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Memories
from Bear Lake
PIONEER STORY
BEAR LAKE FARM
Part II
As far as housing in
those early days was concerned, it was, of course, primitive but
substantial. The forest was around us and with a sharp axe, and
an auger at hand the housing was not a problem. After the timber
was felled, a neighbour helped and in a day or two the log structure
was up. On both sides of the ridgepole was laid either poles from
the nearest tamarack swamp or split balsam. On top of this were
laid layers of birch barking that old ageless fundamental material
for roofing. Clay on top of this made a warm and snug roof. A window
or two was carried on the back from the nearest store. A hole was
left in the roof for the stovepipe and if a piece of lumber was
not available a log was split chinks and plastered with clay in
the inside. The wife saved and begged all the newspapers she could
lay her hands on and that were her wallpaper for years. It was remarkable
what a few simple hand tools could create in the line of furniture.
The old Norwegian spinning wheel had its time-hallowed place in
most of the houses. It had followed the families from the old ancestral
homes in the northlands and found its place in the new homeland.
It meant warm socks, sweaters, and other clothing for the cold winters.
Now it dwells in the attic or had found its way to a museum. Floors
were at first made from split logs (puncheon) but as sawmills were
started (I think in 1892 at Isle Harbour) most everyone got a load
of lumber for flooring and doors, but the ripsaw was the usual way
for years as very few of the settlers had teams.
Some of the settlers were without
cows for awhile, but they planted potatoes among the stumps and
also small vegetable gardens. The men supplemented their incomes
by working in the lumber camps during the winter at wages ranging
from $20.00 to $25.00 for swampers and sawyers, and $40.00 to $45.00
for loaders and sled teamsters. The families had to, in the meantime,
live on the lonesome homesteads. When one or two cows came to the
homestead it began to shape up as a real home. The necessities of
life were carried home from the store on the back of the purchaser,
and it was really a Herculean achievement. Here is a story told
the writer by one of those sturdy people. Mr. Sandberg, Mr. Lundquist
and Mr. Westlund of the first pioneers who settled east and little
north of the present day village of Malmo, had been out in the harvest
fields in the Red River valley. They came into Aitkin on their way
home on the morning train. There they bought a one-hundred pound
sack of flour each and a few other necessities. They arranged their
purchases in packsacks, put them on their backs and started for
home. They trudged homeward tired and hungry, and towards evening
they reached Mud River (now Ripple River) just north of what is
now Wealthwood. They decided to camp there, but as there was no
bridge there as yet, they desire to cross the river before making
their night camp. It was late in the fall so the water was cold.
But there was no choice so they disrobed and got their clothing
over safely, then with the precious flour sacks on top of their
heads they started across again. Mr. Sandberg and Mr. Lundquist
were tall men so they made the crossing without mishap. Mr. Westlund
who was short and stocky did not fare so well. He put his sack of
flour on his head and waded in, but in the deepest place the water
was over his head and misstep made him duck and his flour got a
wetting. He got up and over in a rush. The other two made ready
to cook supper, but Mr. Westlund just put his wet flour on his back
and walked the remaining twelve miles to his home during the night.
The others came home late the next day. This experience was but
one of many of pioneer life.
When you read the list of the original
homesteaders in Idun Township you will notice that all of them came
either from farming districts or cities. Whatever the state of their
finances, because of the drouth or the so-called Cleveland times,
they brought besides their clothing a few family treasures like
a bureau or a sewing machine. An oilcloth soon covered the homemade
table. Newspapers were cut up as trimming for the little bookshelf
nailed up on the wall which always contained the old family Bible
and a couple of hymnbooks besides the other books or papers the
family might possess. Around the stove those same trimmings ornamented
the shelves for the few dishes and cooking utensils. If the quarter
for a broom was not found, a broom made of fine split birch twigs
and tied solidly to a handle served well and had its place right
inside the door.
A great help for the settlers at
that time was mail stage from Aitkin to Opstead. It was established
in 1892 and it enabled the homesteader to get most of his supplies
that way. The stage driver charged fifty cents per one hundred pounds,
which was very moderate when you consider the road. Of course he
had good pay for hauling the mail for the government so the additional
hauling was extra profit for him.
