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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/pioneerwoodsmanaOOwarr 
 
Mo.Mr^m^c- 
 
THE 
 
 PIONEER WOODSMAN 
 
 AS HE IS RELATED TO 
 
 LUMBERING IN THE 
 
 NORTHWEST 
 
 By 
 GEORGK HENRY WARREN 
 
 MINNEAPOLIS 
 
 PRESS OF HAHN <& HARMON COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
TS 80s 
 .W3 
 
 Copyright 1914 
 By George Henry Warren 
 
 ws* i V" 
 
 ff\* 
 
 ^ 
 
 JUL 13 !5?4~ 
 
I DEDICATE 
 
 THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 WILLIAM S. PATRICK, 
 
 GUIDING FRIEND AND HELPFUL COUNSELOR 
 
 OF MY EARLIER MANHOOD YEARS. 
 
Foreword. 
 
 HE aim will be to take the reader 
 along on the journey of the pioneer 
 woodsman, from comfortable hearth- 
 stone, from family, friends, books, 
 magazines, and daily papers, and to disappear 
 with him from all evidences of civilization and 
 from all human companionship save, ordinarily, 
 that of one helper who not infrequently is an 
 Indian, and to live for weeks at a time in the 
 unbroken forest, seldom sleeping more than a 
 single night in one place. 
 
 The woodsman and his one companion 
 must carry cooking utensils, axes, raw provi- 
 sions of flour, meat, beans, coffee, sugar, rice, 
 pepper, and salt; maps, plats, books for field 
 notes ; the simplest and lightest possible equip- 
 ment of surveying implements ; and, lastly, tent 
 and blankets for shelter and covering at night 
 to protect them from storm and cold. 
 
 Incidents of the daily life of these two volun- 
 tary reclusionists, as they occurred to the au- 
 thor, and some of the results obtained, will be 
 told to the reader in the pages which are to 
 follow. 
 
 
 
Table of Contents. 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Sowing the Germ That I Knew Not. 
 Preparations for the Wilds of Wisconsin. 
 Entering the Wilds of Wisconsin. 
 
 Surveying and Selecting Government Timber 
 
 Lands. 
 Gaining Experience — Getting Wet. 
 A Birthday Supper. 
 A New Contract — Obstacles. 
 
 A Few Experiences in the New and More 
 Prosperous Field. 
 
 Tracing Gentlemen Timber Thieves — Getting 
 Wet — Fawn. 
 
 Does It Pay to Rest on Sunday? 
 
 Indian Traits — Dog Team. 
 
 Wolves — Log Riding. 
 
 Entering Minnesota, the New Field. 
 
 An Evening Guest — Not Mother's Bread. 
 
 A Hurried Round Trip to Minneapolis — 
 Many Incidents. 
 
 The Entire Party Moves to Swan River. 
 
 Methods of Acquiring Government Land — 
 An Abandoned Squaw. 
 
 United States Land Sale at Duluth — Joe La- 
 Garde. 
 
 Six Hundred Miles in a Birch Canoe. 
 
 Effect of Discovery of Iron Ore on Timber 
 Industry. 
 
 Forest Fires. 
 
 White Pine— What of Our Future Supply? 
 
 Retrospect — Meed of Praise. 
 
 Page 
 13 
 15 
 18 
 
 22 
 28 
 33 
 40 
 
 47 
 
 56 
 63 
 69 
 73 
 
 77 
 94 
 
 101 
 
 117 
 
 125 
 
 129 
 135 
 
 142 
 159 
 174 
 178 
 

 Illustrations. 
 
 George H. Warren. Frontispiece 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 W. S. Patrick. 16 
 
 The "V" shaped baker is a valuable part of the cook's 
 
 outfit. 22 
 
 "The almost saucy, yet sociable red squirrel". 28 
 
 "I found several families of Indians camping at the end of 
 
 the portage." 34 
 
 "In the Vermilion country, dog trains could sometimes 
 
 be advantageously used." 40 
 
 S. D. Patrick. 44 
 
 "There were many waterfalls". 52 
 
 "We succeeded in crossing Burnt Side Lake". 58 
 
 "We started out with two birch canoes". 64 
 
 "The party subsisted well, until it arrived at Ely". 70 
 
 "My three companions and I had gone to sur- 
 vey and estimate a tract of pine timber." 74 
 
 The journey had to be made with the use of toboggans. 82 
 
 "Our camp was established on the shores of Kekekabic 
 
 Lake". 88 
 
 "The memorable fire which swept Hinckley". 94 
 
 "The fire destroyed millions of dollars worth 
 
 of standing pine timber". 102 
 
 This illustration kindly loaned by Department of Forestry, 
 State of Minnesota. 
 
 "One of the horses balked frequently". 106 
 
 "Our camp was made in a fine grove of pig-iron Norway". 112 
 
 "These little animals were numerous". 1 18 
 
 "We saw racks in Minnesota made by the Indians". 122 
 
 "The roots of the lilies are much relished as a food by the 
 
 moose." 130 S 
 
Illustrations — Con tin tied. 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 "We have seen the moose standing out in the bays of the 
 lakes." 136 
 
 "White Pine—What of Our Future Supply?" 142 
 
 "He motors over the fairly good roads of the northern 
 
 frontier." 148 
 
 "Friends whom he had known in the city who are ready 
 to welcome him." 154 
 
 "He camps by the roadside on the shore of a lake". 160 
 
 The midday luncheon is welcomed by the automobile 
 tourists. 166 
 
 "Here he brings his family and friends to fish". 172 
 
 "Prepare their fish just caught for the meal, by the open 
 camp fire." 178 
 
 "He continues his journey ... to the very source 
 of the Mississippi River". 182 
 
THE PIONEER WOODSMAN AS HE IS 
 
 RELATED TO LUMBERING IN 
 
 THE NORTHWEST. 
 
 By GEORGE HENRY 'WARREN 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Sowing the Germ That I 
 Knew Not. 
 
 "This superficial tale is but a preface of her worthy praise." 
 
 ARLY environment sometimes paints 
 colors on the canvas of one's later 
 life. 
 
 Fifty years ago in western New 
 York, there were thousands of acres of valu- 
 able timber. The country was well watered, 
 and, on some of the streams, mills and factories 
 had sprung into existence. On one of these 
 were three sawmills of one upright saw each, 
 and all did custom sawing. 
 
 My father was a manufacturer, especially of 
 carriages, wagons, and sleighs. There were 
 no factories then engaged in making spokes, 
 felloes, whiffletrees, bent carriage poles, thills 
 
 13 
 
or shafts, and bent runners for cutters and 
 sleighs. These all had to be made at the shop 
 where the cutter, wagon, or carriage was being 
 built. Consequently the manufacturer was 
 obliged to provide himself with seasoned 
 planks and boards of the various kinds of wood 
 that entered into the construction of each ve- 
 hicle. Trips were made to the woods to ex- 
 amine trees of birch, maple, oak, ash, beech, 
 hickory, rock elm, butternut, basswood, white- 
 wood, and sometimes hemlock and pine. The 
 timber desired having been selected, the trees 
 were converted into logs which in turn were 
 taken to the custom mill and sawed into such 
 dimensions required, as far as was possible at 
 that period to have done at these rather primi- 
 tive sawmills. Beyond this the resawing was 
 done at the shop. 
 
 Thus, almost unconsciously, at an early age, 
 by reason of the assistance rendered to my 
 father in selecting and securing this manufac- 
 tured lumber from the tree in the forest to the 
 sawed product of the mill, I became familiar 
 with the names and the textures of many kinds 
 of woods, the knowledge of which stood me in 
 good turn in later years. 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Preparations for the Wilds 
 of Wisconsin. 
 
 N the city of Detroit, early in June, 
 1871, was gathered a group of four 
 veteran woodsmen of the lumber- 
 men's craft, and two raw recruits, 
 one, a student fresh from his father's law office 
 in Bay City, and the other, myself, whose fron- 
 tier experiences were yet to be gained. 
 
 A contract, by William S. Patrick of Bay 
 City, the principal of this group, had been made 
 with Henry W. Sage, of Brooklyn, New York, 
 to select and to secure by purchase from the 
 United States and from the state of Wisconsin, 
 valuable pine lands believed to be located in 
 the wilds of northern Wisconsin. Tents, blan- 
 kets, axes, extra clothing, cooking utensils, 
 compasses, and other surveying implements 
 were ordered, and soon the party was ready for 
 the start. 
 
 At that time no passable roads penetrated 
 the northern woods of Wisconsin from the 
 south. The country to be examined for avail- 
 able pine lands at the commencement of our 
 work was tributary to the head waters of the 
 
 15 
 
Flambeau River. To reach this point in the 
 forest it was thought best to enter the woods 
 from the south shore of Lake Superior. Also, 
 the United States land office controlling a part 
 of this territory, was located at Bayfield, Wis- 
 consin, and at that office must be selected such 
 tov/nship plats as would be needed in the ex- 
 amining of lands in that portion of the Bayfield 
 Land District. 
 
 The quickest line of transit at that date was 
 by railroad to Chicago, and thence to St. Paul 
 over the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Rail- 
 way, crossing the Mississippi River at Prairie 
 du Chien, Wisconsin, to McGregor, Iowa, and 
 thence north to St. Paul. There was no other 
 railroad then completed from Chicago to St. 
 Paul. The only railroad from St. Paul to Lake 
 Superior was the St. Paul and Duluth. From 
 Duluth, passage was taken by steamer to Bay- 
 field. Township plats were here obtained from 
 the government land office. Provisions of 
 pork, flour, beans, coffee, rice, sugar, baking 
 powder, dried apples, pepper and salt, tobacco, 
 etc., for one month's living in the woods for 
 nine men, were bought and put into cloth sacks. 
 Our original number of six men was here aug- 
 mented by three half-breed Indians of the Bad 
 River Indian Reservation, who were hired as 
 
 16 
 
Ths^fl 
 
packers and guides over a trail to be followed 
 to the Flambeau Indian Reservation. A Lake 
 Superior fisherman was then engaged to take 
 the party and its outfit in his sailing boat from 
 Bayfield to the mouth of Montreal River, which 
 is the boundary between Wisconsin and Michi- 
 gan. The distance was about thirty-five miles. 
 
 17 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Entering the Wilds of 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 HE party disembarked at a sand 
 beach, but the sailboat drew too 
 much water to permit a close land- 
 ing. Here it was that the two ten- 
 derfeet got their first experience with Lake 
 Superior's cold water, since all were obliged 
 to climb or jump overboard into three feet of 
 the almost icy water, and to carry on heads and 
 shoulders portions of the luggage to the dry 
 land. Here was to begin the first night of my 
 camp life. Dry wood was sought, and camp 
 fires were kindled to be used, first, to dry the 
 wet clothing, and second, to cook the food for 
 the first out-of-door supper. 
 
 To avoid mosquitoes, orders were given to 
 prepare beds for the night on the sand beach 
 away from the friendly tall trees that stood 
 near by. One mattress served for the whole 
 party and consisted of as level a strip of the 
 sandy shore as could be selected. Promise of 
 fair weather rendered unnecessary the raising 
 of tents which were made to serve as so much 
 
 18 
 
thickness to keep the body from contact with 
 the sand. 
 
 That night the stars shone brightly above 
 the sleepers' faces, the waters of Superior broke 
 gently along the beach, and the tall pines lent 
 their first lullaby to willingly listening ears. 
 
 "The waves have a story to tell me, 
 
 As I lie on the lonely beach; 
 Chanting aloft in the pine-tops, 
 
 The wind has a lesson to teach; 
 But the stars sing an anthem of glory 
 
 I cannot put into speech. 
 
 They sing of the Mighty Master, 
 
 Of the loom His fingers span, 
 Where a star or a soul is a part of the whole, 
 
 And weft in the wondrous plan." 
 
 The next morning broke bright and clear, 
 and the sun sent a sheen upon the dimpled 
 waters of old Superior that gave us a touch of 
 regret at the parting of the ways ; for the mem- 
 bers, one by one, after a well relished break- 
 fast, shouldered their packs and fell into single 
 file behind the Indian guide who led the way to 
 the trail through the woods, forty miles long, 
 to the Flambeau Reservation. 
 
 Two days and the morning of the third 
 brought the party, footsore in new boots and 
 eaten by mosquitoes, to the end of the trail. 
 Now, lakes must be crossed, and the Flambeau 
 River navigated for many days. In the Indian 
 
 19 
 
village were many wigwams, occupied by the 
 usually large families of two or three genera- 
 tions of bucks, squaws, children, from the eldest 
 down to the liquid-nosed papoose, and their 
 numerous dogs that never fail to announce the 
 approach of "kitchimokoman," the white man. 
 
 Some of the old men were building birch 
 canoes, and many birch crafts of different ages 
 and of previous service were to be seen in the 
 camp. From among them, enough were 
 bought to carry all of the men of the party and 
 their outfits. The last canoe bought was a 
 three-man canoe, which leaked and must be 
 "pitched" before it could be used. 
 
 At this point let it be explained that every 
 woodsman, trapper, pioneer, settler, or camper 
 who depends upon a birch canoe for navigation 
 should, and generally does, provide himself 
 with a quantity of commercial resin and a fire- 
 proof dish in which to melt it. The resin is 
 then tempered by adding just enough grease 
 to prevent the mixture, when applied to the dry 
 surface of a leaky spot on the canoe, and cooled 
 in the water of the lake or river at the time of 
 using, from cracking by reason of too great 
 hardness. The surface must be dry or the 
 "pitch" will not adhere firmly to the leaky seam 
 or knot in the bark of the canoe. The drying 
 
 20 
 
is quickly done by holding a live ember or fire- 
 brand close to the surface of the wet bark. 
 
 Mr. Patrick had bought the canoes from dif- 
 ferent owners and had paid for them all except 
 the leaky three-man canoe. It was the prop- 
 erty of a fat squaw of uncertain age. The price 
 agreed upon for this canoe was twenty dollars. 
 Mr. Patrick and the squaw were standing on 
 opposite sides of the canoe as Mr. Patrick took 
 from his pocket a twenty dollar bill to hand 
 her in payment. Just then he discovered that 
 the pan of pitch (resin), which had been previ- 
 ously placed over the live coals, was on fire. 
 He placed the twenty dollar bill on the canoe in 
 front of the squaw, and quickly ran to extin- 
 guish the fire in the burning pitch. When he 
 returned to the canoe, the bill had disappeared, 
 and the wise old squaw claimed to know noth- 
 ing of its whereabouts. A second twenty dollar 
 bill was produced and handed to the squaw, 
 when Mr. Patrick became the owner of a forty 
 dollar birch canoe. 
 
 21 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Surveying and Selecting Gov- 
 ernment Timber Lands. 
 
 UR party of land surveyors, or "land 
 lookers" as they were often called, 
 being thus supplied with water trans- 
 ports, proceeded in their canoes a 
 short distance down the Flambeau River, 
 where the work of selecting government or 
 state lands timbered with pine trees was to 
 begin. 
 
 The questions have been so often asked, 
 "How do you know where you are when in the 
 dense forest away from all roads and trails, and 
 many miles from any human habitation?", 
 "How can you tell one tract of land from an- 
 other tract?", and "How can you tell what land 
 belongs to the United States and what to the 
 State?", that it seems desirable to try to make 
 these points clear to the reader. 
 
 The Continental Congress, through its com- 
 mittee appointed expressly for the work, inaug- 
 urated the present system of survey of the pub- 
 lic lands in 1784. For the purposes of this ex- 
 planation it will be sufficient to recite that the 
 system consists of parallel lines six miles apart 
 
 22 
 
running north and south, designated as "range 
 lines"; also of other parallel lines, six miles 
 apart running east and west, designated as 
 "township lines". Any six miles square bound- 
 ed by four of these lines constitutes a "town- 
 ship". The territory within these two range 
 lines and two township lines is subdivided into 
 "sections", each one mile square, by running 
 five parallel lines north and south across the 
 township, each one mile from its nearest par- 
 allel line, and, in like manner, by running five 
 other parallel lines east and west across the 
 township from the east range line to the west 
 range line, each line one mile from its nearest 
 parallel line. In this manner, the township is 
 subdivided into thirty-six sections each one 
 mile square. The four township corners are 
 marked by posts, squared at the upper end, and 
 marked on the four sides by the proper letters 
 and figures cut into the four flat faces by 
 "marking irons", each flat surface facing the 
 township for which it is marked. 
 
 In addition, one tree in each of the four town- 
 ship corners is blazed (a smooth surface ex- 
 posed by chopping through the bark into the 
 wood) on the side of the tree facing the stake, 
 and the same letters and figures as are on the 
 nearest face of the stake are marked thereon. 
 
 23 
 
These letters and figures give the number of 
 the township, range and section touching that 
 corner. On another blaze below the first, and 
 near the ground, are marked the letters "B T", 
 meaning "bearing tree". 
 
 The surveyor writes in his field book the kind 
 and diameter of tree, the distance and direction 
 of each bearing tree from the corner post, and 
 these notes of the surveyor are recorded in the 
 United States land office at Washington. 
 
 Even if the stake and three of the bearing 
 trees should be destroyed, so that but one tree 
 be left, with a copy of the notes, one could re- 
 locate the township corner. 
 
 The section corners within the township are 
 marked in a similar manner. 
 
 Midway between adjacent section corners is 
 located a "quarter corner", on the line between 
 the two adjacent sections. This is marked by 
 a post blazed fiat on opposite sides and marked 
 "% S". There are also two "witness trees" or 
 bearing trees marked 54 S. 
 
 By running straight lines through a section, 
 east and west and north and south, connecting 
 the quarter corners, the section of six hundred 
 and forty acres may be divided into four quar- 
 ter sections of one hundred and sixty acres 
 
 24 
 
each. These may in turn be divided into four 
 similar shaped quarters of forty acres each 
 called "forties", which constitute the smallest 
 regular government subdivisions, except frac- 
 tional acreages caused by lakes and rivers 
 which may cut out part of what might other- 
 wise have been a forty. In such cases the gov- 
 ernment surveyor "meanders" or measures the 
 winding courses, and the fractional forties thus 
 measured are marked with the number of acres 
 each contains. Each is called a "lot" and is 
 given a number. These lots are noted and 
 numbered on the surveyor's map or plat which 
 is later recorded. 
 
 The subdivision of the mile square section is 
 the work of the land looker, as the government 
 ceases its work when the exterior lines are run. 
 
 On the township plat which one buys at the 
 local United States land office, are designated 
 by some character, the lands belonging to the 
 United States, and, by a different character, 
 the lands owned by the State. 
 
 The country presented an unbroken forest 
 of the various kinds of trees and underbrush 
 indigenous to this northern climate. The deer, 
 bear, lynx, porcupine, and wolf were the right- 
 ful and principal occupants. Crossing occa- 
 sionally, the trail of the first named, served 
 
 25 
 
only to remind us of our complete isolation 
 from the outside, busy world. 
 
 The provisions yet remaining were sufficient 
 to feed our party for less than three weeks. In 
 the meantime two of the Indians had gone 
 down the river in a canoe with Mr. Patrick to 
 the mouth of the Flambeau, to await the arrival 
 of fresh supplies which he was to send up to 
 that point from Eau Claire by team. The ex- 
 perienced and skilled woodsmen had divided 
 the working force into small crews, which 
 began subdividing the sections within the 
 townships where there were government or 
 state lands, to ascertain whether there were 
 any forty acre tracts that contained enough 
 valuable pine to make the land profitable to 
 purchase at the land offices. Two thousand 
 acres were thus selected during the first cruise, 
 but, on our agent reaching the land office where 
 the lands had to be entered, only twelve hun- 
 dred acres were still vacant (unentered), other 
 land lookers having preceded our representa- 
 tive and arrived first at the land office with 
 eight hundred acres of the same descriptions 
 as our own. 
 
 As there were many land lookers at this time 
 in the woods, all anxious to buy the good pine 
 
 26 
 
lands from the government and the state, con- 
 flicts like the above were not unusual. 
 
 Through a misunderstanding of orders, our 
 working party, now nearly out of everything 
 to eat, assembled at The Forks, a point forty- 
 five miles above the mouth of the Flambeau, 
 and waited for the Indians to bring up fresh 
 supplies. They did not come, and, after wait- 
 ing three days, while each man subsisted on 
 rations of three small baking powder biscuits 
 per day, all hands pushed down to the mouth 
 of the river where the Indians were awaiting 
 us with plenty of raw materials, some of which 
 were soon converted into cooked food of which 
 all partook most heartily. 
 
 Corrected plats, showing the unentered lands 
 of each township which we were directed to ex- 
 amine, were sent to us. 
 
 27 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Gaining Experience — 
 Getting Wet. 
 
 OME field experience which I had ac- 
 quired in surveying when a sopho- 
 more in college, assisted me greatly 
 in quickly learning how to subdivide 
 the sections, while my knowledge of timber 
 gained at an early age, when assisting my 
 father in choosing trees in the forest suitable 
 for his uses as a manufacturer, aided me great- 
 ly in judging the quality and quantity of the 
 pine timber growing in the greater forests of 
 the Northwest. 
 
 Freshly equipped with provisions, and with 
 plats corrected up to date, we returned to the 
 deep woods. There we divided into parties of 
 only two — the land looker and his assistant. 
 The latter's duty was chiefly to help carry the 
 supplies of uncooked foods, blankets, tent, etc., 
 to pitch tent at night, and, ordinarily, to do the 
 most of the cooking, though seldom all of it. 
 On some days much good vacant (unentered) 
 pine was found, and on other days none at all. 
 Several miles of woods were at times labori- 
 ously passed through, without seeing any tim- 
 
 28 
 
''The almost saucy, yet sociable 
 red squirrel". (Page 48.) 
 
ber worth entering (buying). Some portions 
 would consist of hardwood ridges of maple, 
 oak, elm ; some of poplar, birch, basswood ; oth- 
 ers of long stretches of tamarack and spruce 
 swamps, sections of which would be almost 
 without wooded growth, so marshy and wet 
 that the moss-covered bottom would scarcely 
 support our weight, encumbered as we always 
 were by pack sacks upon our backs, which 
 weighed when starting as much as sixty pounds 
 and sometimes more. Their weight diminished 
 daily as we cooked and ate from our store 
 which they contained. 
 
 Windfalls — places where cyclones or hurri- 
 canes had passed — were sometimes encoun- 
 tered. The cyclones left the trees twisted and 
 broken, their trunks and branches pointing in 
 various directions ; the hurricanes generally left 
 the trees tipped partly or entirely to the 
 ground, their roots turned up and their trunks 
 pointing quite uniformly in the same relative 
 direction. The getting through, over, under, 
 and beyond these places, which vary from a few 
 rods to a possible mile across, especially in win- 
 ter when the mantle of snow hides the pitfalls 
 and screens the rotten trunks and limbs from 
 view, tries the courage, patience, and endurance 
 of the woodsman. All of the time he must use 
 
 29 
 
his compass and keep his true direction as well 
 as measure the distance, otherwise he would 
 not know where he was located. Without this 
 knowledge his work could not proceed. 
 
 Sometimes we would come to a natural 
 meadow grown up with alders, around the 
 borders of which stood much young poplar. 
 A stream of water flowed through the meadow, 
 and the beavers had discovered that it was emi- 
 nently fitted, if not designed, for their necessi- 
 ties. Accordingly, they had selected an advan- 
 tageous spot where nature had kindly thrown 
 up a bank of earth on each side and drawn the 
 ends down comparatively near to the stream. 
 Small trees were near by, and these they had 
 cut down, and then cut into such lengths as 
 were right, in their judgment, for constructing 
 a water-tight dam across the narrow channel 
 between the two opposite banks of earth. The 
 flow of water being thus checked by the beaver 
 dam, the water set back and overflowed the 
 meadow to its remotest confines, and even sub- 
 merged some of the trunks of the trees to per- 
 haps a depth of two feet. Out further in the 
 meadow and amongst the alders where had 
 flowed the natural stream, the water in the 
 pond was much deeper. 
 
