Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/426

 358 HISTOKY OF GOODHUE COUXTY of the Sioux tribe. All the country west of Keel Wing was then practically a wilderness, and my little party were the first who started in to cultivate the soil and make a permanent settlement. After supplying ourselves at Red Wing with a tent, cook stove, provisions, carpenters' and other necessary tools, and a pair of oxen, we hired a horse team, packed our goods in a wagon, hitched the cattle behind and started for the new settlement. Toward • ■veiling we arrived at a grove on Belle creek, where we pitched our tent and cooked our evening meal. And only pioneers under- stand how well it was relished affer a long day's tramp. The horse team returned alone with its driver in the morning and we were left in the wilderness. After a day's exploration we re- moved the camp to another point on the creek, near where Roos had taken his claim. It was now late in September, and our first care was to secure hay for the oxen during the coming winter. A few days' work produced a great stack. Having heard about prairie fires, we concluded to guard our stack against them, so we set fire to the short stubble around the stack, intending, of course, to put out the inner circle of fire. But a minute and a half was sufficient to convince us thai we had made wrong calculation, for by that time Hit- stack itself was burning with such fury that all the water in Belle creek could not quench it. And this was not the worst. Before we had time to r< ver from our astonishment the outer fire circle had extended over tin' best part of the valley and burned all the remaining grass that was left in the county, Itut fortunately we found plenty near our first camping ground. Having secured ;i second stack of very inferior hay. we proceeded to build a rude loo- house, and had just finished it when .Mr. Wil- lard. my brother-in-law, appeared in our midst. I accompanied him to Red Wing, where we obtained work chopping steamboat wood during the winter. Early the next spring we commenced improving our claims and before summer was ended our colony numbered ten families. These emigrants with their goods had to be transported from Red Wing to the new settlement, twelve miles, in the following manner: When in the spring of 1854 Willard and myself received a pair of three-year-old steers and a cow from my father, we could get no other wagon than a truck with wheels made of 4-inch thick oak cylinders, sawed off a log. A good wagon was made in this way. The wheels were only about twenty inches in diameter, hence I had great trouble in getting over the stumps between John Day's ravine and Hay creek. The road was about where the Milwaukee railroad track is now. I often had to lift one end of the axle to straddle the slumps, one axle at a time, of course, and as the steers were wild, and my assistants always newly arrived emigrants who did not understand how to conciliate the steers by forcible English. I