LILLIAN BUTLER MOREHART
(Mrs. William J. Morehart)
Mrs. Margaret Rathbun Funk—1853.
I came to Mankato in the year 1853 on the Steamer Clarion from St. Paul. I was eleven years old. My father, Hoxey Rathbun, had left us at St. Paul while he looked for a place to locate. He went first to Stillwater and St. Anthony, but finally decided to locate at the Great Bend of the Minnesota River. We landed about four o'clock in the morning, and father took us to a little shack he had built on the brow of the hill west of Front Street near the place where the old Tourtelotte Hospital used to be. Back of this shack, at a distance of a couple of blocks were twenty Indian tepees, which were known as Wauqaucauthah's Band. As nearly as I can remember there were nine families here at that time and their names were as follows: Maxfield, Hanna, Van Brunt, Warren, Howe, Mills, Jackson and Johnson, our own family being the ninth.
The first winter here I attended school. The school house was built by popular subscription and was on the site of the present Union School on Broad Street. It was a log structure of one room, and in the middle of this room was a large, square, iron stove. The pupils sat around the room facing the four walls, the desks being wide boards, projecting out from the walls. Miss Sarah Jane Hanna was my first teacher. I came from my home across the prairie, through the snow in the bitter cold of the winter. Oftentimes I broke through the crust of the snow and had a hard time getting out. One of the incidents I remember well while going to school, was about a young Indian whom we called Josh, who pretended he was very anxious to learn English. Most every day he would come to the school, peer in at the windows, shade his eyes with his hand and mutter "A" "B" "C", which would frighten us very much. The education the children received in those days had to be paid for either by their parents or by someone else who picked out a child and paid for his or her tuition. That was how I received my education. My parents were too poor to pay for mine, and a man in town, who had no children volunteered to pay for same. I went to school for a few years on this man's subscription.
The first winter was a very cold one and although we were not bothered much by the Indians as yet, they often came begging for something to eat.
Although the Indians had never harmed us we were afraid of them. When we came to this country we brought a dog, and when these Indians came begging we took the dog into the house with us and placed him beside the door, where his barking and growling soon frightened them away. They seemed afraid of dogs, as there were very few in this country at that time. One time when father was on his way home he saw an Indian boy who had been thrown from his horse. He picked him up and put him back on his horse and took him to his tepee. Later this same Indian remembered my father's kindness to him by warning us that the Indians were planning an uprising and telling us to leave the country.
My father was the first mail carrier through this part of the country. John Marsh and his brother, George Marsh contracted with him to carry the mail, they having previously contracted with the government. He was to carry the mail from Mankato to Sioux City and return. He made his first trip in the summer of 1856. The trip took about three weeks. He made several trips during the summer. His last trip was in the fall of 1856, when he started from here to Sioux City. The government was supposed to have built shacks along his route at regular intervals of about twenty miles, where he could rest and seek shelter during cold weather and storms, but this had been neglected. He often slept under hay stacks, and wherever shelter was afforded.
On his way to Sioux City he encountered some very severe weather, and froze one of his sides. The lady where he stopped in Sioux City wanted him to stay there for a while before returning home, and until his side had been treated and he had recovered, but he would not have it so, and started on his return trip during exceedingly cold weather. He did not return on schedule time from Sioux City on this trip, and mother became very much worried about him. She went to the men who had contracted with father to carry the mail and asked them to send out men to look for him. They promised to send out a Frenchman, and a dog team. This contented mother for awhile, but as father did not return she again went to these men and this time they sent out three men with a horse and cutter to look for him.
After traveling over the route for some time they came to a shack on the Des Moines river, near where Jackson, this state, now is and in this shack they found my father, badly frozen and barely alive. He lived but a few moments after shaking hands with the men who found him. They brought the body back to Mankato and he was buried out near our place of residence, at the foot of the hill. The weather was so extremely cold at that time that the family could not go out to the burial.
Later, after I was married, myself and husband came down to what is now the central part of town for the purpose of buying a lot for building a home, and we selected the lot where I now live, at the corner of Walnut and Broad streets. We purchased the same for $487. We could have had any lot above this one for $200, but selected this for the reason that it was high. The country around us was all timber and we had no sidewalks or streets laid out at that time.
