Father broke the sod. After hooking the oxen to the breaking plow, he selected the buffalo grass ground on the prairie where the toughest sod was. It couldn’t be too close to the buffalo wallows where water was standing to form little lakes on the prairie. He had to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes that would often times wind themselves up on the breaking plow. Father always wore boots to protect his feet from their poisonous bites. He oftentimes carried a gun on the plow. One time he forgot the gun and pulled off his boot to kill a snake.
The sod was a foot wide. They cut it with a spade into two foot lengths. They used a platform on the running gear of the wagon to load it on. Father unloaded the sod while Mother built the wall, laying the sod like brick with the grass side down. They did not break up more sod than could be used in one day, because the sod was not so good to handle after it got wet.
Three feet thick walls made nice windows for raising flowers, especially geraniums which are loaded with blossoms the year round. I never will forget one time I came home from school and saw the Minister kneeling outside the sod house window. I wondered if something had happened to Mother, that perhaps he was kneeling down praying for her, when the door opened and Mother appeared. The Minister, still kneeling and unable to speak, just pointed to the flowers crimson with blooms and as high as the window.
How nice it was when Mother whitewashed the walls, how clean and refreshing the room looked. This she did after almost every rain. The sod on the roof did not keep it from leaking. Mother used to sit in bed and hold the umbrella over my sister and I when it rained.
Living on the prairie is so close to nature, and the air is refreshing, a good place for children to roam around and make all the noise they want and not disturb the neighbors.
There was a rope swing in the barn where we could swing for hours, the wheelbarrow to ride in when older children would pull it. If we wanted anything to eat, we went down along the creek and picked all the wild plums, grapes and chokecherries which grew wild.
For many years we never saw town, the folks went in the lumber wagon. It took all day. The dog started to watch for them early in the afternoon and never moved, but kept a steady watch. When he saw them coming over the hills several miles away, he started out to meet them.
Mother always brought us a nickel’s worth of candy, which we were glad to get. We never entertained very much, we went over two miles to school, which we enjoyed. There were children of different nationalities. At first we had a time to understand one another. The teacher sure had a time of teaching us all to speak the American language plus writing and reading.
Our folks really started to enjoy the homestead they had worked so hard to improve. They now had large corn fields, also wheat did well when we had rain. They now had a permanent home where they could spend their last days without fear of losing it.
On the prairie there was no noise except for the dogs barking and the wolves howling at night. Sometimes the sunset is in the north, east or south, a freak of nature caused by a cloud obscuring the sun so it throws the rays from the side. The beautiful sunsets in red and lavender, so much color that if an artist had painted them, I would say he sometimes used too much red and too bright lavender.
EARLY SETTLERS—THE HOMESTEADERS
In the summer of the early 1870’s, my father and a number of others decided to go to the plains of Nebraska to take a homestead on which they would have to live five years, when they would then become the owner of the land and get the deed to it. Some had worked as carpenters in the larger cities, my father being one of them. Others had worked in lumber camps and saw mills. They were all hardworking men and had the strength to face the hardships of the Wild West.
They had saved most of the money they made and were buying necessities for the trip. A span of oxen and a covered wagon were the first things purchased. There was always someone ready with advice on what to take along when going west. A gun, they said, was necessary to protect yourselves from the Indians. In the East, they thought the Indians were standing at every corner, ready to attack the immigrants as they came through.
After they purchased the necessities, which comprised a gun, a breaking plow, spade, some carpenter tools, food, cooking utensils, extra clothing, a few blankets to sleep on and whatever else they thought they needed, they joined the steady stream of covered wagons going West.
There were quite a few Norwegians and other nationalities who could not understand so much of the American language. My father had come from Norway in 1869 and settled in Norwegian communities like Decorah, Iowa, but there were others who had been in the United States longer and had gone to school here and learned to write beside. They could also translate to the Americans, and they were a real help to those who knew so little about the United States.
Some intended to settle in the eastern part of Nebraska. Others decided to go on to Colorado. My father wanted to go to the western part of Nebraska. They could only travel from ten to twenty miles a day and had to stop often to let the oxen rest and graze. While they were resting, the men took their guns and went for a hunt. There was lots of wild game, prairie chicken, rabbits, wild ducks and geese. Sometimes when they were close to a stream, the wild game became more plentiful as they came further west. They even shot wild turkeys along the river. They roasted some of these birds on an open fire they made by digging a hole in a bank and putting a grate over it. Some rubbed mud all over the roast real thick and left it right in the fire for several hours. When they peeled that hard crust off, they had some of the finest roast they had ever eaten.
They crossed the Missouri on a ferry boat. When they came to other rivers, they sometimes had to wait around a day or two if it was after a heavy rain and the stream was swollen. They did not dare to cross until after it went down.
