The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier

by Charles E. Flandrau

The St. Paul gentlemen who had been approached by Captain Dodd engaged me to go up the valley of the Minnesota river, and follow out all its tributaries, with the idea of reporting upon its general characteristics and prospects, with reference to the founding of a city at Rock Bend. I was delighted to do anything, or go anywhere, that promised work or adventure. It was to me what the Klondike has been to thousands recently. They furnished me with a good team, and away I went. It was in the winter, but I succeeded in reaching Traverse des Sioux, where I found a collection of Indian trading houses, where flourished Louis Roberts, Major Forbes, Nathan Myrick, Madison Sweetzer and others, who drove a trade with the Sioux. There was also at this point a missionary station, with a schoolhouse, a church, and a substantial dwelling house, occupied by the Rev. Moses N. Adams, who had been a missionary among the Sioux, having been transferred from the station at Lac qui Parle, where he had lived for many years, to this point. But the best find that I made was a young Scotchman by the name of Stuart B. Garvie, who had a shanty on the prairie about midway between Traverse des Sioux and my objective point, Rock Bend. I think that Garvie went up there from St. Anthony, under some kind of a promise from Judge Chatfield, that if ever the courts were organized in that region he would be made clerk. Garvie was delighted to discover me, and I being in search of information, we soon fraternized, and he agreed to go with me on my tour of exploration. We went up the Blue Earth, the Le Sueur, the Watonwan, and, in fact, visited all the country that was necessary to convince me that it was, by and large, a splendid agricultural region, and I decided so to report to my principals.

When I was about to leave for down the river, Garvie insisted that I should return and take up my abode at Traverse des Sioux. The proposition seemed too absurd to me to be seriously entertained, and I said: "I am destitute of funds, and how can a lawyer subsist where there are no people? How can I get a living?" This dilemma, which seemed to me to be insuperable, was easily answered by my new found friend. "Why," he said, "That is the easiest part of it. We can hunt a living, and I have a shack and a bed." The proposition was catching, having a spice of adventure in it, and I promised to consider it.

After making my report, in which I recommended Rock Bend as a promising place for a great city, I told the parties who proposed to purchase Captain Dodd's claim that I would confirm my faith in the success of the enterprise by returning and living at the point. I did so, and found myself farther west than any lawyer in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, unless he was in the panhandle of Texas. And now comes the singular way in which I made my first fee, if I may call it by that name. It was my first financial raise, no matter what you call it.

Garvie and I had gotten quietly settled in our shanty on the prairie, when one excessively cold night an Indian boy, about thirteen years of age, saw our light, and came to the door, giving us to understand that his people were encamped about four or five miles up the river, and that he was afraid to go any further lest he should freeze to death. He was mounted on a pony, had a pack of furs with him, and asked us to take him in for the night. We of course did so, and made him as comfortable as we could by giving him a buffalo robe on the floor. But we had no shelter for his pony, and all we could do was to hitch him on the lee side of the shanty, and strap a blanket on him. When morning came he was frozen to death. We got the poor little boy safely off on the way to his people's camp, and decided to utilize the carcass of the pony for a wolf bait.

In order to present an intelligent idea of the situation, I will say that the river made an immense detour in front of the future town, having a large extent of bottom land, covered with a dense chaparral, which was the home of thousands of wolves, and as soon as night came they would start out in droves in search of prey.

We hauled the dead pony out to the back of the shanty, and left it about two rods distant from the window. The moment night set in the wolves in packs would attack the carcass. At first we would step outside and fire into them with buck shot from double-barrelled shotguns, but we found they were so wary that the mere movement of opening the door to get out would frighten them, and we had very limited success for the first few nights. Another difficulty we encountered was shooting in the dark. If you have never tried it, and ever do, you will find it exceedingly difficult to get any kind of an aim, and you have to fire promiscuously at the sound rather than the object.

We remedied this trouble, however, by taking out a light of glass from the back window, and building a rest that bore directly on the carcass, so that we could poke our guns through the opening, settle them on the rest, and blaze away into the gloom. We brought our bed up to the window, so that we could shoot without getting out of it, while snugly wrapped up in our blankets. After this our luck improved, and after each discharge we would rush out, armed with a tomahawk, dispatch the wounded wolves, and collect the dead ones, until we had slaughtered forty-two of them. We skinned them, and sold the pelts to the traders for seventy-five cents a piece, which money was the first of our earnings.

It was not long before we ceased to depend on wolf hunting for a living, as immigration soon poured in, and money became plenty. I remember soon after of having seventeen hundred dollars in gold buried in an oyster can under the shanty.

I lived on this prairie for eleven years, and never was happier at any period of my life, and feel assured that I can safely say that no other man ever enjoyed the luxury of hunting wolves in bed.