At the time of the Indian outbreak I lived on what is now Washington street, directly across from where the German Lutheran school now stands. The Indians started their outbreaks during the Civil war. They started their massacres in this neighborhood in July and August of 1862. I can distinctly remember seeing, while standing in the doorway of my home, a band of Indians coming over the hill. This was Little Priest and his band of Winnebagoes. These Winnebagoes professed to be friendly to the white people and hostile to the Sioux. They claimed that a Sioux had married a Winnebago maiden, and for that reason they were enemies to the Sioux. To prove that they were their enemies they stalked the Sioux who had married a maid of one of their tribes and murdered him, bringing back to show us his tongue, heart, and scalp, and also dipped their hands in the Sioux's life blood and painted their naked bodies with it.
Mrs. Mary Pitcher—1853.
The old Nominee with a cabin full of passengers and decks and hold loaded with freight bound for St. Paul was the first boat to get through Lake Pepin in the spring of 1853. The journey from Dubuque up was full of interest, but although on either side of the Mississippi the Indians were the chief inhabitants, nothing of exciting nature occurred until Pigseye Bar on which was Kaposia, the village of the never-to-be-forgotten Little Crow was reached. Then as the engines were slowed down to make the landing a sight met our gaze that startled even the captain. The whole village of several hundred Indians was in sight and a most frightful sight it was. Everyone young and old was running about crying, wailing, with faces painted black and white. They did not seem even to see the big steamer. It was such an appalling spectacle that the captain deemed it best not to land, but there were two men on board, residents of St. Paul returning from St. Louis who got into a boat and went ashore.
They learned that there had been a fight in St. Paul the day before between this band of Sioux and a party of Chippewas in which one of the Sioux was killed and several wounded. It was not a very pleasant thing to contemplate, for these people on board the boat were going to St. Paul with their families to make homes in this far away west.
There were also on board some Sisters of Charity from St. Louis, one of them Sister Victorine, a sister of Mrs. Louis Robert. They all fell on their knees and prayed and wept and they were not the only ones who wept either. There were many white faces and no one seemed at ease.
I remember my mother saying to my father, "Oh Thomas, why did we bring these children into this wild place where there can be an Indian fight in the biggest town and only ten miles from a fort at that."
The excitement had not subsided when St. Paul was reached, but the first man that came on board as the boat touched the landing was my mother's brother, Mr. W. W. Paddock. The sight of him seemed to drive away some of the fear, as he was smiling and made light of the incident of the day before. He took us up to the Old Merchants' Hotel, then a large rambling log house and as soon as we had deposited some of our luggage, he said, "Well, we will go out and see the battlefield." It was in the back yard of our hotel, an immense yard of a whole block, filled with huge logs drawn there through the winter for the year's fuel.
The morning of the fight, a party of Chippewas coming into St. Paul from the bluffs saw the Sioux in canoes rounding the bend below and knowing they would come up Third Street from their landing place, just below Forbes' Store and exactly opposite the hotel, the Chippewas made haste to hide behind the logs, and wait the coming of the Sioux.
The landlady, Mrs. Kate Wells, was standing on one of the logs, hanging up some clothes on a line. Frightened almost to death at the sight of the Indians running into the yard and hiding behind the logs, she jumped down and started to run into the house. Instantly she was made to understand she could not go inside. The Indians pointed their guns at her, and motioned her to get down behind the logs out of sight, which she did and none too soon, as just then the Sioux came in sight and were met by a most deadly fusilade that killed Old Peg Leg Jim and wounded many others. Some of the Sioux took refuge in Forbes store and opened fire on any Chippewa who left his hiding place. Pretty soon the inhabitants began to come into hailing distance and the Chippewas concluded to beat a hasty retreat but not before they had taken Old Jim's scalp. When the Sioux ran into Forbes store, the clerk, thinking his time had come, raised a window and taking hold of the sill, let himself drop down to the river's edge, a distance of over fifty feet.
Between the Sioux and Chippewas ran a feud further back than the white man knew of and no opportunity was ever lost to take the scalp of a fallen foe.
