LANDING AT YANKTON AND GETTING ON THE LAND
It may be of interest to take a look at the town of Yankton of forty
years ago, where we finally landed. Yankton was the terminal of this
division of the C.M. & St. P. Railway, or, as it was then called, the
Dakota Southern. It was also the capitol city of Dakota Territory
comprising the present states of North and South Dakota. Its buildings
were mostly small wooden houses, but, as may be surmised, it commanded
a large trade territory, for besides being the end of the railway it
was touched by a considerable steamboat traffic up and down the river
and had considerable Indian trade, besides that of the adjacent white
settlements. So it was then the most important city in the Dakotas and
had been decidedly so before that time.
Here the immigrants were given a cordial welcome and temporary shelter
at the home of Mrs. Carrie Severson, a widow whom they had known from
the old country. We do not know, of course, how our fathers and
mothers felt about the enterprise by this time, but to us youngsters,
who as yet were not loaded with the burdens of life, the green grass
and the freedom to scamper about seemed good after a whole month's
confinement in a crowded steerage and more crowded railway coaches.
Next day friends of the party, who had immigrated some ten years
before, came with teams and wagons to help these newer comers to get
on the land and make their start in the new and, to these people,
strange land. For this was indeed a very different country from the
one they had left and even from the picture many of them had had in
mind. There was much to learn and many disappointments at first as we
shall see.
Among the men who undertook to receive this large company in their
homes and to help them get established in homes of their own, and who
extended the glad hand of welcome that day, should be mentioned these:
Stingrim Hinseth, Ingebricht Fagerhaugh, Haldo Saether, John Rye, John
Aalbu and Halvor Hinseth. These men loaded into their lumber wagons
the big blue chests and smaller parcels; deposited the passengers as
best they could and started out over the prairie on what was called
"The Sioux Falls Trail". This trail angled all the way to their homes
in Turkey Creek, over twenty miles to the northeast. Darkness soon
overtook the travelers and the following circumstance created
considerable merriment for the hosts, at least. The newcomers
observed, as they journeyed on thru the darkness, very many gleams of
light as it were from innumerable human habitations. These points of
light were, of course, fire flies, so called, or certain
phosphorescent bugs which at that time were very numerous because of
the abundant grass prevailing everywhere. At length one of the
passengers remarked in evident astonishment! "This country must be
very thickly populated, judging by the many lights we see"! When
daylight came, however, the lights and most of the supposed
inhabitants had utterly disappeared.
It may be of some interest to the new and coming generations to take a
look at the country around Turkey Creek as it greeted the curious gaze
of these new comers of forty years ago on that first morning of their
arrival. Most of the friends who brought them out from town and
distributed them for temporary shelter were settled on the Turkey
Creek bottom and located about where they or their dwellings are now.
Farthest north up the valley was John Rye, then Halvor Hinseth, next
Steingrim Hinseth, I. Fagerhaug, Ole Solem and Jens Eggen, in order as
named. But back of the creek bottom where these earliest homesteaders
had located was the far stretching open prairie--a sea of waving
grass--with a lonely dug-out only here and there and vast stretches of
"no man's land" between.
There were no regular highways, only some trails winding their way
over the endless grass, in some general direction, but with many
crooks and turns to avoid a hill, ravine or slough. These sloughs, or
small lakes, were very numerous and of considerable size and depth in
those days. There is today many a waving field of corn and grain where
we boys of the first generation of settlers once launched our home
made boats, hunted ducks, swam and occasionally came near drowning.
The best travelled of the trails in the part of the country we are
describing was the old territorial trail called the Sioux Falls Road.
This angled in a north-easterly direction all the way from Yankton to
Sioux Falls, and many a prairie schooner could be seen moving with
stately slowness over this road, not to speak of other vehicles which
were numerous. As a boy I have seen long caravans of Indians, perhaps
twenty or thirty teams in a string, trekking over this road. When the
ruts became too deep, by reason of much travel and the action of the
water, another trail would be made close alongside the old. Thus in
places six or eight pairs of ruts, made by many wagons and feet, could
be seen side by side.
There were no wire fences to mark boundaries between farms or to form
pastures in those days, and the cattle were herded far and wide. The
people in the Turkey Creek Valley herded as far as Clay Creek. The
writer of this, altho not of the earliest herd boys of the time, and
living near Turkey Creek, has taken his herd many a day to the
proximity of Clay Creek with practically open pasture all the way.
I am speaking for many boys and some girls, too, of those days, boys
and girls who are fathers and mothers now, when I say that our pasture
fence was Clay Creek on the west and Turkey Creek on the east. Not
that we were not free to go farther but that the day was not long
enough to get any farther and back again the same day.