 These ponds sometimes lay directly across 
 
 30 
 
the line of our survey and inconvenienced us 
 greatly. We disliked to make "offsets" in our 
 lines and thus go around the dam, for the trav- 
 eling in such places was usually very slow and 
 tedious. The saving of time is always impor- 
 tant to the land hunter, since he must carry his 
 provisions, and wishes to accomplish all that 
 is possible before the last day's rations are 
 reached. It was not strange, then, if we first 
 tried the depth of the water in the pond by 
 wading and feeling our way. While we could 
 keep our pack sacks from becoming wet, we 
 continued to wade toward the opposite shore, 
 meantime remembering or keeping in sight 
 some object on the opposite shore, in the direct 
 course we must travel, which we had located 
 by means of our compass before entering the 
 water. Sometimes a retreat had to be made 
 by reason of too great depth of water. During 
 the summer months we did not mind simply 
 getting wet clothes by wading ; but once in the 
 fall just before ice had formed, this chilly prop- 
 osition of wading across, was undertaken vol- 
 untarily, and was only one of many uncomfort- 
 able things that entered into the woodsman's 
 life. 
 
 Subjected thus to much inconvenience and 
 discomfort by those valuable little animals, we 
 
 31 
 
could but admire their wisdom in choosing 
 places for their subaqueous homes. They feed 
 upon the bark of the alder, the poplar, the birch r 
 and of some other trees. These grew where 
 they constructed their dam and along the mar- 
 gin of the pond of water thus formed. They 
 cut down these trees by gnawing entirely 
 around their trunks, then they cut off branches 
 and sections of the trunks of the trees, and 
 drew them into their houses under the ice. 
 Most trees cut by the beaver are of small diam- 
 eter. I once measured one beaver stump and 
 found it to be fourteen inches in diameter. I 
 still have in my possession a section of a white 
 cedar stump measuring seventeen inches in cir- 
 cumference that had been gnawed off by beav- 
 ers. It is the only cedar tree I have ever known 
 to have been cut down by these wise little crea- 
 tures. 
 
 32 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A Birthday Supper. 
 
 LAMBEAU Farm was located on the 
 right bank of Chippewa River oppo- 
 site the mouth of Flambeau River. 
 There old man Butler kept a ranch 
 for the especial accommodation of lumbermen 
 and land hunters, who included nearly every- 
 one who came that way. It was at the end of 
 the wagon road leading from Chippewa Falls 
 and from other civilized places. Canoes, dug- 
 outs, batteaus — all started from Butler's ranch 
 at Flambeau Farm for operations up the Flam- 
 beau and its tributaries, or for either up or 
 down the Chippewa and its branches. 
 
 One rainy afternoon in October our party of 
 three started from Butler's ranch in a dugout 
 (a long, narrow canoe hewn out of a pine tree), 
 to pole down the Chippewa River to the mouth 
 of Jump River, a distance of about ten miles. 
 Notwithstanding the rain, everything went 
 smoothly for the first hour, when, without 
 warning, the bow of the canoe struck the edge 
 of a sand bar which caused the tottlish craft to 
 tip. The man in the stern jumped overboard to 
 save it from capsizing, expecting to strike his 
 
 33 
 
feet on the sand bar, but, in the meantime, the 
 frail craft had drifted away from the bar, and 
 we were floating over deep water which re- 
 sulted in our comrade's disappearing under the 
 surface. He soon rose hatless, and with a few 
 strokes swam to where he seized the stern of 
 the boat to which he was obliged to cling until 
 we could paddle to the shore, as any attempt 
 on his part to have climbed in would have re- 
 sulted in capsizing the boat, and would have 
 cost us all of our supplies. 
 
 We built a fire, and partly dried his wet gar- 
 ments, after which we proceeded on our jour- 
 ney. Entering the mouth of Jump River, we 
 flushed a small flock of wild geese, one of which 
 we shot and gathered into our dugout. A little 
 farther on, we were fortunate in bringing down 
 a fine mallard. By this time the snow had be- 
 gun to fall very rapidly, so that when we had 
 reached a suitable place to camp for the night, 
 the snow was fully three inches deep. Here, 
 near the bank of the river, we found an unoccu- 
 pied claim shanty built of logs, and containing 
 a very serviceable fireplace. We took posses- 
 sion of it for the night, in consequence of which 
 it was unnecessary to pitch our tents. We be- 
 gan the usual preparations for our evening meal 
 and for comfortable beds upon which to lie. 
 
 34 
 
•g Qh 
 
X 
 
 The latter were soon prepared by going out- 
 side into a thicket of balsam fir trees, felling a 
 few with our axes, and breaking off the soft, 
 springy boughs which were stacked in bunches, 
 carried into camp, and spread in the conven- 
 ient bunks to constitute the mattresses over 
 which the blankets were later laid. 
 
 While thus busy, an Indian hunter clad in a 
 buckskin suit came down the trail by the river 
 bank, bringing with him a saddle of venison. 
 Owing to the Indian's natural fondness for 
 pork, it was very easy to exchange a small piece 
 of the latter for some nice venison steaks. I 
 remember that because of the wet condition of 
 the snow, the Indian's buckskin pants had be- 
 come saturated with water, causing them to 
 elongate to such an extent that he was literally 
 walking on the bottom ends of them. His wig- 
 wam was not far down the river, to which point 
 he soon repaired. Then the cook made a short 
 calculation of the menu he would serve us for 
 our supper after the very disagreeable experi- 
 ences of travel during the day. He decided to 
 broil the mallard and cook some venison steak. 
 Besides this, he boiled rice, some potatoes, 
 some dried peaches, and baked a few tins of 
 baking powder biscuits. 
 
 The land hunter's or surveyor's outfit of 
 
 35 
 
cooking utensils invariably includes a nest of 
 tin pails or kettles of different sizes fitted one 
 within the other, and sufficient in number to 
 supply the needs of the camp ; also a tin baker, 
 so constructed that when set up before an open 
 fire, it is a tilted "V" shaped trough of sufficient 
 length to place within it a good sized baking 
 tin, placed horizontally and supported midway 
 between the two sides of the "V" shaped baker, 
 so that the fire is reflected on the bright tin 
 equally above the baking pan and below it. 
 
 The snow had ceased falling, and, by build- 
 ing a rousing camp fire outside of the claim 
 shanty, we were soon able to dry our clothing. 
 Having partaken of a sumptuous meal, we 
 "rolled in", contented and happy, for a night's 
 rest. To me, this 14th day of October was a 
 red letter day, and in memory ever since has 
 been because it was the birthday of my then 
 fiance, who, not many years subsequent, be- 
 came and ever since has remained my faithful 
 and loving wife. 
 
 The second and final trip of that season in 
 open water was made several weeks later when 
 we again poled up the Chippewa River in a 
 dugout, taking with us our supplies for the 
 cruise in the forest. 
 
 The current in that part of the river was so 
 
 36 
 
swift, not infrequently forming rapids, that we 
 were obliged always to use long poles made 
 from small spruce trees from which the bark 
 had been removed, and an iron spike fastened 
 at one end to aid in securing a hold when 
 pushed down among the rocks. The water was 
 so nearly at the freezing point that small flakes 
 of ice were floating, and the atmosphere was so 
 cold, that, as the pole was lifted from the water, 
 ice would form on it unless the pole at each 
 stroke was reversed, thus allowing the film of 
 ice formed on the pole to be thawed when im- 
 mersed in the slightly warmer water beneath. 
 The day spent in this manner was attended 
 with very great discomfort, and when night 
 came, each man found himself tired and hun- 
 gry, and glad that the day had come to an end. 
 We camped that night at a French-Canadian 
 logging camp. Our party was too fatigued to 
 pitch its own tents and prepare its own meal, 
 and gladly accepted the foreman's hospitality 
 at the rate of two dollars a day each, for some 
 of his fat pork, pea soup, and fairly good bread. 
 
 On the morning following, we found the ice 
 had so formed in the river that further journey- 
 ing in the dugout was impossible, so the latter 
 was pulled up on shore, covered with some 
 brush, and abandoned, at least for the winter, 
 
 37 
 
and, as it proved in this instance, for always, 
 so far as it concerned our party. We finished 
 this cruise on foot, and returned about two 
 weeks later to Eau Claire. 
 
 There were not many men living on govern- 
 ment lands in that part of Wisconsin. Those 
 who had taken claims and were living on them 
 depended on their rifles for all of their fresh 
 meat. Some of them made a practice of plac- 
 ing "set guns" pointing across deer trails. One 
 end of a strong cord was first fastened to a 
 tree, or to a stake driven into the ground some 
 distance from the deer trail. The cord was 
 then carried across the trail which was in the 
 snow, for a distance of one hundred feet or less. 
 Here, the gun was set firmly, pointing directly 
 in line with the cord or string. The barrel of 
 the gun was sighted at such an elevation as to 
 send the bullet, when fired, across the deer trail 
 at a height from the trail sufficient to pene- 
 trate the body of the deer. The string was then 
 carried around some stationary object and fas- 
 tened to the trigger of the gun, the hammer of 
 which had been raised. The pressure of the 
 deer's body or legs against the string would be 
 pretty sure to discharge the gun, thus causing 
 the innocent and unsuspecting deer to shoot 
 itself. 
 
 38 
 
While running a compass line one day, we 
 discovered, just ahead of us, a cord or string at 
 right angles to our line of travel. I stopped 
 immediately, while my companion, Tom Car- 
 ney, followed the cord to its end which he 
 found fastened to the trigger of a rifle. He 
 carefully cut the cord, raised the rifle to his 
 shoulder, and fired it into the air. He next 
 broke the gun over the roots of a tree. Fur- 
 ther examination showed that the cord was 
 stretched across a deer trail which we would 
 have reached in a minute more. 
 
 With the return of winter the Sage-Patrick 
 contract was about completed. 
 
 39 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A New Contract — Obstacles. 
 
 "To him who in the love of Nature holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, she 
 
 speaks 
 A various language; for his gayer hours 
 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
 Into his darker musings, with a mild 
 And healing sympathy, that steals away 
 Their sharpness, ere he is aware." 
 
 Y life, up to the time of my contract 
 with Mr. Patrick to go with him into 
 the wilds of Wisconsin as an appren- 
 ticed land hunter and timber exam- 
 iner, had been spent on the farm, in my father's 
 shop, at school and college, and in teaching. 
 The change of occupation and manner of living 
 will therefore be seen to have been radical. In 
 six months of contact with nature, I had been 
 born into a new life, a life of initiative, of dar- 
 ing, and of hardships, insuring health and in- 
 spiring hope of financial success in a way hon- 
 orable and helpful. I loved the forms of nature 
 all about me, untouched by the hand of man. 
 I therefore sought for and found an associate 
 with capital sufficient to permit me to continue 
 in the same line of work. The late Robert B. 
 
 40 
 
c a. 
 
 >» -. 
 
 h -a 
 
 C &> 
 
 C OT 
 
 C 3 
 
 a o 
 
 £ 5? 
 
 > g 
 
Langdon then became my partner, and this re- 
 lationship was most pleasantly continued to the 
 end of Mr. Langdon's life. 
 
 Late in December, 1871, my first trip under 
 the new contract for securing pine timber, was 
 undertaken. The ice in the rivers and lakes 
 had now become firm and safe for travel 
 thereon. Considerable snow had already 
 fallen, and the roads were heavy in conse- 
 quence. 
 
 Our work, as planned, lay many miles up the 
 Chippewa River. In order to reach the desired 
 locality with sufficient supplies to enable us to 
 be gone a month or six weeks, it was necessary 
 to take them on a toboggan made expressly 
 for the uses of this proposed trip. Four men 
 were needed to push and pull the load. After a 
 week of hard labor, our party arrived at the 
 point where the work of surveying the lands 
 was to begin. A place to camp was chosen in 
 the thick woods not far from the river bank, 
 where water would be near by and convenient 
 for the use of the camp. A small, but strong 
 warehouse of logs was first constructed, in 
 which to store the supplies not necessary for 
 immediate use. 
 
 Having thus secured the supplies for future 
 use from the reach of any wild beasts roaming 
 
 41 
 
in the forests, we put enough of them into our 
 pack sacks to last for a ten days' absence from 
 our storehouse camp. We were about to start, 
 when Abbot, one of our axmen, in chopping a 
 stick of wood, had the misfortune to send the 
 sharp blade of the ax into his foot, deep to the 
 bone. The gash was an ugly one and at once 
 disabled him for further usefulness on this trip. 
 The man must be taken out of the woods where 
 his foot could receive proper care. How was 
 this to be accomplished? Two men alone could 
 possibly have hauled him on the toboggan. 
 The distance to the nearest habitation where a 
 team of horses could be obtained was seventy- 
 five miles. There was but one tent in the outfit 
 and not sufficient blankets to permit of divid- 
 ing our party of four men. It seemed, there- 
 fore, that there was nothing possible to do but 
 for the whole party to retrace its steps to the 
 point where it had been obliged to leave the 
 team behind. The wound in Abbot's foot was 
 cleansed and some balsam having been gath- 
 ered from the fir trees, the same was laid on a 
 clean piece of white cotton cloth, which, used 
 as a bandage, was placed over the wound and 
 made secure. The wound having been thus 
 protected, Abbot was placed on the toboggan 
 
 42 
 
and hauled to the ranch seventy-five miles 
 down the river. 
 
 Cruising in the woods is always expensive, 
 even when everything moves on smoothly and 
 without accident. The men's wages are the 
 highest paid for common labor, while the 
 wages of compassmen are much more. The 
 wages of the man of experience and knowledge 
 sufficient to conduct a survey, as well as to 
 judge correctly of the quality and quantity of 
 timber on each subdivision of land selected for 
 purchase, are from seven dollars to ten dollars 
 a day. He must determine the feasibility of 
 bringing the pine logs to water sufficient to 
 float them when cut, and the best and shortest 
 routes for the logging roads to reach the banks 
 of the rivers, or possibly the lakes where the 
 logs are unloaded; and, in these modern days 
 of building logging railroads, he must also lo- 
 cate the lines of the railroads and determine 
 their grades. At the time above alluded to, no 
 logging railroads were in existence, and that 
 part of the expense did not have to be borne. 
 The trip proved to be a very expensive one, and 
 there had not been time before the accident to 
 choose one forty-acre tract of land for entry. 
 
 After arriving at Eau Claire where the land 
 office was located, and being delayed some 
 
 43 
 
days by other business, we found on going to 
 the land office, that many entries had just been 
 made of lands within the townships in which 
 we had planned to do our work, when the acci- 
 dent to Abbot occurred. This fact necessitated 
 the choosing of other townships in which to go 
 to search for vacant lands on our next trip. 
 
 Having acquired from the land office the 
 necessary plats, and having secured a new 
 stock of provisions, we started again to pene- 
 trate another part of the pine woods. This 
 trip occupied several weeks in which we were 
 more than ordinarily successful in finding de- 
 sirable lands, and we hastened to Eau Claire 
 in order that we might secure these by pur- 
 chase at the land office. 
 ( Rumors had been afloat for some time pre- 
 vious, that there were irregularities in the con- 
 duct of the office at Eau Claire. These rumors 
 had grown until action was taken by the gen- 
 eral land office at Washington, resulting in the 
 temporary closing of the Eau Claire land of- 
 fice for the purpose, as reported, of examining 
 the books of that office. 
 
 Many crews of men came out of the woods 
 in the days that followed, with minutes or 
 descriptions of lands which they desired to 
 enter, each in turn to find the land office closed 
 
 44 
 
oO. % ^m77To^ 
 
 \ 
 
against them. In this dilemma, advice was 
 taken as to what course to pursue. After hav- 
 ing taken counsel, I, as well as several others, 
 sent my minutes, together with the necessary 
 cash, to the general land office at Washington, 
 with application to have the same entered for 
 patents. Our minutes and our money, how- 
 ever, were returned to us from Washington 
 with the information that the entry could not 
 be thus made, and that public notice would be 
 given of the future day when the land of- 
 fice at Eau Claire would reopen for the transac- 
 tion of the government's business. All land 
 hunters of the Eau Claire district were there- 
 fore obliged to suspend operations until the 
 time of the reopening of the land office. This 
 occurred on the first of May following. 
 
 I was there early and in line to enter the of- 
 fice when its doors should be open at nine 
 o'clock in the morning, and reached the desk 
 simultaneously with the first few to arrive. All 
 were told that in due time, possibly later in 
 that day, they could call for their duplicate re- 
 ceipts of such lands as they were able to secure. 
 There was present that morning, a man by the 
 name of Gilmore, from Washington, who, so 
 far as my knowledge goes, had never before 
 been seen at the Eau Claire land office. My 
 
 45 
 
descriptions which I had applied for at the 
 land office on that morning had all been en- 
 tered by the man from Washington, resulting 
 in the loss of all of my work from January until 
 May. I was not alone in this unlooked for ex- 
 perience, as I was informed by others that they 
 had shared the same fate. 
 
 Thus baffled, and believing that there was 
 no prospect of fair treatment in that land office 
 district, I determined to change my seat of op- 
 erations and to go into some other district. I 
 did so, going next onto the waters of the Wis- 
 consin River, the United States land office for 
 which district, was then located at Stevens 
 Point. Here I remained for many months, 
 operating with a good degree of success, and 
 found the land office most honorably and fairly 
 conducted for all. 
 
 The registrar of the land office was Horace 
 Alban, and the receiver was David Quaw. It 
 was always a pleasure to do business with these 
 two gentlemen. 
 
 46 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A Few Experiences in the New 
 and More Prosperous Field. 
 
 HE life of the land hunter is at nearly 
 all times a strenuous one. He daily 
 experiences hardships such as work- 
 ing his way up rivers with many 
 swift waters, and crossing lakes in birch-bark 
 canoes, in wind storms and in rain; fording 
 streams when he has no boat and when the 
 banks are too far apart to make a temporary 
 bridge by felling trees across the channel; 
 building rafts to cross rivers and lakes ; climb- 
 ing through windfalls; crossing miles of swamp 
 where the bog bottom will scarcely support his 
 weight, and where, when night overtakes him 
 he must temporize a bed of poles on which to 
 lay his weary body to protect it from the wet 
 beneath him; and traveling sometimes all day 
 in an open and burnt country with his bed and 
 board upon his back, the sun's hot rays press- 
 ing like a heavy weight upon his head, while 
 myriads of black flies swarm about him and 
 attack every exposed inch of his skin, even 
 penetrating through the hair of his head. These 
 are a few of his experiences, and, if these had 
 
 47 
 
not their offsets at certain times, his life would 
 become indeed unbearable. His health, how- 
 ever, and his appetite are generally as good as 
 are enjoyed by any class of the human family. 
 Possessing these advantages gives him much 
 buoyancy of spirit, and, when a good piece of 
 country in the timber is encountered, he is 
 quick to forget the trials and the hardships of 
 the hour before, and to enjoy the improved 
 prospects. 
 
 There is doubt whether or not anything 
 finer enters into the joy of living than being 
 in the solitude of the great unbroken forest, 
 surrounded by magnificent, tall, straight, beau- 
 tiful pine trees, on a day when the sun is cast- 
 ing shadows through their waving tops, listen- 
 ing to the whisperings, formed almost into 
 words, of the needle-like fingers of their leafy 
 boughs, to the warbling of the songsters, and 
 to the chirping of the almost saucy, yet so- 
 ciable red squirrel who is sure to let one know 
 that he has invaded his dominion. Such days, 
 with such scenes and emotions, do come in the 
 life of the woodsman, the land hunter, who is 
 alone in the forest, except that if he be at all 
 sentimental, he approaches nearer to the Great 
 Creator than at almost any other time in his 
 life's experiences. Those who have read the 
 
 48 
 
books of John Borroughs, John Muir, or Ernest 
 Thompson Seton, may appreciate somewhat 
 the joy that comes to the woodsman in his soli- 
 tude, if he be a lover of nature. 
 
 Those only, who have been through the ex- 
 perience, can fully realize how anxious the 
 land looker is to secure the descriptions of val- 
 uable lands that he has found when out on one 
 of his cruises, for he knows full well that it is 
 probable that he is not the only man who is in 
 the woods at that time, for the same objects as 
 his own. Sometimes, but rarely, two such men 
 may meet in the forest while at their work. 
 When this occurs, it is a courteous meeting, 
 but attended with much concealed embarrass- 
 ment, for each knows that the other has found 
 him out, and, if either is in possession of a val- 
 uable lot of minutes which he hopes to secure 
 when he reaches the land office, he assumes 
 that the other is probably in possession of the 
 same descriptions, or, at least, a part of them. 
 It then becomes a question which one shall out- 
 wit or outtravel the other, from that moment, 
 in a race to the land office where his minutes 
 must be entered, and to the victor belong the 
 spoils, which means in this instance, to the one 
 who is first there to apply for the entry of his 
 land descriptions. 
 
 49 
 
While on one of these cruises on a tributary 
 of the Wisconsin River, with one man only for 
 help and companion, I had left my man, 
 Charlie, on the section line with the two pack 
 sacks, while I had gone into the interior of the 
 section, to survey some of its forties, and to 
 make an estimate of the feet of pine timber 
 standing on each forty. It was in midsummer 
 and in a beautiful piece of forest. Thrifty pine 
 trees were growing amongst the hard woods 
 of maple, birch, and rock elm. Having com- 
 pleted my work in the interior of the section, 
 and having returned, as I believed, to a point 
 within a hundred yards of where Charlie was, 
 I gave the woodsman's call, then listened for 
 Charlie's answer, in order that I might go di- 
 rectly to the point whence it should come. On 
 reaching Charlie, I picked up my pack and 
 started following the section line. We had 
 traveled less than a quarter of a mile on the 
 line, when I saw on the ground, a pigeon 
 stripped of its feathers. I picked up the bird 
 and found that its body was warm. Imme- 
 diately I knew that other land lookers were in 
 the same field and had undoubtedly been rest- 
 ing on that section line at the time I had called 
 for Charlie, and they, hearing our voices, had 
 
 50 
 
hastily picked up their packs and started on 
 their way out. 
 
 There was much pine timber in this town- 
 ship that yet belonged to the government and 
 to the state of Wisconsin. I, at this time, had 
 descriptions of more than four thousand acres 
 of these lands which I was anxious to buy. 
 My interest and anxiety, therefore, became in- 
 tense when I knew that my presence had been 
 discovered by the parties who had so uninten- 
 tionally left that bird on their trail. There 
 were no railroads in that part of the country 
 at that time, and Stevens Point, the location 
 of the government land office, lay more than 
 sixty-five miles south of where we then were. 
 Twenty-five miles of this distance was mostly 
 through the woods and must be traveled on 
 foot. It was then late in the afternoon and 
 neither party could make progress after dark. 
 The route through the woods led through a 
 swamp, and, upon reaching it, the tracks of 
 two men were plainly to be seen in the moss, 
 and in places in the wet ground. One man 
 wore heavy boots, with the soles well driven 
 with hobnails, which left their imprints in the 
 moist soil. Coming to a trail that led off into 
 a small settlement, we saw the tracks of one of 
 the two men following that trail. The tracks 
 
 51 
 
of the man with the hobnails kept directly on 
 in the course leading to the nearest highway 
 that would take him to Wausau, a thriving 
 lumber town, forty miles distant from Stevens 
 Point. We reached this road at about three 
 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. We 
 called at the first house approached, and asked 
 the woman if she could give us some bread 
 and milk, and, being answered in the affirma- 
 tive, we sat down for a rest, and inquired of 
 her if she had seen a woodsman pass. She 
 replied that she had, and that he had left there 
 within an hour of the time of our arrival. The 
 tracks of the boots with the hobnails could be 
 seen occasionally along the road, and, knowing 
 that the stage, the only public conveyance from 
 Wausau to Stevens Point, was not due to leave 
 Wausau for Stevens Point until four o'clock 
 the next morning, we had no further anxiety 
 about overtaking the woodsman who had left 
 there an hour in advance, since we reasoned 
 that he would probably take the stage at its 
 usual hour of leaving, the next day. 
 
