November, 1862

November, 1862

-- Went out to visit my traps and found several of them frozen in. Found four rats in the traps set in the houses. Most of the traps in the run ways except in springy places were frozen in. Caught a mink near the bridge over the Sioux in a little spring.

This afternoon skated three miles up the river to the house of a Swede who is one of the first settlers in this county. He has a big family of boys and rosy-cheeked girls.

I ate a late dinner with them. He was a great talker and told me a lot about the wild times he saw when he first struck the country. He was a friend to the Indians. They always camped near his house when trapping up and down the Sioux River, in the fall and spring.

This man told me the war began by a dog biting an Indian. The Indian shot the dog and the whites shot the Indian and a band of the Siesstou Sioux hearing of this and nearly starved, for government rations that never came, broke into a government warehouse and from this the war started that has cost the nation, so the papers say, round 40 million of dollars. This man told me he never lost a cent by a sober Indian. He had a room in his house called the Indian room where he always put them in the winter when they called. They preferred to sleep in tepees in the fall and spring when they came to trap for furs and to gather wild rice. They were the Santee Sioux, the band that One Eye and Chief Charley belonged to. He showed me a buffalo trail on a steep hill side leading down to the river, which he said had been worn for a hundred years.

He said the Indians never killed a friend if they knew it. The whites were more revengeful, they shot at every Indian, good and bad. He told me a lot more I can't write down. When I left for camp to-night it was dark, I looked at a few of the traps I had set but found nothing.

I believe I am as much of an Indian as the boys say, as white man and I can't deny it. I am awfully tired to-night.

Nov. 22
-- I heard this morning that Little Crow, Chief of the Sioux had committed suicide. If it is true it is because he has lost faith in the great "white Chief at Washington and the broken promises of the government. There are some things in this war that make me feel that I am an infidel. Why does God crush all these poor Indians and give it all to the white because he has wealth. They owned this land from ocean to ocean by the best title on earth given by God himself and yet because we are stronger we drive him away from the homes of their fathers and the graves of his ancestors and claim that Christ is on our side.

I have been studying the "Dacota Friend," the woman left here in the hotel, and I believe there is something terribly wrong in this war. I know the Indians have been wronged and mistreated. But what can a fellow like me do? I could not eat any supper to-night and I dared not tell the boys what I was thinking about. I knew they would joke me and make fun of me. I feel that Obed Hilliard is nearer to me than any of the boys and yet he says the Indians ought to be shot. I seem to think different from any of them. I may not be right but I can't help it.
[p. 16]
I know I think as Bishop Whipple does that all the wrong in this war is on the side of the whites. I am sleepy and it is ten o'clock.

Nov. 23
-- The landlord of the hotel gave me to understand this morning that I could not use any more of his writing paper, as I had left the house for the camp. Of course it's all right but it bothers me because I can't write. where the boys are bothering. We had a drill this forenoon. The captain said we would get pay to-morrow and I am glad. I have two pages in my memoranda of debt and credit accounts to be settled.

Nov. 24
-- Marching orders to be in readiness to start for Fort Snelling, I guess it's a go this time. The notice came last night and all my traps are set miles away on the river and lakes. Obe said when the moon comes up to-night if you will gather in the traps I'll do the other work.

It was after midnight when I got back with all the traps and my light is the only one burning as I write this last word.

Nov. 25
-- It was a lonely trip I made last night up the river and over the lakes picking up traps. I thought of so many things on that trip and I was not quite satisfied that Obe asked me to get traps alone but I made the trip just the same. In the woods between the lakes where the moon shone in spots under the pine trees I thought I saw figures of Indians but I would brace up and walk right up to them and I always found them stumps or trees. I can't say I was really afraid, but I was miles away in an Indian county and sometimes my heart would pump a little hard.

Missing Division Label
Final orders to begin our return march to Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, came late last night.' We were up bright and early. Some of the boys said they were fixing all night to get ready. I was hard to wake, because I had gone to bed so late after my night's jaunt gathering in my traps. I had paid a dollar and a quarter a piece for the traps, and the merchant said I had had such bad luck, he would take them back at cost and charge me $2.00 for the use of them. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart as I had expected a much harder deal. Some of the fellows, one or two from Mondovi had spent a good part of the night at one of the saloons just across the Sioux river and they were singing "Dixie" and "Johnny comes marching home" long before the morning drum beat. I was scared for a moment thinking that the march had commenced when I heard them singing, but hearing my chum snoring at my side, I went to sleep again.

