Old Rail Fence Corners. Various

I came north from Albany, Illinois, with some cattle buyers and a drove of eighty cattle, for the lumberjacks in the woods north of St. Croix Falls. We came up the east bank of the river following roads already made. In the thick woods near the Chippewa Falls, I found an elk's antlers that were the finest I ever saw. I was six feet, and holding them up, they were just my height. The spread was about the same. Of course, we camped out nights and I never enjoyed meals more than those on that trip. The game was so delicious.

      In our drove of cattle was a cow with a young calf. When we came to a wide river, we swam all the cattle across, but that little calf would not go. We tried every way that we knew of to make it, then thought we would let it come over when it was ready. We rested there two days. The mother acted wild and we tied her up. The morning we were going to start, just as it was getting light, she broke away and swam the river. The calf ran to meet her but the mother just stood in the water and mooed. All at once, the calf took to the water and swam with the mother to the other side where it made a hearty breakfast after its two days fast. I thought I had never seen any animal quite so human as that cow mother.

      When we got to St. Croix Falls, I thought it was a metropolis, for it was quite a little town. I was back and forth across the river on the Minnesota side too. In 1843, I helped cut the logs, saw them, and later raft them down the river to St. Louis. This was the first raft of logs to go down the St. Croix river. Lumber rafts had gone before. Our mill had five saws—four frame and one muley. A muley saw was a saw without a frame. It took a good raftsman to get a raft over the Falls. It took four St. Croix rafts to make one Mississippi raft. I got sixteen dollars a month and found, working on a raft. I was raised to twenty after a while and to two dollars a day when I could take charge.

      In 1844 we had been up in the woods logging all winter on the Snake River. The logs were all in Cross Lake in the boom waiting for a rain to carry them down to the boom at St. Croix. There was a tremendous amount of them, for the season before, the water had been so low that it was impossible to get many out and we had an unusual supply just cut. One day in May, there was a regular cloudburst. We had been late in getting out the logs as the season was late. The Snake River over-ran its banks and the lake filled so full that the boom burst and away went all those logs with a mighty grinding, headed straight for the Gulf of Mexico.

      They swept everything clean at the Falls. Took the millrace even. The mill was pretty well broken up too. We found some of them on the banks along and some floated in the lake. We recovered over half of them. We built a boom just where Stillwater is today, in still water. Joe Brown had a little house about a mile from there. There were the logs, and the mill at St. Croix was useless. McCusick made a canal from a lake in back and built a mill. The lumbermen came and soon there was a straggling little village. I moved there myself one of the first.

      I used to take rafts of lumber down the river and bring back a boat for someone loaded with supplies. The first one I brought up was the Amulet in 1846. She had no deck, was open just like a row boat. She had a stern wheel.

      In 1848, Wisconsin Territory was to be made a State. The people there wanted to take all the land into the new state that was east of the Rum River. We fellows in Stillwater and St. Paul wanted a territory of our own. As we were the only two towns, we wanted the capitol of the new territory for one and the penitentiary for the other. In the Spring—in May, I think, I know it was so cold that we slept in heavy blankets, the men from St. Paul sent for us and about forty of us fellows went over. We slept that night in a little hotel on one of the lower bluffs. It was a long building with a door in the middle. We slept on the floor, rolled up in blankets. The next day, we talked over the questions before mentioned and it was decided that we should vote against the boundary as proposed and have a new territory and that St. Paul should have the capital and we the penitentiary. This decision was ratified at the convention in Stillwater, the last of August 1848.

      The hottest time I ever had in a steamboat race was in May, 1857, running the Galena from Galena to St. Paul. A prize had been offered, free wharfage for the season, amounting to a thousand dollars, for the boat that would get to St. Paul first that year. I was up at Lake Pepin a week before the ice went out, waiting for that three foot ice to go. It was dreadful aggravating. There was an open channel kind of along one edge and the ice seemed to be all right back of it. There were twenty boats all waiting there in Bogus Bay. I made a kind of harbor in the ice by chopping out a place big enough for my boat and she set in there cozy as could be. I anchored her to the ice too. The Nelson, a big boat from Pittsburg was there with a big cargo, mostly of hardware—nails pretty much. There were several steamers that had come from down the Ohio. When the ice shut in, it cut the "Arcola" in two just as if it was a pair of shears and she a paper boat. She sank at once. It shoved the "Falls of St. Anthony" a good sized steamer way out of the water on the niggerheads. The "Pioneer" sank. It broke the wheels of the "Nelson" and another boat and put them out of commission. I stayed in my harbor until morning, then steamed away up the little new channel. The "War Eagle" locked us at the head of the lake and held on. I was at the wheel. When we came to Sturgeon Bay, I took a cut in through the bar. I had found it when I was rafting so I knew they did not know about it. That little advantage gained the day for us. As it was, we burned several barrels of resin and took every chance of meeting our Maker. We got to St. Paul at two o'clock in the morning. Such a hullabaloo as there was—such a big tar barrel fire. We could plainly see "Kaposia" six miles away.

      Christmas the company sent me one hundred dollars which came in handy, as I was just married.

      Mr. Caleb Dorr—1847, Ninety years old.

      I came to St. Anthony in 1847 and boarded at the messhouse at first. Later I was boarding with the Godfrey's and trouble with the Indians was always feared by the new arrivals. One night we heard a terrible hullabaloo and Mrs. Godfrey called, "For the Lord's sake come down, the Indians are here." All the boarders dashed out in scant costume, crying, "The Indians are upon us," but it turned out to be only the first charivari in St. Anthony given to Mr. and Mrs. Lucien Parker. Mrs. Lucien Parker was a Miss Huse.

      Mrs. Dorr was never afraid of the Indians, although they seemed very ferocious to her with their painted faces, stolid looks and speechlessness. One day she was frying a pan of doughnuts and had finished about half of them when she glanced up to see seven big braves, hideously painted, standing and watching her with what she thought was a most malevolent look. She was all alone, with nobody even within calling distance. One of the number looked especially ferocious and her terror was increased by seeing him take up a knife and test it, feeling the edge to see if it was sharp, always watching her with the same malevolent look. Quaking with fear, she passed the doughnuts, first to him. He put out his hand to take the whole pan, but she gave him a jab in the stomach with her elbow and passed on to the next. This occasioned great mirth among the rest of the Indians who all exclaimed, "Tonka Squaw" and looked at her admiringly. When they had finished, they left without trouble.

      Once I was spending the evening at Burchineau's place when a number of the Red River cart men were there. As they were part Indian and part white, I looked down on them. One of them challenged me to see who could dance the longest. I would not let him win on account of his color, so danced until my teeth rattled and I saw stars. It seemed as if I was dancing in my sleep, but I would not give up and jigged him down.

      I remember a dance in the messhouse in '48 when there were ten white girls who lived in St. Anthony there. They were wonderfully graceful dancers—very agile and tireless. The principal round dance was a three step waltz without the reverse. It was danced very rapidly. The French four, danced in fours, facing, passing through, all around the room, was most popular. The square dances were exceedingly vigorous, all jigging on the corners and always taking fancy steps. We never went home until morning, dancing all the time with the greatest vim. This mess house stood between the river and the front door of the old Exposition Building.

      The Red River carts used to come down from Fort Garry loaded with furs. There had been a white population in that part of the country and around Pembina long before there was any settlement in what is now Minnesota. The drivers were half breeds, sons of the traders and hunters. They always looked more Indian than white. In the early days, in remote places, where a white man lived with the Indians, his safety was assured if he took an Indian woman for his