Memories from Minnesota
Circa 1915-1928

The following is a transcription from an audio tape made by my father in his later life. He describes his memories as a boy growing up on a farm with his grandparents and uncle in Minnesota during the pre-depression years.
The farm was located about 8 miles south of Cove Bay at Mille Lacs Lake. It was a turn of the century land grant property that Great Grandpa and Great Grandma obtained simply by homesteading there along with their son who received an adjacent property grant for homesteading.

Earliest Memories of Indians

When I first came up here in 1915, I stayed with my grandparents out on the farm, the Griffith farm, and there was a family of Indians lived right across the road from us at that time. They were working on the corduroy on a swamp out there and they cut tamarack logs and laid them side by side all the way across the swamp and then they filled it with dirt and that made our road across that swamp which was practically impassable before that. Anyway, these Indians names were White and they were notorious for being lightfingered. But you know my grandparents never had a lock on their door, never had a padlock or anything and they never lost a thing from their farm. The Indians respected them and they left them alone.

Back in those days the Indians were very--well I don't know--I guess you would call it cautious or particular about people taking pictures of them. They didn't like to have the tourists up here take pictures of them unless they paid them some good money to do it. But I can remember Chief Wadena and his Squaw came out to our farm one day and they had gunny sacks slung over their shoulders. When they got out to the farm they wanted Grandma to take their pictures with their fine beads and beadwork and stuff like that on. Chief Wadena had his feathered headdress on and his buckskin jacket and trousers and they had their bells and their beads and all that. They'd dress all up and Grandma took their pictures and that's what they wanted and she developed their pictures and gave them each a picture of their own to take back with them. That's all they wanted. And they were happy.

I can remember Chief Wadena when they had their medicine dances out at the lake the chief would send John Razer who was his medicine man-he'd send Razer to invite my Grandfather and my Grandmother out to watch them dance. And well it was practically a command performance when the Chief invited them out so the folks all went out there . They took me with them. I was scared to death but I took hold of my Grandmother's hand- wouldn't let go of it. When we got out there the Indians were dancing and the squaws would form a ring and the warriors would dance inside of that ring with all their feathers and their beads and all that stuff--their bells--they had bells around their ankles and they would do their war dance inside this circle of squaws who were rotating around them all the time. I think the squaws were going counterclockwise--I'm not sure but I think thats the way they were going. But the squaws were making this circle and going around and around and the Indians were dancing inside of them.

If I remember right, I think the Chief asked my folks to join in this circle. All of the Indians towards last were getting into the circle. They were getting in between the squaws, you know, and making the circle bigger and my folks got in there with them and we danced around. I had hold of my Grandmothers hand on the one side and my Grandfathers hand on the other and I went with them. That was supposed to be quite an honor.

Old Chief Wadena, he was a small man. I supposed he weighed about 110 or maybe 120 pounds but he had a great big 10 gauge double barreled shotgun. And you could always tell when he was hunting ducks in the fall. You could hear that big gun go brroooom. I guess he could outshoot anybody with that big gun. I don't know how he stood up behind it but evidently he did.

The Indians would come out to our farm to hunt. Hunt deer especially, and partridge. They would always ask my folks permission to hunt on our farm, and of course they'd cross our farm and hunt beyond it but they always asked permission first anyway. And when they'd come back they'd always deliver-oh they'd give the heart or the liver or something like that to my folks if they shot a deer and if they shot partridge they'd give 'em one or two partridge to pay 'em for letting them walk acrosst our land.

My First Recollections and Baby and as a Boy

My first recollection was down on the farm down in Iowa-down by Woodbine Iowa. I can remember my grandpa putting me up on a team of horses. He was going to go down across the creek at a bridge down there and go to cross this bridge and cultivate corn on the other side of the bridge. And I can remember him putting me up on a horse and letting me ride this horse down there. The horse had a harness on it and it had hames around its collar and I could hold onto this hames up there and keep from falling off and I thought this was great. And the horses had a kind of netting over them for to keep the flies off. I can remember that too. I remember it was kind of a yellowish color-kind of light brown or yellowish color-like corn. And I don't remember riding the horses while Grandpa was doing the cultivating. I can just remember riding down and riding across the bridge and then he took me off the horses and I don't know what I did then.

Later on I can remember Ma, me and my sister, Martha, my older sister, playing with cats down at Grandma's house. We had a buggy down there and we'd dress the cats up and put 'em in the buggy and wheel them around and we played house with them. Then I don't remember much else until they shipped us up here.

Moving to Minnesota

My Aunt-I think she was about 18 or 19 years old- brought us up. We came up by train. And we had to transfer trains at Moose Lake and I remember our train was late and they held the other train waiting for us because they knew we were coming. And when we got to Onamia we got off the train and they put us on a hand car-one of these hand propelled handcars with the two guys pumping it you know- and they brought us out to what they called the Bell Crossing and one of the guys took us up the top of the hill to the north to where a farmer by the name of Peterson lived. And one of Peterson's daughters guided us to over to Grandma's place which was about oh, I'd say 3/4 miles as a crow flies but it was about a mile by the road. And she took us over to Grandma's and then she went home. But her name was Eva, Eva Peterson. I can remember that. I can't remember Peterson's name.

When we got to Grandma's place they were living in an old log cabin that the loggers used and they were building a new cabin just to the north of it and I think it was about ready to put the rafters on for the roof when we got there. And Grandpa and Uncle Fred, they put the rafters up and put the roof on, built a chimney and they caulked all the cracks up with moss and they put clay and made mud out of clay and they plastered the cracks between the logs with that and made it pretty solid. Later on they used cement but at first they used clay and they had to replace it every summer or every fall rather because the clay would get wet and fall out when it rained. But the logs were all dovetailed-perfectly dovetailed-and this log cabin couldn't fall down if it wanted to. In order to take it down they would have to take the tap log off first and the the next one and the next one that way because these dovetails were so perfectly formed that it just couldn't fall over.

Well there was proof of that when they build the barn. I remember later on -years later after we moved up here even- that is my family and I had moved up here and we were living out on the lake at the cabin out there and I would go out to the farm and at first I would haul the stumps out-the old pine stumps that were sitting around in the pasture. I'd knock them down and bring them out and burn them in our fireplace out here and after the stumps disappeared I decided I'd take my chain saw out and haul the old barn out-cut it up lengths- stovewood lengths you know and haul it out and burn it. But it didn't work so good. All the pitch had oozed out of the logs and they were just like punk practically. It burned so slow and they didn't burn very hot. They weren't very good. But when I was out there I had to saw the logs down along side of each corner and take the logs out and saw them and take the logs the corner saw apart one at a time, you know, the top log first and bring them out and burn them.

When I was a kid out there we used to go out in the pasture out south of the old building place-what we called the building place which was up on the hill where Grandpa and Grandma had planted evergreens around it as windbrakes and they dug their root cellar up there and they stored their potatoes and rutabagas in that root cellar in the wintertime so they wouldn't freeze. They covered the rootcellar over with logs and put hay and clay, stuff like that and dirt on top of it and it never froze in there. But anyway, we would go out in the pasture up there and all these stumps were hollow. They'd rotted out since the loggers and been there and almost every log -every stump rather- had a bluebirds nest in it. And we used to watch these bluebirds build their nests, then they'd lay their eggs, then they'd hatch their eggs, and we'd watch them teach their babies to fly. It was quite an experience. We didn't realize it at the time but now I think back on it, why, it was a good experience for us. We thought it was just ordinary.

Dad continues with his recollections of going to school in the harsh Minnesota winter.

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