The Spirit Lake Massacre

by Thomas Teakle

For some time the lake region had been well-known to the traders and voyageurs of the upper Mississippi Valley, and their tales concerning it were all favorable. The French interpreter of the Lewis and Clark expedition wrote so clearly of the region as to leave no doubt as to his having been there. He it was who first wrote of the Lac D’Esprit, mentioning it for its great natural beauty of location and as being the chief seat of one of the Dakotan tribes. Hunters, traders, trappers, and adventurers visited the region frequently thereafter, but left only oral accounts as to its character and worth. The same region was visited in the summer of 1838 by Nicollet and John C. Fremont, who made observations as to elevation, latitude, and longitude. It was following this official visit that white frontiersmen began to frequent the locality.

All reports of the region indicated it was the favored home of the Wahpekuta Yankton Sioux. Spirit Lake especially was believed by this tribe to be the scene of various myths and legends intimately connected with the origin and life of the tribe. It was reputed to be always under the watchful care of the Great Spirit whose presence therein was clearly evidenced by the lake’s turbulent waters which were never at rest. It was this suggestion of the supernatural—a sort of mystic veil surrounding the region—that led many people to visit it. Some came only to view the lake and, having done so, departed to add perhaps one more legendary tale to the volume of its romance. Practically every visitor enlarged upon the great charms of the groves of natural timber bordering its shores.

But in nearly all of the accounts and tales of the region there was persistent confusion with regard to the several bodies of water. The Indians had always plainly distinguished at least three lakes; while reports by white men as persistently spoke of only one. The Indians knew of Okoboji, “the place of rest”, of Minnetonka, “the great water”, and of Minnewaukon, “the lake of demons or spirits” or Lac D’Esprit or Spirit Lake as it is known to-day. It is the first of these, Lake Okoboji, with which this narrative is primarily concerned. Upon its borders the first permanent white settlers built their cabins and staked their claims; and here was perpetrated the awful tragedy which has come to be known as the Spirit Lake Massacre.

The lakes, lying closely together as a group, occupy a large portion of the townships of Spirit Lake, Center Grove, and Lakeville. The northernmost and somewhat the largest of the group is Spirit Lake, which is about ten square miles in area. The northern shore of this lake touches upon or extends into Minnesota along practically the whole of its course. To the south, not connected at this time, and extending in a narrowed, almost tortuous course, stretches East Okoboji for a distance of over six miles. At no point is East Okoboji much over three-quarters of a mile in width. West Okoboji lies to the west of its companion and is connected with it by a narrow strait a few yards in width. The west lake stretches to the west and north, circling in a segment of a circle nearly halfway back to the north and east to Spirit Lake. In length it is about the same as the east lake, although its width is over four times as great at one point. Issuing from the southernmost bay of East Okoboji is the outlet stream, which at a distance of six miles from its source effects a junction with the main stream of the Little Sioux.

The shores of the Okoboji lakes are in the main well wooded, while those of Spirit Lake have only occasional clumps of trees. Along the shores of the latter prairie and water usually meet without interruption by bands of timber. In some respects the Okobojis present a reasonably good reproduction of the smaller lakes of southern New York and New England. Thus easterners felt that here could be reproduced the familiar scenes of “back home”. Although the attractiveness of the place was widely known, no one had settled in the region before the middle of the century. The vanguard of the permanent settlers came on July 16, 1856, with the arrival of Rowland Gardner and his family.

THE LAKE REGION: THE SCENE OF THE SPIRIT LAKE MASSACRE

Rowland Gardner was a native of Connecticut, having been born in New Haven in 1815. Here he spent his boyhood years and learned the trade of comb-maker. Growing tired of life in New Haven he migrated to Seneca, New York, where he resumed his trade. At the occupation of comb-maker he had been able to accumulate some three thousand dollars, which, for the time, was considered rather a comfortable little fortune.[93] On March 22, 1836, he married Frances M. Smith, and four children, Mary, Eliza, Abigail, and Rowland, were born while the family lived at Seneca. Abigail, the youngest daughter who is to figure so largely in the story of the Spirit Lake Massacre, was born in 1843. Later the father abandoned the trade of comb-maker and turned to that of sawyer. This change in occupation did not come, however, until the family had again moved—this time to Greenwood, New York. Again, in 1850, they removed to the near-by town of Rexville.

But Gardner had a love for roaming that could not be satisfied by short moves; and so it was not long before he left Rexville for Ohio. His first stop in that State was at Edyington, where he opened a boarding house. His next resolve was to go to the then Far West. Thus, in the spring of 1854 he made his way with his family to Shell Rock, Iowa.[94] Here the family spent their first winter in the West and suffered much from the change of climate. Shell Rock, however, was only a temporary stopping place, for Gardner had no thought of settling short of the farthest bounds of the frontier.

In the early spring of 1855 Gardner, in company with his son-in-law, Harvey Luce, made a rather extensive prospecting tour to the west and north. He seems to have decided to settle, for a time at least, at Clear Lake; for a little later we find him and Luce with their united families moving up the Shell Rock Valley to Nora Springs and thence across the prairie to Clear Lake. This journey consumed the greater portion of April and early May. Settling too late to plant crops that season, the families could not look forward to a very comfortable year.