The Indians mourn for the dead but doubly so if they have lost their scalps, as scalpless Sioux cannot enter the Happy Hunting Grounds.
One of the things about this same trip of the old Nominee was the fact that almost every citizen of St. Paul came down to see this welcome messenger of spring.
Provisions had become very scarce and barrels of eggs and boxes of crackers and barrels of hams, in fact almost everything eatable was rolled out on the land and sold at once. It didn't take long to empty a barrel of eggs or a box of crackers and everyone went home laden.
Mrs. J. R. Beatty—1853.
I landed in Mankato on my twelfth birthday, May 26, 1853. We came from Ohio. My father, George Maxfield and his family and my uncle, James Hanna and family and friend, Basil Moreland, from Quincy, Ill. We took the Ohio River steam boat at Cincinnati. Somewhere along the river we bought a cow. This cow started very much against her better judgment and after several days on the boat decided she wouldn't go west after all and in some way jumped off the boat and made for the shore. We did not discover her retreat until she had reached the high bank along the river and amid great excitement the boat was turned around and everybody landed to capture the cow. She was rebellious all along the way, especially when we had to transfer to a Mississippi boat at St. Louis, and when we transferred to a boat on the Minnesota river at St. Paul, but she was well worth all the trouble for she was the only cow in the settlement that first summer. She went dry during the winter and not a drop of milk could be had for love or money in the town.
The want of salt bothered the pioneers more than anything else. Game abounded. Buffalo herds sometimes came near and deer often came through the settlement on the way to the river to drink. The streams were full of fish, but we could not enjoy any of these things without salt. However, our family did not suffer as much inconvenience as some others did. One family we knew had nothing to eat but potatoes and maple syrup. They poured the syrup over the potatoes and managed to get through the winter. Sometimes flour would be as high as $24 a barrel. During the summer when the water was low and in the winter when the river was frozen and the boats could not come down from St. Paul, the storekeepers could charge any price they could get.
Our family had a year's supply of groceries that father had bought at St. Louis on the way up. We had plenty of bedding and about sixty yards of ingrain carpet that was used as a partition in our house for a long time. There was very little to be bought in St. Paul at that time. Father bought the only set of dishes to be had in St. Paul and the only clock.
There were only a few houses in Mankato and the only thing we could find to live in was the frame of a warehouse that Minard Mills had just begun to build on the south end of the levee, where Otto's grocery store now stands. My uncle purchased the building and we put a roof on and moved in. We were a family of twenty-one and I remember to this day the awful stack of dishes we had to wash after each meal. A frame addition was put along side of the building and in July my cousin, Sarah J. Hanna (later Mrs. John Q. A. Marsh) started a day school with twenty-four scholars. It was the first school ever held in Mankato.
In 1855, a tract of land twenty four miles long and twelve miles wide was withdrawn from civilization and given as a reservation to two thousand Winnebago Indians who took possession in June of that year against the vigorous protest of the people. Everyone in the town was down to see them come in. The river was full of their canoes for two or three days. As soon as they landed, the Indians began the erection of a rude shelter on the levee of poles and bark, perhaps twenty feet long and twelve feet wide. The squaws were all busy cooking some kind of meat and a cake something like a pancake. We soon discovered that they were preparing a feast for the Sioux who had come down in large numbers from Fort Ridgely which was near New Ulm to meet them. After the shelter was finished the feast began. Blankets were spread on the ground and rows of wooden bowls were placed before the Indians, one bowl to about three Indians. The cakes were broken up and placed near the bowls. After the feast was over, the peace-pipe was passed and the speaking began. The first speaker was a Sioux chief, evidently delivering an address of welcome. He was followed by several others all very dignified and impressive.
We had heard that the Sioux would give a return feast on the next day and when we got tired of watching the speakers, we went down to the Sioux wigwams to see what was going on there and found an old Indian squatting before the fire. Dog meat seemed to be the main article of food. Evidently it was to be a ceremonial feast for he had a large supply of dog beside him on the ground and was holding one over the fire to singe the hair off. When we came near, he deftly cut off an ear and offered it to me with a very fierce look. When I refused it, he laughed very heartily at his little joke.