 From that time on, the journey was leisurely 
 made, and we entered Wausau at a late hour, 
 when most of the laboring community had re- 
 tired for the night. Having gone to my accus- 
 tomed hotel, and changed my clothes, I next 
 
 52 
 
walked over to a livery stable and hired a team 
 which I drove to Stevens Point during the 
 night, arriving there in time for breakfast. I 
 then went to the home of the land officer before 
 eating my breakfast, told him that I wished 
 to make some entries that morning, and asked 
 him at what hour the land office would be open ; 
 and, seeing that my time agreed with that of 
 the land officer, told him that I would be there 
 promptly at nine o'clock, the legal hour for 
 opening the office. I made entry of the list 
 of lands belonging to the United States gov- 
 ernment, and was told to return at eleven 
 o'clock to compare the duplicate receipts with 
 my application to enter the lands. While I was 
 thus engaged, the stage from Wausau arrived, 
 and a man came into the land office, wearing 
 a pair of boots with hobnails that looked very 
 much the size of the tracks that I had been 
 previously observing on my way out from the 
 woods to Wausau. He immediately asked for 
 the township plat which represented the lands 
 which I had been so anxious to secure. He 
 began reading the descriptions of the lands he 
 wished to enter, and, as he read them, I heard 
 with much interest, the same descriptions that 
 were in my own list, but there were some that 
 were different. Whenever a description was 
 
 53 
 
read that checked with one in my list, the land 
 officer replied that those lands were entered. 
 This occurred so many times that he soon in- 
 quired when the lands had been entered. He 
 was told, "At nine o'clock this morning." In 
 his perplexity he had also read some of the 
 descriptions that belonged to the state of Wis- 
 consin and which had to be purchased at the 
 land office at Madison, the capital of the state. 
 
 "Well," he remarked, "this is hard luck, but 
 I may secure my state land descriptions." 
 
 I always kept a balance of money with the 
 state treasurer at Madison, with which to pay 
 for lands whenever I should send a list by mail 
 or otherwise, when I did not care to go per- 
 sonally with the descriptions. 
 
 The man having left the land office, I re- 
 paired immediately to the telegraph office and 
 wired the descriptions of the lands I wished 
 to enter, to the chief clerk of the land office 
 at Madison, authorizing him to draw on my 
 account with the state treasurer, to pay for 
 the same. The train left Stevens Point that 
 afternoon for Madison, and both interested 
 parties were passengers. Arriving at the land 
 office, I found the lands telegraphed for, to 
 have been duly secured. 
 
 This instance is given to show by how 
 
 54 
 
slender a thread a matter of great interest 
 sometimes hangs. Had the pigeon not been 
 left on the section line, or had it not been dis- 
 covered by the competing land hunter, the 
 man with the hobnails in his boots would have 
 been the victor, and his would have been the 
 joy of having won that which he had striven 
 hard to attain. 
 
 55 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Tracing Gentlemen Timber 
 
 Thieves— Getting Wet — 
 
 Fawn. 
 
 have said that the country tributary 
 to the waters of the Wisconsin 
 River constituted a good field for 
 the selection of valuable government 
 pine-timbered lands. It is equally true that it 
 was a country where the custom had grown 
 among lumbermen to enter a few forties of 
 government land, sufficient at least to make 
 a show of owning a tract of timber on which 
 to conduct a winter's operation of logging, and 
 then to cut the timber from adjacent or near 
 by forty-acre tracts of land yet belonging to 
 the government. 
 
 This method of trespassing upon the tim- 
 ber not owned by the operator, but being the 
 property of the United States, was carried on 
 to a greater extent there than in any other 
 section of the state in which I was familiar 
 with the methods and practices of logging pine 
 timber. Many logging jobbers having formed 
 this habit of helping themselves to govern- 
 
 56 
 
ment timber, found it difficult, after the gov- 
 ernment lands had been entered by private 
 purchase of others than themselves, to dis- 
 continue their practice of taking timber that 
 was not their own. Reforms of such habits 
 do not come voluntarily nor easily, as a rule, 
 but generally under some sort of pressure. 
 
 In the years following my purchase of con- 
 siderable tracts of timber on these waters, I 
 found it necessary, annually, to make a trip 
 into the country where our timber lands were 
 situated, to ascertain whether or not there had 
 been near-by logging camps during the pre- 
 ceding winter, and if so, to carefully run out 
 the lines around our own timber, to determine 
 whether or not trespass had been committed on 
 any of them. In many instances I found that 
 this was the fact. One spring I found a very 
 considerable number of the best pine trees cut 
 from the interior of forty acres of excellent 
 timber, so that the selling value of the whole 
 tract was injured far more than the full value 
 of the amount of timber that had been unlaw- 
 fully cut and hauled away. The trespass had 
 been committed by a man prominent in the 
 community and well-known among the lum- 
 bermen of the Wisconsin River. The late Gust 
 Wilson of Wisconsin, a fine man, a lawyer of 
 
 57 
 
much experience in lumber cases in that state, 
 and whose counsel was considered of a high 
 order, was retained to bring suit to recover 
 the value of the timber trespassed. Not only 
 that, but, annoyed at the boldness of the tres- 
 pass, I wished also to have him prosecuted 
 criminally for theft. Mr. Wilson said in reply 
 to the request, "Now, don't try that. All of 
 those fellows have had 'some of them hams/ 
 and you can't get a jury in all that country 
 that will bring you in a verdict of guilty, no 
 matter how great and strong your evidence 
 may be." There was nothing left to do under 
 Mr. Wilson's advice but to cool off, keep smil- 
 ing, and collect the best price for the stumpage 
 taken (not stolen), so as to be polite to the 
 gentlemanly wrongdoer. 
 
 One spring, accompanied by Mr. W. B. 
 Buckingham, cashier of one of the national 
 banks at Stevens Point, who also owned in- 
 terests in valuable pine timber lands adjacent 
 to, or near by those in which I owned interests, 
 I went into the countries of the Spirit and 
 Willow Rivers. The snow was melting and 
 the waters nearly rilled the banks of the re- 
 spective streams. Wishing to cross the Spirit 
 River, we found a point where an island oc- 
 cupied the near center of the stream, on which 
 
 58 
 
was a little standing timber. A tree was felled, 
 the top of which landed on the island. Having 
 crossed on the tree to the island, we felled an- 
 other tree which reached from the island to the 
 farther shore. It was not large in diameter, 
 and, under the weight of Mr. Buckingham, 
 who first proceeded, it swayed until he lost 
 his balance and fell into the water and was 
 obliged to swim to the opposite shore. I was 
 more fortunate in this instance, and stayed on 
 the tree until I reached the shore. 
 
 Swimming in ice water is never found com- 
 fortable, and we hurried to a close at hand, 
 deserted logging camp, where, fortunately, we 
 found a large heating stove set up and ready 
 for use, and near by a fine pile of dry wood 
 for the stove, which had been left over from 
 the recent winter's operations of logging. In 
 a few minutes, a rousing fire was made, and, 
 after removing his garments and wringing 
 them as dry as possible, we hung them on lines 
 about the stove and quickly dried them and 
 made them ready for use. This was necessary, 
 as no change of clothing had been provided 
 for this intended short excursion into the 
 woods. 
 
 By the time our work was finished, the snow 
 had mostly melted away. The ice was all out 
 
 59 
 
of the rivers, and we found ourselves one morn- 
 ing on the banks of the Tomahawk River, won- 
 dering how we were to cross it, if possible, 
 without the delay of constructing a raft suf- 
 ficiently large to carry us. The tote-road lead- 
 ing to Merrill, which we wished to follow, was 
 on the opposite side of the Tomahawk from 
 where we approached it. We finally discov- 
 ered an old birch canoe hidden in the brush. 
 It was leaky and in very bad repair, so we set 
 ourselves to work gathering pitch from the 
 ends of a pile of freshly cut pine logs lying 
 on the bank of the river, banked there to be 
 pushed into the stream by the log drivers. 
 This we put into a dish with a little grease 
 and boiled until it was of the right consistency 
 to stick to the bark of the canoe. Patches of 
 cloth were laid over the riven places in the 
 bark, and pitched until the boat was made 
 waterproof — for temporary use at least. 
 
 With our small belongings, we got into the 
 canoe and started down the Tomahawk, in- 
 tending to stay in it as long as it would hold 
 together and take us on our journey, saving 
 us that much walking. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, for us, we soon came to a long strip of 
 rapids with which we were not familiar. Se- 
 lecting what we believed to be the best water, 
 
 60 
 
we permitted the frail craft to float into the 
 rapids, and our fast journey down stream had 
 begun almost before we realized the fact. All 
 went well until nearly to the lower end of the 
 rapids, when the old canoe struck a sharp rock 
 slightly hidden under the water, and split in 
 two. Partly by swimming and partly by wad- 
 ing, we reached the coveted shore, wetter and 
 wiser than when an hour before we had taken 
 an old canoe that was not our own, in which 
 to cross the stream, instead of spending con- 
 siderably more time to construct a raft on 
 which we could safely and with dry clothes, 
 have reached the opposite shore. The usual 
 woodsman's process of drying clothes was 
 again gone through with, since it was too cold, 
 at that season of the year, to travel all day in 
 our wet garments. 
 
 One early summer day while traveling 
 through a part of this same country, watered 
 by the Willow River, my companion and I 
 stopped in a majestic forest of towering white 
 pine trees, interspersed with the more spread- 
 ing hemlocks. It was nearing twelve o'clock, 
 and we were both hungry. While my com- 
 panion was collecting wood for a fire, I went 
 in search of water with which to make a pail 
 of hot coffee. Returning, I climbed over a 
 
 61 
 
large hemlock tree that had fallen, probably, 
 from old age. There, nestled in the moss and 
 leaves, lay a spotted fawn. It made no effort 
 to get up and run from me, so I carefully ap- 
 proached it and gently caressed it. Then I 
 lifted the handsome little creature, with its 
 great, trusting brown eyes, into my arms, and 
 carried it near to our camp fire. While my 
 helper was preparing dinner, I fondled this 
 beautiful infant of the forest that yet knew 
 no fear. I sweetened some water to which I 
 added just a sprinkle of meal, then fed it 
 from a spoon to this confiding baby animal. 
 After this, when I moved, the trusting little 
 creature followed me. When it came time for 
 us to resume our work I carried my little newly 
 found friend back to the spot where its mother 
 had probably left it and put it down in its 
 mossy, leafy bed, and, carefully climbing over 
 the log, left it to be better cared for than it 
 was possible for me to do. 
 
 62 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Does It Pay to Rest on Sunday? 
 
 "With what a feeling deep 
 Does Nature speak to us! Oh, how divine 
 The flame that glows on her eternal shrine! 
 What knowledge can we reap 
 From her great pages if we read aright! 
 Through her God shows His wisdom and His might." 
 
 T was in the summer of 1872, while 
 I was at the United States land office 
 at Bayfield, Wisconsin, and was hav- 
 ing some township plats corrected 
 previous to going into the woods in that dis- 
 trict to hunt for pine timber, that John Buffalo, 
 chief of the Red Cliff band of Chippewa In- 
 dians, a friend of the United States land 
 officers, made his quiet appearance at the land 
 office. I had asked where I could find a reli- 
 able, trustworthy, and capable man to accom- 
 pany me on this cruise, planned to cover a 
 period of not less than two weeks. Captain 
 Wing, receiver of the land office, asked the 
 Indian chief, "John, wouldn't you like to earn 
 a little money by going into the woods to help 
 this man for a couple of weeks or more?" To 
 this the chief gave his consent with the usual 
 Indian "Ugh." 
 
 63 
 
During that day provisions were bought and 
 placed in individual cloth sacks. A strong 
 rowboat was secured and the journey begun. 
 Camp was made the first night on one of the 
 Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. The day 
 following, our destination was reached at the 
 mouth of the Cranberry River, where our boat 
 was carefully cached. 
 
 It rained for several days, in consequence 
 of which the underbrush was wet most of the 
 time, and in passing through it we became wet 
 to the skin. Before leaving home I had bought 
 for use on the trip what I believed to be a fine 
 pair of corduroy trousers. They looked well, 
 and the brush did not cling to them, a desirable 
 condition when traveling through thickets 
 often encountered in the woods. It rained the 
 first day that we were out. At night we pitched 
 our tent, prepared the evening meal, and at 
 an early hour retired. On retiring, it is usually 
 the custom for men camping, to remove their 
 outer garments and put them out of the way 
 at one side of the tent. Both were very tired 
 and soon fell asleep. I was awakened by a 
 very disagreeable odor within the tent and 
 walked out into the fresh air. Returning, I lay 
 down and remained thus until early daylight, 
 experiencing only a disturbed sleep during the 
 
 64 
 
night. My feeling was that I had chosen an 
 undesirable bedfellow, and, as later develop- 
 ments proved, it would have been reasonable 
 if the Indian chief had arrived at the same con- 
 clusion. 
 
 During the next day it again rained. After 
 the rain the sun came out bright and warm, 
 causing a rapid evaporation to take place on 
 our wet garments. It was under these circum- 
 stances that the discovery was made that the 
 very disagreeable odor experienced during the 
 preceding night was again present, and was 
 emanating from the wet coloring matter that 
 had been used in the manufacture of the cor- 
 duroy trousers. The best possible defense — 
 which I felt it was necessary to make — was to 
 call attention to the fact that the strong odor 
 was coming forth from the corduroy cloth. 
 On reaching camp that evening, the new cordu- 
 roys were hung out on the limb of a tree where 
 they were last seen by our small camping party. 
 
 It is not customary for land hunters to work 
 less on Sunday than on other days, for the 
 principal reason that all of their provisions 
 must be carried with them on their backs, and, 
 that by resting on Sunday, the provisions 
 would disappear as rapidly, or more so, than 
 they would if work continued on that day. 
 
 65 
 
However, toward the end of our trip which 
 had been a very successful one in point of find- 
 ing desirable government timber lands to enter, 
 we decided that we would rest on the next day, 
 v/hich was Sunday, just previous to our taking 
 our boat to make our return trip on Lake Su- 
 perior waters to the land office at Bayfield. As 
 a precaution, lest other land lookers should dis- 
 cover our presence, our camping ground was 
 selected in the interior of the section. We had 
 eaten our dinner, and were enjoying a siesta 
 when we heard voices. Listening, we heard men 
 discussing the most direct line to take to reach 
 their boat, hidden somewhere on the shore of 
 the lake. Time sufficient was given to allow 
 them to get so far in our advance, that any 
 movement on our part would not be heard by 
 them. Soon, thereafter, we packed our tent 
 and all of our belongings and started for our 
 boat. We did not reach it until nine o'clock 
 the following morning. We were then forty- 
 five miles from Bayfield by water. 
 
 Soon after we had rowed out into the lake, 
 a northeasterly wind began to blow and did 
 not cease blowing during the entire day. The 
 sandstone bluffs around that portion of the 
 south shore of Lake Superior in many places 
 are nearly vertical and rise to very consider- 
 
 66 
 
able heights, preventing any possible way of 
 escape from the water's edge for miles in ex- 
 tent. It was with the greatest effort that we, 
 pulling with all our might, could keep the boat 
 out into the lake, so powerful was the wind, 
 and so increasingly great were the waves. Be- 
 sides, it was not possible to take a rest from 
 our labors for, the moment we ceased rowing, 
 our boat began rapidly drifting toward the 
 rocks on the south shore. Thus we labored 
 until near the middle of the afternoon, when 
 we got under cover of the first of the friendly 
 Apostle Islands. After resting awhile, before 
 dark we were able to reach the Red Cliff Indian 
 Agency, where we spent the night at the chief's 
 wigwam. 
 
 The next morning early, we resumed our 
 boat and rowed into Bayfield, arriving in time 
 to be present at the opening of the land office. 
 With much anxiety, I made application to 
 enter the vacant lands that had been selected 
 on this trip, fearing that the men whom we 
 had overheard talking in the woods two days 
 before, might have arrived in advance of me 
 and have secured at least a part of the same 
 descriptions. With great satisfaction, how- 
 ever, I found the lands to be still vacant, and 
 
 67 
 
all of the minutes chosen while on this strenu- 
 ous cruise, I bought. 
 
 A little before noon of this same day, two 
 well-known land hunters from Chippewa Falls 
 came in, in their boat, off the lake, and, on 
 going to the land office, applied to enter nearly 
 all of the lands which I had secured a few hours 
 before. 
 
 The moralist might point with justification 
 to the fact that had we not rested on Sunday, 
 more than likely we should not have known 
 of the presence of any competitors in the field, 
 and should not, therefore, have worked so 
 many long hours in our boat on that windy 
 day, nor should we likely have reached the land 
 office in advance of the two men who arrived 
 there only a few hours later than ourselves. 
 
 "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
 By the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
 Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 
 Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. 
 Dark behind it rose the forest, 
 Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 
 Rose the firs with cones upon them; 
 Bright before it beat the water, 
 Beat the clear and sunny water, 
 Beat the shining Big-Sea- Water." 
 
 68 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Indian Traits — Dog Team. 
 
 HIEF JOHN BUFFALO was a su- 
 perior Indian, always pleasant, com- 
 panionable, and willing to do a full 
 day's work. He seemed to prefer 
 the society of the white men, and therefore 
 spent much of his time with them. The Indian 
 grows to manhood schooled in superstition. 
 I recall that during the first long trip from the 
 mouth of Montreal River to the Flambeau 
 Reservation, and thence to the mouth of the 
 Flambeau River, on one evening the party 
 camped near by a natural meadow where the 
 grass had ripened and was dry. Our three 
 Indians went out with their knives, to gather 
 armfuls of the grass to spread in our tents to 
 soften our beds for the night. While thus 
 engaged, Antoine, one of the Indians, encoun- 
 tered a blow-snake. This reptile, when de- 
 fending itself, emits an odor which is sicken- 
 ing, but among white men is not considered 
 very dangerous. There was no question but 
 that Antoine was made sick for that evening 
 by the snake, which had not touched him but 
 had been very near to him. Ed and Frank, 
 
 69 
 
the other two Indians of the party, told us that 
 evening that it was too bad, for Antoine surely 
 would die within the year as a result of his 
 having gotten this odor from the blow-snake. 
 Two years subsequently, I landed at Bayfield 
 from a Lake Superior steamer, and one of the 
 first persons I met on the dock was Antoine, 
 who looked as hale and hearty and well as 
 he was before his experience with the blow- 
 snake. On congratulating him for his victory 
 over the dire calamity predicted, because of 
 his encounter two years previous with the 
 blow-snake, he was considerably embarrassed, 
 but made no explanation why he was yet alive. 
 
 During the first half of the seventies, there 
 was no railroad to the shores of Lake Superior 
 in Bayfield County. In January, 1876, it was 
 necessary for me to reach Bayfield on im- 
 portant business. A very poor road had been 
 cut through the woods from Old Superior to 
 Bayfield, crossing the streams running north 
 into Lake Superior. United States mail was 
 carried on toboggans drawn by dogs, and con- 
 ducted by Indian runners. 
 
 The snow was deep, and no trail was broken 
 on the morning that I arrived at Superior 
 hoping to secure some kind of conveyance to 
 take me through to Bayfield, but I found no 
 
 70 
 
:■ 
 
 a- >> 
 
one who would volunteer to make the journey. 
 In this dilemma I sought the owners of dog 
 teams, and succeeded in purchasing two rather 
 small dogs that were young and full of life, 
 as well as well trained. These I hitched to 
 a toboggan and started on my journey of 
 ninety-five miles to Bayfield. The morning 
 was mostly gone when the start was made, 
 and that night was spent in a small cabin on 
 the Brule River. The cabin had been erected 
 for the use of the Indian mail carriers, and was 
 unoccupied. It contained a stove, however, 
 and wood was handy outside. The next morn- 
 ing an early start was made, and our train 
 reached Bayfield, as I remember, about one 
 o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 The return journey was made by the same 
 route. I had become acquainted with the 
 smart dog team, so that the return journey 
 was rather enjoyable than otherwise. I took 
 advantage of the down grades to get a little 
 rest by throwing myself flat upon the tobog- 
 gan, dismounting as soon as the up grades 
 were reached. I had become greatly attached 
 to the dogs, therefore I put them in the express 
 car, on my return from Duluth, and brought 
 them with me to Minneapolis. The thought 
 to do this was prompted by thinking of the 
 
 71 
 
little daughter at home, then two and one-half 
 years old, and of her baby brother, yet in arms. 
 A suitable sled was at once ordered made, with 
 a seat for little sister. To the sled, the dogs 
 were harnessed abreast, and the dogs and child 
 were never happier than when out on the 
 streets for exercise. 
 
 There were only two miles of street car track 
 in Minneapolis at that time, and that little 
 track was remote from the family home. The 
 city was then small. Passing teams on the 
 streets were infrequent, so that it was perfectly 
 safe for her to be out in her tiny conveyance, 
 accompanied always either by her father or 
 by her admiring uncle. 
 
 Tl 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Wolves — Log Riding. 
 
 ANY experiences of meeting or see- 
 ing the more dangerous of the wild 
 animals have been related by men 
 whose occupation as woodsmen has 
 made it necessary at times to go for days, un- 
 accompanied into the woods, and miles distant 
 from any human habitation. Personal experi- 
 ence leads me to believe that man is safe, nearly 
 always, except when such animals are suffer- 
 ing from hunger. 
 
 Early one spring, while the snow was yet 
 deep in the woods, I was scaling some trespass 
 of timber that lay about three miles away from 
 my headquarters camp. In going to my work, 
 mornings, I passed along a trail near to which, 
 in the deep snow, was the carcass of a horse 
 which had belonged to the owner of a near-by 
 lumber camp. I noticed, one morning, that 
 it had been visited during the night by a pack 
 of wolves that had fed upon it and had gone 
 away, using the trail for a short distance and 
 then leaving it, their tracks disappearing into 
 the unbroken forest. The following morning, 
 having gotten an early start, on passing this 
 
 73 
 
same place, I saw the wolves leaving their feed- 
 ing place and disappearing by the same route 
 as the tracks indicated on the preceding morn- 
 ing. The animals seemed to be as anxious to 
 get out of my sight, as I was willing to have 
 them. Had it not been for their full stomachs, 
 their actions, likely, would have been different. 
 
 Returning, on a subsequent day just before 
 nightfall, tired from a long day's work, and, 
 probably, because of the late hour, thinking 
 of my near by neighbors, the wolves, I com- 
 mitted an act that came near costing me my 
 life. The ice had gone out of the streams, and 
 the spring drive of logs was at its height. To 
 reach camp by the usual way, it was necessary 
 to follow up the stream one mile and cross on 
 a dam that had been constructed by the lum- 
 bermen to hold back water to use in driving 
 logs out of this stream, which at this point was 
 about two hundred and fifty feet wide. The 
 gates were open, and the water was running 
 high within the banks of the stream. Seeing, 
 in the eddy close to the bank of the river, a 
 large log that would scale at least one thousand 
 feet board measure, I was seized with the idea 
 that I could, with the assistance of a pole, step 
 onto that log, push it out from shore, and guide 
 it across the stream to the opposite shore. It 
 
 74 
 
;'\£'S 
 
 '■/■[' \-'y 
 
 
 
 
 JA# 
 
 o 
 
 X! it. 
 
 T3 S 
 
 OT c 
 
 S 'S. 
 o 
 
 'E o 
 
 « „ 
 
 C cS 
 
 o S 
 
 « E 
 >> - a 
 
 SCO 
 
was a log that had been skidded to the bank 
 of the river and rolled in. On such logs, the 
 bark on the under side is always removed to 
 reduce the amount of friction produced by one 
 end of the log dragging, while it is being hauled 
 to the water's edge. The "log driver" belongs 
 to a class of men that has produced many 
 heroes, and some of their exploits are among 
 the most thrilling recorded among the exi- 
 gencies of a hazardous occupation. I never 
 was of that class, and was almost entirely with- 
 out experience in trying to ride logs in open 
 water. I had pushed the log out into the 
 stream some distance and all was lovely, as 
 every minute it was approaching nearer to 
 the opposite shore. Suddenly it entered the 
 current of the river which quickly revolved the 
 log under my feet, bringing the peeled side 
 uppermost, at which instance I was dropped 
 into the stream. The first thing I did on rising 
 to the surface, was to swim for my hat, which 
 had been pulled off as I sank under the water. 
 Having secured it, I commenced swimming 
 for the opposite shore. My clothing was heavy 
 and grew more so as it became soaked with 
 water, so that by the time I had attained the 
 further shore — in the meantime watching con- 
 stantly to see that no floating log bumped me, 
 
 75 
 
thereby rendering me unconscious — I was 
 nearly exhausted. 
 
 During these years from 1871 to 1874, the 
 woods of Wisconsin were thoroughly traveled 
 over by land hunters, and nearly all of the 
 desirable timber was entered at the respective 
 land offices, so that there remained no further 
 field for exploit. A new field was therefore 
 looked for, and this I found in Minnesota. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Entering Minnesota, the 
 New Field. 
 
