Nothing was ever stolen and many firm friendships were thus cemented. Our pocketbooks were light, but our hearts were also. It was a combination hard to beat.

1857 was the most stringent year in money that Minnesota has ever known. There was absolutely no money and every store in the territory failed. Everything was paid by order. Captain Isaac Moulton, now of La Crosse, had a dry goods store. A woman, a stranger, came in and asked the price of a shawl. She was told it was $15.00. It was done up for her. She had been hunting through her reticule and now put down the money in gold. The Captain looked at it as if hypnotized, but managed to stammer, "My God woman, I thought you had an order. It is only $5.00 in money."

Mrs. Martha Gilpatrick--1858, Minneapolis.

When I married, my husband had been batching it. In the winter his diet was pork! pork! pork! Mrs. Birmingham, who helped him sometimes, said she bet if all the hogs he ate were stood end to end, they would reach to Fort Snelling.

We had a flock of wild geese that we crossed with tame ones. They were the cutest, most knowing things. I kept them at the house until they were able to care for themselves, then I turned them out mornings. I would go in the pasture and say, "Is that you nice gooses?" They would act so human, be so tickled to see me and flop against me and squawk. When Mr. Fitzgerald came home they would run for him the same way as soon as they saw the horse. They were handsome birds.

I used to go to my sister's. She had a boarding house on the East Side. Her boarders were mill workers and "lathers." That is what we used to call the river drivers. They always had a pike pole in their hand. It looked like a lath from a distance, so they got the name of "lathers" from this.

Upper row from left to right: Mrs. Robert Anderson, Mrs. James Pratt, Mrs. John Brown, Mrs. Mary E. Partridge, Mrs. Anna Todd, Mrs. Martha Gilpatrick, Mrs. Rufus Farnham, Mrs. Charles Godley, Mrs. Paulina Starkloff.

Second row: Mrs. Elizabeth Clifford, Mrs. Stephen Rochette.

Lower row: Mrs. Mahlon Black. Mrs. Mary Schmidt, Mrs. Margaret Hern, Mrs. Margaret A. Snyder, Miss Carrie Stratton, Mrs. Mary Weeks, Mrs. Rebecca Plummer. Eleven of these ladies are over eighty-four years old and Mrs. Weeks is ninety. All have wonderful memories.]

Mrs. Margaret Hern--1858.

My husband enlisted in the Fall of 1861. It was not a very easy thing for him to do, for our farm was not yet very productive, our three children were very young, one a tiny baby, and we had no ready money. However, he felt that his country called him and when the recruiting officer told him that all soldier's families would be welcome at the post and that we could go there with him, he rented our farm to George Wells and went on to Fort Ridgeley. We lived forty miles from there on the Crow River, near Hutchinson.

We found that the officer had lied. We were not expected or wanted at the fort. We finally made arrangements to stay by promising to board the blacksmith in his quarters. His name was John Resoft. His rations and my husband's supported us all. Mr. Hern was very handy about the house, as he was a Maine Yankee and daily helped me with the work.

There was a great sameness about the life as there were only about a hundred men stationed at the fort. Very few of them had their families with them. The only women were Mrs. Mueller, wife of the doctor, Mrs. Sweet, wife of the chaplain and their three children, Mrs. Edson, the Captain's wife; Sargeant Jones' wife and three children; Mrs. Dunn and their three children; Mrs. Snider and three children; Mrs. Mickel and three children; Mrs. Randall, the sutler's wife, and myself and our three children.

The winter passed monotonously. We used to have some fun with the squaws. Once I was writing home to mother. I wanted a little lock of Indian hair to show her how coarse an Indian's hair was. Old Betts happened to come in just then, so I took my scissors and was going to cut a little bit of her "raving locks." When she saw what I was going to do she jumped away screaming and acting like a crazy woman. She never came near that house again, but in the spring after my husband had gone to the front and Mrs. Dunn and I had joined forces and gone to living in another cabin, she stuck her head in our window to beg. I jumped and grabbed a looking glass and held it before her to let her see how she really did look. She was a sight. She had an old black silk hood I had given her and her hair was straggling all over. When she saw the reflection she was so mad she tried to break the glass.

Three weeks before the outbreak, the Sioux, our Indians had a war dance back of the fort and claimed it was against the Chippewas. At first we believed them, but when the half breed, Indian Charlie, came in to borrow cooking utensils, he sat down and hung his head, as if under the influence of liquor. He kept saying "Too bad! Too bad!"

Mrs. Dunn became suspicious and knowing I knew him well, as he had often stopped at our cabin, said "Ask him what is too bad." He said, "Injins kill white folks. Me like white folks. Me like Injins. Me have to fight. Me don't want to." He seemed to feel broken-hearted. I did not believe him and thought him drunk, but Mrs. Dunn said "You go over and tell Sergeant Jones what he said." I did. Sergeant Jones said, "What nonsense! They are only going to have their war dance. All of you white people go over and see that dance."

We all went. The soldiers were all there. The Indians had two tom-toms, and the squaws beat on them while the Indians, all painted hideously, jumped stiff legged, cut themselves until they were covered with blood and sweat and yowled their hideous war whoop. They were naked excepting their breech clout. Sargeant Jones had control of all the guns at the fort, and unknown to us, the cannon were all trained on the dancers. We could not understand why the soldiers were so near us, but later in the day learned that there was a soldier for everyone of us to snatch us away if it was necessary to fire on the Indians.

On Monday morning, August eighteenth, 1862, at about ten o'clock, we saw a great cloud of dust arising. Soon it resolved itself into teams, people on horseback and on foot coming pell mell for the fort. They said that Redwood Agency, twelve miles distant, had been attacked and the Indians were killing all the white settlers.

As they were flying for their lives, they passed the sutler of the Redwood store lying face downwards with a board on his back on which was written, "Feed your own squaws and papooses grass."