There was at this time, when our pilgrims arrived, but very little of
the ground broken up. What little there was broken was mostly on the
creek bottom, but scarcely any on the upland. And when a little later
patches of prairie were broken up in order to comply with the
homestead law requirements for getting title to the land, these
patches were usually in a draw or low-lying strip between the hills.
Thus the fields of early days were not laid out with any reference to
north or south, but their direction was determined entirely by the
hills and valleys. The little breaking which was done was done with
oxen and sometimes the direction of the field to be was determined by
the oxen themselves more than by the driver. Some wheat, corn and oats
was raised, but the main dependence of the farmer was cattle and
milking.
The dwellings were of three main types. There was the dug-out, usually
in a side-hill, with a sod roof, a few studdings and boards being used
to support the roof. The walls and floor were usually the native
earth. The sod house was a more advanced and perhaps more stylish
dwelling. Closely related to the sod house was the mud house where the
walls, about two or three feet thick, were made of well tramped mud
and straw. These mud houses were at times whitewashed and were both
comfortable and sightly. As for comfort in the cold winter the dug-out
and sod house were not so bad when properly built. But do not imagine
that they were equal to your furnace-heated, modern house. They were,
after all, a temporary hole in the ground to preserve life until
houses could be had. A house made of lumber was a luxury which many an
early settler had to look forward to for many a hard, long year, and
often he had to die in the dug-out or sod shanty. Finally, there was
the story-and-a-half frame house of two or three rooms with a
possible lean-to. This type of house put one in the class of the most
well-to-do; and such a habitation was the hope and dream of years for
many a pilgrim mother of those days.
We have turned aside from our main narrative for a look at the country
as it appeared to our band of pilgrims as they looked about them on
that first morning of their arrival in the Turkey Creek Valley. And
the view was not all that they had hoped for. What could these
men--farmers and men of trades--do in this howling wilderness of
grass, grass and nothing but grass? Yes, there was something
else--mosquitoes--and oh, how they stung! Also flies, and how
incessantly and mercilessly they attacked the fair soft skin of these
pilgrims from the Norseland! Finally, there was the heat, which
literally took the fair skin off their faces in flakes and put on a
tan which made them almost unrecognizable.
Moreover, what could these shoemakers, masons, painters or even
farmers do here? Shoes were bought; houses were of sod or earth and
needed no paint; years would be required to make cultivated fields out
of this sea of grass, and meanwhile they and their families must
somehow live.
The kind hosts did all they could to encourage and make comfortable
the newcomers, sharing with them what accommodations they had. But we
must remember that these first comers had not been here long
themselves. The dwellings were small, without cooling porches, and in
summer necessarily hot, and they had no screens to protect the inmates
from the blood-thirsty fly and mosquito. So there was but little rest
or comfort by day or night, especially for those unused to these
conditions. This together with the unaccustomed food, which at first
completely upset them, made some of the newcomers very discouraged
with the new country.
One of these "blue" ones said to Father soon after their arrival: "Do
you suppose you will ever get your money back which you loaned us for
our passage?" "That," replied father, "I do not know. But this I do
know, that now I have no money either to take myself or any of you
back again." "Then," rejoined the first one, "if now I could stand on
the highway where we started, even with nothing but a shirt on my
back, I should be the happiest man alive." Another said: "There is not
even grass here such as one can cut with a scythe and, as for land I
shall have none of it." And in his case it became so. He never
homesteaded and later worked at his trade in Yankton and Sioux City,
where he died many years later.
Father tried to take a brighter view and to cheer those complaining
ones and said to Iver Sneve, who had just expressed the wish to be
back on the old sod: "In three years you will be butchering your own
pork, raised on your farm in this new land." Then Iver broke out into
his characteristically loud, uproarious laughter, full of incredulity
and almost scorn, and said: "Berhaug Rise, I have up till this time
considered you a man of sense and good judgment, but now I am
compelled to believe that your mind's eye is shimmering. I cannot even
_keep alive_ for _three years_ in this man-consuming wilderness.
Unless some one takes pity on me and helps me to return home, the
flies and mosquitoes alone will have finished me before that time. Oh,
that some of us older men could have had sense enough to return even
when we were as far as England," he added. This is a sample of many
conversations, and these expressions were by no means uttered as jokes
either. Nevertheless, this Iver Sneve lived some 35 years after this
conversation and was worth $25,000.00 when he died.
