The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier

by Charles E. Flandrau

The winter of 1856, in Minnesota, was characterized by the usual amount of cold weather, snow and storms, and people operating on the frontier were compelled to exercise great care and caution to prevent disasters. All old timers who have had occasion to live beyond the settlements and travel long distances in an open prairie country well know that the danger of being overtaken by storms is one of the most terrible that one can be exposed to. Most of the casualties, however, that result from being caught in these storms may be attributed to want of experience, and consequent lack of preparation to meet and contend with them. I have employed many men of all nationalities in teaming long distances on the prairie frontier in the winter season, and while the American is always reliable and dexterous in emergencies, I have found the French Canadian always the best equipped for winter prairie work, in his knowledge in this line that can only be gained by experience. His ancestors served the early fur companies from Montreal to McKenzie's river, from Hudson's bay to the Pacific, and knew how to take care of themselves with the unerring instinct of the cariboo and the moose, and the generation of them that I came in contact with had inherited all these characteristics.

I have known a brigade of teams, manned by Germans, Englishmen and Irishmen (the Scandinavians had then just begun to make their appearance in the Northwest) to be caught in a winter storm, and result in the amputation of fingers, toes, feet and hands from freezing, but I cannot remember ever losing a Canadian Frenchman. I recall one instance, where a train was overtaken by a severe storm just about evening, where no timber was in sight. The men built barricades with their sleds and loads, and took refuge to the leeward of them, where they passed quite a comfortable night for themselves and their teams. With the coming of the morning light they discovered a timber island not very far off, and started for it with their horses, to make fires, feed the teams, and get breakfast. The storm had abated, and the sun shone brilliantly. One young American lad shouldered a sack of oats, and not realizing that it was very cold, did not put on his mittens, but seized the neck of the sack with his bare hand. When he arrived at the timber all his fingers were frozen, and had to be amputated. It was merely one of the cases of serious injury I have known arising from ignorance.

No one who has not encountered a blizzard on the open prairie can form an adequate idea of the almost hopelessness of the situation. The air becomes filled with driving, whirling snow to such an extent that it is with difficulty you can see your horses, and the effect is the same as absolute darkness in destroying all conception of direction. You may think you are going straight forward when in fact you are moving in a small circle; the only safety is to stop and battle it out.

I remember a case which happened in this region before it became Minnesota which fully proves the dangers of a blizzard to a traveler on the open prairie. Martin McLeod and Pierre Bottineau, together with an Englishman and a Pole, started from Fort Garry for the headwaters of the Minnesota river. They were well equipped in all respects, having a good dog train, and, in Bottineau, one of the most experienced guides in the Northwest. While the party was in sight of timber it was suddenly enveloped in a blizzard, and, of course, wanted to reach the timber for safety. Here a controversy arose as to the direction to be taken to find it, the Englishman and the Pole insisting on one line, and McLeod and Bottineau on another. They separated. McLeod took the dogs, and he and they soon fell over a precipice and were covered up in a deep snow drift, where they remained quite comfortably through the night. Bottineau through his instincts reached the timber, and was safe, where he was joined the next morning by McLeod. The Englishman was afterwards discovered so badly frozen that he died, while the Pole was lost. The only trace of him that was ever discovered was his pistols, which were found on the prairie the next spring, the wolves having undoubtedly disposed of his remains.

The remedy for these dangers is to avoid them by a close scrutiny of the weather, and by never venturing on a big prairie if you can by any means avoid it, and always being abundantly supplied with food for yourself and animals, whether horses or dogs, besides fuel, matches, blankets, robes, and all the paraphernalia of a snow camp, should you have to make one. No people are more careful in these particulars than the Indians themselves, from whom the French voyageurs undoubtedly learned their lessons.

To give an idea of how treacherous the weather may be, and of what dangers frontier people are subjected to, I will relate an adventure in which I participated when living in the Indian country, which, however, turned out pleasantly. I had been at my Redwood agency for several days, and it became important that I should visit my upper agency, situated on the Yellow Medicine river, about thirty miles distant, up the Minnesota river. After crossing the Redwood river, the road led over a thirty-mile prairie, without a shrub on it as big as a walking stick. The day was bright and beautiful, and the ride promised to be a pleasant one, so I invited my surgeon, Dr. Daniels, and his wife to accompany me. They gladly accepted, and Mrs. Daniels took her baby along. (By the way, this baby is now the elder sister of the wife of one of our most distinguished attorneys, Mr. John V. I. Dodd.) Mr. Andrew Myrick, a trader at the agency, learning that we were going, decided to accompany us, and got up his team for the purpose, taking some young friends with him, and off we went.

I had early taken the precaution to construct a sleigh especially adapted to winter travel in this exposed region. It had recesses where were stowed away provisions, fuel, tools, and many things to meet possible emergencies. The cushions were made of twelve pairs of four-point Mackinaw blankets, and the side rails were capable of carrying two carcasses of venison or mutton, so I felt quite capable of conquering a blizzard.

I may say here that I had a surgeon at each agency, who were brothers, Dr. Asa W. Daniels at the lower agency and Dr. Jared Daniels at the upper, and this excursion presented a pleasant opportunity for the families to meet. The upper agency was in charge of my chief farmer, a Scotch gentleman by the name of Robertson. He was a mystery which I never unravelled,—a handsome, aristocratic, highly educated man about seventy years of age, with the manners of a Chesterfield. He had been in the Indian country for many years, had married a squaw, and raised a numerous family of children, and had been in the employment of the government ever since the making of the treaties. I always thought he once was a man of fortune, who had dissipated it in some way, after travelling the world over, and had sought oblivion in the wilds of America.

There was a large comfortable log house at the Yellow Medicine agency, occupied by Robertson, which answered for all his purposes, both business and domestic, and furnished a home and office for me when I happened to be there; and on one occasion, during the Ink-pa-du-ta excitement, I found it made a very efficient fort for defense against the Indians.

Our trip was uneventful, and we arrived in the evening. That night a blizzard sprang up that exceeded in severity anything of the kind in my experience, and I have had nearly half a century of Minnesota winters. It raged and rampaged. It piled the snow on the prairie in drifts of ten and twenty feet in height. It filled the river bottoms to the height of about three feet on the level. It lasted about ten days, during which time, we of course, did not dream of getting out, but amused ourselves as best we could. It was what the French called a poudre de riz, where there is more snow in the air than on the ground. Although I have been entertained in many parts of the world, and by many various kinds of people, I can say that I never enjoyed a few weeks more satisfactorily than those we spent under compulsion at the Yellow Medicine river on that occasion.