To whom it
may concern,
The
following document, War Comes to Norwegian Grove, was originally written
by me for publication in Telesoga (the journal of Telelaget of America).
This document
describes the life of immigrants from Norway (including my family) in
Territorial Minnesota as cultures clashed resulting in the Sioux Uprising. It contains what I believe to be the first
translation to English of a letter to Norway
from St. Peter, Minnesota
describing the Indian War in Minnesota.
The Minnesota
Pioneer Project and “Stories of the Early Norwegian Settlers in Minnesota
Project” is welcome to use this material in any way that enhances our
understanding of the early days of Norwegian immigration history.
Gene Estensen gene.estensen@gmail.com
18628 Fairway Green Drive
Hudson, FL
34667
(678)-446-9798
War Comes to
Norwegian Grove
Gene Estensen
The
Minnesota River begins its journey to the Mississippi
in west-central Minnesota. It flows south and west then turns sharply
north and east toward St. Paul. At the sharp bend in the river is a natural
crossing that the Sioux Indians (Dakota) called Oiyuwege, meaning “the place of
the crossing”. French explorers called
it Traverse des Sioux, or “crossing place of the Sioux”. For centuries the great buffalo herds
migrated across the plains of present day Minnesota
and crossed the Minnesota River at Traverse
des Sioux. This spot became a crossroads
and meeting place for people of many cultures.
A town named St. Peter grew near this historical crossroads. To the west, the Great
Plains was the home of the Sioux Indians and for centuries they
lived in harmony with the buffalo and other wildlife. However, to the east were the pioneers from
Scandinavia and Germany
and they were pressing ever westward onto the plains. The two cultures clashed in southern Minnesota Territory and violence flared up in 1862
resulting in the loss of life of nearly 1,000 settlers and Indians. In twenty Minnesota counties, bands of Sioux warriors
swept down on isolated farms and settlements, killing the men, capturing women
and children, and burning or plundering property.[i] About thirty persons were killed in Nicollet County.[ii] This is the story of Norwegian territorial
pioneers in one county (Nicollet) and one township (New
Sweden) that got caught up in the war. The letters written to Norway from Nicollet
County, and translated for this
article, describe the terror that filled the Minnesota River Valley.
The Treaty of Traverse
des Sioux
In 1851,
at Traverse des Sioux, the Sioux Indians ceded 24 million acres of tribal land
to the U.S. Government. This land was
opened to settlement in 1853, leaving 7,000 Sioux living on a narrow
reservation of two million acres along the Minnesota River. In 1858, the Sioux ceded an additional one
million acres of land. At the same time
the government tried to turn the nomadic Sioux into farmers.[iii] This divided the Sioux into two groups, those
that took on the ways of the whites, and those that remained faithful to
traditional tribal ways. This division
would impact life in Minnesota
Territory and the outcome
of the Sioux Uprising.
Norsemen come to Traverse
des Sioux
Before Minnesota became a state, and just as settlement in
southern Minnesota was allowed for the first
time, a wagon train moved slowly westward from the Norwegian settlement of Muskego in Wisconsin. In the year 1854[iv],
after a journey of seven weeks, the families of Norwegians Torstein Østensen
Bøen of Tinn, Telemark, Johan Tollefson of Totten, and Lars Svenson Rodning of
Hallingdal (a single man) crossed the Minnesota River at the Traverse des
Sioux. They climbed the far shore and settled near what is now St. Peter in Nicollet County.
They settled this area and it became known as the Norseland Settlement.[v] Torstein Østensen settled at Scandian Grove
in Lake Prairie Township. About a year later, on October 7, 1855 a
group of Swedes joined him at Scandian Grove.
Andrew Thorson of this group would write, “It was a beautiful fall
season. During the winter we lived among
Indians who were numerous in our woods.
Four or five Norwegian farmers were living in the vicinity. We were the first Swedes at this place”.[vi] Thorson reported that the Swedes spent the
first winter in a house that stood on some land “now occupied by Annexstad”
(Author, this would be the Torstein Østensen Bøen farm). The next year, on June 17, 1856, Ole Østensen
Bøen and family from Tinn, Telemark, Norway joined his brother Torstein at Nicollet County.
Accompanied by Gunder Nereson and Swenke Torgerson, they settled near a
grove in the northern part of what is now New Sweden Township
and named the area “Norwegian Grove”.[vii]
“There are
no towns or railroads in this township, but the domain has a wonderful
fertility and is known far and near as being one of the best improved among the
banner townships of the county and state.