One thing that helped the settlement
and kept want from the door was the abundance of the fish in Mille
Lacs Lake. In the fall of the year the white fish came inshore to
spawn and was caught by the barrel by the settlers. If the weather
was cold enough they could be kept fresh for a long time, otherwise
were salted for winter use. In the spring we had the pike and pickerel,
and there were plenty suckers in the lakes and creeks. The suckers
were speared by the thousands and were a great asset to the summer
diet. They were salted down mostly. Father who was a fisherman from
the old country knew quite a lot about curing fish. He split the
fish, spread them flesh side up on a wide board, salted each layer
lightly, and when the pile was high enough, he placed another board
on top. After two or three days he rinsed them and hung them up
in the smokehouse and was careful to keep the smoke going until
they got a little hard and the danger of flies was over. Well cured
and served with fresh potatoes in the late summer they were a dish
that anyone would enjoy, not only Scandinavians, who will face any
road or weather to get to a lutefish supper served by some enterprising
ladies who want to make some money for either church or charity
purposes. An occasional deer for those who were handy with the rifle
also helped to fill the larder. The distance from any market prevented
any serious misuse of the game and fish laws.
I will tell a little story about
an experience my brother and I had. We had been over to Mille Lacs
fishing and I came driving up from the lake with a wagonbox full
of fishing gear and fish. After I got up on the main road I was
met by a team of horses and four men. I could see they had come
quite a distance by their rig. When we met, one exclaimed, "Wouldn't
you be a fine catch for the game warden." I looked at him,
and answered, "Evidently, I would." "Don't you know
you are a lawbreaker?" "Maybe," I said, "and
if the state wants to chase the settlers out of the country, all
they would have to do is to send a couple of over-zealous game wardens
up here and I suppose we would all land in the lock-up, and our
dependents on the country poor farm. As for crime, I see no virtue
in going hungry when the woods are full of game and the lakes flooded
with fish." They shook their heads and drove off. I hauled
my catch home. When we got the railroad and a new set of people
came in the game wardens done a good job in preserving our riches
in natural resources intact as it seemed some people had an insatiable
thirst for destruction. However, in the first days we depended on
the game and fish for existence.
Now a few words about the Thomsen
family on section four at Bear Lake. We were a large group by ourselves.
There were three unmarried boys. Father and mother's house was the
centre. There were three men to bring victuals to one place, when
most had to bring them alone to feed several mouths. We also brought
several horses. That saved us from the drudgery of carrying so much
on our backs as we could get things in the winter on sleds. They
were also a great help in hauling hay, most of which we had to haul
four or five miles. In the summer time, those horses were a liability
and a nuisance, because of the mosquitoes and later in the season
there were the horseflies. It was like the plague of Egypt. We built
huge smudges all day and banked them last thing before we went to
bed. The cattle suffered some but their thick hides saved them somewhat,
but the poor horses lived in a torment most of the summer. We tried
to darken the stables, but then the horses almost suffocated. We
never hitched them up during the summer unless it was a dire necessity.
A man who had come into our neighbourhood as a small boy with his
parents went on the Alaskan highway. When he returned I asked him
how the mosquitoes in Alaska compared with those here when he was
a boy. The mosquitoes in Alaska were gentle in comparison, he said.
He had gone equipped, and among other things he had a both of mosquito
netting in his trunk, but he didn't have to take it out. They were
bad enough in the day, but when evening came they quieted down.
Here they were never quiet day or night. The fly sprays we have
now were non-existent at that time. As the country was cleared the
situation became a great deal better.
Now a word for and about those loyal
helpmates who followed their husbands into the wilds and surely
had their full share of the struggle to build up the country and
their homes. It was a task worthy of a place in our county's history.
To come, so to speak, barehanded into a new country and to build
a home out of next to nothing was no easy task. To be alone in a
cabin for days at time when their men folks were off to work or
on some trip, and in the long winter months to live alone with the
children while the husbands were working in lumber camps. One woman
said that after they got a cow and she could hear the bell, it was
a great help because it told of a home and a coming farm. It was
quite a distance between settlers and the trails were poor, so it
wasn't very safe to venture out very far to go visiting. It was
easy to get off the trail, and be lost. To tell a couple of pioneer
episodes would not be out of place. Our neighbour, Ole Thorsen,
who came up here with the group from Kandiyohi County in the spring
of 1894, found himself a homestead on section 10 in Idun Township.
After he located his claim he started to cut timber for cabin and
to cut a road. In October he returned from North Dakota where he
had worked during harvesting and brought with him his bride of a
year. She stayed at Melbys while he finished putting up the cabin
and cutting the road. He stayed at Melbys while he finished putting
up the cabin and cutting the road. He stayed with us during the
week. We were a mile and a half from his claim.
One Monday morning when he came he
told us he expected his wife to come on Thursday with provisions,
and that he would by that time have the road so well finished that
she would find the place easily. If she did not come he was not
so worry because it would mean she did not dare to start out alone.
