Mrs. Stephen Rochette--1855.

When we first came into St. Paul in 1855 we landed on the upper levee.

It was used then more than the lower one. We thought we could never get used to the narrow, crooked streets. We lived with my father, Jacob Doney, where the Milwaukee tracks now cross Seventh Street.

We soon had three cows. We never had any fence for them, just turned them out and let them run in the streets with the other cows and pigs.

Sometimes we could find them easily. Again we would have a long hunt.

Mrs. James A. Winter--1855.

We came to Faribault in 1855. My father had the first frame hotel there.

The Indians had a permanent camp on the outskirts of the village. I was a small girl of sixteen with very fair skin, blue eyes and red cheeks.

The squaws used to come to the house asking for food, which mother always gave them. "Old Betts" was often there. A young Indian, tall and fine looking used to come and sit watching me intently while I worked about the house, much to my discomfort. Finally one day he came close to me and motioned to me to fly with him. I showed no fear but led the way to the kitchen where there were others working and fed him, shaking my head violently all the time. He was the son of a chief and was hung at Mankato.

Mrs. George E. Fisher--1855.

Mother's name was Jane de Bow. Her father and mother were French. She came to Minnesota with the Stevens' in 1834 when she was seven years old. They were missionaries and when their own daughter died induced Jane's family to let them have her. The Indians were always sorry for her because her mother was away. They called her "Small-Crow-that-was Caught". Mrs. Stevens never could punish her for it made the squaws so angry.

The first Indian child my mother ever saw was a small boy who stood on the edge of Lake Harriet beckoning to her. She was afraid at first but finally joined him and always played with the Indian children from that time.

The Stevens' the next year had a little school near their cabin not far from where the pavilion is now. The Indian children always had to have prizes for coming. These prizes were generally turnips. Often they gave a bushel in one day.

In 1839 some Chippewa Indians ambushed a Sioux father who was hunting with his little son. The child escaped and told the story. The Sioux went on the warpath immediately and brought home forty or fifty Chippewa scalps. They had been "lucky" as they found a camp where the warriors were all away. They ma.s.sacred the old men, women and children and came home to a big scalp dance. My mother had played with the Indian children so much that she was as jubilant as they when she saw these gory trophies. She learned and enjoyed the dance. She taught me the Sioux words to this scalp dance and often sang them to us. Translated they are:

You Ojibway, you are mean, We will use you like a mouse.

We have got you and We will strike you down.

My dog is very hungry, I will give him the Ojibway scalps.

The Indian children would take a kettleful of water, make a fire under it, and throw fish or turtles from their bone hooks directly into this.

When they were cooked slightly, they would take them out and eat them without salt, cracking the turtle sh.e.l.ls on the rocks. The boys used to hunt with their bows and arrows just as they did in later years. They were always fair in their games.

My mother married Mr. Gibbs and moved to this farm on what was the territorial road near the present Agricultural college. It was on the direct Indian trail to the hunting grounds around Rice Lake.

The Indian warriors were always pa.s.sing on it and always stopped to see their old playmate. By this time they had guns and they would always give them to mother to keep while they were in the house. The kitchen floor would be covered with sleeping warriors. Mother knew all their superst.i.tions. One was that if a woman jumped over their feet they could never run again. I can well remember my gay, light hearted mother running and jumping over all their feet in succession as they lay asleep in her kitchen and the way her eyes danced with mischief as she stood jollying them in Sioux. We noticed that none of them lost any time in finding out if they were bewitched.

Our Indians when they came to see mother wanted to do as she did. They would sit up to the table and she would give them a plate and knife and fork. This pleased them much. They would start with the food on their plates but soon would have it all in their laps.

They were very dissatisfied with the way the whites were taking their lands. The big treaty at Traverse de Sioux was especially distasteful to them. They said their lands had been stolen from them. They were very angry at my father because he put a rail fence across their trail and would have killed him if it had not been for mother.

The last time these good friends came was in May, 1862. A large body of them on horseback camped on the little knoll across from our house where the dead tree now is. They were sullen and despondent. Well do I remember the dramatic gestures of their chief as he eloquently related their grievances. My mother followed every word he said for she knew how differently they were situated from their former condition. When she first knew them they owned all the country--the whites nothing. In these few years the tables had been turned. Her heart bled for them, her childhood's companions. He said his warriors could hardly be kept from the warpath against the whites. That, so far, his counsel had prevailed, but every time they had a council it was harder to control them. That their hunting and fishing grounds were gone, the buffalo disappearing and there was no food for the squaws and papooses. The Great White Father had forgotten them, he knew, for their rations were long overdue and there was hunger in the camp.

They slept that night in our kitchen, "Little beckoning boy" and the other playmates. I can still see the sad look on my mother's face as she went from one to the other giving each a big, hot breakfast and trying to cheer them. She could see how they had been wronged. She stood and watched them sadly as they mounted their ponies and vanished down the old trail.

Lieut. Governor Gilman--1855.

The winter of '55 and '56 was thirty five degrees below zero two weeks at a time and forty degrees below was usual.

I have often seen the Red River carts ford the river here. They crossed at the foot of Sixth Street between where the two warehouses are now.

Mrs. Austin W. Farnsworth--1855.

We came to Dodge County in 1855. The first year we were hailed out and we had to live on rutabagas and wild tea. We got some game too, but we were some tired of our diet before things began to grow again. When that hailstorm came we were all at a quilting bee. There was an old lady, Mrs. Maxfield there, rubbing her hundred mark pretty close. She set in a corner and was not scared though the oxen broke away and run home and we had to hold the door to keep it from blowing in. We said, "Ain't you afraid?" She answered, "No, I'm not, if I do go out, I don't want to die howling."