Its people, largely Scandinavians, are the true type of men and women
who fear not to do and to dare. They
have developed this six-mile square tract of Nicollet county in a manner that
would put to blush many an older and fairer looking country, by nature, than
was this when they first set their plowshares to the tough prairie sod in the
fifties and sixties.”[viii]
As
cultures clashed and tensions mounted between the Indians and Territorial
Pioneers it was decided that the U.S. Government would build a fort in Nicollet County
to protect the early settlers on the Great Plains. In 1853, the U.S.
military started construction of Fort
Ridgely near the southern
border of the new Indian reservation and northwest of the German settlement of
New Ulm. The fort was designed to keep peace as settlers poured into the former
Sioux lands. It was substantially completed by 1855. This fort would play a great role in the war
to come. With the protection offered by the fort, settlers poured into the Minnesota River Valley.
By 1858, when Minnesota
became a state, thirty-one families resided at Norseland.
Pioneer C.
C. Nelson found mostly Indians when he came to what is now New Sweden Township
in 1858. “We lived among the Indians
four years. They visited us frequently
and occasionally stayed all night and we accommodated them the best we could,
although we didn’t find them very pleasant or agreeable. However, we tried not to cr
War comes to Norwegian
Grove
By 1862
the Sioux were near starvation. Food and clothing were on hand in a warehouse
at the Indian Agency near the present town of Redwood Falls,
but had not been distributed.[x] To make matters worse, the customary payment
date to the Sioux from the Congress of the United States was missed by two
months. Now the Sioux would desperately try to drive the white people out of
the land given up in the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851. War broke out on August 17, 1862 when a small
band of Indians shot and killed four or five settlers in Meeker
County, near Acton.
A war council was held the following day under the leadership of Little
Crow, Chief of the Mdewakanton Santee Sioux, and the decision was made to go to
war. Little Crow had been to Washington, D.C. in 1854
thus knew of the vast number of white people to the east. He gave an impassioned speech to his
followers:
“We are only little herds of
buffaloes left scattered; the great herds that once covered the prairies are no
more. See! The white men are like the
locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is a snowstorm. You may kill one – two – ten; yes, as many as
the leaves in the forest yonder, and their brothers will not miss them. Kill one – two – ten, and ten times ten will
come to kill you. Count your fingers all
day long and white men with guns in their hands will come faster than you can
count……….Braves, you are little children – you are fools. You will die like the rabbits when the hungry
wolves hunt them in the Hard Moon (January).
Ta-o-ya-te-du-ta is not a coward; he will die with you”.[xi]
The war
soon spread across the entire Minnesota
frontier. Major battles were fought at Fort Ridgely
and at New Ulm in Nicollet
County. Life and death struggles occurred in the
townships like New Sweden.
Dr. Asa W.
Daniels wrote in his Reminiscences[xii] “The news of the Indian Uprising reached St.
Peter during the night of Monday, the 18th of August”. Dr. Daniels went north and west on Tuesday
(toward Norwegian Grove) to warn the settlers and on his return found “the
refugees were already pouring in, and by noon the village became crowded with
men, women, and children. Some had been
attacked on the way, and bore their wounded with them. All were in the most pitiful condition, having
in their haste taken little clothing, and no provisions”.
The war
reached New Sweden
Township on August 23,
1862. A band of Sioux warriors moved
from south to north through the township, through the farms of many Swedes and
directly to the Norwegians at Norwegian Grove.
Sections 18, 8, and 4 saw the most destruction. Before the approaching Indians, the Larson
and Carlson families fled in terror in a horse-drawn wagon. As they approached a curve in the road at
Norwegian Grove, they appeared to be doomed.
The Sioux warriors took a short cut across the prairie to get ahead of
the Larson team. They would have
succeeded if it had not been for a strong built rail fence. The Indians turned back and began to search
for the Erik Johnson (Swedish) family who had abandoned their wagon. Years later, at the age of 73, in 1920, Inger
Johnson Holmquist wrote her story about the encounter at Norwegian Grove:
Indians Murdered my
Mother and Brother
“It was on
the 23rd of August that the Indians murdered my mother and
brother. I was 14 years old. We met the Indians. Father turned and drove to the end of the
pasture. There he stopped while we
jumped off the wagon and hid in the grass.