 N the summer of 1874, I went to the 
 head waters of the Big Fork River 
 with a party of hardy frontiersmen, 
 in search of a section of country 
 which was as yet unsurveyed by the United 
 States government, and which should contain 
 a valuable body of pine timber. Having found 
 such a tract of land, we made arrangements 
 through the surveyor-general's office, then 
 located in St. Paul, to have the land surveyed. 
 The contract for the survey was let by the 
 United States government to Mr. Fendall G. 
 Winston of Minneapolis. 
 
 The logging operations on the Mississippi 
 River in Minnesota at this period extended 
 from a short distance above Princeton on the 
 Rum River, one of the tributaries of the Mis- 
 sissippi River, to a little above Grand Rapids. 
 To reach Grand Rapids from Minneapolis, the 
 traveled route was by way of the St. Paul and 
 Duluth railroad to Northern Pacific Junction, 
 thence, over the Northern Pacific Railroad, 
 west to Aitkin. From this point the steamboat 
 
 77 
 
Pokegama plied the Mississippi to Grand 
 Rapids, the head of navigation at that time. 
 For many years this steamboat was owned 
 and operated by Captain Houghton, almost 
 wholly in the interest of the lumber trade. 
 Later, Captain Fred W. Bonnes became its 
 owner. Subsequently, the old Pokegama 
 burned, when Captain Bonnes built a new boat, 
 using the machinery of the Pokegama, and 
 naming it Aitkin City. At a still later period 
 he built the larger steamer, Andy Gibson. 
 
 In those days, the lumber-jack was a very 
 interesting type of man. Men from Maine 
 and New Brunswick were numerous. Scotch- 
 men, Irish-Americans, and French-Canadians 
 constituted a considerable portion of all the 
 labor that went to the logging camps of Min- 
 nesota. As early as the month of July, they 
 began their exodus from Minneapolis to the 
 woods for the purpose of building new camps, 
 cutting the wild grass that grew along the 
 natural meadows, and making it into hay for 
 the winter's use for oxen and horses. Some 
 of these men worked at the sawmills in sum- 
 mer, but there was not employment for all at 
 this work, and many spent their time in idle- 
 ness and not infrequently in drunken carousal. 
 On leaving the city for the logging camps, they 
 
 78 
 
were pretty sure to start out, each with one 
 or two bottles of whiskey stored away in his 
 tussock, which was ordinarily a two bushel, 
 seamless sack, with a piece of small rope tied 
 from one of its lower corners to the upper end 
 of the sack. In this were placed all of the 
 lumber-jack's belongings, except what were 
 carried in his pockets, including one or two 
 additional bottles of whiskey. Not all of the 
 lumber-jacks drank whiskey, but this was the 
 habit of very many of them. By the time the 
 train had arrived at Northern Pacific Junction, 
 where a change of cars was made, and where 
 the arrival of the Northern Pacific train from 
 Duluth, west bound, was awaited, many of our 
 lumber-jacks were well under the influence of 
 John Barleycorn. Disputes would frequently 
 arise while waiting for the train. These would 
 be settled by fist fights between the disputants, 
 their comrades standing about to see that each 
 man had fair play. 
 
 On one of our trips to the pine forests north 
 of Grand Rapids, we arrived at Aitkin on a 
 train loaded with this class of men, as well as 
 their bosses, and proprietors of the lumber 
 camps. Aitkin at that time was not much 
 more than a railroad station for the transfer 
 of the lumbermen and merchandise to the 
 
 79 
 
steamboat. A few men had preempted lands 
 from the government and had made their 
 homes where now is the city of Aitkin. The 
 late Warren Potter was one of them. He kept 
 a large store which was well stocked with 
 lumbermen's supplies, and which was the 
 rendezvous for the lumbermen. His pre- 
 emption claim was only a short distance in the 
 woods from his store. He had been East to 
 buy goods and had returned by train that day. 
 He found that his preemption claim had been 
 "jumped" by one, Nat Tibbetts, whom he found 
 occupying the Potter cabin. An altercation 
 took place between the two men, resulting in 
 Tibbetts blacking Potter's eye. The only repre- 
 sentative of the law was a justice of the peace, 
 a man whose name was Williams. Before him, 
 Potter swore out a warrant for the arrest of 
 Tibbetts, charging Tibbetts with assault with 
 intent to do bodily harm. Potter asked me to 
 act as his attorney to prosecute his case. This 
 honor was politely declined, and I assured him 
 that he would find a better man for the occasion 
 in the person of S. S. Brown, the well-known 
 log jobber, who was in town. 
 
 Mr. Brown having consented to act in the 
 interest of Mr. Potter, and Mr. Tibbetts having 
 secured some other layman to defend his case, 
 
 80 
 
all parties repaired, as I remember, to an un- 
 occupied building which was temporarily used 
 as a court of justice. As almost the entire 
 community that evening was a floating popula- 
 tion of lumbermen of various sorts, waiting 
 for an opportunity to start up the river on the 
 steamboat the following day, it will readily 
 be seen by the reader that this occasion was 
 one of unusual interest and bade fair to furnish 
 an interesting entertainment for a part of the 
 long evening. 
 
 Tibbetts demanded a jury trial. The jury 
 was chosen, and the prosecution opened the 
 case by putting on the stand, a witness who 
 had seen the encounter, and who proved to be 
 a good witness for Mr. Potter. The case pro- 
 ceeded until the evidence was nearly all pre- 
 sented. At this juncture, in the back end of 
 the improvised court room, a tall lumber-jack 
 who was leaning against the wall, and who was 
 considerably the worse for whiskey, cried out, 
 "Your honor! your honor! I object to these 
 proceedings." Everything was still for a mo- 
 ment, and all eyes turned toward the half drunk 
 lumber-jack. Justice Williams attempted to 
 proceed, when the lumber-jack repeated his 
 calls and his demands to be heard. Every one 
 present knew that any attempt on the part of 
 
 81 
 
the constable to quiet this man would have re- 
 sulted in starting a general fight, where there 
 were so many who were under the influence of 
 liquor. Some one, therefore, said to the justice, 
 "Your honor, you had better hear the man's 
 objections." Justice Williams then said, "You 
 may state your objections, sir." The lumber- 
 jack replied, "I object, your honor, because that 
 jury has not been sworn." This was true. The 
 jury was then sworn, and the trial of the case 
 was begun anew. The witnesses having again 
 given their evidence under oath, the case was 
 soon argued by the improvised lawyers. The 
 justice gave a short charge to the jury, and, 
 without leaving their seats, and while the spec- 
 tators waited, they notified the justice that 
 they had agreed upon a verdict of guilty. The 
 justice fined Mr. Tibbetts one dollar, and this 
 frontier court of justice adjourned. 
 
 The question of the ownership of the claim 
 was not before the court. My recollection, 
 however, concerning it, is that Mr. Potter ever 
 after had peaceful possession of the land. 
 
 The ride up the Mississippi to Grand Rapids 
 on the steamer Pokegama, which tied up each 
 night, occupied two days and a half. The dis- 
 tance was one hundred and ninety-five miles. 
 The steamer was crowded, and men slept 
 
 82 
 
JQ O 
 
 T3 ho 
 2 °5 
 
 C on 
 
 b c 
 
 3 c« 
 
 O tao 
 
 — > ao 
 
 u o 
 
 h 2 
 
everywhere on the deck, on their blankets or 
 without them, as best fitted their condition. 
 Whiskey and cards were plentiful. The table 
 was well supplied with good things to eat. 
 Grand Rapids at that time consisted of a 
 steamboat landing, a warehouse, and a ranch 
 or stopping place kept by Low Seavey, whose 
 wife was a half-breed. These were on the left 
 bank of the river just below the falls or rapids. 
 On the opposite side of the river was a small 
 store, a new enterprise, and owned by a man 
 whose name was Knox. 
 
 I met Mr. Winston and his assistant sur- 
 veyors at Grand Rapids about the middle of 
 August. There were no roads leading into 
 the country that we were to survey, and, as 
 our work would extend nearly through the 
 winter, it was necessary to get our supplies 
 in sufficient quantity to last for our entire cam- 
 paign, and take them near to our work. This 
 was accomplished by taking them in canoes 
 and boats of various sorts. Our first water 
 route took us up the Mississippi River, into 
 Lake Winnibigoshish, and from that lake on 
 its northeasterly shore, we went into Cut-foot 
 Sioux, or Keeskeesdaypon Lake. From this 
 point we were obliged to make a four mile 
 portage into the Big Fork River, crossing the 
 
 83 
 
Winnibigoshish Indian Reservation. From an 
 Indian encampment on this reservation, at the 
 southwest shore of Bow String Lake, we hired 
 some Indians to help pack our supplies across 
 the four mile portage. Before half of our sup- 
 plies had been carried across the portage, the 
 Indian chief sent word to us by one of his 
 braves, that he wished to see us in council and 
 forbade our moving any more of our supplies 
 until we had counseled with him. Although 
 the surveyors were the agents of the United 
 States government, for the sake of harmony, 
 it was thought best to ascertain at once what 
 was uppermost in the chief's mind. 
 
 That evening, a conference was held in the 
 wigwam of the chief. First, the chief filled full 
 of tobacco, a large, very long stemmed pipe, 
 and, having lighted it with a live coal from 
 the fire, took the first whiff of smoke; then 
 immediately passed it to the nearest one of our 
 delegates to his right, and thus the pipe went 
 round, until it came back to the chief, before 
 anything had been said. The chief then began 
 a long recital, telling us that the great father 
 would protect them in their rights to the ex- 
 clusive use of these lands. The chief said that 
 he was averse neither to the white man using 
 the trail of his people nor to his using the 
 
 84 
 
waters of the rivers or lakes within the boun- 
 daries of the reservation, but, if he did so, he 
 must pay tribute. In answer to his speech, the 
 chief surveyor of our party, Fendall G. Win- 
 ston, replied that he and his men had been 
 sent to survey the lands that belonged to 
 the great father; and, that in order to reach 
 those lands, it was necessary that his people 
 should cross the reservation which the 
 great father had granted to his tribe ; neverthe- 
 less, that they felt friendly to the Indians ; that 
 if they were treated kindly by himself and his 
 tribesmen, they should have an opportunity to 
 give them considerable work for many days, 
 while they were getting their supplies across 
 his country to that of the great father, where 
 they were going to work during the fall and 
 winter; and that they would also make him 
 a present of a sack of flour, some pork, some 
 tea, and some tobacco. He was told, too, that 
 this was not necessary for the great father's 
 men to do, but that they were willing to do 
 it, provided that this should end all claims of 
 every nature of the chief, against any and all 
 of the great father's white men, whom he had 
 sent into that country to do his work. This 
 having been sealed with the chief's emphatic 
 "Ugh," he again lighted the pipe, took the first 
 
 85 
 
whiff of smoke, and passed it around. Each, 
 in token of friendship, did as the chief had 
 already done. This ended the conference, and 
 we were not again questioned as to our rights 
 to pass over this long portage trail, which we 
 continued to use until our supplies were all in. 
 As nearly as I can now recall, our force was 
 made up of the following men: Fendall G. 
 Winston, in whose name the contract for the 
 survey was issued ; Philip B. Winston, brother 
 of Fendall G. Winston; Hdye, a young en- 
 gineer from the University of Minnesota; 
 Brown, civil engineer from Boston; Coe, from 
 the Troy Polytechnic School of Engineering; 
 Charlie, a half-breed Indian; Franklin, the 
 cook; Jim Flemming, Frank Hoyt, Charlie 
 Berg, Tom Jenkins, George Fenimore, Tom 
 Laughlin, Joe Lyon, Will Brackett, Miller, and 
 myself. 
 
 Flemming, poor fellow, was suffering with 
 dysentery when he started on the trip. On 
 reaching Grand Rapids, he was no better, and 
 it was thought best not to take him along to 
 the frontier, so he was allowed to go home. 
 Miller was not of a peace loving disposition, 
 and, having shown this characteristic early, 
 was also allowed to leave the party. It was 
 best that all weaklings and quarrelsome ones 
 
 86 
 
should be left behind, because it was easily 
 foreseen that when winter closed in upon the 
 band of frontiersmen, it would be difficult to 
 reach the outer world, and it would be un- 
 pleasant to have any in the party that were 
 not, in some sense, companionable. 
 
 Considerable time was consumed in getting 
 all of our supplies to headquarters camp, which 
 consisted of a log cabin. The first misfortune 
 that befell any one of our party came to Frank 
 Hoyt, who one day cut an ugly gash in the 
 calf of his leg with a glancing blow of the ax. 
 The cut required stitching, but there was no 
 surgeon in the party. Will Brackett, the young- 
 est of the party, a brother of George A. 
 Brackett, and a student from the university, 
 volunteered to sew up the wound. This he did 
 with an ordinary needle and a piece of white 
 thread. The patient submitted with fortitude 
 creditable to an Indian. Some plastic salve 
 was put on a cloth and placed over the wound, 
 which resulted in its healing too rapidly. Proud 
 flesh appeared, and then the wisdom of the 
 party was called into requisition, to learn what 
 thing or things available could be applied to 
 destroy it. Goose quill scrapings were sug- 
 gested, there being a few quills in the posses- 
 sion of the party. Brackett, however, sug- 
 
 87 
 
gested the use of some of the cook's baking 
 powder, because, he argued, there was suf- 
 ficient alum in it to remove the proud flesh 
 from the wound. "Dr." Brackett was consid- 
 ered authority, and his prescription proved ef- 
 fectual. Hoyt was left to guard the provision 
 camp against possible visits from the Indians, 
 or from bears, which sometimes were known 
 to break in and to carry away provisions. 
 
 It is never necessary for surveyors whose 
 work is in the timber, nor for timber hunters, 
 to carry tent poles, because these are easily 
 chosen from among the small trees; yet nine 
 of our party one time in October, with the rain 
 falling fast and cold, found themselves, at the 
 end of the four mile Cut-foot Sioux Portage, 
 on a point of land where there were no poles. 
 All of the timber of every description had been 
 cut down and used by the Indians. The Indian 
 chief and several of his family relations lived 
 on this point. They had built the house of 
 poles and cedar bark, in the shape of a 
 rectangle. Its dimensions on the ground were 
 about twelve by twenty feet; its walls rose to 
 a height of about five feet; and it was covered 
 by a hip roof. 
 
 Our party must either obtain shelter under 
 this roof or must get into the canoes and 
 
6 3 
 
 O M 
 
paddle nearly two miles to find a place where 
 it could pitch its tents. At this juncture 
 the hospitality of the Indians was demon- 
 strated. The chief sent out word that we should 
 come into his dwelling and remain for the 
 night. The proffer was gladly accepted. When 
 we had all assembled, we found within, the 
 chief and his squaw, his daughter and her hus- 
 band, the hunter, his squaw and two daughters, 
 besides our party of nine, making a total of 
 seventeen human beings within this small en- 
 closure. A small fire occupied a place on the 
 ground at the center of the structure, an ample 
 opening in the roof having been left for the 
 escape of the smoke and live sparks. Indians 
 can always teach their white brothers a lesson 
 of economy in the use of fuel. They build 
 only a small fire, around which, when inside 
 their wigwams, they all gather with their 
 usually naked feet to the fire. It is a physio- 
 logical fact that when one's extremities are 
 warm, one's bodily sufferings from cold are at 
 their minimum. Our party boiled some rice 
 and made a pail of coffee, without causing any 
 especial inconvenience to our hosts, and, after 
 having satisfied hunger and thirst, the usual 
 camp fire smoke of pipes was indulged in, be- 
 fore planning for any sleep. Our party had 
 
 89 
 
been assigned a portion of the space around 
 the open fire, and our blankets were brought 
 in and spread upon the mats that lay upon 
 the earth floor. 
 
 The additional presence of nine Indian dogs 
 has not previously been mentioned. Before 
 morning, however, they were found to be live 
 factors, and should be counted as part of the 
 dwellers within the walls of this single room. 
 They seemed to be nocturnal in habit, and to 
 take an especial delight in crossing and recross- 
 ing our feet, or in trying to find especially cozy 
 places between our feet and near to the fire, 
 where they might curl down for their own 
 especial comfort. It was not for us, however, 
 to complain, inasmuch as the hospitality that 
 had been extended was sincere; and it was to 
 be remembered by us that it was in no way 
 any advantage to the Indians to have taken 
 us in for the night. Therefore, we were truly 
 thankful that our copper colored friends had 
 once more demonstrated their feelings of hu- 
 manity toward their white brothers. They 
 had been subjected to more or less inconven- 
 ience by our presence, but in no way did they 
 make this fact manifest by their actions or by 
 their words. The rain continued at intervals 
 during the entire night, and it was with a feel- 
 
 90 
 
ing of real gratitude, as we lay upon the 
 ground, and listened to it, that we thought of 
 the kindly treatment we were receiving from 
 these aborigines. In the morning we offered 
 to pay them money for our accommodations, 
 but this they declined. They did, however, 
 accept some meat and some flour. 
 
 While we were crossing the lake, one day, 
 in canoes loaded with supplies of various de- 
 scriptions, an amusing, yet rather expensive, 
 incident happened in connection with one of 
 the canoes. Its occupants were George Feni- 
 more, a Mainite Yankee, and Joe Lyon, a 
 French-Canadian. Both were good canoe- 
 men, but only Fenimore knew how to swim. 
 They had become grouchy over some subject 
 while crossing the lake, and, as they neared 
 the opposite shore from which they had started, 
 in some manner which I have never under- 
 stood, the canoe was overturned. Little of its 
 contents was permanently lost, except one box 
 of new axes. The water was about eight feet 
 deep under them. Each man grasped an end 
 of the overturned canoe, and clung to it. Then 
 an argument began between the two dis- 
 gruntled men, about getting to shore. Lyon 
 wanted Fenimore to let go of the canoe and 
 swim ashore; but this, the latter refused to 
 
 91 
 
do. Finally, after considerable loss of time, 
 Joe Lyon, who was nearest to shore, turned his 
 body about, with his face toward the shore, 
 and, letting go of the canoe, went to the bot- 
 tom of the lake and floundered to gain the 
 shore. He had only to go a short distance 
 before the water became sufficiently shallow 
 for his head to appear, but he was winded, and 
 thoroughly mad. I have always believed that 
 Fenimore purposely overturned the canoe, but 
 if so, he never admitted the fact. 
 
 The pine timber lying east of Bow String 
 Lake, and included in the survey of 1874 and 
 1875, was all tributary to waters running north, 
 into the Big Fork River, which empties into 
 the Rainy River. Levels were run across from 
 Bow String Lake into Cut-foot Sioux River, 
 and considerable fall was found. The distance, 
 nearly all the way, was over a marsh. It was 
 shown that a dam could easily be thrown across 
 from bank to bank of the river at the outlet 
 of Bow String Lake, and by thus slightly rais- 
 ing the water in the lake, plus a little work of 
 cleaning out portions of the distance across 
 the marsh, from Bow String Lake to Cut-foot 
 Sioux, the timber could be driven across and 
 into the waters of the Mississippi River. All 
 of this engineering was before the advent of 
 
 92 
 
logging railroads. However, before the timber 
 was needed for the Minneapolis market, many 
 logging railroads had been built in various 
 localities in the northern woods, and their 
 practical utility had been demonstrated. When 
 the time came for cutting this timber, a logging 
 railroad was constructed to reach it; and over 
 its tracks, the timber was brought out, thus 
 obviating the necessity of empounding the 
 waters of Bow String Lake. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 An Evening Guest — Not 
 Mother's Bread. 
 
 HAVE previously mentioned the pres- 
 ence of nine dogs at an Indian camp, 
 where members of our party spent 
 a night. One of these animals is de- 
 serving of special mention, for the reason that 
 he was a stranger among a strange people, and 
 he was evidently so against his own choice. 
 He had at one time been a fine, large mastiff. 
 His history was never learned in full, but from 
 an account of the animal, gained by question- 
 ing the Indians who had him in captivity, it 
 was learned that the dog had belonged at some 
 lumber camp. It often happens that the mid- 
 day meal for most of the men in a large logging 
 crew must be taken out on a sled, usually 
 drawn by a single horse, for a distance of not 
 infrequently three or four miles from the cook's 
 camp. This is the work of the cookee; and, 
 at the logging camp where the mastiff had be- 
 longed, the animal had been used instead of 
 a horse, to pull the load of the midday meal 
 out to the men at work. In what manner he 
 
 94 
 
"The'memorable fire . . . which swept 
 Hinckley". (Page 160.) 
 
had been left behind when the camp broke in 
 the spring, was not learned. 
 
 He was about the size of two or three ordi- 
 nary Indian dogs, and was correspondingly 
 less sprightly in his movements. He was very 
 poor when members of our party first saw him. 
 Indian dogs never get enough to eat, and this 
 poor fellow with his large frame, had the ap- 
 pearance of not receiving any more for his 
 portion of food than an average Indian dog, 
 if as much. He looked as though he were 
 hungry, and probably was, every day. The 
 particular action that impressed itself upon 
 every member of our party, was this animal's 
 almost human desire for sympathy that he 
 sought from this party of white men, when 
 he and they first met at the Indian camp. He 
 wagged his tail and passed from one member 
 of our party to another, with an expression of 
 unusual joy. He rubbed against us and almost 
 begged to be caressed. Every man of our 
 party pitied him and would gladly have sent 
 him out to the white man's country, had it been 
 at all practicable to have done so. 
 
 Later in the fall, I was camped for a single 
 night, some three hundred yards distant from 
 the Indian encampment, on the shore of a lake 
 that I must cross the following morning. 
 
 95 
 
While I was preparing my evening meal, this 
 mastiff made his appearance, wagging his tail, 
 and wishing by his actions to say, "I am glad 
 to see you, and have come to call on you." 
 It is the custom of the land hunter, as well 
 as other frontiersmen, when paddling his canoe 
 across a lake, to throw out a trolling line; and 
 not infrequently, in those northern lakes, a 
 catch of several fish may thus be made. On 
 that day, such had been my experience, and 
 I had in my possession, several fine wall-eyed 
 pike that I intended to take through to the 
 main camp, which I should reach on the follow- 
 ing day. I also had a small bag of corn meal, 
 which I sometimes used as a substitute for 
 oatmeal, in cooking a porridge for my own 
 use. While preparing my supper, I took the 
 largest kettle, filled it with water, and placed 
 it over the fire. I then cut into small pieces, 
 a number of the fish, and put them in the kettle 
 to boil. Later I added some corn meal and 
 cooked all together. When it was sufficiently 
 done, I removed one-half of the pail's contents 
 and spread it out on a large piece of birch bark 
 to cool. When it had cooled sufficiently, I 
 invited my welcome guest, the mastiff, to par- 
 take of the food. Every mouthful eaten was 
 accompanied by a friendly wag of the animal's 
 
 96 
 
tail. The portion remaining in the pail I hung 
 on a limb, high enough up in the tree to be 
 out of reach. The dog remained about the 
 camp, and when I lay down in my blankets 
 for the night, he curled down at my feet and 
 there remained until morning. 
 
 While I was preparing my own breakfast, 
 I took the pail from the tree and placed it over 
 a small fire, that I might give my guest a warm 
 breakfast. I spread out on the same birch 
 bark, all that remained in the pail, and it was 
 eaten to the last morsel by the grateful animal. 
 
 Having placed all my belongings in my birch 
 canoe, I pushed out into the lake without the 
 dog, who tried hard to follow, and, as the 
 canoe went farther from the shore, the home- 
 sick animal commenced to whine at his loss 
 of companionship. By every means possible 
 to a dumb beast, this dog had expressed his 
 dislike for his enforced environment and his 
 longing to be back with the white man. I 
 could not help but believe that the feelings 
 expressed by this dog were akin to those of 
 many a captive man or woman who had fallen 
 into the hands of the aborigines. 
 
 Our frail birch canoes had been abandoned 
 as cold weather approached, and we had settled 
 down to the work of surveying. Sometimes, 
 
 97 
 
however, we came to lakes that must be 
 crossed. This was accomplished by cutting 
 some logs, and making rafts by tying them 
 together with withes. Sometimes these rafts 
 were found insufficiently buoyant to float 
 above water all who got onto them, so that 
 when they were pushed along there were no 
 visible signs of anything that the men were 
 standing on. When on a raft, Hyde was al- 
 ways afraid of falling off, and would invariably 
 sit down upon it. This subjected him to 
 greater discomfort than other members, but 
 as it was of his own choosing, no one raised 
 any objection. 
 