You can imagine his consternation when on Saturday evening he got
to Melsbys
and found she wasn't there. They told him she had started out according
to the agreement, but when she did not return they had thought she
had stayed with him and didn't think anything was amiss. Mr. Melsby
came back with Mr. Thorsen and we started out with them to search.
We took our guns along. We could
not do much in the darkness except to call her name and to fire
our guns at intervals. In the morning the whole settlement was aroused
and out hunting for her. Mr. Melsby
who had been raised in a backwoods settlement in Wisconsin and was
a trained woodsman, took the lead. In the forenoon he found her
tracks and followed them east a couple of miles to a big rock formation
where she had spent the first night. She had gone eastward and got
into a section where a big forest fire had gone over earlier in
the fall (a part of the Hinckley fire). As we had trouble to find
her tracks we divided and I went with a party who went northeastward.
Those who went southeast were luckier. She had gotten on a new-cut
logging road Sunday morning and the foreman of the lumber camp who
had gone out in the morning to blaze a new branch road saw her travelling
eastward to the river several miles off. He took her to the camp
where she was given the best of care. A little later in the day
the searchers found her there. She was, of course, much exhausted,
but otherwise had made out well. The fright and wild loneliness
had been the worst. When she had left she had put on her heavy Norwegian
woollen clothes and a pair of light men's boots on her feet so she
had survived the cold nights of late autumn rather well. Her husband
thought it would be best to give up the homestead, and go back to
civilization. But she said, "No, I will try not to get lost
again. We will build on that land and make a home out of it. "She
was from Helgeland in northern Norway, and had all the native grit
and endurance. No hysteria there! Just the right sort of pioneer
spirit. He built his cabin and they moved in. A logging camp was
started nearby where he got work all winter for $15.00 a month and
board.
Someone would get lost frequently in those days, but not as badly
as she had. I have often been lost for an hour or so. The worst
thing you can do is to start running. You think you see an opening
ahead and run to it, and discover it isn't there. The best thing
to do is to sit down and try to study the situation. You are much
more likely to get back on the right course. It was also a big help
if you could get a glimpse of the sun and figure out where it might
be at that time of day, and try to get your course from that. If
it was dark we had the big Dipper and the northern star, but the
first year when we often had to go for miles after our cattle in
the evenings or dark days it was far from pleasant. You thought
you heard the bell in a certain direction, but when you got there
the cows had lain down and you were left puzzling in the dark woods.
Sometime after we had moved up there we could not find the cows.
I thought I had heard the bell a distance south. Father thought
it was to late to start out after them, but I started out. After
I had gone a mile or so I knew I was caught, because the cows had
lain down and rest for the night. I stood there not knowing what
direction to go. The weather was foggy. I walked in what I believed
to be a northerly direction. I came to a little ridge and I stopped
and looked around. Then I noticed something bright rise up in the
dark. I thought at first it was a campfire, but who could build
such a big fire? Not Indians surely. Finally it came to me that
it was the full moon rising among the trees. The fog was lifting
and the air was clearing up. Now I had to consider and think where
the moon should rise. East, of course. North was now easy to figure
out. It now became fine starlight. Twenty minutes later I was home.
Not much to relate maybe, but get lost some dark evening and have
the task of finding your way out or spending the night alone in
the darkness, resting your head against a tree. You will use the
brains you got to get out of it. One thing we learned soon was never
to leave home for a distance without a watertight matchbox well
filled, and a compass in the pocket. Often I have lighted myself
along the trails with a torch made of birch bark. We did not have
electric flashlight in those days. That woodcraft we often read
about in pioneer history was acquired by along sojourn in the woods
and by constant practice brought up to perfection.
Now we get the world's news every
morning in the newspapers and over the radio. Shining cars flash
by on the roads, planes land in our fields, tractors plow the fields,
electricity is in most homes, but are we happier?
A new time is here, most of the old-timers
have passed over the river, and we who remain are old and bent,
and the poet's words fit us.
"Those who go
foremost,
In the strife of life,
He does not conquer,
Only fights and falls."
Our children and grandchildren I
most cases till the old homesteads, and so our memory lives on.
Or as the song says.
"In the woodlands,
son
I still do see,
A branch of those sturdy forebears,
Who willingly bore the strife of life.
In the maidens eyes
as yet, I see
Sweet innocence and charming firelight,
And Idun's everlasting spring
Upon her cheeks written in."
Did we live in vain?
T. G. Thomsen
Chicago, Illinois
1949
With written permission
from Carolyn Thomsen Mutchler
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Fossum postmaster@slektsforskning.com
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