The Winnebagoes were sent to the agency four miles from town soon after. The agency buildings were where St. Clair is now located.
One day at noon the school children heard that the Indians were having a squaw dance across the river. It was in the spring, just as the snow was beginning to melt. We found about twenty-five squaws dancing around in a circle and making a fearful noise in their high squealing voices. They danced in the same way that the Indians did, and I had never seen any other form of dancing among them. They were wearing moccasins and were tramping around in the water. The Indians were sitting on logs watching them. One was pounding on a tom-tom.
One day when we were eating dinner, about twenty-five Indians came to the house and looked in the window. They always did that and then would walk in without knocking. They squatted down on the floor until dinner was over and then motioned for the table to be pushed back to the wall. Then they began to dance the begging dance. In their dances they pushed their feet, held close together over the floor and came down very heavily on their heels. There were so many of them that the house fairly rocked. Each Indian keeps up a hideous noise and that with the beating of the tom-tom makes a din hard to describe. The tom-tom is a dried skin drawn tightly over a hoop and they beat on this with a stick. After they were through dancing they asked for a pail of sweetened water and some bread which they passed around and ate. This bread and sweetened water was all they asked for. It is a part of the ceremony, although they would take anything they could get.
The Sioux were the hereditary foes of the Chippewas who lived near the head waters of the Mississippi and during this summer about three hundred Sioux on their way to Fort Ridgely where they were to receive their annuity, pitched their wigwams near our house. They had been on the war path and had taken a lot of Chippewa scalps and around these bloody trophies they held a savage scalp dance. We children were not allowed to go near as the howling, hooting and yelling frightened everybody. It continued for three nights and the whole settlement was relieved when they went away.
Mrs. A. M. Pfeffer—1858.
My father, Miner Porter had been closely connected with the early history of Fox Lake, Wis. He had conducted the leading hotel and store for years, was Postmaster, and did much by his enterprise and liberality for the town. He went to bed a wealthy man and awoke one morning to find everything but a small stock of merchandise swept away by the State Bank failures of that state. Selling that, he came to Mankato in 1857 and pre-empted a tract of land near Minneopa Falls, now our State Park. It was one half mile from South Bend, located on the big bend of the Minnesota River.
The following year, 1858 father started to build on our claim. There were sawmills in our vicinity where black walnut and butternut for the inside finishing could be bought, but the pine that was needed for the other part of the building had to be hauled from St. Paul by team. It took all summer to get the lumber down.
After our house was finished it came to be the stopping place for lodging and breakfast for settlers traveling over the territorial road towards Winnebago and Blue Earth City.
Pigeon Hill, a mile beyond our house was used as a camping ground for the Sioux all of that winter. We could see the smoke from their campfires curling up over the hill, although they were supposed to stay on their reservation at Fort Ridgely they were constantly coming and going and they and the Winnebagoes roved at will over the entire country.
One night mother was awakened by an unusual noise. She called father, who got up and opened the bedroom door. The sight that met their eyes was enough to strike terror to the heart of any settler of those days. The room was packed with Indians—Winnebagoes—men, women and children, but they were more frightened than we were. They had had some encounter with the Sioux and had fled in terror to our house. After much persuasion, father induced them to leave the house and go down to a small pond where the timber was very heavy and they remained in hiding for two days. We were in constant terror of the Sioux. All the settlers knew they were a blood thirsty lot and often an alarm would be sent around that the Sioux were surrounding the settlement. Mother would take us children and hurry to the old stone mill at South Bend, where we would spend the night.
They became more and more troublesome until father thought it unsafe to remain any longer and took us back to our old home in Wisconsin.
Mr. I. A. Pelton—1858.
I came into the State of Minnesota in April, 1858 and to Mankato May 1, 1858 from the State of New York, where I was born and raised. This was a pretty poverty stricken country then. The panic they had in November 1857 had struck this country a very hard blow. It stopped immigration. Previous to this panic they had good times and had gone into debt heavily, expecting to have good times right along. Everyone was badly in debt and money was hard to get. Currency consisted of old guns, town lots, basswood lumber, etc. These things were traded for goods and groceries. Money was loaned at three to five per cent per month, or thirty-six to sixty per cent per year. I knew of people who paid sixty per cent a year for a short time. Three per cent a month was a common interest. I hired money at that myself.