 One day, several of the party had gone to 
 the supply camp to bring back some provisions 
 which the cook had asked for. Returning, not 
 by any trail, but directly through the unbroken 
 forest, we found ourselves in a wet tamarack 
 and spruce swamp; and, although we believed 
 we were not far from the camp where we had 
 left the cook in the morning, we were not cer- 
 tain of its exact location. Mr. F. G. Winston 
 said he thought he could reach it in a very 
 short time, and suggested that we remain 
 where we were. He started in what he be- 
 lieved to be the direction of the camp, saying 
 that he would return in a little while. We 
 
waited until the shades of night began to fall; 
 and yet he did not come. Preparations were 
 then made to stay in the swamp all night. The 
 ground was wet all around us, nor could we 
 see far enough to discern any dry land. We 
 commenced cutting down the smaller trees 
 that were like poles, and with these poles, con- 
 structed a platform of sufficient dimensions to 
 afford room for four men to lie down. Then 
 another foundation of wet logs was made, on 
 which a fire was kindled, and by the fire, we 
 baked our bread and fried some bacon, which 
 constituted our evening meal. A sack of flour 
 was opened, a small place within it hollowed 
 out, a little water poured in, and the flour mix- 
 ed with the water until a dough was formed. 
 Each man was told to provide himself with a 
 chip large enough on which to lay the piece 
 of dough, which was rolled out by hand, made 
 flat, and then, having been placed in a nearly 
 upright position against the chip in front of the 
 fire, was baked on one side; then turned over 
 and baked on the other. In the meantime, each 
 man was told to provide himself with a forked 
 stick, which he should cut with his jackknife, 
 and on it to place his piece of bacon and cook 
 it in front of the fire; thus each man became 
 his own cook and prepared his own meal. There 
 
 99 
 
was no baking powder or other ingredient to 
 leaven the loaf — not even a pinch of salt to 
 flavor it. But the owner of each piece of dough 
 was hungry, and, by eating it immediately 
 after it was baked and before it got cold, it was 
 much better than going without any supper. 
 The following morning, the party resumed its 
 journey, and met Mr. Winston coming out to 
 find it. He had found the cook's camp, but at 
 so late an hour that it was not possible for him 
 to return that night. 
 
 100 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A Hurried Round Trip to Min- 
 neapolis — Many Instances. 
 
 FTER leaving Grand Rapids about 
 the middle of August, we saw very 
 few white men for many months fol- 
 lowing. In October, on our survey, 
 local attraction was so strong on part of our 
 work, that it was necessary to use a solar com- 
 pass. This emergency had not been antici- 
 pated ; it, therefore, became necessary to go to 
 Minneapolis to secure that special instrument. 
 Philip B. Winston, afterwards mayor of Min- 
 neapolis, and I started in a birch canoe, and in 
 it, made the whole distance from our camp on 
 Bow String Lake to Aitkin, Minnesota, on the 
 Mississippi, the nearest railroad station. We 
 were in Minneapolis but two days, when we 
 returned, catching the steamer at Aitkin, and 
 going up the Mississippi to Grand Rapids, the 
 head of navigation for steamboats. 
 
 Captain John Martin of Minneapolis, the 
 well-known lumberman and banker, wished to 
 return with us for his final fishing trip in open 
 water, for that season. He fished successfully 
 for a number of days, and, at the end of each 
 
 101 
 
day, personally prepared and cooked as fine a 
 fish chowder as anyone would ever wish to eat. 
 On the day of his departure, I took the Captain 
 in my canoe, and landed him on the four-mile 
 portage with an Indian escort who was to take 
 him to Grand Rapids, whence he would return 
 by steamer to Aitkin, a station on the line of 
 the Northern Pacific Railroad. 
 
 I was left alone in my canoe and must return 
 to camp, crossing the open water of Bow String 
 Lake. On my arrival at the main lake, the 
 wind had increased its velocity, and the white- 
 caps were breaking. I hired an Indian, known 
 as "the hunter," to help me paddle across the 
 lake and up a rapid on a river flowing into Bow 
 String, up and over which it was not possible 
 for one man to push his canoe alone. 
 
 The annual payment to the Indians by the 
 United States government was to occur a few 
 days subsequently, at Leach Lake, and the In- 
 dians were busy getting ready to leave, to at- 
 tend the payment. The hunter's people were 
 to start that day, and he seemed to realize when 
 half way across the lake, that, owing to our 
 slow progress, because of the heavy sea, he 
 would be late in returning to his people at 
 camp. He said so, and wished to turn back, 
 but I told him that he must take me above the 
 
 102 
 
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 e ft 
 
 •a 
 
 t> « • 
 
 >. "n 
 
 o iu 
 
 "- -fi 
 
 CO P 
 
 •O '*• 
 
 . 1) 
 
 c 
 
 ! s. 
 
 «, be 
 
 £ c 
 
rapid, which was my principal object in hiring 
 him. After sitting stoically in the bow of the 
 canoe for a few moments, he suddenly turned 
 about, and, drawing his long knife, said in 
 Chippewa, that he must go back. I drew my 
 revolver and told him to get down in the canoe 
 and paddle, and that if he did not, he would get 
 shot. There was no further threat by the In- 
 dian, and we made as rapid progress as possible 
 over the rapid, landing my canoe — his own 
 having been trailed to the foot of the rapid. 
 Both stepped ashore. Then he said in Chip- 
 pewa, "Me bad Chippewa; white man all 
 right" ; and bidding me good-by, hurried off to 
 his canoe at the foot of the rapid. 
 
 Once more, during the fall of 1874, I had to 
 reckon with this wily Indian, the hunter, as 
 will soon appear in this narrative. 
 
 Perhaps the most convenient pack strap used 
 by the woodsman when on an all day's tramp, 
 is one that is commonly known as the Indian 
 pack strap. It consists of a strap of leather 
 about three inches wide and about three feet 
 long, from each end of which, a tapering piece 
 of leather, either sewed or buckled to it, ex- 
 tends finally to a narrow point no wider than 
 a whip-lash. Each of these added narrow 
 strips is from five to six feet in length, so that 
 
 103 
 
the whole strap is about fourteen feet long 
 when straightened out. A blanket or a tent is 
 folded into shape, about four feet by six feet. 
 This is laid on the ground, and the strap is 
 folded double with a spread at the wide part, 
 of about three feet, which is the length of the 
 wide strap. The narrow ends are then drawn 
 straight back over the blanket, across its nar- 
 row dimension, leaving the wide strap, which 
 in use becomes the head strap, at the outer 
 edge of the blanket. Then the blanket is folded 
 from each end over the narrow straps, the two 
 ends of which project out and beyond the 
 blanket at the opposite side from the head 
 strap. The articles to be placed within the 
 blanket, which generally consist of small sacks 
 of beans, flour, pork, sugar, coffee, and wearing 
 apparel, and blankets, are then carefully 
 stacked upon the blanket, within the spread 
 of the two narrow lines of the pack strap. 
 When this is done, the blanket is folded over, 
 and the two outer edges are brought as near to 
 the center of the pile of things to be carried 
 within it, as is possible. Then the two taper- 
 ing ends of the pack strap are brought up and 
 over, to meet the opposite ends of the narrow 
 straps, which, as has been explained, are either 
 sewed to, or buckled onto the wide head strap. 
 
 104 
 
Drawing these ends firmly together puckers 
 the outer edge of the blanket on either side, 
 and draws the blanket completely over the con- 
 tents piled in the center, and makes, ordinarily, 
 nearly a round bundle. This load, or pack, the 
 man then throws over his shoulder, onto his 
 back, and brings the wide strap across his fore- 
 head, or across his breast, or across the top of 
 his head, when he is ready to begin his journey. 
 Before he has traveled long with this load, 
 which weighs ordinarily from fifty to one hun- 
 dred pounds, according to the ability of the 
 man to bear the burden, he will be found shift- 
 ing that wide strap to any one of the three po- 
 sitions named, and will have used all of those 
 positions many times before the party as a 
 whole, stops for a moment's rest. 
 
 I had taken with me, on going north on this 
 long campaign, an extra fine red leather pack 
 strap that I had had made to order at a Min- 
 neapolis harness shop. I had kept it coiled up, 
 and carefully stored in my belongings, waiting 
 for an emergency when the more common 
 straps would no longer be of service. A num- 
 ber of times the Indians had seen this strap 
 and had admired it, and, as it later proved, not 
 always without envy. 
 
 One day the strap was missing, and I could 
 
 105 
 
find it, neither by searching, nor by open 
 inquiry of my fellow white men, nor of the In- 
 dians, whom I occasionally met. On one occa- 
 sion, while portaging my canoe to another lake, 
 I found several families of Indians camping at 
 the end of the portage. Among them was the 
 hunter who has been previously mentioned. 
 While stopping a moment for a friendly talk 
 with the Indians, I saw protruding from under 
 the coat of the hunter, nearly two feet of one 
 end of my missing pack strap. I knew it so 
 well that I was sure that it was no other pack 
 strap. Nevertheless, I deliberated slowly what 
 action I should take to recover the strap, not 
 wishing by any possibility to make a mistake. 
 Having surely concluded that the strap was 
 mine, and that the hunter had not come into 
 possession of it honestly — he having previous- 
 ly denied, when questioned, that he knew any- 
 thing of the whereabouts of the strap — I de- 
 cided upon a course of action. Going up 
 quietly behind the hunter, and twisting the end 
 of the protruding strap twice around my wrist, 
 and grasping it firmly in my hand, I started 
 with all my might to run with the strap. The 
 effect was to make a temporary top of my 
 friend, the hunter, who whirled about until the 
 other end of the pack strap was released from 
 
 106 
 
c CL, 
 
 o * 
 
his body. It was too good a joke, even for the 
 Indians to remain unmoved, and the majority 
 of them broke into merriment. The hunter at 
 first was disposed to take it seriously but soon 
 looked sheepish and ashamed, and tried to 
 smile with the rest of his tribe, as well as with 
 myself. 
 
 Having wound the strap carefully around my 
 own body, and having made sure that the ends 
 did not protrude, I bade my friends, including 
 the hunter, good day, got into my canoe and 
 pushed out into the lake. This proved to be the 
 last time I ever saw the hunter, but it was not 
 the last time that I ever thought of the inci- 
 dent. 
 
 In justice to the Indians as compared with 
 white men, I am glad to be able to say, that, 
 after mingling with them more or less for 
 many years, and becoming sufficiently familiar 
 with their language to be able to use it on all 
 necessary occasions, I believe that the Indians 
 are as honest and as honorable as the men with 
 whom they mingle, who have not a copper 
 skin. 
 
 Captain Martin was the last white man whom 
 any one of our party saw for four months. 
 Winter closed in on us before the beginning of 
 November. The snow became very deep, so 
 
 107 
 
that it was absolutely necessary to perform all 
 of our work on snowshoes. The winter of 1874 
 and 1875 is shown to have been the coldest 
 winter in Minnesota, of which there is any rec- 
 ord, beginning with 1819 up to, and including, 
 1913. 
 
 The party was mostly composed of men who 
 had had years of experience on the frontier, 
 and who were inured to hardship. With a few, 
 however, the experience was entirely new, and, 
 except that they were looked after by the more 
 hardy, they might have perished. As it was, 
 however, not one man became seriously ill at 
 any time during this severe winter's campaign. 
 
 All of the principal men of the party wore 
 light duck suits, made large enough to admit 
 of wearing heavy flannel underwear beneath 
 them. Either boot-packs or buckskin mocca- 
 sins, inside of which were several pairs of 
 woolen socks, composed the footwear. Boot- 
 packs or larigans, as they are commonly called 
 by the lumber-jack, are tanned in a manner 
 that makes them very susceptible to heat, and 
 the leather will shrivel quickly if near an open 
 fire. It cost one of the party several pairs of 
 boot-packs before he could learn to keep suffi- 
 ciently far away from the open fire, on return- 
 ing to camp from his work. It will be sur- 
 
 108 
 
mised by the reader that he was one of the in- 
 experienced of the party. 
 
 Many incidents, amusing to others, hap- 
 pened during the winter to this same man. He 
 had started on the trip in the summer months, 
 with a supply of shoe blacking and paper col- 
 lars. The crossing of one or two portages with 
 his loaded pack sack on his back was sufficient 
 to convince him that there was no need of 
 carrying either shoe blacking or paper collars, 
 and they were thrown out to reduce weight. 
 Each man carried a hank or skein of thread, a 
 paper of needles, and a supply of buttons. Soon 
 after winter set in, this man, who might ordi- 
 narily be termed a tenderfoot, complained of 
 lameness in one of his feet. As the weather 
 became more severe, he added from time to 
 time, another pair of socks to those he already 
 had on, never removing any of previous ser- 
 vice. This necessitated, not infrequently, his 
 choosing a larger sized boot-pack. Before the 
 campaign was over, although he was a man of 
 low stature and light weight, his feet presented 
 the appearance of being the largest in the 
 party. Still he complained of lameness in the 
 hollow of his foot, and no relief came until 
 March, when the work was completed. Arriv- 
 ing once more back in civilization, he removed 
 
 109 
 
his much accumulated footwear. There, un- 
 der this accumulation of socks, and against the 
 hollow of his foot, was found his skein of 
 thread, the absence of which, from its usual 
 place, had necessitated his borrowing, when- 
 ever he had need of it, from some one of his 
 companions. Before starting out on this cam- 
 paign, he had been one of the tidiest of men 
 about his personal appearance. 
 
 One evening in midwinter, when sitting 
 around the camp fire, by reason of the pile of 
 wood for the evening being largely composed 
 of dry balsam, we were kept more or less busy, 
 extinguishing sparks that are always thrown 
 out from this kind of wood when burning. 
 Sometimes one would light on the side of the 
 tent near by, and unless immediately extin- 
 guished, would eat a large hole in the cloth. 
 That evening, Fendall G. Winston and I were 
 sitting side by side, when we saw a live spark 
 more than a quarter of an inch in diameter light 
 in the ear of our friend who sat a little way 
 from, and in front of us. It did not go out im- 
 mediately, neither did it disturb the tranquillity 
 of the young man. Mr. Winston and I ex- 
 changed glances and smilingly watched the 
 ember slowly die. The time to clean up had 
 not yet arrived for at least one of the party. 
 
 no 
 
The compassman's work that winter was 
 rendered very laborious from the fact that his 
 occupation made it necessary for him, from 
 morning until night of every day, to break his 
 own path through the untrodden snow, for it 
 was he who was locating the line of the survey. 
 I was all of the time running lines in the in- 
 terior of the sections, following the work of the 
 surveyors, and choosing desirable pine timber 
 that was found within each section. I had no 
 companion in this work, and thus was sep- 
 arated most of each day from other members 
 of the party, but returned to the same camp at 
 night. 
 
 In the morning, each man was furnished by 
 the cook, with a cloth sack in which were 
 placed one or two or more biscuits, containing 
 within, slices of fried bacon and sometimes 
 slices of corned beef, also, perhaps, a dough- 
 nut or two. This he tied to the belt of his 
 jacket on his back and carried until the lunch 
 hour. Ordinarily a small fire was then kindled, 
 and the luncheon, which generally was frozen, 
 thawed out and eaten. Under such mode of 
 living, every one returned at night bringing an 
 appetite of ample dimensions. 
 
 One of the most acceptable of foods to such 
 men at the supper hour was bean soup, of a 
 
 111 
 
kind and quality such as a cook on the frontier, 
 alone, knows how to prepare. Plenty of good 
 bread was always in abundance at such time. 
 Usually there was also either corned beef or 
 boiled pork to be had by those who wished it ; 
 generally also boiled rice or apple dumplings, 
 besides tea and coffee. 
 
 In a well-regulated camp, where men are liv- 
 ing entirely out of doors in tents, a bean hole 
 is pretty sure to be demanded. The bean hole 
 is prepared by first digging a hole in the 
 ground, sufficiently large, not only to make 
 room for the pail, but also for several inches of 
 live coals with which it must be surrounded. 
 After supper is over, the beans are put into a 
 large pail made of the best material, with ears 
 always riveted on, so that the action of heat 
 will not separate any of its parts. The beans 
 are first parboiled with a pinch of soda in the 
 water. As soon as the skins of the beans be- 
 come broken, the water is poured off; then the 
 beans are placed in the bean pail, a small quan- 
 tity of hot water is added together with a suf- 
 ficiently large piece of pork; and, when a tight 
 cover has been put on the pail, it is placed in 
 the bean hole. The live coals are placed around 
 it, until the hole is completely filled and the 
 pail entirely covered several inches deep. Then 
 
 112 
 
'Our camp was made in a fine grove of 
 pig-iron Norway". (Page 167.) 
 
ashes or earth are put on the top of it all, to 
 exclude the air. Thus the pail remains all 
 night, and, in the morning when the cook calls 
 the men to breakfast, the beans, thoroughly 
 cooked and steaming, are served hot and fur- 
 nish an acceptable foundation for the arduous 
 day's work about to begin. 
 
 The work of the frontiersman is more or less 
 hazardous in its nature, and yet bad accidents 
 are rare. Occasionally a man is struck by a 
 falling limb, or he may be cut by the glancing 
 blow of an ax, though he learns to be very care- 
 ful when using tools, well knowing that there 
 is no surgeon or hospital near at hand. Some- 
 times in the early winter, men unaccompanied, 
 yet obliged to travel alone, drop through the 
 treacherous ice and are drowned. Few winters 
 pass in a lumber country where instances of 
 this kind do not occur. One day, when alone, 
 I came near enough to such an experience. I 
 was obliged to cross a lake, known to have air 
 holes probably caused by warm springs. The 
 ice was covered by a heavy layer of snow, con- 
 sequently I wore snowshoes, and before start- 
 ing to cross, cut a long, stout pole. Taking 
 this firmly in my hands, I made my way out 
 onto the ice. All went well until I was near the 
 opposite shore, when suddenly the bottom 
 
 113 
 
went out from under me and I fell into the 
 water, through an unseen air hole which the 
 snow covered. The pole I carried was suffi- 
 cient in length to reach the firm ice on either 
 side, which alone enabled me, after much la- 
 bor, impeded as I was by the cumbersome 
 snowshoes, to gain the surface. The next abso- 
 lutely necessary thing to do, was to make a 
 fire as quickly as possible, before I should be- 
 come benumbed by my wet garments. 
 
 The survey went steadily on, the snow and 
 cold increased, and rarely was it possible to 
 make an advance of more than four miles in a 
 day. Frank Hoyt remained at the warehouse 
 and watched the supplies which were steadily 
 diminishing. One day, Philip B. Winston, two 
 men of the crew, and I, set out to the supply 
 camp to bring some provisions to the cook's 
 camp. The first day at nightfall, we reached 
 an Indian wigwam that we knew of, situated 
 in a grove of hardwood timber, near the shore 
 of a lake, directly on our route to the supply 
 camp. Our little party stayed with the Indians 
 and shared their hospitality. It was a large 
 wigwam, covered principally with cedar bark, 
 and there was an additional smaller wigwam 
 so close to it, that a passage way was made 
 from one wigwam to the other. 
 
 114 
 
In the smaller wigwam lived a young In- 
 dian, his squaw, and the squaw's mother ; in the 
 larger wigwam lived the chief, his wife, his 
 daughter, son-in-law, and the hunter, his wife, 
 and two daughters, all of whom were present 
 except the hunter. There was an air of expec- 
 tancy noticeable as we sat on the mats around 
 the fire in the wigwam, after having made 
 some coffee and eaten our supper outside. 
 Presently the chief informed us that an heir 
 was looked for that evening in the adjoining 
 tent. Before nine o'clock it was announced 
 that a young warrior had made his appearance, 
 and all were happy over his arrival. The large 
 pipe was brought forth, filled with tobacco, 
 and, after the chief had taken the first smoke, 
 it was passed around to their guests, and all 
 the men smoked, as well as the married women. 
 
 The next morning, we continued our jour- 
 ney across the lake and on to Hoyt's camp, 
 where, it is needless to say, he was glad to see 
 some white men. Their visits were rare at his 
 camp. Filling our packs with things the cook 
 had ordered, we started on our return journey, 
 arriving at the Indian camp at nightfall. As 
 we left the ice to go up to the wigwams, 
 we met the mother of the young warrior 
 who had made his first appearance the preced- 
 
 115 
 
ing night, going down to the lake with a pail 
 in each hand to bring some water to her wig- 
 wam. The healthy young child was brought 
 into the wigwam and shown to the members 
 of our party, who complimented the young 
 mother and wished that he might grow to be a 
 brave, worthy to be chieftain of their tribe. 
 
 That evening a feast had been prepared at 
 the chief's wigwam, in honor of the birth of 
 the child, to which our party was invited. The 
 menu consisted principally of boiled rice, 
 boiled muskrat, and boiled rabbit. The three 
 principal foods having been cooked in one 
 kettle and at the same time, it was served as 
 one course, but the guests were invited to re- 
 peat the course as often as they desired. This 
 invitation was accepted by some, while others 
 seemed satisfied to take the course but once. 
 I have always found the hospitality of the 
 Chippewa Indian unsurpassed, and more than 
 once, in my frontier experiences, I have found 
 that hospitality a godsend to me and to my 
 party. 
 
 116 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Entire Party Moves to 
 Swan River. 
 
 T WAS in the month of February, 
 1875, when the surveying party com- 
 pleted its work east of Bow String 
 Lake, and finished, one afternoon, 
 closing its last lines on the Third Guide Meri- 
 dian. At the camp, that afternoon, prepara- 
 tions were being made for a general move of 
 considerable distance. It is not always pos- 
 sible for the frontiersman to reach his goal on 
 the day that he has planned to do so. An in- 
 stance in point occurred next day, when our 
 surveying party was moving out to Grand 
 Rapids. The snow was deep and the weather 
 intensely cold when we broke camp that morn- 
 ing, hoping before nightfall to reach one of 
 Hill Lawrence's logging camps. Some Indians 
 had been hired to help pack out our belongings. 
 Our course lay directly through the unbroken 
 forest, without trail or blazed line, and the 
 right direction was kept only by the constant 
 use of the compass. All were on snowshoes, 
 and those of the party who could be depended 
 upon to correctly use the compass, took turns 
 
 117 
 
in breaking road. Each compassman would 
 break the way through the snow for half an 
 hour, then another would step in and break the 
 way for another half hour, and he in turn 
 would be succeeded by a third compassman. 
 This change of leadership was continued all 
 the way during that day. 
 
 About the middle of the afternoon, the In- 
 dians threw down their packs and left our 
 party altogether, having become tired of their 
 jobs. This necessitated dividing up the In- 
 dians' packs and each man sufficiently able- 
 bodied taking a part of these abandoned loads 
 in addition to his own pack; and thus we con- 
 tinued the journey. 
 
 Night was fast approaching, and the dis- 
 tance was too great to reach the Lawrence 
 camp that night. Fortunately, there were 
 some Indian wigwams not far in advance. 
 These we reached after nightfall, and, as our 
 party was very tired and carried no prepared 
 food, we asked for shelter during the night, 
 with the Indians. They soon made places 
 where our men could spread their blankets 
 around the small fire in the center of the wig- 
 wams. Then we asked if we could be served 
 with something to eat. We received an af- 
 firmative "Ugh," and the squaws commenced 
 
 118 
 
'These little animals were numerous' 
 (Page 169.) 
 
preparing food, which consisted solely of a 
 boiled rabbit stew with a little wild rice. It 
 was once more demonstrated that hunger is a 
 good cook. After having partaken of the un- 
 selfishly proffered food, and, after most of our 
 party had smoked their pipes, all lay down 
 about the fire, and fell asleep. Even the pres- 
 ence of Indian dogs, occasionally walking over 
 us in the night, interfered but little with our 
 slumbers. The next morning our party started 
 out without breakfast, and by ten o'clock 
 reached the Lawrence camp, where the cook 
 set out, in a few minutes' time, a great variety 
 of food, and an abundance of it, of which each 
 man partook to his great satisfaction. 
 
 From Lawrence camp we were able to secure 
 the services of the tote team that was going 
 out for supplies, which took our equipment 
 through to Grand Rapids. From that point, 
 we were able, also, to hire a team to take our 
 supplies to the Swan River. Crossing this 
 we went north to survey two townships, which 
 would complete the winter's contract. 
 