The trees disappeared entirely as they came further west. The country looked so bare, until at last there was not a tree or house in sight, just the endless plains covered with buffalo grass and yellow cactus in full bloom. Some wanted to settle where there was a creek with trees, and grass for the oxen.
At last they came to such a place. It was a hot day in the late summer. The trees shaded the water in the creek that looked so cool. There were grape vines on the trees, and they were covered with wild grapes that were still green. There were also plum trees that were loaded with plums.
There was also a trading post ten miles south of where some of the homesteaders were, but no railroad within forty to sixty miles. There were some places seventy miles or more between the railroads running east and west. They had a stagecoach going between these places to the country store, carrying passengers and mail, but the homesteaders did not get any mail for a whole month. When they had to go to the country store for some supplies, they often walked. It would take them about as long to walk as to drive, since the oxen were very slow.
They used the water from the creek, as some were without a well for several years. They carried their drinking water from a neighbor that had a well. Wells were not easily made as it was over a hundred feet to water.
One man dug the well with a spade. They had a wooden box that went down in the hole, and as he dug the dirt he put it in the box, which was hoisted up and emptied. When the well digger had it full of dirt, he pulled on the rope to signal that the box was ready to be pulled up. The one that dug the well would go from place to place and dig wells. Some were two hundred feet down. They had to lower a tubing as he went down. There were no rocks here on the plains. There was black dirt down about two feet and clay until they got down to about sixty feet.
Wells here in Nebraska never go dry. This state has more rivers than any state, and the water here comes from the supply in the northern part, which is a sandy country. Closer to the river it is not so far down to water. There are even springs which always supply cool, fresh drinking water.
The early settlers struggled on and kept breaking up more sod, and plowed it the next year and planted a few acres corn with a hand planter. They bought a
milk cow which was larietted for years before they could get a pasture. They got a hog the year after they came and dug a hole in the ground two to three feet deep so the hog could not get out. They built a shed in one end which was some poles with brush over. They also got some chickens. The chicken house was another dugout, but there were no rats or skunks those days that took chickens. It was just clay walls and floor. Sometimes snakes would disturb the chickens.
A few times they had some buffalo meat, but there were not many buffalo left in the country. They had gone west to the Rockies, as did the deer, elk and antelope. And the Indians went behind following their trail. The Indians were always hunting the buffalo. They could ride their ponies faster than the buffalo could run, and with their bow and arrow, they had killed many a buffalo before the white man ever came to this country. Many an arrow was plowed up by the early settlers, some still in good condition. How long the Indians had been here no one could tell as they did not farm the country, only hunted all the time and camped by the river. Even in these later years, there has been many a burial ground found where the Indians were buried.
But the rattlesnakes stayed on for many years. They would be winding around the poles under the roof of the dugout. The settlers had their guns ready to shoot them at a moment’s notice.
The stove pipe run up through the dugout roof, and the only sign of life was when the smoke would come out of the bank. The pioneers felt a sense of peace and security in this wide open space in the country, with the sky filled with sparkling stars. Sometimes on a moonlit evening, the coyotes would look like dogs, racing over the prairie in the night and hiding behind the shadows of the tall grass.
The buffalo seemed to scent the approach of the white man and fled in advance. In the earliest days, the buffalo were so plentiful that the settlers supplied themselves as far as they could with buffalo meat. The settlers of 1870 saw more buffalo and had more experience with them. Sometimes along the river, people would stand on top of the bluffs and look down on thousands of buffalo grazing along the river. When the herd left for another grazing place across the river, they crossed it one by one until they were all on the other side, with antelopes and wolves traveling with them. The antelopes were not so wild and were very curious. They liked to see what the people were doing and would stand and watch the log houses being built.
The hardships were almost unbearable in the earlier years for settlers who had taken homesteads in the eastern counties of Nebraska. The Indians would kill and rob the people, so when the settlers dug their dugout, they also made a ditch from there to the creek. Then they could go unobserved by incoming Indians and get water.
For those who had lived in the city, it took years to get used to this life. I have heard some of the older women say they went down by the creek to sit under a tree and cry while they sewed. The boys liked a life full of adventure, killing rattlesnakes and cutting off the rattlers to see how many they could get and shooting wild game.
The early settlers could get an elk or a deer down by the river. They could watch the Indian women cutting wood, putting the papoose down beside the tree while they worked. They carried the firewood high on their heads and carried the papoose on their backs.
In the summer of 1874, grasshoppers invaded Nebraska. They were the Rocky Mountain grasshoppers and came in swarms from the West. They were so numerous they looked like great clouds that darkened the sun. The vibration of their wings filled the air with a roaring sound. All corn was eaten in a single day, nothing remained but the stumps. They ate potatoes and onions, even dug the earth away so they would be sure to get it all, leaving just the peelings of the onions. It was hard to drive a team across a field because the grasshoppers flew up with such force, they struck the horses in the face. Chickens feasted on the grasshoppers but there were plenty left to do damage.