The farmers had not developed their farms much at that time. A farmer who had twenty to twenty-five acres under plow was considered a big farmer in those days. The summer of 1858 was a very disastrous, unprofitable one. It commenced very wet and kept raining during the summer until North Mankato was all under water and the river in places was a mile wide. The river was the highest about the first of August. The grain at the time of this heavy rain was ripening causing it to blight, ruining the crop. Wheat at this time was worth from $2 to $3 per bushel. A great many of the farmers did not cut their grain because there was nothing in it for them. The man where I boarded cut his grain but he had little or nothing, and that which he did get was soft and smutty. He took the same to be ground into flour and the bread the flour made was almost black, as they did not at that time have mills to take out the smut.
The people in the best condition financially were mighty glad if they had Johnny cake, pork and potatoes and milk and when they had these they thought they were on the "top shelf."
At this time too, they had to watch their fields with guns, or protect them with scarecrows and have the children watch them to keep them clear from the blackbirds, which were an awful pest. There were millions of these birds and there was not a time of day when they were not hovering over the fields. These birds would alight in the corn fields, tear the husks from the corn and absolutely ruin the ears of corn; also feed on the oats and wheat when it was not quite ripe and in a milky condition.
During the winter they would go south, but come back in the spring when they would be considerable bother again, by alighting on fields that had just been sown and taking the seed from the ground. Farmers finally threw poisoned grain in the fields. This was made by soaking wheat and oats in a solution of strychnine. It was ten years before these birds were exterminated enough to make farming a profitable occupation.
Farming was more successful after that, for the reason that these birds did not need watching. During the summer of 1858 and all during the summer of 1859 the river was navigable. St. Paul boats came up often and sometimes a Mississippi boat from St. Louis. We had no railroads in the state at that time.
During the year of 1859 State Banks were put into the state but these did not last long. I know at that time my brother sent out $150 that I had borrowed of Harry Lamberton. He sent this money by a man named David Lyon from New York. He came to where I was boarding and left State Bank money. The people where I was staying gave me the money that night when I came home and told me about what it was for. I started for St. Peter the next day to pay the debt and during the time the money was left and when I arrived at St. Peter it had depreciated in value ten per cent and it kept on going down until it was entirely valueless. Money was very scarce at that time and times were hard. We had some gold and a little silver.
In the year of 1859 we had the latest spring I ever experienced. We did not do any farming of any kind until the first week in May and this made it very late for small grain. We had a short season, but the wheat was very good. We had an early frost that year about the third of September and it killed everything. I saw killdeers frozen to death the third day of that month. Corn was not ripe yet and was ruined. It would have been quite a crop. It was dried up afterwards and shrunk, but was not good. Oats and wheat however were good and it made better times.
The country was gradually developing. In the spring of 1860 we had an early spring. The bees flew and made honey the seventeenth of March. We commenced plowing on the sixteenth of March. I brought down potatoes that spring and put them in an open shed and they did not freeze. This summer was a very productive one. Wheat went as high as forty bushels to the acre, No. 1. All crops were good.
The fall of 1860 was the time they held presidential election and Lincoln was elected that fall. We had very many speakers here at Mankato and excitement ran high. General Baker, Governor Ramsey, Wm. Windom, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury and other prominent men spoke.
After the war commenced and the volunteers were called out, most of the able bodied men joined the army. These men sent their pay home and afterward business began to get better and conditions improved. Early in August of 1862 Lincoln called for five hundred thousand men and those men in this immediate vicinity who had not already joined, went to war, leaving only those not able to join to protect their homes and property.
Mr. John A. Jones.
We were among the very earliest settlers in the vicinity of Mankato and came from Wisconsin. I had come in April and pre-empted a claim at the top of what is known as Pigeon Hill. Two other families came with us.