 It has been stated that this winter of 1874 
 and 1875 was the coldest of which the Weather 
 Bureau for Minnesota furnishes any history. 
 Besides the intense cold, there were heavy 
 snows. Nevertheless, no serious injury or 
 
 119 
 
physical suffering of long duration befell any 
 member of our band of hardy woodsmen. Not 
 one of our number was yet thirty years old, 
 the youngest one being eighteen. Two only 
 of the party were married, Fendall G. Winston, 
 and myself. On leaving Grand Rapids in Au- 
 gust, we separated ourselves from all other 
 white men. The party was as completely sep- 
 arated from the outside world as though it had 
 been aboard a whaling vessel in the Northern 
 Seas. No letters nor communications of any 
 kind reached us after winter set in, until our 
 arrival in Grand Rapids in the month of Feb- 
 ruary following. Letters were occasionally 
 written and kept in readiness to send out by 
 any Indian who might be going to the nearest 
 logging camp, whence they might by chance 
 be carried out to some postoffice. Whether 
 these letters reached their destinations or not, 
 could not be known by the writers as long as 
 they remained on their work, hidden in the 
 forest. 
 
 I had left my young wife and infant daugh- 
 ter, not yet a year old, in Minneapolis. Either, 
 or both might have died and been buried be- 
 fore any word could have reached me. It was 
 not possible at all times to keep such thoughts 
 out of my mind. Of course every day was a 
 
 120 
 
busy one, completely filled with the duties of 
 the hour, and the greatest solace was found in 
 believing that all was well even though we 
 could not communicate with each other. As I 
 recall, no ill befell any one of the party nor of 
 the party's dear ones, during all these long 
 weeks and months of separation. Every man 
 of the party seemed to become more rugged 
 and to possess greater endurance as the cold 
 increased. It became the common practice to 
 let the camp fire burn down and die, as we 
 rolled into our blankets to sleep till the morn- 
 ing hour of arising. 
 
 Not every night was spent in comfort, how- 
 ever, though ordinarily that was the average 
 experience. The less robust ones, of whom 
 there were very few, sometimes received spe- 
 cial attention. 
 
 It was during the arduous journey, getting 
 away from the scene of our first survey to that 
 of the upper waters of Swan River, that one of 
 our men fell behind all of the others, on a hard 
 day's tramp. P. B. Winston, who had all the 
 time been very considerate of him, observing 
 that he was not keeping up to the party, but 
 was quite a long way back on the trail which 
 the men were breaking through the snow, said 
 that he would wait for him until he should 
 
 121 
 
catch up. Concealing himself behind a thicket 
 close to the trail, he quietly awaited our friend's 
 arrival. He told the following incident of the 
 poor fellow's condition: 
 
 Mr. Winston allowed him to pass him on the 
 trail, unobserved, and heard him saying, as he 
 rubbed one of his legs, "Oh Lord, my God, 
 what ever made me leave my comfortable home 
 and friends, and come out into this wilder- 
 ness !" At this instant Mr. Winston called out, 
 
 "What is the matter ?" "Oh, I'm 
 
 freezing, and I don't know that I shall ever be 
 of any use if I ever get out," he replied. He 
 did live to get out and to reach his friends, 
 none the worse for his doleful experience. He 
 did not again, however, go north into the for- 
 est, but tried another portion of the western 
 country, where he became very prosperous. 
 
 Long living around the open camp fire in the 
 winter months, standing around in the smoke, 
 and accumulating more or less of the odors 
 from foods of various kinds being cooked by 
 the open fire, invariably result in all of one's 
 clothing and all of one's bedding becoming 
 more or less saturated with the smell of the 
 camp. This condition one does not notice 
 while living in it from day to day, but he does 
 not need to be out and away from such environ- 
 
 122 
 
Z <N 
 
 c 
 
 c cu 
 
 2 c 
 
ments for more than a few hours, before he be- 
 comes personally conscious, to some degree, 
 that such odors are not of a quality that would 
 constitute a marketable article for cash. On 
 arriving in Minneapolis at the close of the win- 
 ter's campaign, without having changed our 
 garments — as we had none with us that had not 
 shared with us one and the same fate — Mr. 
 P. B. Winston and I engaged a hack at the rail- 
 road station, and drove to our respective 
 homes. 
 
 It was Mr. Winston's domicile that was first 
 reached, and it happened, as the driver stopped 
 in front of his house, that his fiance, Miss Kit- 
 tie Stevens (the first white child born in Min- 
 neapolis) , chanced to be passing by. Of course 
 their meeting was unexpected to either, but 
 was a pleasant and joyous one, though some- 
 what embarrassing to Mr. Winston. The wind 
 was blowing, and I noticed that he took the 
 precaution to keep his own person out of the 
 windward. He had been a soldier in the Con- 
 federate Army, and I smiled with much satis- 
 faction as I observed his splendid maneuver. 
 
 On meeting me next day, Mr. Winston in- 
 quired whether his tactics had been observed, 
 and, being assured that they had, he said that 
 that was the embarrassing moment for him, 
 
 123 
 
for he did not know but that the young lady 
 might have considered that she had just 
 grounds for breaking the engagement. Both 
 of us, however, knew better, for she was a 
 young lady possessed of a large degree of com- 
 mon sense and loveliness. The young people 
 later were married, Mr. Winston becoming 
 mayor of Minneapolis, remaining always, one 
 of its best citizens. Often, afterwards, incidents 
 of that winter's experience, a few of which 
 have been herein recorded, were gone over to- 
 gether with great pleasure by the parties in- 
 terested. 
 
 124 
 
 J 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Methods of Acquiring Govern- 
 ment Land — An Aban- 
 doned Squaw. 
 
 51 OR many years it was the practice of 
 the United States government, after 
 its lands had been surveyed, to ad- 
 vertise them for sale at public auc- 
 tion on a date fixed by the government. Time 
 sufficient was always given to allow parties in- 
 terested to go themselves, or send men into 
 the woods, to examine the lands, and thus to 
 be prepared on the day of sale, to bid as high 
 a price on any description as each was willing 
 to pay. After the time advertised for the lands 
 to be thus offered, had expired, and after the 
 land sale had been held, all lands not bought in 
 at that sale became subject to private entry at 
 the local land office. It was this class of lands 
 that I bought in Wisconsin. 
 
 After the Civil War, by act of Congress, each 
 Union soldier was given the right to home- 
 stead one hundred and sixty acres of land, the 
 government price of which was one dollar and 
 twenty-five cents per acre. It sometimes hap- 
 pened that the soldier found only forty acres, 
 
 125 
 
or possibly eighty acres, or one hundred and 
 twenty acres, lying contiguous, that he cared 
 to take as a homestead. Later, Congress 
 passed another law enabling the soldier, who 
 had thus previously entered fewer than one 
 hundred and sixty acres, to take an additional 
 homestead claim of enough acres, which, when 
 added to his previous homestead, would make 
 a total of one hundred and sixty acres. The 
 soldier was not obliged to live on this addi- 
 tional piece of land, but had the right to sell his 
 certificate or scrip from the government, to 
 anyone who might choose to buy it, and the 
 purchaser, by power of attorney from the sol- 
 dier, could with this scrip, himself enter the 
 land. This became a common practice, cover- 
 ing a period of several years, and it was with 
 the use of this kind of scrip that very much 
 of the land that was surveyed about the time I 
 have been describing, was entered. 
 
 In the following winter — that of 1875 and 
 1876 — I was in the woods of Minnesota west 
 of Cloquet, accompanied by an Indian named 
 Antoine, and, while breaking trail on snow- 
 shoes in the deep snow along an obscure road 
 that had been cut through to Grand Rapids, on 
 the Mississippi, I came to a small Indian tepee 
 close by the side of the road. A little smoke 
 
 126 
 
was curling from its peak, and a piece of an old 
 blanket was hanging over its entrance. Call- 
 ing aloud, I heard a faint voice of a woman an- 
 swering from within. Entering the wigwam, 
 we found there an impoverished, half-clad, 
 half-frozen, perishing squaw. She told us that 
 her feet had been frozen so that she could not 
 walk, and that her family had left her to die. 
 She had food enough, and possibly fuel enough, 
 to last her about two more days. I was at a 
 loss to know what was the wisest and most 
 humane thing to do. We were far in the woods, 
 and away from every human inhabitant. It 
 was as easy to proceed to Grand Rapids as it 
 was to retrace our steps to Duluth. A decision 
 was soon made, and that was, that we would 
 cut and split, and bring inside the wigwam a 
 large pile of good wood, with plenty of kin- 
 dling, and would leave the poor woman sup- 
 plies from our pack sacks, of things most suit- 
 able and most convenient for her to use, as 
 whatever she did, must be done on her hands 
 and knees. 
 
 Having provided her with a liberal supply of 
 rice, pork, crackers, some flour, sugar, tea, and 
 a package of smoking tobacco — for all squaws 
 smoke — besides melting snow until we had 
 filled an old pail with water, we felt that she 
 
 127 
 
could keep herself alive and comfortable for 
 several days, at least. I then took out of my 
 pack, a new pair of North Star camping 
 blankets, and cutting them in two, left one- 
 half to provide additional warmth for the un- 
 fortunate squaw. As is the custom of her peo- 
 ple when something much appreciated has been 
 done for one of them, she took my hand and 
 kissed it. Leaving her plenty of matches, we 
 bade her good-by, and resumed our journey 
 toward Grand Rapids. 
 
 Once more on the trail, I asked Antoine how 
 old he believed the squaw to be. He said maybe 
 forty; I should have judged her to have been 
 seventy, but no doubt I was mistaken, and the 
 Indian's judgment was far better. Arriving at 
 Grand Rapids, I wrote the authorities at Du- 
 luth, and at Fond du Lac Indian Reservation, 
 telling them of the poor woman's situation and 
 where she was located. I afterwards learned 
 that she had been sent for, and brought out by 
 team, and that she had been subsequently taken 
 to her band of Indians. 
 
 I have been told by different Indians, that 
 the sick and the aged are sometimes abandoned 
 when the band is very short of provisions, and 
 when to take the helpless with them, would 
 prove a great burden. 
 
 128 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 United States Land Sale at 
 Duluth — Joe LaGarde. 
 
 URING the summer of 1882, the 
 United States government had ad- 
 vertised that it would offer at public 
 auction, many townships of land ly- 
 ing along the border between Minnesota and 
 Canada, in Cook, Lake, St. Louis, and Itasca 
 Counties. This country was difficult to reach. 
 The distance from Duluth to Lake Vermilion 
 was upwards of ninety miles. There was not 
 even a road through the woods, over which a 
 loaded team could be driven. Men were 
 obliged to take their supplies upon their backs 
 and carry them over a trail, all of this distance. 
 From Lake Vermilion, it was possible to work 
 both eastward and westward, by using canoes 
 and making numerous portages from one lake 
 to another, and so on for seventy-five miles in 
 either direction along the boundary. Supplies 
 were soon exhausted, so that it was necessary 
 to keep packers on the trail, bringing in on 
 their backs, fresh supplies from Duluth to Ver- 
 milion, where now is located the city of Tower. 
 
 129 
 
In the Vermilion country, dog trains could 
 sometimes be advantageously used. 
 
 Estimators of timber were employed either 
 for themselves or for others, in surveying the 
 lands, and in estimating the pine timber in 
 these various townships that were to be of- 
 fered at public sale in the month of December. 
 This work continued almost to the day when 
 the sale was to begin. That sale was held at 
 the local land office at Duluth, and there were 
 present men interested in the purchase of pine 
 timber, from Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, 
 Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and some 
 men representing Canadian capital. The com- 
 petition was vigorous, and Uncle Sam's lands 
 were bid in at a round price. 
 
 During the fall of 1882, while preparing for 
 the approaching land sale at Duluth, the only 
 son of William S. Patrick, Simeon D. Patrick, 
 a veteran land examiner in my employ, and I, 
 made a short trip west of Duluth, exploring a 
 section of country south of where now is the 
 station of Cornwall, on the Northern Pacific 
 Railroad. Our packer and handy man who car- 
 ried part of our supplies, was an Indian of con- 
 siderable note, by the name of John LaGarde, 
 familiarly known as Joe LaGarde. He was a 
 fine specimen of Chippewa Indian trapper, tall, 
 
 130 
 
3 cu 
 
 2 S 
 
 
straight, muscular, and a good burden bearer, 
 but rather averse to long days' work. He was 
 handy about camp, but, being an Indian, and 
 accustomed to lying down at night with his 
 feet close to a few live embers, he did not share 
 with the white man the wish for large piles of 
 wood to last through the cold nights that pre- 
 vailed during this trip. 
 
 It happened that one evening we pitched 
 our tent near a small stream, in a grove com- 
 posed principally of young birch, but inter- 
 spersed with large and shaggy ones. Everyone 
 at all familiar with the birch knows there is 
 much of it, on which the outer bark peels nat- 
 urally, and it is no uncommon thing to be able 
 to peel, with the use of the hands only, large 
 quantities of the bark. There was almost an 
 inexhaustible supply of just such bark near 
 this camping ground. Joe was either tired or 
 indisposed to work that evening, and when 
 bedtime arrived, the pile of wood looked very 
 scant for the long hours of the night. No one 
 likes a little innocent fun better than my friend 
 Patrick. Looking at the small woodpile, then 
 at Joe, Patrick gave me a twinkle of his eye, 
 started out into the semidarkness, and com- 
 menced peeling bark off the birch trees. He 
 busied himself thus, until he had peeled off and 
 
 131 
 
brought in near our tent, a huge pile of this 
 beautiful birch bark. 
 
 No matter how rainy the weather may be, 
 or how deep the snow in winter, if the fron- 
 tiersman is fortunate enough to be camped in 
 a grove of live birch, he knows that this ever 
 friendly and useful birch bark will afford him a 
 sure means of kindling a fire. It carries much 
 oil and burns readily when a match is applied 
 to it. The fire was fixed for the night, and 
 Patrick and I lay down in our tent under our 
 blankets to sleep. Joe, as was his custom, 
 curled up at the foot of the tent and left his 
 bare feet sticking out toward the fire. His re- 
 quirement of blanket was less than half of what 
 would satisfy a white man. As long as his feet 
 were warm, the Indian did not suffer from cold. 
 About midnight the fire had burned very low, 
 when Patrick emerged from the tent and com- 
 menced dropping pieces of birch bark on the 
 fast consuming fire logs. I was well back in 
 the tent, propped up a little on my elbows, en- 
 joying the glow of the fire, and watching it, as 
 well as watching the Indian. As the fire in- 
 creased and the flames rose higher, the In- 
 dian's feet began to twitch, and to draw up 
 closer to his body. Soon the heat was so tre- 
 mendous that the tent was in danger, when, 
 
 132 
 
like a missile, thrown by a strong spring, the 
 Indian shot out of his blanket and into the 
 woods, muttering his imprecations in Chip- 
 pewa. He did not swear, for praise be to the 
 Chippewa language, it contains no such words ; 
 but a madder Indian and a happier white man 
 are seldom seen. The sequel to this episode 
 was plenty of good fuel to burn during all of 
 the following nights of this cruise in the for- 
 est. 
 
 We employed LaGarde on other and later 
 trips, and his services were always satisfactory. 
 He has since gone to the happy hunting 
 ground, and, with his passing, a tinge of sad- 
 ness steals over us, for his memory is dear, and 
 we have no right or wish to count him as other 
 than our brother. He was always true to the 
 white man, and deserves his meed of praise. 
 
 An account of his death appeared in the Du- 
 luth Herald, February 28th, 1911, from which 
 the following summary is gathered : 
 
 His age is given in the death certificate, as 
 one hundred years. He was born on the Red 
 Lake Indian Reservation, near Thief River 
 Falls. His mother was a full-blooded Chip- 
 pewa, and his father a half-breed with a 
 French-Canadian name. In 1834, when about 
 twenty-four years old, he came with his 
 
 183 
 
mother, to the Head of the Lakes, and settled 
 at the historic John Jacob Astor Trading Post, 
 at Fond du Lac. Three years later, while trad- 
 ing at Madeleine Island, near Bayfield, he met 
 Liola Chievier, a half-breed, whom he after- 
 wards married and brought to Fond du Lac. 
 There were seven children to this union, but 
 only three are now living. The youngest, aged 
 fifty-five, lived at Fond du Lac with his father. 
 The other two were located on the White 
 Earth Reservation. They were Moses and Si- 
 mon. The old man's wife died about thirty- 
 eight years ago. LaGarde lived in Fond du 
 Lac about seventy-seven years. He possessed 
 a remarkable physique. His chest was well de- 
 veloped, his body straight as an arrow, and he 
 stood six feet two inches in height. Being a 
 Chippewa, LaGarde loved peace more than 
 war, and he never took part in any Indian out- 
 break. As far back as the memory of any 
 white man of the suburb goes, he had a reputa- 
 tion of being honest in all his transactions with 
 the white traders. His body was buried in the 
 Indian burying grounds, at the Fond du Lac 
 Indian Reservation near Cloquet. 
 
 134 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Six Hundred Miles in a 
 Birch Canoe. 
 
 HE following summer, I hired a num- 
 ber of men to pack some supplies 
 from Duluth to the shores of Lake 
 Vermilion. I had with me one white 
 man to assist me in a reestimate of the pine 
 timber that I had bought at the land sale in De- 
 cember. Canoes were purchased of the Indians, 
 and I employed some of them to go as packers 
 and canoemen. 
 
 The work first took the party eastward a dis- 
 tance of fifty miles. Not only was the timber 
 reexamined, but the character of the streams 
 was carefully noted, with reference to their 
 feasibility for floating out the timber, when- 
 ever the time should come for it to be cut and 
 brought to market. All of that country is very 
 rugged and much broken. The shores of the 
 lakes are bold and rock-bound. Islands exist 
 in nearly all of the lakes, and at that time they 
 were thoroughly wooded, many of them con- 
 taining fine bunches of pine timber. The coun- 
 try was picturesque and the scenery most en- 
 chanting. Aquatic birds of various species 
 
 135 
 
were frequently startled from the water as our 
 canoes came in sight of them. Fish were 
 abundant and could be taken in almost any one 
 of the lakes, by throwing out a line. There 
 were caribou and moose in the country, but 
 no deer at that time. 
 
 Bands of Indians were living along these 
 waters, most of them belonging to the United 
 States, but, as we turned and went westward, 
 on the waters of Lake La Croix we met many 
 Canadian Indians. They all spoke the same 
 language, though sometimes with great differ- 
 ence in accent. There were many waterfalls, 
 and around these, in every instance, a portage 
 had to be made of all our supplies and of our 
 canoes. One day's experience was much like 
 that of its predecessor or like that of the one to 
 follow. On the whole, the work was less ar- 
 duous than that in a country which is mostly 
 land and not cut up by numerous lakes, as is 
 the condition in all of the northern woods in 
 Minnesota. A camping ground would be se- 
 lected on a shore of a lake, and, from this one 
 camp, it was often our experience that several 
 days' work could be economically accomplished 
 before it was necessary to again move. The 
 timber that we wished to examine often lay on 
 either side of the lake on the shore of which the 
 
 136 
 
to rH 
 
 O c« 
 
 o a, 
 
 E - 
 
 c •* 
 
camping ground had been selected. Thus the 
 work continued until the party reached Rainy 
 Lake. This lake is fifty-five miles long, and at 
 its foot, at that time, on the Canadian side, was 
 Fort Francis. Much of this water route was 
 then known as the Dawson Route. It had been 
 used by the Canadian government to reach the 
 Canadian Northwest with its soldiers, at the 
 time of the Riel Rebellion. The shattered re- 
 mains of a number of French batteaus were 
 seen on the rapids between different lakes, 
 where an attempt had been made to navigate 
 the waters, which had disastrously failed. 
 
 Just below Fort Francis, which is at the be- 
 ginning of the Rainy River which flows into 
 Lake of the Woods, we found a Canadian 
 farmer. He had been an engineer on board a 
 Canadian steamer that plied from Rat Portage 
 to Fort Francis. When the rebellion was over, 
 and there was no longer use for steamboating, 
 this man determined to take a homestead un- 
 der the Canadian land laws. This was at the 
 latter end of July. While our party was pre- 
 paring dinner on the bank of the river at the 
 edge of the settler's meadow, he came down to 
 see us. It was seldom that he saw any of the 
 white race, and, when one chanced to pass by, 
 he was always glad, he said, to see him and 
 
 137 
 
learn something of the outside world. He in- 
 vited us to go back into his meadow where, he 
 assured us, we should find an abundance of 
 ripe, wild strawberries. This we found to be 
 true, and the berries were indeed a luxury to a 
 lot of men who had been living on nothing bet- 
 ter than dried peaches or dried apples, stewed 
 and made into sauce. 
 
 The work of examining lands was now com- 
 pleted for this trip, but the easiest way out was 
 to continue down Rainy River into Lake of the 
 Woods, and across Lake of the Woods to Rat 
 Portage, where a train on the Canadian Pa- 
 cific could be boarded and the journey con- 
 tinued to Winnipeg, and from thence by rail 
 back to Minneapolis. At that time no logs 
 had been driven down the Rainy River to mar 
 the beauty of its shore lines which were the 
 most beautiful of any river I have ever seen in 
 Minnesota or in Canada. In some places for 
 half a mile at a stretch there would be a con- 
 tinuous gravel shore. Its waters were deep 
 and clear. 
 
 Near the mouth of Rainy River, our party 
 overtook Colonel Eaton and his helper, a man 
 from Wisconsin, whose name, I believe, was 
 Davis. Colonel Eaton was United States gov- 
 ernment inspector of lands, and was on a tour 
 
 138 
 
of inspection to ascertain to what extent the 
 land laws relating to homestead entries were 
 being complied with. Each was glad to meet 
 the other, and in company, we traveled from 
 that time until we finally arrived at Rat Port- 
 age. 
 
 Lake of the Woods is a very large body of 
 water, and not everywhere is it safe to venture 
 out upon it in small boats or canoes. Colonel 
 Eaton had a staunch rowboat. At Rainy Lake 
 I had paid off and dismissed most of my help- 
 ers, so that I had but one canoe remaining. 
 This was occupied by myself and the white 
 man, my assistant, whom I had taken at the 
 beginning of the journey. For a considerable 
 distance, the party was able to keep behind the 
 islands and away from the open lake, until it 
 arrived at a point that is known as a traverse, 
 a wide opening between islands, where the 
 westerly winds, if blowing heavily, have a tre- 
 mendous sweep. Our party found the white- 
 caps rolling in across this traverse, on the top 
 of waves so high that neither of our crafts 
 could possibly live, if out in them. Here, on 
 this island, we went ashore and made our camp 
 as comfortable as possible while waiting for 
 the wind and waves to subside. 
 
 Both parties had been long from home, and 
 
 139 
 
were practically without food to eat. We were 
 obliged to stay on that island three nights and 
 two days before the water had calmed suffi- 
 ciently for us to cross the traverse. In the 
 meantime, we had eaten the last of our sup- 
 plies, and were subsisting wholly upon what 
 blueberries we were able to find growing on 
 the island. Some public work was about to be- 
 gin up the Rainy River, and we had been in- 
 formed that a steamer from Rat Portage, 
 loaded with various articles of merchandise, 
 was liable to come up the lake to enter the river 
 at almost any time ; consequently we were con- 
 tinually on the lookout for the steamer, it being 
 the only source from which we could hope to 
 get anything to eat, before we should arrive at 
 Rat Portage. Finally the steamer was spied 
 on the afternoon of the second day of our un- 
 foreseen residence on the island. With towels 
 tied to poles, our party, hoping to be able to 
 signal the passing steamer, went to the shore 
 of the island. It was well out on the lake from 
 our shore, and our hopes began to wane as we 
 saw it steam by us, not having given us any in- 
 dication that it had seen our signal. Suddenly, 
 however, our fears were turned to hope and 
 joy as we saw its bow turning in our direction. 
 It made a long sweep on account of the high 
 
 140 
 
sea, and came in behind our island where the 
 water was deep, and the nose of the steamer 
 was brought almost to our shore. We quickly 
 told the captain our plight, and asked only that 
 we might purchase of him a little flour and a 
 little meat, a little tea and a little coffee, suffi- 
 cient to take us to Rat Portage, including a 
 possible longer delay on the island because of 
 the wind that was yet blowing. This he gladly 
 gave us, refusing to accept any compensation ; 
 and with grateful hearts, we waved him adieu 
 as the boat resumed its course. The following 
 morning, early, the lake was quite calm; and, 
 after a hasty breakfast, we pulled out from 
 shore, crossed the traverse, and once more got 
 behind the friendly islands. From this time 
 on to Rat Portage, our journey was without 
 special interest, the party returning together 
 by rail to Minneapolis. 
 
