Mr. B. F. Shaver—1853.
My parents came from Lucerne Co., Pa., father in the fall of 1850 and mother just two years later. She came to Rockford, Ill., by rail, then to Galena by stage and up the Mississippi by boat. One of her traveling companions was Miss Mary Miller, sister of Mrs. John H. Stevens. Mother spent the first night in Minneapolis in the old Stevens house, at that time the only residence on the west side of the river, about where the Union Station was.
Two years before this father had learned of Lake Minnetonka and had taken some pork and flour and a frying pan and started west to find the lake, over somewhat the route of the Great Northern railroad track to where Wayzata now is. He reached the site of Minnetonka Mills and located a claim about where Groveland park on the Deephaven trolley line is. This was some time before the government survey. He blazed out a claim. Like the old lady in the Hoosier Schoolmaster, he believed "While ye're gittin', git a plenty" for after the survey he found he had blazed out seven hundred acres where he could pre-empt only a hundred and sixty. He had been up the creek several times to the lake where there was a beautiful pebbly beach. Once, while wandering back, he had come upon this spot, he said, "Beautiful as a poet's dream." A forty acre prairie right in the midst of dense woods covered with wild flowers and prairie grass. He blazed out his claim right there.
On November 8, 1852, father and mother traveled from St. Anthony to Minnetonka Mills with an ox team and sled on eight or ten inches of snow. They kept boarders at Minnetonka Mills that winter and in March moved to their claim. The house was not completed. There were no windows, no outside door and no floor. The following August were born twin boys, the first white children born in Hennepin county outside the city limits of Minneapolis. Mother was the first pioneer woman of Minnetonka township.
When we were about three weeks old mother's nearest neighbor, Mrs. Robinson, who lived on a claim near the present site of Wayzata, came over to assist her with the twins, as she was all worn out. It was a hot, sultry night early in September and Mrs. Robinson made a bed on the ground beside mother's and put us into it. She became very drowsy towards morning and lay down on the ground beside us. She was aroused by my brother stirring about and complaining and reaching over was surprised to feel something like a paw of a large dog thrust through a crack between the logs and pulling the baby towards the crack by its hand. She got up quietly and moving aside the blanket that hung for a door, stepped out around the corner of the house. At the crack was a large wolf. It was frightened off at seeing her and ran into the woods.
Before mother came, in August, 1850, father and three others took a boat at Minnetonka Mills with provisions and went up to Gray's Bay and westward on Lake Minnetonka to explore the lake and get a definite idea of its area and characteristics. They went through Hull's narrows and explored the upper lake several days, landed at a point about at Zumbra Heights and decided to carry their boat across to the Minnesota river and row down to Fort Snelling. After wandering in the woods several days they abandoned the boat and subsisted for days on basswood sprouts and raspberries. They reached the Minnesota river directly north of Shakopee, descended a bluff and found the shanty of a squaw man. The squaw gave them some fat pork with gravy over it and mixed up dough which she baked on a griddle. Father said he had been to many a fine banquet but that was the best he ever had tasted.
Father, mother and some of the men from the sawmill were eating supper one night by candle light, when there came a loud knocking at the door. Father opened the door and an Indian in hunting regalia staggered into the house, holding his sides and evidently in great pain. Mother did the best she could for him, gave him pain killer and hot drinks and made him a bed on the floor beside the kitchen stove, where after a time he fell into deep sleep. About daylight several members of the tribe, including his squaw, came in search of him and learned from the crew at the mill that he had been cared for during the night. His squaw came into the house, talked with him for a while and then with the other Indians started east. They were gone about two hours, returning with the carcass of a very fine deer. The Indian had started hunting the day before and pursued a deer till almost night, finally bringing it down. Having had nothing to eat since early morning he was ravenous and cut a piece of steak from the deer and ate it raw. This made him desperately sick and on his way back he had to stop at the mill. His squaw and the other Indians proceeded to skin the deer at the house and the squaw brought in the deer's kidneys to mother. This she thought very odd but a few days later was informed by Martin McCloud, an interpreter, that the gift of a deer's kidneys was one of the highest tokens of esteem that an Indian could bestow. Afterwards the Indian and his squaw were very kind, sending her fish and venison and the squaw presented her with some beautiful bead work.
The cruelty of the male Indians always astounded mother. Once she sold an Indian a sack of flour. He was to come for it the next day. At the time appointed he came, bringing with him his squaw who had with her a little papoose, and his mother, an aged woman. He brought an empty sack along. Mother presumed he would empty a small portion of the flour into this for his wife and mother to carry and he would shoulder the remainder in the sack which contained the flour. He emptied about one third of the flour into the sack which he had brought. This he put down by the side of his mother. He took the papoose out of a broad strap around the squaw's head hanging in a loop in the back and taking up the remaining flour, put it in the strap on his wife's back, she stooping over to receive the load. It was so heavy he had to help her straighten up; she could not rise alone. Then he took the papoose and set it atop the sack of flour. He then assisted his mother about getting her portion of flour in her strap. His conduct provoked mother greatly and she told him in decided terms that he should be ashamed of himself. At her remarks he grinned and folding his arms complacently around his gun, strutted off after the women muttering, "Me big Injun."
A curious trait about the Indians was that they wanted you to trust them and have no suspicions about their honesty. When going away from the house it was better not to lock it, but take a stick and lean it up against the house outside, intimating to them that you were away; and nothing would be molested. If the house was locked they were likely to break in and steal something.
Not far from our house at Spirit Knob, now Breezy Point, Lake Minnetonka, on a bold hill projecting out into the water was a stone idol, a smoothly polished stone a little larger than a wooden water pail. The Indians came regularly to worship this idol and make offerings to their god. In very early times, probably not later than 1853, a doctor from St. Louis, Mo., is said to have stolen this image and taken it to St. Louis and put it in a museum. The Indians were very much enraged at this and some people have assigned to this deed a motive for many of the atrocities committed in 1862.