Traveling across country, we and our teams and live stock made quite a procession. We had five yoke of oxen, several span of horses, and about forty head of cattle, among them a number of milch cows. The wagons, in which we rode and in which we carried our household goods were the real "prairie schooner" of early days. We found our way by compass and made our own road west, traveling over the soft earth in which deep ruts were made by our wheels. The following teams were compelled to proceed with care in order not to get stalled in the ruts made by the first wagons.
We made the trip in four weeks, fording all rivers and streams on the way. At La Crosse we hired both ferries and took all day to cross. During the difficult journey we averaged about twenty-two miles, some of us walking all the time driving the large drove of cattle. No Indian villages were passed although we met a number of friendly redskins. At night we slept in the wagons and cooked our meals as all emigrants did. We brought a large store of provisions and on Saturdays would set a small stove up in the open and do our weekly bread baking. We passed through eighteen miles of heavy timber beyond what is now Kasota, coming out from the forest about three miles this side onto a very nice road.
We finally arrived at the homestead. We set our stove up in the yard by a tree and lived in the shanty until our new log house was completed. The shanty was covered with seven loads of hay to make it warm inside and a quilt was hung over the door. Here we lived for two months, suffering at times from rain penetrating. At one time a heavy cloud burst nearly drowned us out.
The first winter in our new home was a severe one. For three weeks the cold was very intense, and what was known as three "dog moons" at night and three "dog suns" during the day heralded the cold weather, the moon and sun being circled with these halos for the entire three weeks. h4Provisions began to run low. The prices were very high and Mr. Jones went to St. Paul to lay in a stock of provisions. Among other things he brought home sixty barrels of flour and eight barrels of salt. The superfine flour was $16 a barrel and the second grade $13. The provisions were brought by boat to Kasota, where they were stranded in the sand and were brought the rest of the way by team. There was also a barrel of sugar and one of apples. Sugar in those days sold at the rate of six pounds for $1.00.
The families used this flour until they raised their own wheat and after that they used graham flour. The Jones' planted five acres to wheat the following spring.
Mrs. Clark Keysor.
After my husband had enlisted and went to Fort Snelling, I was quite timid about staying alone and got a neighbor girl to stay with me. The third night I thought I might as well stay alone. That night a rap came at the door. A neighbor was there and wanted to know if Mr. Keysor had a gun. He said the Indians had broken out and they wanted to get all the guns they could. Of course we were paralyzed with fear. From that on the trouble began.
As soon as the rumor reached Fort Snelling my husband's company was sent back. On the day they arrived I got a good dinner for them. I knew they would be tired and when he arrived he looked worn and haggard, having marched all the way from Fort Snelling to Mankato. We could not eat much dinner, we were so excited. He left right away for the frontier. The last thing he told me before he went away was, "Fight 'til you die, never be taken prisoner."
The bluest day of all was one Sunday. Everyone who could get away was packing up. Women and children were walking the streets and crying. They expected the Sioux to start from Fort Ridgely to kill all the whites, but when they got to Birch Coolie where the Winnebagoes were to join them, the Indians found a barrel of whiskey there. They became intoxicated and had a big fight, so they did not come to Mankato. That was one time when whiskey served a good purpose.
One night not very long after the Indians broke out, there were four of our neighbors' families came into our house, as they felt safer together. There were twelve children in the house. About midnight we heard the town bell begin to ring and one of the women got up and went to the door to see what the trouble was. When she opened the door, she saw a fire, which was Seward's Mill, but she cried out, "The Indians have come, the town is all on fire." The children began screaming and we were all nearly frightened to death but it proved it wasn't Indians at all. Someone had set the mill on fire.
A few of the men who were left thought that we had better pack a few of our best things and go to Leeche's old stone building for protection. What few men there were could protect us better there than at different homes. This old building was three stories high. Some women were sick, some screaming. It was a scene of trouble and distress. It was the worst bedlam I ever got into.
Mr. Hoatling was then our best friend and helped me get my things over to this store building. We stayed one night. The cries of women in pain and fright were unbearable, so the next day I went back home thinking I would risk my chances there.
Judge Lorin Cray—1859.