The first time I worked out, when I was fourteen years old, I got 50c a week. There was lots to do for there were twin babies. I used to get awful homesick. I went home Sat.u.r.days and when I came over the hill where I could see our cabin, I could have put my arms around it and kissed it, I was that glad to see home.

Mr. Theodore Curtis--1855, Minneapolis.

When I was a little boy my father was building some scows down where the Washington Avenue bridge now is at the boat landing. There were five or six small sluiceways built up above the river leading from the platform where the lumber from the mills was piled, down to where these scows were. These sluices were used to float the lumber down to the scows. A platform was built out over the river in a very early day and was, I should say, three hundred feet wide and one thousand feet long. As the lumber came from the mills it was piled in huge piles along this platform. Each mill had its sluiceway but they were all side by side.

It was very popular to drive down on this platform and look at the falls, whose roaring was a magnet to draw all to see them.

We boys used to play under this platform jumping from one support to another and then finish up by running down the steps and cavorting joyously under the falls. I used to get the drinking water for the workmen from the springs that seeped out everywhere along near where my father worked. Once he sent me to get water quickly. I had a little dog with me and we unthinkingly stepped in the spring making the water roily. Childlike, I never thought of going to another but played around waiting for it to settle, then as usual took it on top of the sluiceways. It seemed father thought I had been gone an hour and acted accordingly. I shall always remember that whipping.

Mrs. Charles M. G.o.dley--1856.

My father, Mr. Scrimgeour, came to Minneapolis in 1855 and built a small home between First and Second Avenues North on Fourth Street. When my mother arrived she cried when she saw where her home was to be and said to her husband, as he was cutting the hazel brush from around the house, "You told me I would not have to live in a wilderness if I came here."

Mr. Morgan lived across the street. He and my father decided to dig a well together and put it in the street so that both families could use it. My father said to Mr. Morgan, "Of course, there is a street surveyed here, but the town will never grow to it, so the well will be alright here."

Mr. Morgan was a great bookworm and not at all practical. If his horse got out and was put in with other strays, he could never tell it, but had to wait until everyone took theirs and then he would take what was left.

There was a big sand hole at the corner of Second Avenue South and Fourth Street where they had dug out sand. It was the great playground for all the children, for it was thought the town would never grow there and so it was a good place for a sand hole.

When I went to school I always followed an Indian trail that led from Hoag's Lake to the government mill. It was bordered by hazel brush and once in a while a scrub oak. I was much disturbed one night on my way home, to find men digging a hole through my beloved trail. I hoped they would be gone in the morning, but to my great disappointment they were not, for they were digging the excavation for the Nicollet House. My school was in an old store building at the falls and was taught by Oliver Gray.

Dr. Barnard lived on the corner by our house. He was Indian agent and very kind to the Indians. One night a number of them came in the rain.

Mr. Barnard tried to get them to sleep in the house. All refused. One had a very bad cough so the doctor insisted on his coming in and gave him a room with a bed. Shortly after, they heard a terrible noise with an awful yell like a war-whoop. The Indian dashed down the stairs, out of the house and away. The slats in the bed were found broken and the bed was on the floor. Later, they found that he had started for bed from the furthest side of the room, run with full force and plunged in and through.

In 1857, when the panic came, all stores in Minneapolis failed and there was not a penny in circulation. Everything was paid by order.

There was a small farmhouse where the Andrews Hotel now stands. Fourth Street North, that led to it from our house, was full of stumps. We got a quart of milk every night at this place. They never milked until very late so it was dark. I used to go for it. My mother always gave me a six quart pail so that after I had stumbled along over those stumps, the bottom of the pail at least would be covered.

No one who was used to an eastern climate had any idea how to dress out here when they first came. I wore hoops and a low necked waist just as other little girls did. I can remember the discussion that took place before a little merino sack was made for me. I don't remember whether I was supposed to be showing the white feather if I surrendered to the climate and covered my poor little bare neck or whether I would be too out of style. I must have looked like a little picked chicken with goose flesh all over me. Once before this costume was added to, by the little sack, my mother sent me for a jug of vinegar down to Helen Street and Washington Avenue South. I had on the same little hoops and only one thickness of cotton underclothing under them. It must have been twenty degrees below zero. I thought I would perish before I got there, but childlike, never peeped. When I finally reached home, they had an awful time thawing me out. The vinegar was frozen solid in the jug.

A boardwalk six blocks long was built from Bridge Square to Ba.s.sett's Hall on First Street North. It was a regular sidewalk, not just two boards laid lengthwise and held by crosspieces as the other sidewalks were. Our dress parade always took place there. We would walk back and forth untiringly, pa.s.sing everybody we knew and we knew everybody in town. Instead of taking a girl out driving or to the theatre, a young man would ask, "Won't you go walking on the boardwalk?"

Lucy Morgan used to go to school with us when we first came. She had long ringlets and always wore lownecked dresses, just as the rest of us did, but her white neck never had any gooseflesh on it and she was the only one who had curls.

We went to high school where the court house now stands. It was on a little hill, so we always said we were climbing the "Hill of Knowledge."

I can well remember the dazed look that came on my father's face when for the first time, he realized that there were horses in town that he did not know. The town had grown so that he could not keep pace with it.