The Indians took our horses and were pursuing my brother and a
neighbor. They shot a neighbor boy, John
Solomonson through the wrist. Then they
came and found mother, one brother Pehr, twelve years old, one brother 10
months old, and myself. They shot mother
in the chest. The last words she said
were ‘Lord Jesus receive my soul’. Then
they kicked my twelve-year-old brother and told him to get up. Then they kicked me and said get up. I was in a trance and could hear and feel,
but could not move or see. They asked my
brother if I was dead. Do not remember
his answer.”[xiii] The Indians took Pehr and led him away. It appeared that they intended to kidnap him
but he refused to go so they shot him dead.
After a long day, night came and Inger heard her baby brother
crying. She found her mother dead and
the baby crying in her arms. They hid
through the night. Inger’s father later
returned and found Inger and the baby hiding under a haycock.
Herman
Solomenson later recalled an incident regarding the fence at Norwegian
Grove. “This fence was close to a
Norwegian settler’s home. The wife,
hearing the noise, picked up a small child and ran outdoors to see what was
going on. She came face to face with the
Indians who did not molest her”.[xiv] (Author: There were four Norwegian families
at Norwegian Grove. I will always wonder
if this woman was my great-great-grandmother Astrid Johnsdatter Bøen, wife of
Ole Østensen Bøen. The child could have
been Østen, age 6, or Nils, age 4).
The next
day soldiers came out from St. Peter and were unable to find anyone at New
Sweden; they had fled to St. Peter or the Scandian Lutheran
Church. The Indians had burned several houses. They belonged to the Swedes Carl Nelson, Pehr
Carlson, Swen Benson, John Johnson, and Lars Solomenson. In addition, losing their houses and their
grain were Pehr Benson, Peter M. Fritioff, Joran Johnson, Erik Johnson, J.
Larson, Johannes Ecklund, and Lars Solomenson.
May I never again have to
See such Terrible Sights
One
settler, E. O. in St. Peter, wrote his family in Stavanger, Norway
on September 9, 1862:
"I will now describe
everything to you as thoroughly as I am able, and as far as my heart, which is
trembling with fear, will allow me. That which I suspected and wrote about in
my last letter has come about. The Indians have begun attacking the farmers.
They have already killed a great many people, and many are mutilated in the
cruelest manner. Tomahawks and knives have already claimed many victims.
Children, less able to defend themselves, are usually burned alive or hanged in
the trees, and destruction moves from house to house. The Indians burn
everything on their way - houses, hay, grain, and so on. Even if I describe the
horror in the strongest possible language, my description would fall short of
reality. These troubles have now lasted for about two weeks, and every day
larger numbers of settlers come into St. Peter to protect their lives from the
raging Indians. They crowd themselves together in large stone houses for
protection, and the misery is so great that imagination could not depict it in
darker colors. A few persons have their hands and feet burned off. May I never again have to see such terrible
sights”.[xv]
Scandinavian
farmers quickly united to secure their defense.
“All the settlers in that neighborhood, and the western part of New Sweden, gathered to work on a stockade. They decided to put up sod walls. The wall was built six feet in height. Their stockade stood there many years”. The settlers formed groups of citizen
soldiers to protect themselves. They gave themselves names like the Le Sueur
Tigers, St. Peter Guards, and the Scandinavian Guards of Nicollet County. Also, soldiers rushed from St.
Paul to defend the counties of southern Minnesota.
An experienced Norwegian-American soldier, originally from Hol in
Hallingdal, by the name of Ansgrim Skaro trained the group named the
Scandinavian Guard of Nicollet County.
Skaro went on to become a Civil War hero and was killed at the Battle of
Nashville. The Scandinavian Guard of Nicollet County was organized in Nicollet County, Minnesota
on the 27th day of August 1862. Gustaf
A. Stark became their captain and they patrolled the prairie around Nicollet County for three weeks. He was later killed by the Sioux. Below is an excerpt from a second letter to Norway, from St. Peter, Minnesota,
dated September 9, 1862 and translated by the Vesterheim staff for this
article:
There have been Terrible
Murders
“ ----- But here in our
neighborhood we have not seen any of those appalling things, thank God. But about 300 miles west of here there have
been terrible murders and atrocities– the worst the world has ever seen. For we have talked to people from that area
and also seen letters, written in a grieving state of mind so that it makes it
hard to even talk about how the Indians had rampaged. They don’t do like other warring powers; they
go from one farm to the next, committing atrocities against women and men,
wives and children, and they came like thieves and murderers, taking with them
everything they could, and what they couldn’t take, they set on fire, such as
hay stacks, wheat stacks, buildings, and fences, and they didn’t kill like
other murderers; they would take young and old and bang them against a wall,
leaving them half dead in a pool of blood, and others they would take and
attach to fences and buildings, and others again they would stab with spears
and knives in the outer part of the limbs.