 141 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Effect of Discovery of Iron Ore 
 on Timber Industry. 
 
 URING the same year that the 
 United States government offered its 
 lands in the northern counties of 
 Minnesota at public auction, new in- 
 terests effecting the market for pine timber 
 were created by the discovery of iron ore of a 
 marketable quality, near the south shore of 
 Lake Vermilion, where now is the city of Tow- 
 er, Minnesota. 
 
 Historically, the first mention of iron ore in 
 northern Minnesota dates back to the report of 
 J. G. Norwood, made in 1850, in which he men- 
 tioned the occurrence of iron ore at Gunflint 
 Lake, but claimed no commercial importance 
 in his discovery. The Geological and Natural 
 History Survey of Minnesota, Volume 4, page 
 583, records the following: "H. H. Eames, 
 state geologist of Minnesota in 1865 and 1866, 
 was the first to observe and report iron ore on 
 both the Vermilion and Mesabi ranges, and to 
 consider it of any value. In his report for 1866, 
 he describes the ore outcroppings near the 
 southern shore of Lake Vermilion, and in his 
 
 142 
 
report, published the following year, is an ac- 
 count of the ore at Prairie River Falls, on the 
 western end of the Mesabi, and several analyses 
 showing it to be of good quality." 
 
 As early as 1880, Professor A. H. Chester, in 
 the interest of private parties, made a personal 
 examination of the Vermilion Iron Range, and 
 predicted that an iron ore district of immense 
 value and importance would be found to exist 
 on that range. George C. Stone of Duluth, one 
 of the parties who had employed Chester to 
 make the examination for iron ore, was elected 
 a member of the Minnesota legislature, and, 
 through his instrumentality, in 1881, a law was 
 passed, "to encourage mining in this state, by 
 providing a uniform rate for the taxing of min- 
 ing properties and products." This law pro- 
 vided for a payment of a tax of fifty cents for 
 each ton of copper, and one cent for each ton of 
 iron ore, mined and shipped or disposed of; 
 each ton to be estimated as containing two 
 thousand two hundred and forty pounds. The 
 Duluth and Iron Range Railroad was con- 
 structed from Two Harbors, on Lake Superior, 
 to Tower, Minnesota; and in August, 1884, the 
 first shipment of iron ore was made from the 
 Minnesota Mine at Tower. 
 
 143 
 
Promising outcrops of iron ore bearing rocks 
 were found east of Tower, where now is the 
 flourishing town of Ely. Work was begun on 
 these outcrops, resulting in the finding of the 
 Chandler Mine, by Captain John Pengilly, from 
 which, in 1888, the first shipment of iron ore 
 was made, the railroad having been extended 
 from Tower to Ely, for the purpose, primarily, 
 of shipping the iron ore to Two Harbors, and 
 thence to the eastern markets. Other mines 
 were later found in this vicinity. The building 
 and equipping of this railroad created a de- 
 mand for manufactured lumber, for railroad 
 ties, and for telegraph poles. Sawmills were 
 built at different points along the line of the 
 railroad and at its terminals, so that the years 
 immediately following were busy ones for 
 those dealing in standing timber and its manu- 
 factured products. 
 
 My associates and I had acquired interests 
 in these localities, so that much of my time for 
 nearly a decade, was actively employed along 
 the line of the Vermilion Range. During these 
 years from 1882 to 1888, the most practical 
 modes of travel, and almost the only ones, were 
 either by birch canoe and portaging from lake 
 to lake in summer, or by dog train during the 
 winter. Sometimes these trips were pleasant 
 
 144 
 
ones, but quite as often they were attended by 
 incidents not always agreeable. 
 
 On one of these occasions late in October, 
 accompanied by one white man known only as 
 "Buffalo," I started to travel east from Tower, 
 on Lake Vermilion, along the route followed 
 by the Indians, to the foot of Fall Lake, a dis- 
 tance of forty-five miles. It was some time after 
 noon when we pulled out from shore in our 
 two-man canoe, a small craft, affording just 
 room for two men to sit, and to carry their 
 pack sacks and scant supplies. Soon it began 
 to rain, and the wind commenced blowing. We 
 were approaching an island, when Buffalo, who 
 had had much experience on the Great Lakes 
 as a sailor, insisted that we could not reach our 
 landing at the easterly end of the lake, before 
 dark, without the use of a sail. Arriving at an 
 island, we pulled our canoe ashore, and Buffalo 
 quickly improvised a sail, which was hoisted in 
 the bow of the canoe and the boat was again 
 launched. In this manner we sailed and pad- 
 dled at a much accelerated speed, but all of the 
 time we were in imminent danger of being cap- 
 sized, it being my first experience of riding in a 
 birch canoe carrying a sail. Fortune favored 
 the undertaking, however, and we made a safe 
 
 145 
 
landing in time to pitch our tent and make our 
 camp for the night. 
 
 During the night the cold increased, and 
 when we arose in the morning, we found that 
 ice had formed on the water in the little bay 
 of the lake. We made a number of portages 
 that day, the cold increasing so that in all of 
 the little bays, ice was forming. We succeeded 
 in crossing Burnt Side Lake and entering the 
 river leading to Long Lake as it was getting 
 dark. We were then six miles from what we 
 knew to be a comfortable ranch near the lower 
 end of Long Lake, which Buffalo strongly 
 urged we should try to reach that night, al- 
 though to do so meant that we must pass be- 
 tween some islands where, in places, we knew 
 the rocks projected out of the water, and there- 
 fore were perilous to our birch canoe. We de- 
 cided to make the effort, and soon after push- 
 ing out from shore, we were only able to faintly 
 discern the outlines of the islands that we must 
 pass. Fortunately, these were soon alongside 
 of us, and we had passed the last dangerous 
 reef of rocks. Then, to our great satisfaction, 
 we saw the light from the lantern which had 
 been hung out on a pile driven close by the 
 outer end of the dock at the foot of the lake, 
 about four miles distant, where the ranch, that 
 
 146 
 
we hoped to reach that night, was located. The 
 wind had died down so that the surface of the 
 lake was comparatively smooth, but we no- 
 ticed that our mittens, which had become thor- 
 oughly wet, were freezing on our hands. For 
 one hour we paddled in silence, when the light 
 toward which we had been steering, became 
 much more visible, and soon we landed at the 
 little dock, thankful that we had made our 
 journey safely. Our appetites were keen for 
 the good, broiled steak and hot potatoes that 
 previous experience had taught us we were 
 pretty sure to receive, and in this we were not 
 disappointed. 
 
 The following summer, I passed over this 
 same canoe route under quite different circum- 
 stances. My work of examining lands and tim- 
 ber all lay near to the shores of several lakes. 
 My wife's father, J. H. Conkey, and her 
 brother, Frank L. Conkey, had often expressed 
 a wish to see that northern country. Accom- 
 panied by them and also by my son, Frank 
 Merton, who was then a boy in short pants, we 
 journeyed by rail to Tower. Before leaving 
 Duluth for Tower, Mose Perrault was added 
 to our number. 
 
 Perrault was a fine specimen of man, six feet 
 in height, well-proportioned, of middle age, 
 
 147 
 
and thoroughly familiar with frontier life. At 
 Tower, we started out with two birch canoes, 
 and after dinner, on a pleasant afternoon in Au- 
 gust, we pushed our canoes out into the waters 
 of Lake Vermilion, from the same point from 
 which we had left in the rain, the previous Oc- 
 tober. We reached the east end of Vermilion 
 early, portaged into Mud Lake, went up the 
 river, and camped on the high ground west of 
 Burnt Side Lake, in a pine grove where we 
 were surrounded by blueberry bushes laden 
 with their large, ripe fruit. 
 
 Our party was made up of two classes of 
 people; one out to examine timber, the other, 
 to fish and have a good time. While crossing 
 one of the portages, my brother-in-law, Frank 
 L. Conkey, who knew almost nothing about 
 canoeing or portaging, but was willing, and 
 full of hard days' work, picked up two pack 
 sacks, one of which was strapped to his 
 shoulders, and the other was placed on top of 
 his shoulders and the back of his head. Thus 
 burdened, he started across Mud Portage, the 
 footing of which, in places, was very insecure. 
 At an unfortunate moment, he caught his foot 
 in a root and tumbled, the top pack sack shoot- 
 ing over his head and breaking open at its fast- 
 enings, thus spilling its contents on the 
 
 148 
 
X! 
 
 c 
 £ A. 
 
 fi -a 
 
"He motors over the fairly good roads of the 
 northern frontier." (Page 180.1 
 
ground. All that could be found of these, were 
 gathered together and replaced in the pack 
 sack, and the journey was resumed. Mose Per- 
 rault was the cook, and on arriving at the 
 camping ground at night, he began prepara- 
 tions for making bread and getting the evening 
 meal. The pack sack that had broken open, 
 originally contained two tin cans, one filled 
 with baking powder, and the other, with fresh 
 live worms buried in earth, that had been gath- 
 ered for bait for the fishing party. Perrault 
 wanted the baking powder with which to 
 leaven the dough. The fishermen wanted their 
 worms with which to bait their hooks. The 
 latter were gratified, but nowhere could the 
 baking powder be found, and we were forced 
 to the conclusion that it was one of the lost ar- 
 ticles on the portage. That night and the next 
 day, we lived on bread made without any 
 leaven, which from a number of experiences, I 
 feel competent to state, is never a great suc- 
 cess. The fishing, however, was good, and on 
 the portages enough partridges were shot with- 
 in revolver range to afford plenty of good meat 
 for the party. These we cooked with bacon 
 and dressed with butter, of which we had a 
 goodly supply. There were plenty of crackers 
 and Carolina rice, with blueberries close at 
 
 149 
 
hand for the picking, so that the party sub- 
 sisted well, until it arrived at Ely, where the 
 three fishermen bade Perrault and me farewell, 
 returning to their homes by railroad train, 
 after a pleasant outing. 
 
 In February, 1891, my three companions and 
 I had a very different experience, away east of 
 Ely, where we had gone to survey and estimate 
 a tract of pine timber. The snow was deep, 
 and the journey, which had to be made with the 
 use of toboggans, was a hard one. I had, as 
 my associate and chief timber estimator, S. D. 
 Patrick. In addition were the cook, and Buf- 
 falo, a man whose name has appeared on a pre- 
 vious page. This man is worthy of more than 
 passing notice. His true name I never knew. 
 He always said, "Call me 'Buffalo'." He 
 claimed to have been born at Buffalo, New 
 York, and to have spent his childhood and 
 early youth in that city. He was an Irish- 
 American and was possessed of the typical 
 Irish wit on all occasions. He was never angry 
 to the extent of being disagreeable, but he had 
 no patience for any man in the party who re- 
 fused or neglected to do his full share of the 
 work. He claimed that when a boy, he had 
 earned money at the steamboat landings at 
 Buffalo, by diving under the water for coins 
 
 150 
 
 --i**L J 
 
thrown to him by passengers on board the 
 ships at anchor in the harbor, as did also the 
 late Daniel O'Day of the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany. He too, was an Irish-American, born 
 and raised near Buffalo, and at his death left 
 millions of dollars. He once told me that when 
 a youth he had earned many dimes and quar- 
 ters by diving for them alongside the passenger 
 ships in Buffalo Harbor. 
 
 Buffalo was always ready to act promptly 
 and to do, or to undertake to do, anything that 
 was requested of him. On this occasion he had 
 an opportunity to demonstrate these good 
 qualities. The trip was attended with the 
 greatest of hardships, of heavy work, and of 
 exposure to intense cold. Buffalo was a good 
 axman, and not one night did he fail to cut 
 and pile near to the camp, enough wood to last 
 until after breakfast the next morning. 
 
 Our camp was established on the shores of 
 Kekekabic Lake, in Township 64 N., Range 
 7 W., for several days and nights. There were 
 many partridges in this section of the forest. 
 They would come out on the borders of the 
 woods next to the lake. It was possible to 
 shoot one or more nearly every day, so that the 
 camp was supplied with fresh game. The cook 
 and Buffalo remained at the camp, while Mr. 
 
 151 
 
Patrick and I went out each day to examine 
 timber, returning at night. The daylight cov- 
 ered none too many hours, so that we arose 
 early and started on our journey after break- 
 fast, as soon as we could see to travel, in order 
 that the day's work might be accomplished, 
 and the return to camp made before dark. It 
 was not possible to calculate the day's work so 
 as to be sure that we could reach camp before 
 nightfall, but, owing to the intense cold that 
 prevailed at this time, it was only the part of 
 wisdom to plan so as to return to camp while 
 we could yet see where to travel. Nearly every 
 day's work was, in part at least, over a new 
 tract of land, to which a new trail must be 
 broken in the morning as we went out to the 
 work. 
 
 One day our work lay directly north of our 
 camp, through the woods, out onto a small lake, 
 and again into the woods. We knew, before 
 leaving camp in the morning, that it would re- 
 quire our best efforts to accomplish the work 
 and to return before nightfall. For this reason, 
 we started at daybreak, and, after having done 
 our best, it was night before we commenced to 
 retrace our steps. The cold had increased all 
 day, so that we were obliged to summon our 
 courage at times, to keep our feet and hands 
 
 152 
 
from freezing. We were only two miles from 
 camp when our return journey began ; but two 
 miles in an unbroken wilderness, in deep snow, 
 with the only path to follow being the tracks 
 made by two men passing once over it, is a long 
 distance to travel when daylight has disap- 
 peared, and when to leave those tracks at such 
 a temperature, would probably prove fatal. 
 
 Within a few minutes from the time of our 
 beginning to retrace our steps, each step was 
 taken by the sense of feeling. We were both 
 clad in moccasins, which made it possi- 
 ble, through the sense of feeling, to distinguish 
 between the unbroken snow and that which 
 had been stepped upon during the morning 
 hours of that day. Being in darkness, we dared 
 not proceed whenever we were not certain that 
 our feet were in the path that we had made on 
 going out to our work. A few times we lost 
 the path. Immediately we stopped, one man 
 standing still, in order that we might not lose 
 our location, while the other felt around until 
 the path was regained. We knew that if we 
 should lose it, the one thing remaining for us 
 would be to walk around a tree, if it were possi- 
 ble to do so, until morning light should appear. 
 We went slowly on, never giving up hope. 
 
 153 
 
It was getting late in the evening, so that 
 Buffalo, at camp, became alarmed for our safe- 
 ty. His wits were at work, and he commenced 
 to build a large fire. Then he found, near by, 
 a dead pine stub. About this he piled kindling 
 until he got it on fire. It is not possible to 
 write words describing the satisfaction and joy 
 with which we two lonely travelers finally 
 spied the illumination, penetrating the dark 
 forest for a short distance only, it is true, yet 
 far enough. Soon we walked into camp, to the 
 joy of all of the party, and there we found an 
 excellent supper awaiting us. Buffalo's big 
 wood pile was in waiting at all the hours of 
 that night, and some one was astir to keep the 
 fire going. It was the only night of my long 
 experience of living in the woods, when it was 
 impossible, for more than a short period, to be 
 comfortable away from the fire, and even then, 
 we each in turn revolved our bodies about the 
 open fire, first warming one side, and then the 
 other, and slept but little. 
 
 After our work was completed, and we had 
 gotten back in touch with the civilized world, 
 we were told by residents at Tower, that the 
 thermometer on that night, had indicated from 
 48° to 52° below zero. 
 
 The following summer, on one of my trips to 
 
 154 
 
•c 2 
 
 * a, 
 
 6 8 
 
this then picturesque country in northeastern 
 Minnesota, I tried the experiment of taking my 
 wife, who had long been an invalid, and my 
 son, Frank Merton, then a boy in his early 
 teens, with me, in the hope that the trip would 
 prove beneficial to the wife and mother. The 
 experiment was in no way disappointing, 
 although on one occasion when the rain 
 had poured incessantly, leaving the woods 
 drenched, in crossing a rather blind and un- 
 avoidable portage, Mrs. Warren's clothing 
 became thoroughly wet. In the absence of a 
 wardrobe from which to choose a change of 
 garments, the expedient was resorted to of 
 requesting her to remove one garment at a 
 time, which Vincent De Foe, a half-breed, and 
 James O'Neill, an old and trusty friend, held 
 to the open fire, until it was dry. This she 
 replaced, when another wet garment went 
 through the same process, until all had been 
 dried. No ill effects followed ; on the contrary, 
 Mrs. Warren's health continued to improve. 
 At the end of the trip I was so happy over 
 the results that I sent the following account 
 of some of its incidents to Dr. Albert Shaw, 
 then of the Minneapolis Tribune, and at pres- 
 ent, editor of the Review of Reviews. This 
 
 155 
 
little account appeared in the Tribune of Sat- 
 urday, September 6, 1890: 
 
 "IN THE WILDS OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 Mrs. G. H. Warren's Travels in the North- 
 eastern Part of the State. 
 
 Mrs. G. H. Warren and her son Frank re- 
 turned to the city Monday from a two weeks' 
 tour of the Vermilion Iron Range, north of 
 Lake Superior. Their trip was both inter- 
 esting and novel. From Ely, the eastern 
 terminus of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, 
 they embarked in birch canoes, traversing ten 
 lakes, thirteen portages and three small rivers 
 as far as they were navigable for birch canoes. 
 The whole distance thus traveled included over 
 one hundred miles. Pike, pickerel, bass, white 
 fish, or landlocked salmon abound in all these 
 lakes of rugged shores. Master Frank reports 
 the capture of a twenty-seven inch pike and a 
 thirty-seven inch pickerel. In one of the bays 
 of Basswood Lake — a beautiful body of clear 
 water thirty miles in length and extending 
 several miles into Canada — the Indians were 
 seen gathering wild rice. This is accomplished 
 by the male Indian standing upright in the bow 
 
 156 
 
of his canoe, and paddling it forward through 
 the field of rice, the stalks of which grow from 
 three to four feet above the water; while his 
 squaw sits in the stern of the canoe, and with 
 two round sticks about the size, and half the 
 length of a broom handle, dexterously bends 
 the long heads of the rice over the gunwale 
 of the canoe with one stick, while at the same 
 instant, she strikes the well filled heads a sharp, 
 quick blow with the other, threshing out the 
 kernels of rice, which fall into the middle por- 
 tion of the canoe. This middle portion is pro- 
 vided, for the occasion, with a cloth apron, 
 into which the rice kernels fall. The apron 
 will hold about two bushels, and is filled in the 
 manner above described in less than three 
 hours' time. The rice is next picked over to 
 free it from chaff and straw, after which it is 
 placed in brass kettles and parched over a slow 
 fire ; then it is winnowed, and is ready for future 
 use. 
 
 Mrs. Warren is the first white woman to 
 penetrate so far on the frontier of wild North- 
 eastern Minnesota, and though never before 
 subjected to uncivilized life, or the primitive 
 mode of travel, she endured the walks over the 
 portages, slept soundly on beds of balsam fir 
 boughs, ate with a relish the excellent fish and 
 
 157 
 
wild game cooked at the camp fire, and returns 
 to her home in the city with health much im- 
 proved, and enthusiastic over the many beau- 
 ties of nature in this yet wild, but attractive 
 portion of Minnesota." 
 
 158 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Forest Fires. 
 
 HE terrible forest fires that swept 
 over much of Wisconsin and Minne- 
 sota during the summer of 1894, re- 
 sulting in such an appalling loss of 
 life at Hinckley and vicinity, will always be 
 remembered by the people living in the north- 
 ern half of Minnesota. 
 
 One who has never been in the forest at a 
 time when the fires within it extended over 
 many miles of area, cannot appreciate the 
 danger and the anxiety of those who are thus 
 placed. I vividly recall two days during the 
 summer of the Peshtigo fire, when I was in 
 the burning woods of Wisconsin. The sun 
 was either entirely obscured, or it hung like 
 a red ball above the earth, now penetrating 
 the clouds of smoke, now again being hidden 
 by them. The smoke came at times in great 
 rolls at the surface of the earth, then was 
 caught up by the breeze and lifted to higher 
 altitudes, and at all times was bewildering to 
 those whom it surrounded. 
 
 No one could tell from what point of the 
 compass the distant fire was most dangerous, 
 
 159 
 
nor in what direction it was making most rapid 
 progress toward the point where he was lo- 
 cated. At times one became choked by the 
 thick smoke. For many hours, during one of 
 these days, I moved with my face close to the 
 ground, that I might get air sufficient to 
 breathe. When finally I came to an open 
 country where the currents of wind could lift 
 the smoke, I experienced a feeling of the great- 
 est thankfulness that I was delivered from the 
 condition of the two last days, surrounded with 
 so much uncertainty as to my safety. 
 
 The memorable fire of September 1st, 1894, 
 which swept Hinckley and all its surrounding 
 country, resulted in the death of four hundred 
 and seventeen human beings, left destitute two 
 thousand two hundred, and extended over an 
 area of four hundred square miles. The finan- 
 cial loss was upwards of one million dollars. 
 
 That loss does not include the great losses 
 of timber situated in the northeastern part of 
 Minnesota, extending all along its boundary 
 and reaching into Canada. The fire in north- 
 eastern Minnesota destroyed millions of dol- 
 lars worth of standing pine timber, much of 
 which was entirely consumed, while portions 
 of it were killed at the root. Such timber as 
 was thus killed, but not destroyed, had most 
 
 160 
 
of its value yet remaining, provided that it 
 were cut and put in the water, during the first 
 one or two seasons following. Later than that, 
 most of its value would have been destroyed 
 by worms boring into the dead timber. On 
 account of these fires, it was necessary for 
 all timber owners to make a careful examina- 
 tion of all timber lands within the burnt dis- 
 trict. For this purpose, accompanied by S. D. 
 Patrick, and E. A. White, timber examiners 
 to assist in the work, and my son, Frank Mer- 
 ton, then a senior in the University of Minne- 
 sota, besides packers, I went, in 1897, into 
 the burnt districts in northeastern Minnesota. 
 As a result of these forest fires, one of the 
 worst pests that the frontiersman meets is the 
 black fly, which flourishes in a burnt country. 
 This little insect is apparently always hungry, 
 is never tired, and wages a relentless fight upon 
 every inch of the white man's epidermis that 
 is exposed to its reach, even penetrating the 
 hair and beard of a man, and leaving the effects 
 of its poisonous bite. So terrible were these 
 little pests, and so numerous were they on two 
 days of the excursion, that one eye of each of 
 three of the white men in the party was so 
 badly swollen by the bites of the insects, that 
 it was closed. No remedy has ever been offered 
 
 161 
 
that effectually protects the woodsman from 
 injuries inflicted by this insect. 
 
 While our party was on that expedition that 
 summer, reestimating the timber in the burnt 
 district, Mr. Patrick came close to a large bull 
 moose standing in some thick woods. The 
 animal had not yet discovered Mr. Patrick's 
 presence, consequently he was able to carefully 
 examine and study this great beast of our 
 northern woods. Below the animal's hips, on 
 either side, at a point where he could in no wise 
 protect himself from the ravages of this insect 
 pest, the poor beast's flesh was raw and was 
 bleeding. The Indians claim that their dogs 
 frequently go mad and have to be killed as 
 a result of the bites inflicted by these insects. 
 
 In proof of the wide range of their activities 
 I will briefly relate one experience with them 
 in Wisconsin. Joseph McEwen and I left 
 Wausau one morning, riding out behind a 
 livery team twenty miles to the Big Eau Plaine 
 River, in search of desirable cranberry marsh 
 lands. The country we traveled over was flat. 
 Fires had recently killed the timber, and black 
 flies formed one vast colony over this territory. 
 
 Our driver had trouble controlling the horses, 
 so fierce was the attack of the black flies upon 
 them. We arrived at the nearest point of our 
 
 162 
 
work that could be reached by team about ten 
 o'clock in the forenoon, and dismissed our 
 driver. We then proceeded on foot into this 
 burnt, marshy country, attacked continuously 
 by swarms of flies. They penetrated our ears, 
 our noses, and our mouths if we opened them. 
 They worked themselves into our hair, up our 
 sleeves, under our collar bands, over the tops 
 of our socks and down into them until they 
 found the end of our drawers where, next, was 
 our naked skin. 
 