All the forenoon its been Dixie, Dixie. A lot of the nearby settlers came in to see the boys go away. Some of them said its all right for us to go south, they wern't afraid any more the Indians had been scared away, others wished we would stay. I think there were four or five pretty girls from the Sioux river that felt sorry for reasons of their own to see the boys go away. It was near noon when we started out in hit or miss order for St. Cloud. We straggled into St. Cloud late in the evening. Every fellow looked out for his own sleeping quarters. It was cold. The Captain said, "Get the best quarters you can. I slept under the flap of a tent between barrels rolled up in two blankets with a freezing west wind like so much cold water pouring over my face all night. I was awakened in the morning by that song so dear to the south, Dixie. I would think more of what the song means, if the fellows had their heads.
[p. 17]

We have been late this morning Nov. 26th, in starting. I have put in the time writing my notes.

Nov. 26
-- I am tired tonight marched all day with heavy overcoat, haversack, gun and two big blankets. I made but 18 miles and when it began to get dark I dropped out of the squad I was with and went to a private house where I saw a light shining among the trees. A young woman and child were the only persons there. She told me her husband had gone to the war and she was carrying on the farm alone with a little help her brother gave her who came once in a while. She told me she had but one bed in the house but I was welcome if I could sleep on the lounge in the kitchen. I asked to sleep on the floor, but she said, "No." I told her where I slept the night before and she just looked at me with out saying a word. She asked me why my mother let me go into the army when I was so young. When I told her I tried to get my mother's consent a year before, she said, "O, you must be a crazy fellow."

Nov. 27th
-- I was up and on the road this morning by daylight. I was anzious to catch up with the boys I knew were ahead of me. To tell the whole truth, I shed a few tears because I could not keep up with the crowd. Obed had told me and Sergeant McKay that I was not over the effects of the measles and that I should take it easy. Father wrote me too, before leaving the hotel at Richmond, "Be patient and not try to do too much, you will need to save your strength for months." Just the same I am mad that the boys are going to beat me to St. Paul.

Nov. 28th
-- Fort Snelling, Minn. Arrived this noon. A few of the company still here, most of them come and gone. The right wing of our Reg't came down the Minnesota some days ago bringing with them 1700 captured Sioux, wives, children and old men and women of the hospitiles. They are camped on the bottoms just below the Fort at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. They are a broken hearted ragged, dejected looking lot. They have a million dogs almost, and you can hear them barking for miles. There are 156 Teepes. A Minnesota Reg't is in charge of them and no soldier is allowed inside the Teepes. Papooses are running about in the snow barefoot and the old Indians wear thin buckskin moccasions and no stockings. Their ponies are poor and their dogs are starved. They are going to be shipped West into the Black Hills country. Like the children of Israel in the Bible story they are forced to go forever from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their fathers to dwell in te mountains and on the barren plains of a strange land. I lifted up the flaps of a number of their Teepes and looked in. Every time I looked in I met the gaze of angry eyes. Nearly all of them were alike. Mothers with babies at their breasts, grand-mothers and grand-sires sat about smouldering fires in the center of the Teepe, smoking their long stemmed pipes, and muttering their plaints in the soft guttural tones of the Sioux. The white man's face was their hate and their horror and they showed it by hate in their eyes and their black lowering brows. Why shouldn't they? What had they done? What was their crime? The white man had driven them from one reservation to another. They were weary and broken hearted and desperate at the broken promises of the government. And when they took up arms in desperation for their homes and the graves of their sires they are called savages and red devils. When we white people do the same things we are written down in history as heroes and patriots. Why this difference? I can't see into it.
[p. 18]
I often think of what father said of justice in the world. That is, that it is the winning party the lions of the earth, that write its history. He said, "Cataline, had any body but his bitter enemies written his history might have been shown to be a good man." I have been fooling around the Indian camps all day and my company are all gone home. From where I sit writing these notes in a little niche on the side of the Fort overlooking the camp below I can see the sentinels pacing their rounds and hear the yelping of hungry Indian dogs. My fingers are numb. The cold west wind hits me here and I must quit. I must look for a warm place to sleep tonight and start for home in the morning by the way of Hudson and Eau Claire.