I heard of a child who had been stabbed 11 times and still lived for a
while, and 12 miles from here there is a girl who was able to escape, but her
husband and children were killed there on the farm, and she had to witness
it. She also was knocked down by a
couple of heavy blows and was left on the farm, half dead, along with her
smallest child, and when she came to again, she set out with her little child
who had been lying by her side and had also been hurt and was half dead. You
can imagine what kind of misery that poor woman has to suffer through, losing
both her husband and her children, and there are many more who are going
through hardships equally terrifying.
Young and attractive girls were herded together and had to go along from
one camp to another, and you can just imagine what kind of misery and grief
those poor girls had to go through, having to be with such people, because they
were just like wild animals, and their faces were red, black, and blue, and I
must tell you that they have had a tremendous effect, and the reason for it is
that people didn’t know a thing until they were coming over them, and secondly
because all soldiers have gone south to fight against the southern powers, and
consequently they had a good opportunity to advance
before people had time to get together.
But then the soldiers came, and they received the same gifts back as
they had been handing out earlier, and they deserved nothing better. On the 2nd day of Christmas 39
Indians were hanged, and the ropes were made so that they all had to give up
the ghost at the same moment, and 600 are in prison for life, tied together two
and two with iron chains. This curse
against humanity took place in August and September. But for a while now, the Indians have been
completely quiet. However, in the south
there have been great battles with casualties as high as 20,000 in one battle
--------- neither the North nor the South has been winning ------------.
May God be with you, that is the wish of your sister,
Helga
Knudsdatter Hegtvedt[i]
(Author:
Helga Knudsdatter left Tinn, Telemark for America in 1843 with her brother
Ole. Helga was born February 18, 1817
and was the daughter of Knut Olsen Heggtveit and Aase Halvorsdatter Gøystdal).
[i]
Translated for Author from Tinns Emigrasjons Historie, Svalestuen, Andres A.,
p. 158.
John Other Day,
Anpetu-Tokeka, Prevents a Massacre
Many of
the Sioux were peace loving. Today, a
statue stands at Morton, Minnesota to honor the memory of John Other
Day, Anpetu-Tokeka, and four other “faithful Indians” that were instrumental in
saving the lives of white settlers. They were:
Am-pa-tu
To-ki-cha. Other Day John Other
Day.
Mah-za-koo-te-manne Iron that shoots walking Little Paul.
To-wan-e-ta-ton.Face Of the village Lorenzo Lawrence.
A-nah-waug-manne Walkd alongside Simon.
Mah-kah-ta
He-i-ya-win Traveling on the
ground Mary Crooks.
Other Day
was a full-blooded Sioux who lived on a farm and grew crops. He heard of the Sioux’s plan to attack New
Ulm and began to protect a group of settlers.
Other Day stood guard all night outside a warehouse that hid 62
settlers. The settlers heard the cries
and whoops of the Indians throughout the night.
The next day Other Day led the group on a three-day journey out of harms
way. One can only imagine what might
have happened if all of the Sioux were united in their desire to rid their
ancestral homeland of white settlers.
Capture, Trial, and
Execution
The
uprising was short in duration, lasting only a few weeks. Some four hundred and twenty-five Sioux were
arraigned for criminal trial. A military
commission convened for the trial. “All
ages, from boys of fifteen to infirm old men, were represented”.[xvii] Those who pled “guilty” soon had their cases
disposed of. The others took some time
but in the end three hundred and three were sentenced to be hung, and twenty to
imprisonment. President Abraham Lincoln
later reduced the number to be hung to thirty-nine, then thirty-eight. The execution was carried out on the 26th
of December 1862. The thirty-eight were
hanged at Mankato, Minnesota.
A. P. Connolly described the execution.[xviii] The condemned Sioux climbed the stairs to the
large execution platform. “They kept up
a mournful wail and occasionally there would be a piercing scream” until the
moment of execution came. The cutting of
the rope was assigned to William J. Daly of Lake Shetek
who had three children killed and his wife and two children captured. All 38 were hanged at one time, the largest public
execution in American history.
The Sioux
wars continued, off and on, for nearly thirty years as the Sioux were pressed
ever westward. On June 25, 1876, near
the Little Big Horn River, General George Armstrong Custer was killed in a
battle between the U.S. Army's seventh cavalry, guided by Crow and Arikara
scouts, and several bands of Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Then, on December 29, 1890, at the massacre
of Wounded Knee the great Sioux wars ended, as
did a way of life. In his old age, Black
Elk (1863-1950), also known as Hehaka
Sapa,
looked back on this day:
“I did not know then how much was
ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see
the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered along the crooked
gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that
something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A
people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...