While at St. Peter and in the early part of December, 1862 a few of us learned, by grapevine telegraph, late one afternoon, that an effort was to be made the following evening, by the citizens of Mankato, New Ulm and vicinity, to kill the Indian prisoners, three hundred and more then in camp at Mankato near the present site of Sibley Park. As no admission fee was to be charged the select few determined to be present at the entertainment. The headquarters of the blood-thirsty citizens was the old Mankato House located where the National Citizens Bank now stands, where liquid refreshments were being served liberally, without money and without price.
I have never seen a correct history of this fiasco in print. A very large crowd congregated there, and there seemed to be no great haste to march on the Indian camp. Several times starts were made by a squad of fifty or one hundred persons, who would proceed for a few hundred feet, and then halt and return for more refreshments.
Finally at nearly midnight the supply of refreshments must have been exhausted for the army moved. Several hundred citizens started south along Front Street for the Indian camp, straggling for a distance of several blocks. When the head of the column reached West Mankato it halted until the rear came up, and while a rambling discussion was going on as to what they should do and how they should do it, Capt. (since governor) Austin with his company of cavalry, surrounded the whole squad and ordered them to move on towards Colonel (since governor) Miller's headquarters, right at the Indian camp. They seemed reluctant to go, and refused to move. Capt. Austin ordered his men to close in, which they did—crowding the citizens and yet they refused to move. Finally Capt. Austin gave the command to "draw sabers" and when a hundred sabers came out in one movement, the army again moved on Colonel Miller's headquarters at the Indian camp.
The scene here was supremely ridiculous. Colonel Miller came out from his tent and spoke kindly to the citizens and asked why they were congregated in such large numbers. He finally ordered their release and suggested that they go home which they hastened to do.
The next morning these Indians were removed, under guard of all the troops in the city, to log barracks, which had been built for them on Front Street diagonally across the street from where the Saulpaugh now stands. The Indians remained in these barracks only about two weeks. They had been there but a short time when the officer of the day, making his morning inspection, which was very formal, thought that he saw a hatchet or knife under the blanket of one of the Indians. Without a change of countenance or a suspicious movement he proceeded with the inspection until it was completed, and retired from the barracks, and at once caused to be mustered around the barracks every soldier in the city with loaded guns and fixed bayonets. Then with a squad of soldiers he entered the barracks and searching every Indian, he secured a large number of hatchets, knives, clubs and other weapons. These weapons, it was learned had been gotten at the Winnebago agency about twelve miles away by several squaws, who prepared food for these Indians and who were allowed to go to the woods to gather wood for their fires. Immediately after this discovery the Indians who were under sentence of death were removed to a stone building near by where they were kept under heavy guard. A few days after this incident, Dec. 26, 1862, my company came from St. Peter to act as guard on one side of the scaffold at the execution of the thirty-eight Indians who were then hanged on what is now the southerly end of the grounds of the Chicago and Northwestern freight depot, in Mankato. A granite monument now marks the place.
Captain Clark Keysor.
I served as first Lieutenant, Co. E, 9th Minnesota of the frontier extending from Fort Ridgely through the settlement at Hutchinson, Long Lake and Pipe Lake. At the latter place we built a sod fort and I was in charge. Mounted couriers, usually three in number, traveling together, reported daily at these forts. I was stationed along the frontier for more than a year and we had many encounters with the Indians, and I soon learned that a white man with the best rifle to be bought in those days had a poor chance for his life when he had to contend with an Indian with a double barrel shot gun.
The Indian, with one lightning like movement throws a hand full of mixed powder and shot into his gun, loading both barrels at once and takes a shot at his enemy before the white man can turn around, and when the Indian is running to escape, he jumps first to this side and then to that, never in a straight line, and it is an expert marksman, indeed, who can hit him.
I worked on the Winnebago agency as carpenter and millwright and learned to know the habits of the Indians very well. I learned to follow a trail and later during the Indian trouble that knowledge came in very handy.
It is very easy for a white man to fall into the habits of the Indian, but almost impossible to raise the Indian to the standard of the white man. The head chief of the Winnebagoes was well known to me, and we became fast friends. He was a friendly man to all the settlers, but I knew the characteristics of the Indian well enough to trust none of them. He never overcomes the cunning and trickery in his nature and I learned to know that when he seemed most amiable and ingratiating was the time to look out for some deviltry. The Indians were great gamblers, the squaws especially. They would gamble away everything they owned, stopping only at the short cotton skirt they wore.