However, these people were here and, with all bridges burned behind
them, they realized that mere lamentations would not meet the
situation. Something must be done to live and to keep their families,
here or in the old country, as was the case with some, alive. So in a
few days a party of the younger men set out afoot toward the present
site of Parker to seek work on the railroad which was just being
extended from that point westward toward Mitchell. They found work
with shovel and pick. But ten hours a day, in the hot sun and with an
Irish boss over them to see that these implements kept constantly
moving, was no soft initiation for these fair skinned men just out of
a much colder climate. However, with true Norse and immigrant grit
they "stuck it out" and earned a little money before the first winter
of 1880-1 came on.
Berhaug Rise and Halvor Hevle, by the help of the good neighbors, got
some lumber hauled from Vermilion, the latter for a dug-out and the
former for a frame house 14 x 16 and 12 feet high. This house was
built by John Rye and is still standing in the old homestead after
nearly forty years. In this house made of one thickness of drop siding
and paper, we spent the terrible snow winter of 80-81. It was the
winter of the great blizzard which came in the middle of October. And
the deep snow never left until nearly the middle of April, when the
big flood of 1881 resulted. Luckily Father had filed without ever
seeing it, as also Grandma, on some land traversed by deep ravines.
There had been heavy hardwood timber in these ravines, but it was now
cut, with nothing left but young shoots--brush--and great stumps, some
4-6 feet in diameter. These stumps formed the winter's fuel, as also
most of the winter's work. With such a house it became necessary to
keep the stove about red hot in cold weather to have any comfort and,
of course, everything froze solid during the nights. But if it had not
been for the old oaken stumps and the warm woolen clothes we had
brought with us, it is hard to see how we could have survived that
first winter. Much better off, as far as the cold was concerned, were
those who had a good dugout. But by a sort of special dispensation of
providence there was no sickness requiring a doctor in our family or
in the neighborhood. And this was well, for doctors were far away and
expensive to get. We children waded and coasted in the deep snow,
getting hands and feet thoroly wet, but never had a better time in our
lives, as far as I can recall. There was yet no public school in that
neighborhood, so there was lots of time for play--mostly coasting down
the surrounding hillsides.
A word ought also to be said about the outbuildings, if we may call
them such, for they were typical of what many others had. The stable,
for three cows and two ponies, was an excavation in the side hill. The
hill formed the full wall on the upper side and part of the wall on
the other sides, the rest being filled in with straw, hay or sod. Over
these walls was thrown brush with a little frame work of supports
underneath, and then the whole was covered with hay or straw. For a
door, in our case, Father took a bush, covered with an entanglement of
grape vines, set it in the doorway and piled hay against it. This
last, however, was an emergency measure as the notorious blizzard of
1880 above referred to, broke upon us before the structure was quite
finished. But as there were many emergency appliances in those days,
of every kind, this one was nothing out of the ordinary.
The place where the two pigs were kept was built on the same plan,
only that it was divided into two stories--the chickens having roosts
over the pigs. But this combination did not prove a success, for
whenever the chickens fell down or ventured down to their room mates
below, they were eaten up by the pigs.
Perhaps a word should also be said about two of the inmates of the
stable, for they also were common types of those and even much later
times. These were two Texas ponies which Father and Halvor Hevle had
purchased out of a herd driven to Yankton. After picking their choices
out of the herd in a large corral, and paying $20.00 apiece for their
choices, the men in charge lassoed the animals and turned them over to
the new owners, at the end of a fairly long new rope. It was well
that the ropes were new and fairly long, for it took three days of
both brave and skilled maneuvering to get these wild animals of the
plains to the home of their new masters. And the masters were
certainly tired and not over-enthusiastic over their new horse power
when they at last arrived. Matters were not so serene as could be
wished while these little savages were being picketed outside. But
when winter came and the animals which had never known any roof lower
than the blue sky, nor walls more confining than the far-flung
horizon, were to be quartered in a hole in the ground, real excitement
began. Whenever any one ventured into the stable he would no sooner
open the door than he would see these creatures on their haunches
trying to jump thru the roof, which feat they almost succeeded in
accomplishing. At first it was a problem how to get near enough to
tend to them. The hay could be poked down the roof to where their
heads ought to be, but the water was not so easy. In spite of
precaution they "got the drop" on Father once I recall, and he was in
bed for some time, but lucky to escape with his life. It should be
said to their credit, however, that by the help of Lars Almen, above
referred to, they were in due time subdued and served many years, and
faithfully, according to their size and strength, with only an
occasional runaway. These wild horses filled a useful place in the
needs of these scattered beginners far from each other and from towns.
But it was after all the ox who really helped subdue the soil and lay
the foundations for farming and prosperity in general. But for the
people we are now describing real farming had not yet begun, so more
of that a little later.