I possessed a good team of horses and made trips to Decorah for supplies. I went only when it was really necessary, for the journey was beset with many dangers and discomforts. Flour and salt pork were the foods purchased, which I sold to the other settlers in small quantities. Prairie chickens were abundant, and some of the pioneers tried drying the breasts and found that one way to provide meat for the winter.
In the winter of '56, there was a thick coating of ice over the snow, sufficiently strong to hold a man's weight, but the deers' legs cut through the crust. My neighbors told of how easily they were able to get plenty of venison without venturing far from home. Never did a settler dare to go far away to hunt during those first winters, for the dangers of being lost and frozen were very great. I have often heard the wish expressed that fresh meat could be had every winter, with as few risks as in that year before I moved to Otranto.
We all felt the lack of fruit, for all of us had come from districts where fruit was grown, so on festive days such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had dried wild crab-apples boiled up in soda water, then sweetened with molasses. We were all used to better than this, but we never complained and felt that better times were coming.
Mrs. W. L. Niemann.
My mother was Sophia Oakes. She was born in Sault Ste. Marie in 1823. She was the daughter of Charles Oakes who had charge of a trading post for the American Fur Company. Her mother died when she was a very small child and her father removed with his two children, my mother and her sister two years younger, to La Pointe, where he had charge of another post of the same company.
The winters there were very long and severely cold and many times they would be shut in by the depth of the snow for weeks at a time. One time in particular the snow was so deep and the cold so intense that they had been snowbound so long that their supplies were almost exhausted, and my grandfather sent the men off to get a fresh supply. They were gone much longer than usual and the little family began to suffer for want of food and were obliged to go out and scrape away the snow to find acorns. They also ate the bark of trees.
Finally my grandfather concluded that he, too, must start out to try and get some food. The windows of the cabin were covered in place of glass, with deerskins. In getting ready to leave the children, grandfather took down these skins and replaced them with blankets to keep out the cold and boiled the skins to provide a soup for the children to drink while he was gone. My mother was twelve and her sister was ten.
Grandfather had not gone far when his feet were both frozen and he lay disabled in the snow. Some men chanced along, and carried him to a house which was about a mile further along. When they reached the house he refused to be carried in, for he knew he would surely lose his feet if he went in where it was warm. He asked for an awl and punctured his feet full of holes and had the men pour them full of brandy. This, while it was excruciatingly painful, both at the time and afterwards, saved him his feet.
When he and his men returned to the cabin, he had been gone all day and all night and into the next afternoon, and they found the little girls locked in each other's arms fast asleep, having cried themselves to sleep the night before.
Soon after the little girls were sent to school back in New York and my mother stayed until her education was completed, graduating from a seminary in Fredonia.