Fifty Years In The Northwest by William H. C. Folsom
1874. His seat was contested by John Hallburg, of Centre City. The
1396 words | Chapter 107
Senate referred the question to the people, but in the election that
followed (1875) he was defeated. In 1879 he removed to Dakota, where
he died three years later.
JOHN S. FERSON came from Michigan to Pine City in 1869. During that
and the succeeding year he was principal in building a first class
steam saw mill. It was located on a bay in the western part of the
city. This mill was burned in 1872, rebuilt and burned again. Mr.
Ferson has since removed to Dakota.
SAMUEL MILLET settled in Pine City in 1869, and in 1870 erected the
Bay View House, on an elevated plateau commanding a fine view of Cross
lake and Kanabec river. Mr. Millet died in 1879, leaving a widow, two
sons and three daughters.
ROCK CREEK
Was organized March, 1874. The first supervisors were Enoch Horton,
Frank England, and S. M. Hewson. Obadiah Hewsom was town clerk. Enoch
Horton and C. W. Gill were justices of the peace. Mr. Horton was the
first settler, he having come to the county in 1872. The year
following he raised the first crop. Mr. Horton was from Colchester,
New York. He was born in 1811, and came to Minnesota in 1862. He was
the first postmaster at Rock Creek. Other settlers came in slowly.
Edgerton, Gill & Co. built a saw mill in 1873, with a capacity of
3,000,000 feet. This property has changed hands several times.
CAPT. ENOCH HORTON commenced official life at the age of twenty-two
years, in New York, where he served twenty-eight years as justice of
the peace and county judge. He served during the Rebellion as captain
of a company of sharpshooters.
ROYALTON
Was organized in 1880. The first supervisors were Edward Peterson,
Alexis Kain and Joseph Heiniger. It is a good farming township with
many good farms. The first settlement was made by Elam Greely, in
1849, who made a farm and built a large barn, hauling the lumber from
Marine Mills, a distance of seventy miles. The town was named in
honor of Royal C. Gray, who located on the Greely farm in 1854, in the
northwest quarter of section 15, township 38, range 22, on the banks
of the Kanabec river.
WINDERMERE
Was organized as a town Jan. 3, 1882. The first supervisors were
August Schog, William Champlain and Frank Bloomquist.
The towns of Kettle River, Hinckley and Pine City were organized, and
Chengwatana reorganized by special act of the legislature in 1874, and
at that time embraced all the territory in the county. Since 1874,
Mission Creek, Rock Creek and Royalton have been set off from Pine
City and Windermere from Kettle River.
The following villages were platted at the dates named: Neshodana, by
Clark, Cowell & Foster, in townships 41 and 42, ranges 15 and 16, in
1856; Fortuna, by W. A. Porter, surveyor, at the crossing of Kettle
river and the military road, January, 1857; St. John's, by M. L.
Benson, surveyor, in section 26, township 41, range 17, October, 1857;
Midway, by Frank B. and Julia L. Lewis, proprietors, in the northwest
quarter of section 34, township 40, range 21, September, 1855.
A ROCK CREEK MURDER.
A man passing under the name of Harris had been arrested for stealing
horses. George Hathaway started with the prisoner to Sunrise. Five
days afterward Hathaway's dead body was found, and the inquest decided
that he probably met his death by stabbing or shooting at the hands of
his prisoner, who made his escape, and was never again heard from.
Hathaway was a native of Passadumkeag, Maine.
THE BURNING OF A JAIL.
March 22, 1884, a couple of young men, John Cope and William Leonard,
were arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and confined in
the Pine City jail, a wooden structure. About three o'clock the next
morning the jail was found to be on fire. All efforts to extinguish
the flames or rescue the unhappy prisoners were unavailing. The fire
originated from within, in all probability from the careless action of
the prisoners themselves in striking matches, either for the purpose
of smoking or of exploring their cells.
A DISFIGURED FAMILY.
Mr. Redman, the agent at the Kettle River railroad station, called my
attention to the fact that old Batice is singularly disfigured. He was
born without thumbs or big toes. The fingers and remaining toes
resemble birds' claws. Two of the fingers of each hand and two of the
toes on each foot are united to the tips but have distinct nails. Of
his four children three are disfigured like the father. His
grandchildren are many of them worse than himself, one having but one
finger.
INDIAN FAITH CURE.
A woman at Pokegama was badly burned by the explosion of gunpowder
while she was putting it in a flask. Her face became terribly swollen
and black. The missionaries did what they could for her, but thought
she must die. After two days the Indian doctors held a medicine dance
for her benefit. After they had gone through with their magic arts the
woman arose, and, without any assistance, walked around distributing
presents to the performers of the ceremony. It was truly wonderful.
She recovered rapidly.
INDIAN GRAVES.
The Chippewas bury their dead much as the whites do. The body is
deposited in a grave and covered with earth. A low wooden covering,
somewhat like the roof of a house, is reared above it, the gables
resting on the ground. The roof is covered with white or bleached
muslin, and surmounted by a board cross. An aperture about six inches
square is left in each end of the structure. The head of the grave is
toward the west, and here are deposited offerings of fruits and
trinkets of various kinds. We found at one grave a broken saucer, an
oyster can filled with blueberries, a large red apple, and a pair of
old shoes. Friends of the deceased visit the graves for one or two
years, renewing their tributes of affection, and bringing offerings of
fruit according to the season, and various foods, from acorns to dried
venison, but in time these visits are discontinued and the graves are
neglected and forgotten.
STOICISM OF THE INDIAN.
On the banks of the Kettle river a five-year-old boy burned his hand
badly. The mother, after examining the wound, decided that it was
incurable, ordered the boy to place his hand upon a block, and by a
single blow from a common hatchet severed it from the wrist. The boy
endured the suffering without flinching.
OLD BATICE, _alias_ "Kettle," lived on Kettle river in 1880. Counting
by moons he claims to have lived there ninety-nine years. He is
certainly very old. He says that he has always been a friend to the
whites, and that in the Sioux outbreak of 1862 he counseled his people
to remain quiet; that he was the enemy of the Sioux, three of whom he
had killed and scalped. To commemorate his warlike deeds in
slaughtering his enemies, he wore three large eagle feathers in his
gray hair. He claims to be half French.
AN INDIAN DANCE.
In June, 1880, the Indians were practicing a new dance near the Kettle
River railroad station, part of which it was my privilege to witness.
The dance house was a rudely constructed pole frame covered with birch
bark, fastened down with willow twigs. About thirty dancers, male and
female, and of all ages, were crowded in the dance house, sweating,
grunting, hopping and bounding at the tap of a deer skin drumhead, and
the "chi-yi-chi-yi-chi-hoo" of a quartette of boys and girls, squatted
in a corner of the bark house. The din was incessant, the chant of the
singers, or howlers, monotonous and wearisome, yet the dancers stepped
and bounded to their rude music as readily as do civilized dancers to
the more exquisite music of stringed instruments. This dance was the
same that so frightened the Burnett county people, and required at
least ten days for its complete performance. A few minutes'
observation amply satisfied us, and we gladly withdrew.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] Several years prior to this William Morrison had a trading station
upon the shores of this lake, and is probably the first white man who
visited it, but it does not appear that he identified it as the source
of the Mississippi.
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