Some Pioneers and Pilgrims on the Prairies of Dakota / Or, From the Ox Team to the Aeroplane

by John B. Reese; H. B. Reese

We have turned aside from our main narrative for a look at the country as it appeared to our band of pilgrims as they looked about them on that first morning of their arrival in the Turkey Creek Valley. And the view was not all that they had hoped for. What could these men—farmers and men of trades—do in this howling wilderness of grass, grass and nothing but grass? Yes, there was something else—mosquitoes—and oh, how they stung! Also flies, and how incessantly and mercilessly they attacked the fair soft skin of these pilgrims from the Norseland! Finally, there was the heat, which literally took the fair skin off their faces in flakes and put on a tan which made them almost unrecognizable.

Moreover, what could these shoemakers, masons, painters or even farmers do here? Shoes were bought; houses were of sod or earth and needed no paint; years would be required to make cultivated fields out of this sea of grass, and meanwhile they and their families must somehow live.

The kind hosts did all they could to encourage and make comfortable the newcomers, sharing with them what accommodations they had. But we must remember that these first comers had not been here long themselves. The dwellings were small, without cooling porches, and in summer necessarily hot, and they had no screens to protect the inmates from the blood-thirsty fly and mosquito. So there was but little rest or comfort by day or night, especially for those unused to these conditions. This together with the unaccustomed food, which at first completely upset them, made some of the newcomers very discouraged with the new country.

One of these "blue" ones said to Father soon after their arrival: "Do you suppose you will ever get your money back which you loaned us for our passage?" "That," replied father, "I do not know. But this I do know, that now I have no money either to take myself or any of you back again." "Then," rejoined the first one, "if now I could stand on the highway where we started, even with nothing but a shirt on my back, I should be the happiest man alive." Another said: "There is not even grass here such as one can cut with a scythe and, as for land I shall have none of it." And in his case it became so. He never homesteaded and later worked at his trade in Yankton and Sioux City, where he died many years later.

Father tried to take a brighter view and to cheer those complaining ones and said to Iver Sneve, who had just expressed the wish to be back on the old sod: "In three years you will be butchering your own pork, raised on your farm in this new land." Then Iver broke out into his characteristically loud, uproarious laughter, full of incredulity and almost scorn, and said: "Berhaug Rise, I have up till this time considered you a man of sense and good judgment, but now I am compelled to believe that your mind's eye is shimmering. I cannot even keep alive for three years in this man-consuming wilderness. Unless some one takes pity on me and helps me to return home, the flies and mosquitoes alone will have finished me before that time. Oh, that some of us older men could have had sense enough to return even when we were as far as England," he added. This is a sample of many conversations, and these expressions were by no means uttered as jokes either. Nevertheless, this Iver Sneve lived some 35 years after this conversation and was worth $25,000.00 when he died.

However, these people were here and, with all bridges burned behind them, they realized that mere lamentations would not meet the situation. Something must be done to live and to keep their families, here or in the old country, as was the case with some, alive. So in a few days a party of the younger men set out afoot toward the present site of Parker to seek work on the railroad which was just being extended from that point westward toward Mitchell. They found work with shovel and pick. But ten hours a day, in the hot sun and with an Irish boss over them to see that these implements kept constantly moving, was no soft initiation for these fair skinned men just out of a much colder climate. However, with true Norse and immigrant grit they "stuck it out" and earned a little money before the first winter of 1880-1 came on.

Berhaug Rise and Halvor Hevle, by the help of the good neighbors, got some lumber hauled from Vermilion, the latter for a dug-out and the former for a frame house 14 × 16 and 12 feet high. This house was built by John Rye and is still standing in the old homestead after nearly forty years. In this house made of one thickness of drop siding and paper, we spent the terrible snow winter of 80-81. It was the winter of the great blizzard which came in the middle of October. And the deep snow never left until nearly the middle of April, when the big flood of 1881 resulted. Luckily Father had filed without ever seeing it, as also Grandma, on some land traversed by deep ravines. There had been heavy hardwood timber in these ravines, but it was now cut, with nothing left but young shoots—brush—and great stumps, some 4-6 feet in diameter. These stumps formed the winter's fuel, as also most of the winter's work. With such a house it became necessary to keep the stove about red hot in cold weather to have any comfort and, of course, everything froze solid during the nights. But if it had not been for the old oaken stumps and the warm woolen clothes we had brought with us, it is hard to see how we could have survived that first winter. Much better off, as far as the cold was concerned, were those who had a good dugout. But by a sort of special dispensation of providence there was no sickness requiring a doctor in our family or in the neighborhood. And this was well, for doctors were far away and expensive to get. We children waded and coasted in the deep snow, getting hands and feet thoroly wet, but never had a better time in our lives, as far as I can recall. There was yet no public school in that neighborhood, so there was lots of time for play—mostly coasting down the surrounding hillsides.

A word ought also to be said about the outbuildings, if we may call them such, for they were typical of what many others had. The stable, for three cows and two ponies, was an excavation in the side hill. The hill formed the full wall on the upper side and part of the wall on the other sides, the rest being filled in with straw, hay or sod. Over these walls was thrown brush with a little frame work of supports underneath, and then the whole was covered with hay or straw. For a door, in our case, Father took a bush, covered with an entanglement of grape vines, set it in the doorway and piled hay against it. This last, however, was an emergency measure as the notorious blizzard of 1880 above referred to, broke upon us before the structure was quite finished. But as there were many emergency appliances in those days, of every kind, this one was nothing out of the ordinary.

The place where the two pigs were kept was built on the same plan, only that it was divided into two stories—the chickens having roosts over the pigs. But this combination did not prove a success, for whenever the chickens fell down or ventured down to their room mates below, they were eaten up by the pigs.

Perhaps a word should also be said about two of the inmates of the stable, for they also were common types of those and even much later times. These were two Texas ponies which Father and Halvor Hevle had purchased out of a herd driven to Yankton. After picking their choices out of the herd in a large corral, and paying $20.00 apiece for their choices, the men in charge lassoed the animals and turned them over to the new owners, at the end of a fairly long new rope. It was well that the ropes were new and fairly long, for it took three days of both brave and skilled maneuvering to get these wild animals of the plains to the home of their new masters. And the masters were certainly tired and not over-enthusiastic over their new horse power when they at last arrived. Matters were not so serene as could be wished while these little savages were being picketed outside. But when winter came and the animals which had never known any roof lower than the blue sky, nor walls more confining than the far-flung horizon, were to be quartered in a hole in the ground, real excitement began. Whenever any one ventured into the stable he would no sooner open the door than he would see these creatures on their haunches trying to jump thru the roof, which feat they almost succeeded in accomplishing. At first it was a problem how to get near enough to tend to them. The hay could be poked down the roof to where their heads ought to be, but the water was not so easy. In spite of precaution they "got the drop" on Father once I recall, and he was in bed for some time, but lucky to escape with his life. It should be said to their credit, however, that by the help of Lars Almen, above referred to, they were in due time subdued and served many years, and faithfully, according to their size and strength, with only an occasional runaway. These wild horses filled a useful place in the needs of these scattered beginners far from each other and from towns. But it was after all the ox who really helped subdue the soil and lay the foundations for farming and prosperity in general. But for the people we are now describing real farming had not yet begun, so more of that a little later.