A Pacific Coast Vacation

by Mrs. James Edwin Morris

ROADWAY, SOLDIER’S BARRACKS, FORT SNELLING.

The horse may not have to go, but the bicycle has surely come to stay. A unique figure on the streets of St. Paul is a window washer, black as the ace of spades, mounted on a wheel. Rags of all sorts and conditions hang from his pockets. He carries his brushes aloft a la “Sancho Panza.” He rides up to the curbstone, dismounts, leans his steed against the curb, washes his windows and rides away at a pace that would make Don Quixote’s sleepy squire open his eyes in amazement.

A beautiful morning in June finds us aboard the Great Northern Flyer, bound for the Pacific coast. We were soon up on the river bluffs. Here is some fine farming land, the only drawback being the lack of well water. The geological formation is entirely different from that of Indiana and Illinois, where water may be had on the bluffs as easily as lower down toward the riverbed. Here the underground water current lies on a level with the bed of the river and a well must go down five or six hundred feet through the bluff before water is obtained.

Our route here follows the Mississippi, which in places is jammed with rafts of logs on their way down to the saw mills. Each log bears the owner’s mark. One sees many logs, big fellows worth ten or fifteen dollars, which have slipped from their rafts and like independent boys, get lost in all sorts of places.

George Monte was an Indian lumberman of the north. He worked at a chute where the logs were floated down to the river and held back by a gate until it was time to send them through en masse. When all was ready the foreman ordered the log drivers to open the gate. One chilly night the order came to open the gate. The night was dark and the men drew lots to see who should attempt the dangerous feat. Monte drew what was to him the fatal slip. Without a word he opened the door and passed out into the night. The jam was broken and the logs passed through, but hours passed and Monte failed to return. Then his companions went in search of him. Investigation showed that the big gate which sank by its own weight when the pins had been removed, was held by some obstruction. The object was removed with long spike-poles and proved to be the mangled body of Monte. The chute was soon abandoned, for every night at midnight his ghost walks the banks. His moans can be distinctly heard above the swish and lap of the water.

On the Coteau des Prairies (side of the prairies) in Minnesota, pipe-stone, a smooth clay, from which hundreds of Indians have cut their pipes, forms a wall two miles long and thirty feet high. In front of the wall lie five big bowlders dropped there by the glaciers. Under these bowlders lies the spirit of a squaw, which must be propitiated before the stone is cut. This quarry was neutral ground for all the tribes. Here knives were sheathed and tomahawks belted. To this place came the Great Spirit to kill and eat the buffalo of the prairies. The thunder bird had her nest here and the clashing of the iron wings of her young brood created the storms. Once upon a time, when a snake crawled into the nest to steal the young thunderers, Manitou, the Great Spirit, seized a piece of pipe stone and pressing it into the form of a man, hurled it at the snake. The clay man missed the snake and struck the ground. He turned to stone and there he stood for a thousand years. He grew to manhood’s stature and in time another shape, that of a woman, grew beside him. One day the red pair wandered away over the plains. From this pair sprang all the red people.

From St. Paul to Fargo not a stalk of corn was to be seen, but there was field after field of fine wheat. This part of Minnesota is much more thickly settled than immediately around St. Paul and Minneapolis. Morehead in Minnesota and Fargo, across the line in Dakota, are thriving towns. The country here looks like Illinois. The lay of the land is the same and groves and houses dot the landscape. Here dwelt the Dakota tribes from which the states of Dakota and Minnesota take their names. Here came Hiawatha and his bride, Minnehaha, whom he won at St. Paul when the tribe was visiting that country, for Minnehaha was a Dakota girl, you remember.

Hiawatha’s fight with his father began on the upper Mississippi and the bowlders found there were their missiles. Hiawatha fought against him for many long days before peace was declared between them.

The evil Peace Father had slain one of Hiawatha’s relatives. He engaged him in combat all the hot day long. They battled to no purpose, but the next day a woodpecker flew overhead and cried out, “Your enemy has but one vulnerable point; shoot at his scalp-lock.” Hiawatha did this and the Peace Father fell dead. Taking some of the blood on his finger the victor touched the woodpecker on the head and the red mark is seen on every woodpecker to this day.

Dakota as well as Wisconsin has her Devil’s Lake, about which hang many legends, but unlike that of Wisconsin the Great Spirit, Gitche Manitou, does not appear in the middle of it every night at twelve o’clock.