Most of the settlers were very poor and lived on their sod corn and garden. Now these were all gone, and it looked like starvation. Some sold or gave away their claims and went back East. Others would take their teams and go to older settlements to find work. The rest stayed and hunted wild game. They would go out on the prairie in their covered wagons and pick up buffalo bones. When they got a load they took them to the nearest railroad town which took two days travel. The bones were sold in exchange for cornmeal that was used to make bread.
Thus the hard winter of 1874-1875 was lived through. Those were the darkest days in the history of the western pioneers. Those that left their claims wished many times they had stayed because it got better after that. They all needed help those days in one way or another. Their aim was to improve the whole community to a better way of life, and they came up with new ideas to store food and insure health to everyone.
A blacksmith shop was built in a bank with a sod front. Grandfather Jakob Walstad had some experience in Norway in that line of work. People would come there and he would help them to do their own black smithing.
This sod shop had a cave underneath it and was very steep and cool. It was tunneled in under the floor, very cool in the summer and used for storing food. The shop had been in use for several years when one day a two-year-old steer was grazing in the pasture near this dugout. He went on top of the roof and fell through, landing in the blacksmith shop. He didn’t stop there, but went right in through the shop and landed in the cave. The neighbors had to come with rope and tackle. This they fastened on the pole which was top of the shop and they lowered it down and fastened it around the steer, and pulled him up without a scratch. After that, a fence was made around the roof where it was even with the ground.
It seemed like in those days, everyone depended on their neighbors.
Granddaughter of homesteaders
Appendix C:
Additonal Photographs
John and Julia by front porch of home, 1920
The Marker farmhouse
Lucille at Christmas, 1918
Grainary with windcharger
District 66 Schoolhouse Julia Walstad attended as a child
Shelling grain
Threshing oats and wheat
At the Inavale Depot, 1935, after the dam on the Republican River broke during the night, flooding farmland and houses, killing a hundred people while they slept.
Flood at the Inavale Depot, 1935
Mr. and Mrs. William C. Jones, September 16, 1944
John Marker with his first granddaughter, 1946
Lucille with daughters at Thanksgiving, 1954
The Jones family camping, 1958
Lucille and daughter Karen, Aitkin, Minnesota, March 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen Jones Gowen is a graduate of Brigham Young University and mother of ten. Born and raised in Central Illinois, she and her husband now live in South Jordan, Utah.
Websites: www.karenjonesgowen.blogspot.com
and www.writingyourhistory.blogspot.com
E-mail: [email protected]
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
WiDo Publishing is dedicated to publishing books that appeal to a wide audience. A well-written book with a compelling story and identifiable characters transcends the boundaries of religion, culture, politics, age and gender. Each title will be marketed to its primary audience, with the expectation that the overall excellence of the book will carry it beyond its initial demographic to a broader audience.
Website: www.widopublishing.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Also from WiDo Publishing
Uncut Diamonds by Karen Jones Gowen
UNCUT DIAMONDS by Karen Jones Gowen celebrates family—the ordinary, the outrageous, the comical and the tragic. It is Steel Magnolias with Mormon characters. A breakthrough LDS novel, Uncut Diamonds is everything you have always wanted in the genre.
It is the late Seventies. Gold medallions and disco dancing, bell bottoms and bushy sideburns, Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever are all the rage. Jimmy Carter is President during a frightening recession, with mortgage interest rates
at 13% and fuel bills higher than house payments. In the heartland of the nation, in the shadow of Nauvoo, a young Mormon couple, Marcie and Shawn McGill, struggle to save their home, family and marriage, during these uncertain times.
Follow the lives of Marcie and her two sisters as their lives intertwine. Beautiful Cindy who is single and dating, too often the wrong guy. Linda who married rich and lives in Denver with her husband and young daughter. And the parents—the kindly Methodist minister and his cheerful wife, who do whatever they can to help everyone out.
Website: www.karenjonesgowen.com
House of Diamonds by Karen Jones Gowen
In this sequel to Gowen’s debut novel, UNCUT DIAMONDS, she follows sisters Cindy and Marcie as they reach a crossroads in their lives. HOUSE OF DIAMONDS tells the story of two women—one facing opportunity, the other tragedy. Can their bond endure?
Marcie pursues her dream of becoming a published writer, while Cindy faces a terrible tragedy. In this gripping story of faith, loss and the transcending nature of sacrifice, Gowen gives voice to a beloved baby who has none. She shows the incredible power that comes to families when they pull together to overcome challenges.
It is at these times that a house of pain can become a house of diamonds.
Website: www.karenjonesgowen.com
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