FRONTIER LIFE.
The culture which the pale faces introduced into that land of the
Dakotas was sometimes curious. The first sermon I heard there was
preached in Rockville--a town-site on the Sauk, twelve miles from its
confluence with the Mississippi--in a store-room of which the roof was
not yet shingled. The only table in the town served as a pulpit; the red
blankets from one wagon were converted into cushions for the front pews,
which consisted of rough boards laid on trussles. There was only one
hymn book, and after reading the hymn, the preacher tendered the book to
any one who would lead the singing, but no one volunteered. My scruples
about psalms seemed to vanish, so I went forward, took the book, lined
out the hymn, and started a tune, which was readily taken up and sung by
all present. We were well satisfied with what the day brought us, as we
rode home past those wonderful granite rocks which spring up out of the
prairie, looking like old hay-ricks in a meadow.
There were people in our frontier town who would have graced any
society, and with the elasticity of true culture adapted themselves to
all circumstances. At my residence, which adjoined the _Democrat_
office, I held fortnightly receptions, at which dancing was the
amusement, and coffee and sandwiches the refreshments. At one of these,
I had the honor to entertain Gov. Ramsey, Lieut.-Gov. Donnelly, State
Treas. Shaeffer, and a large delegation from St. Paul; but not having
plates for seventy people, I substituted squares of white printing
paper. When Gov. Ramsey received his, he turned it over, and said:
"What am I to do with this?"
"That is the ticket you are to vote," was the answer.
In our social life there was often a weird mingling of civilization and
barbarism. Upon one occasion, a concert was given, in which the audience
were in full dress, and all evening in the principal streets of St.
Cloud a lot of Chippewas played foot-ball with the heads of some Sioux,
with whom they had been at war that day.
In those days, brains and culture were found in shanties. The leaders of
progress did not shrink from association with the rude forces of savages
and mother nature.
St. Cloud was the advance post of that march of civilization by which
the Northern Pacific railroad has since sought to reach the
Sascatchewan, a territory yet to be made into five wheat-growing States
as large as Illinois. All the Hudson Bay goods from Europe passed our
doors, in wagons or on sleds, under the care of the Burbanks, the great
mail carriers and express men of Minnesota, and once they brought a
young lady who had come by express from Glasgow, Scotland, and been
placed under the charge of their agent at New York, and whom they handed
over to the officer she had come to marry on the shores of Hudson Bay.
But their teams usually came east with little freight, as the furs sent
to Europe came down in carts, not one of which had so much iron as a
nail in them, and which came in long, creaking trains, drawn by oxen or
Indian ponies.
In each train there was generally one gorgeous equipage--a cart painted
blue, with a canvas cover, drawn by one large white ox in raw-hide
harness. In this coach of state rode the lady of the train--who was
generally a half-breed--on her way to do her shopping in St. Paul. Once
the lady was a full-blooded Indian, and had her baby with her, neatly
dressed and strapped to a board. A bandage across the forehead held the
head in place, and every portion of the body was as secure as board and
bandages could make them, except the arms from the elbow down, but no
danger of the little fellow sucking his thumb. His lady mamma did not
have to hold him, for he was stood up in a corner like a cane or
umbrella, and seemed quite comfortable as well as content. She had
traveled seven weeks, had come seventeen hundred miles to purchase some
dresses and trinkets, and would no doubt be a profitable customer to St.
Paul merchants, for the lady of the train was a person of wealth and
authority, always the wife of the commander-in-chief, and her sentence
of death might have been fatal to any man in it.
In these trains were always found Indians filling positions as useful
laborers, for the English government never gave premiums for idleness
and vagabondism among Indians, by feeding and clothing them without
effort on their own part. Their dexterity in turning griddle cakes, by
shaking the pan and giving it a jerk which sent the cake up into the air
and brought it down square into the pan other side up, would have made
Biddy's head whirl to see. The "Gov. Ramsey" was the first steamboat
which ran above the falls of St. Anthony, and in the spring of '59 she
was steamed and hawsered up the Sauk Rapids, and ran two hundred miles,
until the falls of Pokegamy offered insurmountable barriers to further
progress. It was thought impossible to get her down again, there was no
business for her, and she lay useless until, the next winter, Anson
Northup took out her machinery and drew it across on sleds to the Red
River of the North, where it was built into the first steamboat which
ever ran on that river.
Before starting on his expedition, Mr. Northup came to the _Democrat_
office to leave an advertisement and ask me to appeal to the public for
aid in provisions and feed to be furnished along the route. He was in a
Buffalo suit, from his ears to his feet, and looked like a bale of furs.
On his head he wore a fox skin cap with the nose lying on the two paws
of the animal just between his eyes, the tail hanging down between his
shoulders. He was a brave, strong man, and carried out his project,
which to most people was wild.
Nothing seemed more important than the cultivation of health for the
people, and to this I gave much earnest attention, often expressed in
the form of badinage. There were so many young housekeepers that there
was much need of teachers. I tried to get the New England women to stop
feeding their families on dough--especially hot soda dough--and to
substitute well-baked bread as a steady article of diet. In trying to
wean them from cake, I told of a time when chaos reigned on earth, long
before the days of the mastodons, but even then, New England women were
up making cake, and would certainly be found at that business when the
last trump sounded. But they bore with my "crotchets" very patiently,
and even seemed to enjoy them.