 We camped at night in the marsh. The next 
 morning the attack was renewed as vigorously 
 as it had been waged on the previous day. At 
 eleven o'clock we stopped for our dinner. 
 McEwen wore a heavy beard all over his face; 
 my face was bare. He looked at me as we 
 were eating our dinner, then dryly remarked, 
 "I don't know how I look, but you look like 
 the devil ; the black flies have bitten you every- 
 where ; your face is a fright." We went out to 
 the main road, and secured a conveyance by 
 which we reached Wausau about five o'clock 
 that afternoon. 
 
 I went immediately to my accustomed hotel, 
 owned and managed by Charles Winkley. He 
 had known me well for years, and I had left 
 him less than forty-eight hours previous to my 
 
 163 
 
entering on that afternoon. Mr. Winkley was 
 behind his desk. I greeted him and asked him 
 how business was. He answered me quite 
 independently that his house was full, and that 
 he had not a vacant room. I then asked him 
 if there was any mail for me, giving him my 
 full name. He looked at me in astonishment, 
 then exclaimed, "My God ! What is the matter 
 of you?" I said, "Black flies." Then he con- 
 tinued, "I mistook you for some man with the 
 small-pox and was planning to notify the au- 
 thorities and have you cared for. Go right to 
 your room and stay there. Mrs. Winkley will 
 care for you and have your meals brought to 
 you. I will go to the postoffice every day for 
 your mail." My face was one blotch of raw 
 sores. My eyes were nearly closed because of 
 the poison from the black flies. 
 
 The best remedy or preventive we have ever 
 found against all insect pests of the northern 
 woods, is smoked bacon rubbed onto the bare 
 skin in generous quantities. Its presence is 
 not essentially disagreeable. Objection to its 
 use is prejudice, since it is no less pleasant than 
 is the oil of cedar or pennyroyal which are often 
 prescribed by druggists for the same purpose, 
 and which are not half as continuous in their 
 efficacy, because a little perspiration will neu- 
 
 164 
 
tralize all of the good effects of the latter named 
 remedies. Soap and water will remove the 
 bacon grease when protection from flying in- 
 sects is no longer desired. 
 
 There are other and more interesting living 
 things in the northern woods than black flies, 
 to which statement I am willing to testify. I 
 had been running some lines one summer, for 
 the purpose of locating a tote road to some 
 camps where work was to be prosecuted the 
 following fall. It was known among the home- 
 steaders, as well as trappers, that a large bear 
 lived in that vicinity. On one occasion he had 
 been caught in a "dead-fall" that had been set 
 for him, and he had gotten out of it, leaving 
 only some tufts of his hair. 
 
 Alone, and while blazing a line for this pro- 
 posed road, one sunny afternoon, I came onto 
 a table-rock, in a little opening in the woods, 
 where fifty feet in front of me lay a large pine 
 tree that had blown down. As some small 
 brush crackled under my feet, a bear, which 
 I have ever since believed from descriptions 
 that had previously been given me, was the 
 much v/anted great bear, stood up in front of 
 me, close by the fallen tree. Presumably he had 
 been awakened from an afternoon nap. The 
 only weapon that I possessed was what is 
 
 165 
 
known as a boy's ax, the size and kind usually 
 carried by land examiners. I had not sought 
 this new acquaintance, nor did I at that moment 
 desire a closer one, but mentally decided, and 
 that quickly, that the wrong thing to do would 
 be to make any effort to get to a place of safety. 
 I therefore decided to stand my ground and to 
 put up the best fight possible with my small ax, 
 in case the bear insisted on a closer acquaint- 
 ance. Why I should have laughed on such an 
 occasion as this, I never have known, but the 
 perfect helplessness of my situation seemed so 
 ridiculous, that I broke into a loud laugh. I 
 have often wondered why that bear at that 
 moment seemed to think that he had seen 
 enough of the man whom he faced. Certain 
 it was, that he turned on his hind legs, leaped 
 over the log, and disappeared, leaving only the 
 occasional sound of a twig breaking under his 
 feet. So well pleased was I with the less dis- 
 tinct notes of the breaking twigs, that I waited 
 and listened until I could no longer hear any 
 of the welcome, receding music. The excite- 
 ment having subsided, an inspection of the 
 little ax revealed the fact that the head was 
 nearly, but not quite off its handle. This in- 
 cident has always been sufficient to convince 
 
 166 
 

 * * 
 
 
known as a boy's ax, the size and k 
 carried by land examiners. I had not 
 this new acquaintance 
 desire a closer one, but merit 
 that quickly, that the wrong 
 be to make any effort to get to a place of safety. 
 I therefore decided to stand my ground an 
 put oest fight possible with n 
 
 in case the bear insisted on a closer acquaint- 
 ance, Why I should have laughed on such an 
 occasion as this, I never have known, but the 
 perfect helplessness of my situation seeme* 
 ridiculous, that I broke into a loud laugh. 1 
 have often wondered why that bear at that 
 •emed he had seen 
 
 an who, faced. Cer 
 
 fhat he turned on hiy egs, ieapec 
 
 over the log, and disappeared, leaving only the 
 
 rial sound of a twig breaking under his 
 feet. So well pleased was I with the less dis- 
 tinct notes of the breaking twigs, that I waited 
 and listened until I could no longer hear any 
 of the welcome, receding music. The excite- 
 ment having subsided, an inspection of the 
 little ax revealed the fact that the head 
 nearly, but not quite ofi 
 cident has always been 
 
•a .3 
 •a .a 
 •3 o 
 
me that I have no desire to approach nearer to 
 this animal of the northern woods. 
 
 In the summer of 1899, some special work 
 was required north of Grand Rapids, Minne- 
 sota. Accompanied by my son, Frank Merton, 
 and a cook named Fred Easthagen, I left Grand 
 Rapids on a buckboard drawn by two horses 
 and driven by Dan Gunn, the popular pro- 
 prietor of the Pokegama Hotel. Our route was 
 over a new road where stumps and pitch holes 
 were plentiful. The team of horses was said 
 to have been raised on the western plains, and 
 objected strenuously to being driven over this 
 stump road. One of the horses balked fre- 
 quently, and, when not standing still, insisted 
 on running. The passengers, except East- 
 hagen, became tired of this uneven mode of 
 travel, and preferred to walk, being able to 
 cover the ground equally as fast as the team. 
 Easthagen, however, sat tight through it all; 
 he having come from the far West, refused to 
 walk when there was a team to pull him. 
 
 Our camp was made in a fine grove of pig- 
 iron Norway, near to which dwelt Mr. and Mrs. 
 Sandy Owens, settlers upon government land. 
 From this camp we were able to prosecute our 
 work for a long period of time. The late sum- 
 mer and autumn were very dry. Both wolves 
 
 167 
 
and deer abounded in this vicinity, and not far 
 away ranged many moose. Large lumbering 
 camps were about ten miles away. Oxen had 
 been turned loose for the summer, to pasture 
 in the woods and cut-over lands. Passing, one 
 day, a root house built into the side of a hill, we 
 pushed open the door, and in there found the 
 remains of an ox. The animal had probably 
 entered the root house to get away from the 
 flies, and, the door having closed behind him, 
 he had no means of escape, so that the poor 
 beast had perished of hunger and thirst. The 
 ground was dry, and all the brush, and twigs, 
 and leaves lying thereon, had become brittle 
 and crackled under the feet of every walking 
 creature. This interfered much with the ability 
 of the wolves to surprise the deer, rabbits, or 
 other animals on which they are accustomed to 
 feed, so that they were hungry. On this ac- 
 count they had become emboldened, so much 
 so, that they would, at nightfall or toward 
 evening, venture near enough to show them- 
 selves. 
 
 My son was coming in alone, from work one 
 evening, when a pack of wolves followed him 
 for some distance, occasionally snapping out 
 their short yelp, and had he been less near the 
 camp, he might have been in great danger. 
 
 168 
 
As it was, however, they kept back from him 
 in the woods, but not so far as to prevent his 
 hearing them. 
 
 An interesting article appeared in one of the 
 numbers of "Country Life in America," on the 
 subject of breeding skunks for profit. From 
 their pelts is made and sold a fine quality of 
 fur, known, to the purchaser, at least, as stone 
 martin. The nearest approach to a natural 
 farm of these animals that I have ever known 
 was that existing at Sandy Owen's cabin, and 
 immediately adjacent to it. These little ani- 
 mals were numerous in the Norway grove in 
 which we were camped. 
 
 My son and I slept in a small "A" tent which 
 at night was closed. On one occasion I was 
 awakened by feeling something moving across 
 my feet on the blankets, covering us. I spoke 
 quietly to my son, requesting him to be careful 
 not to move, for something was in the tent, 
 and probably, that something was a skunk. 
 With the gentlest of motions, I moved just suf- 
 ciently to let the animal know that I was aware 
 of its presence in the tent. Immediately the 
 animal retreated off of my legs, while we re- 
 mained quiet for some time in the tent. Then 
 a match was struck and with it a candle lighted, 
 when a small hole was discovered at the foot 
 
 169 
 
of the tent where evidently the animal had 
 nosed its way in, and through which it had 
 retreated. In the morning when my son and 
 I arose, unmistakable evidence was discovered, 
 near where our heads had lain, that his skunk- 
 ship had visited us during the night. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Owens left their cabin to visit 
 another settler, several miles distant, leaving 
 the key with the cook, and telling him that he 
 could use it if he had occasion to do so. Com- 
 ing in one evening from a cruise, the cook went 
 to the cabin to make and bake some bread in 
 Mrs. Owen's stove. A small hole had been 
 cut in the door, to admit the Owens' cat. On 
 entering, Easthagen saw a skunk sitting in the 
 middle of the floor. The animal retreated 
 under the bed, while the cook kindled a fire 
 in the stove and began mixing the dough for 
 the bread. He baked the bread and cooked 
 the evening meal for three persons, consider- 
 ately tossing some bits of bread and meat near 
 to where the skunk was concealed. Our party 
 ate supper outside the door a short distance 
 from the cabin. The animal remained in the 
 cabin that night and until after breakfast, a 
 portion of which latter the cook fed to it, when 
 taking the broom, he, by easy and gentle 
 
 170 
 
stages, pushed the skunk toward the door, re- 
 moving the animal without accident. 
 
 The state of Minnesota has some excellent 
 laws to prevent the destruction of game ani- 
 mals by the pothunter. Notwithstanding this 
 fact, a greater or less number of market hunt- 
 ers have been able to subsist by killing unlawful 
 game and selling the meat to the lumber camps 
 at about five cents per pound. Many men in- 
 terested in the ownership of timber lands, have 
 been aware of this fact and have been desirous 
 of preventing the unlawful killing of moose and 
 deer. Some lumbermen, also, have refused to 
 buy the meat from these market hunters. It 
 has not been safe, however, for such people 
 to offer evidence against these hunters. There 
 have been two principal reasons that have 
 deterred them from so doing. One is, that 
 the informant's personal safety would have 
 become endangered, and the other reason is, 
 that his timber would have been in danger of 
 being set on fire. It rests, therefore, with the 
 game wardens, to ferret out and prosecute to 
 the best of their ability, all offenders against 
 the game law. 
 
 In the latter part of the season of 1905, my 
 son and I, accompanied by James O'Neill, a 
 frontiersman and trusty employee, made a 
 
 171 
 
canoe trip from Winton down the chain of 
 lakes on the boundary line between Minnesota 
 and Canada, as far as Lake La Croix. We 
 camped at night and traveled by day, being 
 always in Minnesota. We saw racks in Min- 
 nesota made by the Indians, on which to smoke 
 the meat of the moose they had killed. We 
 counted twenty-one moose hides hung up to 
 dry. The moose had doubtless been killed as 
 they came to the lakes to get away from flies 
 and mosquitoes. All these animals were un- 
 lawfully killed. 
 
 A more pleasant sight than the one just re- 
 lated was once accorded us while working in 
 this same country. We were quietly pushing 
 our canoes up a sluggish stream that had found 
 its bed in a spruce swamp. There, in many 
 places, pond lilies were growing, their wide 
 leaves resting on the surface of the water. 
 The roots of the lilies are much relished as a 
 food by the moose. We have seen the moose 
 standing out in the bays of the lakes, and in 
 the almost currentless streams, where the 
 water was up to the animal's flanks, or where 
 its body was half immersed, and poking its 
 head deep below the surface in search of the 
 succulent roots of the lilies. On this day, a 
 mother moose and her twin calves had come 
 
 172 
 
M 
 
 a 
 
 
 00 
 
 2 
 
 
 m 
 
 <o 
 
 OC 
 
 Suj 
 
 c 
 
 01 
 
 u 
 
 & 
 
 43 
 
 
 u 
 
 
 J^ 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 u 
 
 go 
 
 jj 
 
 iC 
 
 as 2 
 
to this stream to feed. She was in the act of 
 reaching down under the water for a lily root, 
 as we pushed our canoes quietly over the sur- 
 face of the water into her very presence. The 
 first to observe us was one of the young calves 
 not more than two days old, that rose to its 
 feet, close by on the shore. The mother looked 
 toward her calf before she saw us; then, with- 
 out undue haste, waded ashore. At this mo- 
 ment the second calf arose, shook itself, then, 
 with the other twin, joined its mother. The 
 three moved off into the spruce swamp as we 
 sat quietly in our canoes, enjoying to the full- 
 est this most unusual opportunity of the ex- 
 perienced woodsman, accustomed as he is to 
 surprises. Our only regret on this occasion 
 was, that we had no camera with us. 
 
 173 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 White Pine— What of Our 
 Future Supply? 
 
 T is claimed that where Dartmouth 
 College is, in the town of Hanover, 
 New Hampshire, on the bank of the 
 Connecticut River, there once stood 
 a white pine tree two hundred and seventy 
 feet in height. That is said to have been the 
 tallest white pine of which there is a record. 
 Of the thirty-seven species of pine that grow 
 in the United States, the white pine is the best. 
 Nature was lavish in distributing this beau- 
 tiful and useful tree on American soil, for it 
 has been found growing in twenty-four states 
 of the Union. 
 
 The following quotation is from Bulletin 99 
 of the Forest Service of the United States: 
 
 "White pine occurred originally in com- 
 mercial quantities in Connecticut, Delaware, 
 Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, 
 Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minne- 
 sota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, 
 North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode 
 Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, 
 Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The 
 
 174 
 
cut has probably exceeded that of any other 
 species. Several timber trees have a wider 
 commercial range, and at the present time two 
 yield more lumber yearly — Douglas fir and 
 longleaf pine — but white pine was the leader 
 in the market for two hundred and fifty years. 
 Though to-day the original forests of this 
 species are mere fragments of what they once 
 were, the second growth in small regions is 
 meeting heavy demand. In Massachusetts, 
 for example, the cut in 1908 was two hundred 
 and thirty-eight million feet, and practically 
 all of it was second growth. It is not improb- 
 able that a similar cut can be made every year 
 in the future from the natural growth of white 
 pine in that state. It might be shown by a 
 simple calculation that if one-tenth of the orig- 
 inal white pine region were kept in well- 
 protected second growth, like that in Massa- 
 chusetts, it would yield annual crops, success- 
 fully for all time, as large as the white pine 
 cut in the United States in 1908. To do this 
 would require the growth of only twenty-five 
 cubic feet of wood per acre each year, and good 
 white pine growth will easily double that 
 amount. The supply of white pine lumber 
 need never fail in this country, provided a mod- 
 
 175 
 
erate area is kept producing as a result of 
 proper care. 
 
 "During the past thirty years the largest cut 
 of white pine has come from the Lake States, 
 Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota." 
 
 It is shown in the government's reports that 
 forty-eight per cent of the total lumber output 
 of the United States in 1908 was pine. If 
 something near this ratio is to be maintained, 
 it must be by planting and growing the trees. 
 Under the present system of taxation, neither 
 individuals nor corporations will undertake the 
 work. The investment, at the shortest, is one 
 of thirty years before returns may be looked 
 for, while twice that time is better business. 
 Owners o£ pine forests are obliged now, and 
 have been in past years, to cut their timber 
 lands clean because of excessive taxation. To 
 encourage the planting and cultivation of new 
 pine forests, it would be better to levy no tax 
 upon the individual's or corporation's young 
 trees until the time that the timber has grown 
 to a size fit to be marketed, and then only on 
 that portion which is cut into lumber. Even 
 with this encouragement it is an enterprise that 
 belongs largely to the state, and from it must 
 emanate the aggressive movement upon land 
 belonging to the state. 
 
 176 
 
On the subject of "Reforestation with White 
 Pine," Prof. E. G. Cheyney, Director of the 
 College of Forestry in the University of Min- 
 nesota, states: "Like everything else, a tree 
 does better on good soil, but the pine tree has 
 the faculty of growing well on soil too poor 
 
 for any other crop On the best 
 
 quality of soil the white pine tree has produced 
 100 M feet per acre in Europe. On the third 
 quality soil it makes from 40 to 60 M feet. Our 
 forest soils are, on the whole, of better quality 
 than those devoted to forests in Europe. 
 
 "The Forest Experiment Station at Cloquet, 
 under the control of the College of Forestry, 
 is now studying this reforestation policy, and 
 the State Forest Service is looking after the 
 forest fires and expects to begin the reforesta- 
 tion of our State Forests this spring. 
 
 "There are now two National Forests in 
 Minnesota aggregating about 1,300,000 acres 
 and only 50,000 acres of State Forest. These 
 State Forests should be increased to at least 
 3,000,000 acres." 
 
 177 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Retrospect — Meed of Praise. 
 
 T is hoped that the foregoing pages 
 have thrown some light upon the 
 peculiar occupation of the pioneer 
 woodsman as he is related to lumber- 
 ing in the Northwest. There has been no at- 
 tempt to do more than to give a plain recital 
 of some of the events that have occurred in the 
 experiences of one man while pioneering in 
 this special field of the great timber and lum- 
 bering industry of the Northwest. Another, 
 engaged in the same pursuit, might easily re- 
 late his personal experiences of equal or greater 
 scope than have been herein portrayed, for 
 not all has been said that might be of the 
 woodsman's secluded life. 
 
 The occupation of this type of man is fast 
 being eliminated, and soon his place will be 
 known no more. In fact, the time has already 
 arrived when there is no longer any primeval 
 forest in the Northwest into which he may 
 enter and separate himself from others of his 
 own race. Railroads have been built in many 
 directions into these vast forests, and the fine, 
 stately pine trees have been cut down and sent 
 
 178 
 
-C as 
 
 <J= ca 
 
 a -5 
 
 Oh 5" 
 
out over the lines of these railroads. Men 
 and their families have come from various 
 states and from foreign countries, and are still 
 coming to make for themselves homes on the 
 lands now denuded of their once majestic for- 
 est trees towering high, and overshadowing 
 all the earth beneath with their green branches 
 and waving plumage. 
 
 The neigh of the horse, the low of the cow 
 or the ox, and the laugh or song of the child 
 is now heard where twenty years ago in sum- 
 mer time, stalked fearlessly the moose and the 
 deer, where roamed the bear at will, un- 
 molested, safe from the crack of the white 
 man's rifle. 
 
 The schoolhouse springs into existence, 
 where a year ago were stumps and trees. The 
 faithful teacher, fresh from one of the normal 
 schools or colleges of the state, comes into 
 the settlement to train the minds and to help 
 mould the characters of the future farmers, 
 mechanics, statesmen, or financiers; of the 
 doctors, lawyers, judges; or honored wives 
 and mothers. From this ever increasing sup- 
 ply of the newly-born Northwest, are coming 
 and will continue to come, some of the most 
 valued accretions of good citizens to the com- 
 monwealth of Minnesota. 
 
 179 
 
Farms are yielding their first crops to the 
 sturdy husbandman. Pleasant, comfortable 
 homes meet the eye of the tourist from the city 
 in summer as he motors over the fairly good 
 roads of the northern frontier. He enters 
 little towns carved out of the woods, and finds, 
 now living happily, friends whom he had known 
 in the city, who are ready to welcome him. 
 He camps by the roadside on the shore of a 
 lake, or on the bank of the Mississippi whose 
 waters flowed on unobstructed in the earlier 
 days herein recorded, but now are harnessed 
 for the better service of man. Here he brings 
 his family and friends to fish and to lunch, or, 
 better still, to prepare their fish just caught for 
 the meal, by the open camp fire. He continues 
 his journey through this unbroken wilderness 
 of less than a generation ago, over improving 
 roads, to the very source of the Mississippi 
 River that is within five minutes' walk of Lake 
 Itasca. Here is a refreshing bit of natural pine 
 forest, owned and preserved by the state of 
 Minnesota, where he and his friends may find 
 shelter for the night, and for a longer period if 
 desired. 
 
 In concluding this subject, I am actuated by 
 a desire to manifest my appreciation of the fine 
 manhood possessed by many men whom I have 
 
 180 
 
known, the best part of whose lives has been 
 spent similarity to my own, in the extensive 
 forests that once beautified and adorned the 
 great Northwest. 
 
 The occupation is one which demands many 
 of the highest attributes of man. He must be 
 skillful enough as a surveyor to always know 
 which description of land he is on, and where 
 he is on that description. He must be a good 
 judge of timber, able to discern the difference 
 between a sound tree and a defective one, as 
 well as to estimate closely the quantity and 
 quality of lumber, reckoned in feet, board 
 measure, each tree will likely produce when 
 sawed at the mill. He must examine the con- 
 tour of the country where the timber is, and 
 make calculations how the timber is to be 
 gotten out, either by water or by rail, and 
 estimate how much money per thousand feet 
 it will cost, to bring the logs to market. The 
 value of the standing pine or other timber in 
 the woods is dependent on all of these condi- 
 tions, which must be reckoned in arriving at 
 an estimate of the desirability of each tract of 
 timber as an investment for himself, or for 
 whomsoever he may represent. 
 
 Possessing these qualifications, he must also 
 be honest; he must be industrious; he must be 
 
 181 
 
courageous. He must gain the other side of 
 rivers that have no bridges over them, and he 
 must cross lakes on which there are no boats. 
 He must find shelter when he has no tent, and 
 make moccasins when his shoes are worn and 
 no longer of service, and new ones are not to 
 be obtained; he must be indefatigable, for he 
 will often be tempted to leave some work half 
 finished rather than overcome the physical ob- 
 stacles that lay between him and the com- 
 pletion of his task. 
 
 On the character of this man and on his 
 faithfulness, his honesty, his conscientiousness, 
 and on the correctness of his knowledge con- 
 cerning the quality, quantity, and situation as 
 to marketing the timber he examines, depends 
 the value of the investments. Hundreds of 
 thousands of dollars are invested on the word 
 of this man, after he has disappeared into the 
 wilderness and emerged with his report of 
 what he has seen. The requisitions of man- 
 hood for this work are of a very high degree, 
 and, when such a man is found, he is entitled 
 to all of the esteem that is ever accorded to an 
 honest, faithful, conscientious cashier, banker, 
 or administrator of a large estate. 
 
 Is he required to furnish an illustrious ex- 
 ample to prove the worthiness of his chosen 
 
 182 
 
'He continues his journey ... to the very source 
 of the Mississippi River". (Page 180.) 
 
occupation, let him cite to the inquirer the 
 early manhood days of George Washington, 
 who penetrated the forests from his home in 
 Virginia, traveling through a country where 
 savages roamed, pushing his course westward 
 to the Ohio River in his search for valuable 
 tracts of land for investment, and surveying 
 lands for others than himself. 
 
 His occupation is an honorable one, and 
 those who pursue it with an honest purpose, 
 are accorded a high place in the esteem of 
 those whom they serve, and with whom they 
 associate. 
 
 The Pines. 
 
 "We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines; 
 The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock 
 
 our lines, 
 And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where 
 
 never a sunbeam shines. 
 
 We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the 
 
 valley's lap we lie; 
 From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cxinge, 
 
 to the peaks that tusk the sky, 
 We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that 
 
 gleams like a golden eye. 
 
 183 
 
Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision 
 
 ranges free; 
 Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye 
 
 can see; 
 A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant em- 
 
 pery. 
 
 Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly 
 
 stand 
 Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand, 
 Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?" 
 
 , 184 
 
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