"Crazy Jane" was an educated squaw and could talk as good English as any of us. She was very peculiar and one of the funny things she did was to ride her Indian pony, muffled up in a heavy wool blanket carrying a parasol over her head. She had the habit of dropping in to visit the wives of the settlers and would frequently; on these visits, wash her stockings and put them on again without drying. One day when we were living at the agency I came home and found my wife in a great fright. Our little three year old girl was missing. She had looked everywhere but could not find her. I ran to the agency buildings nearby, but no one had seen her. They were digging a deep well near our house and I had not dared to look there before, but now I must and after peering down into the depths of the muddy water and not finding her, I looked up and saw Crazy Jane coming towards me with a strange looking papoose on her back. When she came nearer I found it was my child. I snatched the little girl away from her. She said she was passing by and saw the child playing outside the door and had carried her away on her back to her tepee, where she had kept her for several hours but had meant no harm.
We were ordered to New Ulm after the outbreak. We found the place deserted. The doors had been left unlocked and everyone had fled for their lives. The desk and stamps from the postoffice were in the street and all the stores were open. I put out scouting parties from there and we stood guard all night. After two or three days a few came back to claim their property. They had to prove their claim before I would allow them to take charge again. Uncle "Tommy" Ireland came to us a few days after we arrived there. He was the most distressed looking man I ever saw in my life. He had been hiding in the swamps for seven days and nights. He had lain in water in the deep grass. When we examined him, we found seventeen bullet holes where he had been shot by the Indians. He told me about falling in with Mrs. Eastlake and her three children.
They had all come from Lake Shetek. The settlement there comprised about forty-five people. They had been attacked by the Indians under Lean Bear and eight of his band, and the bands of White Lodge and Sleepy Eye, although Sleepy Eye himself died before the massacre.
Many of the settlers knew the Indians quite well and had treated them with great kindness. Mr. Ireland and his family were with the rest of the settlers when they were overtaken by the Indians. Mrs. Ireland, Mr. Eastlake and two of his children, were among the killed. Mrs. Eastlake was severely wounded, and wandered for three days and nights on the prairie searching for her two children, hoping they might have escaped from the slough where the others met their death. Finally on the way to New Ulm she overtook her old neighbor, Mr. Ireland, whom she supposed killed, as she had last seen him in the slough pierced with bullets, but he had revived and managed to crawl thus far, though in a sorry plight. From him she received the first tidings from her two missing children. Later on when she found her children, they were so worn by their suffering she could hardly recognize them. The eldest boy, eleven years old had carried his little brother, fifteen months old on his back for fifty miles. All the baby had to eat was a little piece of cheese which the older boy happened to have in his pocket. When within thirty miles from New Ulm they found the deserted cabin of J. F. Brown in Brown County, where Mrs. Eastlake and children, a Mrs. Hurd and her two children, and Mr. Ireland lived for two weeks on raw corn, the only food they could find. They dared not make a fire for fear the Indians would see the smoke. Mr. Ireland had been so badly injured that he had not been able to leave the cabin to get help, but finally was forced by the extreme need of the women and children to start for New Ulm. He fell in with a priest on the way, and together they came to our headquarters and told their story. We started at four o'clock next morning, with a company of soldiers and a wagon with a bed for the injured women. When we reached the cabin the women were terribly frightened and thought it was the Indians after them again. On our return to New Ulm we took a different turn in the road. It was just as near and much safer. One of our men, Joe Gilfillan had not had his horse saddled when the rest started and when he came to the fork in the road, he took the one he had come by and was killed by the Indians. Undoubtedly we would have met the same fate had we taken that road as the Indians were on our trail and were in ambush waiting for our return. However, we got safely back to New Ulm and later Mrs. Eastlake and her children and Mr. Ireland came to Mankato where they were cared for with the other refugees. The sufferings and hardships endured by the older Eastlake boy soon carried him to an untimely grave.