The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and
the sacred tree is dead.” [xix]
Thus it was on the Great Plains as one culture made way for another. The swarms of Scandinavians and Germans moved
ever westward. A boy living near the rim of the Dakota country long remembered the
pageant of pioneer caravans that passed on their way westward. "We watched
the schooners come up from the south," he wrote many years later,
"zigzagging up the tortuous trail like ships beating up against the wind.
Slowly they drew nearer - sometimes one, sometimes five or six in a fleet. Out
to the road we went to watch them pass, and it was the only event of interest
from one day to another. Usually the woman was sitting at the front driving the
team, and beside her or peeking out of the front opening were a flock of dirty,
tousled, tow-headed children. Often she held a small baby in her arms. Behind
followed a small herd of cattle or horses driven by the man and the boys on
foot, for the rate of travel was a walk". Sometimes the travelers would
stop. "They told us where they came from, Fillmore or Goodhue County
in Minnesota, or Wisconsin,
or Iowa………
" Slowly the wagons passed on, the children now peeking from the opening
in the rear, the schooner receding into the distance, very much like a real
ship plowing its way over a trackless sea and then disappearing below the
horizon."[xx]
About the Author:
Gene
Estensen was born at Morris,
Minnesota and is now a retired
technology executive. He resides at Hudson,
Florida. He is on the Board of Telelaget
of America and is recognized for his knowledge of Norwegian immigration
history. This document is dedicated to
the memory of Ole Østensen Bøen (later Ole Estensen) and Astrid Johnsdatter,
the author’s great great grandparents.
They left Tinn, Telemark, Norway in 1851 and worked their way across America before settling at Norwegian Grove, New Sweden Township,
Nicollet County, Minnesota Territory. Torstein Østensen Bøen was Ole’s older
brother. Both were Minnesota Territorial Pioneers and citizen soldiers in the
Scandinavian Guard of Nicollet County and their families survived the Sioux
Uprising of 1862.
[i]
“Sioux Terror on the Prairie”, Kachuba, John B., in America’s Civil War,
p. 34.
[ii] History
of Nicollet and LeSueur Counties, Gresham,
Wm G., p. 140.
[iii]
“Sioux Terror on the Prairie”, Kachuba, John B., in America’s Civil War,
p. 30.
[iv]
Saint Peter Tribune, June 27, 1906, Obituary of Torstein Østensen states that
he came to Minnesota
Territory in 1854.
[v] Nordmandene I Amerika, Ulvestad, Martin (v.1 1903).
[vi] Scandian
Grove, A New Look, Johnson, Emeroy, 1980, p. 24.
[vii] History
of Nicollet and LeSueur Counties, Gresham,
Wm G., p. 166.
[viii]
History of Nicollet and LeSueur Counties, Gresham,
Wm G., p. 168.
[ix] “New Sweden Township,
Nicollet County, History of the Early Pioneers of
this Neighborhood, Nelson, C.C., 1926.
[x] Scandian
Grove, A New Look, Johnson, Emeroy, 1980, p. 31.
[xi] Through
Dakota Eyes, Edited by Gary Anderson and Alan Woolworth, 1988, p. 40.
[xii]
Microfilm HKR-170, Minnesota
Historical Society Collection, V15.
Reminiscences of the Little Crow Uprising.
[xiii]
Microfilm HKR-170, Minnesota
Historical Society Collection, V15.
Reminiscence of August 23, 1862 Dakota Indian attack on
New Sweden Township.
[xiv] Scandian
Grove, A New Look, Johnson, Emeroy, 1980, p. 35.
[xv] The
Promise of America,
Lovoll, Odd, p. 130.
[xvi]
Translated for Author from Tinns Emigrasjons Historie, Svalestuen, Andres A.,
p. 158.
[xvii]
Dakota War-Hoop, McConkey, Harriet, B., p. 249.
[xviii]
Microfilm HKR-170, Minnesota
Historical Society Collection, V15.
A thrilling narrative of the Minnesota Massacre and the
Sioux War of 1862.
[xix] Web site of Virtualmuseumofhistory.com.
[xx] "Sod Houses and Prairie Schooners", Minnesota
History, 12:153-156 (June, 19331) and reprinted in Norwegian Migration to
America, Blegen, Theodore, C., 1940.
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