The woods are on fire with fall colors. The farmers are in the fields. The nights are very cool. At nearby Glacial Lakes State Park the prairie grasses and their wild flowers are a joy to see.
The first day of fall seemed like a good day to snap some pics. Add a little music by Donavan and you get this result:
To the north of us lie the vast forests of Minnesota. We have begun to explore that region of the state.
The forest lands are shown in orange.
Hibbing is also home to the Little Grand Canyon of the North. The largest of the large iron mines is the Hull Rust mine and we paid a visit to this vast hole in the ground.
Minnesota is bisected east to west as can be seen in the image below. To the south lie the vast prairies which extend from the Red River Valley, through South Dakota, down through the southern half of Minnesota, and into Iowa and Illinois. This is corn country today. It was the land of the Sioux (Dakota, Lakota).
At Lake Minnewaska we are on the boundary. Drive to the north and you are quickly in forest lands. Drive to the south and the Great Plains awaits you.
Imagine how it must have looked before the settlers from Norway, Sweden, and Germany swept into this part of the world. When the first settlers arrived at present-day Glenwood, the "ground was strewn with buffalo bones".
Actually, one can get a real appreciation for the prairie lands even today. Just around the corner from us a state park provides the look and feel of a time gone by. The bison are gone but the white-tailed deer are plentiful.
Glacial Lakes State Park lies right near us, just a few miles from Lake Minnewaska. It was called Mountain Lake when I was a kid and my father and grandfather took me there.
This park features small lakes and vast views of prairie grasses and flowers. There are great hikes here.
The prairie grasses and flowers bring a raw beauty to the plains.
As the glaciers retreated, they left the lakes and potholes of Minnesota. Mountain Lake is just one of 10,000 lakes. But it is a special lake because my dad and grandfather brought me here often. The memories linger. I will wrap up this segment with some pics of Mountain Lake.
Weekdays, this is a quiet place. The campsites are empty. There are remote campsites out along the trails for those who seek the isolation. One evening soon, I will slowly walk the high trails with binoculars in hand. At about sunset the deer begin to move about.
She is lost, but not forgotten. She is buried somewhere near Norseland or New Sweden, Minnesota. In the year 1850 Astrid Jonsdatter married Ole Østensen Bøen in Vestfjorddalen, Telemark, Norway.
Ole and Astrid set out by ship for "Amerika" in 1851. The family group included her father Jon, her brother Osten, and their new baby named Aase (Oh-sa). The journey to Minnesota Territory was long and difficult. Astrid lost her father and baby on the journey. Ole worked the railroad westward and Astrid gave birth to a second child, Jon, in a railroad shanty near Galena, Illinois. Eventually, they settled in the Minnesota River Valley and were a founding family of New Sweden, Minnesota Territory. They lived within the Sioux Indian territory for several years. Ole built a cabin for the family. It had two windows and a door. A second son, Osten, was born before Minnesota Territory became a state. They were surrounded by Swedes but four Norwegian families lived near a grove of trees named Norwegian Grove. The Sioux War of 1862 came to their very doorstep. More on that below. Astrid died after giving birth to a baby girl. Ole named the baby Astrid (awe-STREE in Norwegian) after her mother. Astrid traditionally became Ester in America. Ole is buried at Norseland Lutheran Church. In Norwegian, his tombstone tells of leaving Norway for America in 1851.
Next to Ole is a headstone, an unknown identity in the cemetery records. Is this Astrid? Like I wrote above, my great-great-grandmother Astrid Jonsdatter Estensen is lost but not forgotten.
I was just a kid when we had a family reunion at Ft. Ridgely along the Minnesota River Valley and near Norseland and New Sweden. I remember playing on the cannons with my cousins. More important, I heard my elderly aunts speaking of a grandmother who baked bread for the Indians. I learned later in life that some settlers were spared destruction to their farms, even death, because of acts of kindness to the Sioux Indians when the Sioux Uprising of 1862 brought terror to the Minnesota River Valley.
We returned to visit Ft. Ridgely and surrounds this summer.
Fort Ridgely was built along the Minnesota River to offer protections for the settlers from Norway, Sweden, and Germany as they swept into Minnesota Territory. They pressed the Native Americans, the Sioux, onto reservations. One promise after another made to the Sioux was broken. Over time tensions mounted and war broke out.
Ft. Ridgely came under attack. Here is an account from a Sioux Warrior and a summary of the Uprising of 1862.
The cannons at Ft. Ridgely saved the day for the army.
Mrs. Ingar
Holmquist
(Ingar Johnson)
[Source: Dakota Conflict of 1862 Manuscripts Collections of Minnesota
Historical Society. St. Paul, Minnesota]
INDIAN OUTBREAK IN (NEW SWEDEN TOWNSHIP) NICOLLET COUNTY,
MINNESOTA, AUGUST 1862.
Statement by Mrs. Ingar Holmquist, nee Ingar Johnson, or
Jessen, of Faribault, Minnesota, 1920.
On the 14th of August we were told that the Indians had
broke out and were killing people and burning houses, stables and grain. That
same night all the dogs in the neighborhood kept howling all night. The men got
their rifles ready but did not have any ammunition and we had 16 miles to St.
Peter where ammunition could be bought but they went out anyway to see if they
could see any Indians or fires, but they could not see anything. The next day
all the men hitched up their teams and everybody went to the Church which was
five miles from where we lived. We stayed there till the 21st of August. Then a
man named Thorson told us that scouts had been out to see and there were no
Indians so it was safe for us to return home. But the very same night after we
were back home someone discovered fires and all the rest of the families (in
the neighborhood) went back to the church in the night, except my parents, who
had not been told of the fires. In the morning one of the neighbors was sent to
tell us, but got scared and forgot to tell us. Some other men and father went
on horseback out west on the prairie toward where they had seen the fires to
see if there were any Indians. They rode on till they came to a big slough.
They saw men on the other side of the slough who beckoned them to come. They
rode as near as they could; then the Indians fired at them but did not hurt
anybody. Our men turned around and galloped back as fast as the horses could
go. Mother and we children were ready in the wagon to drive away. When we saw
the men coming so fast we knew there was danger. Mother did not want to leave
till father came. He jumped off the horse, and my brother (John) jumped on the
horse father had been riding. Father took the lines of the team to drive away.
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 Solomon, changed name later to Wilson) through the wrist. Then
they came and found Mother, one brother, Pehr, twelve years old, one brother
ten months old, and myself. They shot Mother in the chest. The last
words she said were, "Lord Jesus receive my soul." They then kicked
my twelve year old brother and told him to get up. They then kicked me and said
get up. I was in a trance and could hear and feel but could not move and see.
They asked brother if I was dead. Do not remember his answer. Then two Indians
dragged me across the pasture holding my wrists; they felt of my pulse and
threw a feather mattress over me. I thought an Indian was near me watching. I
have a big scar on my right side above my knee from being dragged. I lay there
from between two and three o'clock until nightfall. When I got up it was dusk.
It looked to me like the corn in the field was walking - fires all around,
houses, stables and grain. I heard my little brother cry. He had laid by Mother
and cried all that time. I went and got him and walked back to where I had been
left. There I found a piece of bread and masticated it some as it was very dry
and no water near. He ate it and went to sleep. I went through the fence into
the field where some hay was cocked and went into one of the cocks with my
brother. Father had gone farther away so the Indians did not find him. He had
two small brothers with him (Olof and Nels). When it was dark father came to look
for his dead as he had heard a shot for each one of us. He saw a dog sitting on
one of the haycocks. He went and tipped it over. There he found a neighbor's
wife with her little daughter. Then he turned them all over and found me in the
last one. Father, my two brothers, myself, the neighbor's wife and her daughter
walked five miles that night to the Church. There there were some soldiers who
had started for St. Paul to go South, but had been called back. The next day
father with the soldiers went to find my twelve year old brother (Pehr) and to
bring mother to be buried. They did not find brother till a week after. He was
buried in the same grave with mother. It was on the 23d of August that the
Indians murdered my brother and my mother. I was then 14 years old and am now
73. We went to St. Peter and stayed in a fort that was not finished. I was so
nervous that I could not sleep nights, thought I heard Indians outside the
house. The next spring I began to sleep again nights, but dreamed of Indians
and often woke up with a scream. Have never go over being nervous. The least
little thing startles me. My father's name was Erick Johnson.
Respectfully,
Mrs. Ingar Holmquist,
East Side,
405 5th Ave.,
Faribault, Minnesota.
To the best of our knowledge and belief the above
statement is true.
Signed, Andrew Nelson, C. C. Nelson, S. O. Strand, Witnesses.
[1] The Pehr Carlson cabin was also spared. I don’t know about the grain, but the Carlson family believed that their home was spared because mother Chastie Carlson had always fed the Indians who came looking for food. This first log cabin existed until at least the 1960s.
[2] Many of the families stayed in Minnesota, including that of the author, the Carlsons, the P.M. Fritjoff family, and others.
We drove on down the Minnesota River Valley to Walnut Grove where we took a close look at the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Does Little House on the Prairie sound familiar to you?
The 'Little House' Series
In the 1910s Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, by then grown up and a reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin, encouraged her mother to write about her childhood. In the 1920s, Wilder's first attempt at writing an autobiography, called Pioneer Girl, was uniformly rejected by publishers. Determined to succeed, Wilder spent the next several years reworking her writing, including switching the title and changing the story to be told from the third-person perspective.
In 1932, Laura Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in what would become an autobiographical series of children's books, collectively called the Little House books. Just as Little House in the Big Woods recounts her life in Pepin, Wisconsin, each of her books focuses on one of the more memorable places she lived. With Wilder and daughter Rose working together on the manuscripts, other books in the Little House series include Little House on the Prairie, Farmer Boy, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. Wilder completed the last book in the series in 1943, when she was 76 years old.
At Walnut Grove, the family lived in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek, then into a home the family built.
A replica of the dugout is found at the Museum in Walnut Grove.
The museum offered insight into life on the prairie.
