The Last Letter Home

by Vilhelm Moberg

  Red Chief Speaks to White Chief at Mankato:

  Man does not own the earth. What he does not own he cannot sell. What no one can sell no one can buy. Your people, Wliite Chief, therefore cannot buy the earth. All objects you can move from one place to another may be bought. A horse, a bow, a buffalo hide you can buy. But the land you cannot pick up and move from one place to another.

  My people do not own this land and therefore we cannot sell it to your people. We have only granted your people the right to use this ground and live on it. All the gold and silver you might offer us—be it even enough to fill our valleys to the very brim—would not buy from us the beautiful hunting grounds the Great Father gave to our forefathers. We will not give up the graves of our fathers for all the money in the world.

  My people have been forced to let your people use this land. Your chiefs have given us paper with written promises of sufficient gold to sustain our lives. We have waited for many moons in our camps but this gold has not arrived. We are still waiting.

  Your people are rich, my people are poor. Your people have fine buildings, my people live in poor wigwams. Your fires are warm, our fires are not able to keep out the cold. The white children are strong and well fed, our children are weak and starved. Your people have food in great plenty, my people are sick from hunger. Your storehouses are filled, my people have no storehouses. Deer and elk will soon be gone, the fish in our lakes disappear. Soon the snow will fall over the ground and hunting will be over. Soon ice will cover the waters and we will not be able to catch the fish. How then will my people live?

  We cannot survive in this country without food. Without food we shall perish. As deer in the forest and fish in the lakes diminish and disappear, so our people will disappear and die.

  We have surrendered our hunting grounds and our fathers’ graves. Soon there will be no place in this land where we can bury our dead. We have no land left for our graves. Your people have taken our land and will not give space even for our dead bodies.

  Our Great Father will see his children die in the land he has given them to possess. We will only leave our bones, to whiten aboveground. When our bones have turned to dust there will be nothing more left of our people. Your people alone will possess that beautiful land our Great Father once gave his children.

  Thus spake Red Chief to White Chief at Mankato.

  The Start:

  On August 18, 1862, there arrived for the government agent at Fort Ridgely the $70,000 in gold which was overdue the Sioux tribes of western Minnesota.

  It was exactly one day too late. The day before, the Indians had begun to exact their claim in settlers’ blood.

  —1—

  It began on Sunday, August 17, on Sven Danjelsson’s homestead near Acton in Meeker County.

  Sven had staked out his claim of 160 acres close to a small reedy lake a mile from Acton, and even before his marriage he had built a log cabin and cleared a few acres. After their wedding the previous autumn, Sven and Ragnhild had moved to the claim and lived there during the winter. In the spring they had done their first sowing and planting, and their first crops were now ready to be harvested.

  Danjel Andreasson and his son Olof, who was three years younger than Sven, had early in spring promised to help the young couple with their first crop. Ragnhild was expecting a child and did not feel strong. On Friday evening, the fifteenth, Danjel and Olof arrived at the new clearing near Acton. Sven was pleased with the prospect of help from his father and brother; now his young wife need not overwork herself during the harvest, so close before her delivery; Ragnhild was in the last month of her pregnancy.

  On Saturday Sven started to mow his rye, his father bound the sheaves after him, and his brother put them in shocks. Before evening the field was finished, but Danjel and Olof would remain over Sunday to help with the wheat during the following week.

  During Sunday forenoon a Swedish neighbor came to visit the family. His name was Ivar Eriksson, a young man about Svens age. He brought with him his two children, a boy four years old and a girl of three. Ivar and Sven had helped each other with work and were good friends.

  The neighbor and his children stayed for Sunday dinner with the Danjelsson family. It was a humid summer day. At table the men talked about the crops and the intense heat; it was now about as warm as it ever was in Minnesota in August—how long would the heat wave last? This weather suited the settlers until the crops were in, even though they perspired greatly in their work in the fields.

  Dinner over and Danjel having read the prayer of thanks, the men sought shade outside to enjoy their rest. The coolest place was at the back of the log house. Ragnhild remained inside to wash the dishes, and the neighbor children stayed in with her to play on the floor.

  The four men stretched out in the grass against the wall.

  During dinner Ivar Eriksson had happened to mention that some Indians had been seen near Acton yesterday, but he thought this was of no particular significance since the redskins frequently appeared in groups nowadays. Some of the Sioux had camped in Meeker before and had always been friendly; they had disturbed neither him nor any other settler in the vicinity. However, someone who had seen the Indians yesterday insisted their faces were painted red, whatever that might mean.

  Sven Danjelsson had replied that sometimes the Indians painted their faces just for the fun of it, to be dressed up like. They enjoyed everything that glittered and shone, they would deck themselves out in anything they might lay hands on, they were like children in that respect. If one of them found a colorful rooster feather he would immediately put it in his hair. To look really festive they would rub their hair with bear fat until it seemed they had been ducked in a kettle of grease.

  Ragnhild told about several squaws who had come to the house during the winter, their poor children blue in the face from cold; she had given them whatever clothing she could spare. Sven said she had given them more than she could spare, she had coughed the whole winter because she was dressed too lightly.

  Pleasantly sated, the men were dozing at the wall. Half asleep they noticed some Indians approach the house from the forest.

  Sven Danjelsson arose to meet the callers—six Sioux. Their faces were not painted; he did not suspect any treachery. It did surprise him, though, that all six carried new guns; he had not seen Indians with guns before. He recognized two of the men, who had often come to the cabin to beg for food. They had always been given something and they had always appeared friendly. They spoke a little English, a few words for food, and their request had always been the same: They were hungry, could they have some potatoes today?

  It was the same today. Sven replied that he would go and pick some potatoes for them; usually they ate the tubers raw.

  He picked up a basket and went toward the potato field, about two hundred yards from the house. The other three men had remained in the shade of the house, but as the Indians now approached, they rose and watched their movements with some concern.

  The savages split up into two groups: Three men walked into the cabin while three snooped around the outhouses, apparently looking for food. They caught sight of the small chicken house which Sven had hammered together; inside a setting hen was on her eggs. Startled by their approach the hen rose with a cackle from her nest and ran away. The Indians threw themselves over the nest, grabbed the eggs, and seemed to swallow them, shell and all. Not one single egg was left. The yolks were running down their chins.

  Sven Danjelsson had just reached the potato field when he heard the cackle of the frightened hen. He turned and saw the visitors plunder the nest. He had promised them potatoes—why must they now steal from him? Enraged, he shouted to them to leave his property alone. Didn’t they understand that this was a setting hen, ready to hatch chickens! They must . . .

  These were the settler’s last words in life. Still chewing on the eggshells, one of the Indians lifted his gun, aimed, and fired. The shot hit Sven in the chest. He dropped the basket, fell face forward
across a potato furrow and lay still among the broken stalks.

  Sven Danjelsson died instantly.

  From the cabin wall his father and brother had been calling to him about the plunder of the nest, and Ivar Eriksson had run toward the chicken coop, threatening the robbers. At that moment the first shot cracked, and Danjel Andreasson saw his oldest son drop to the ground.

  Until then he had irresolutely watched the Indians’ doings; now he ran to the potato field, Danjel was hastening to his fallen son as fast as his stiff old legs could carry him.

  He reached only halfway: The Indians at the coop aimed two shots at him; the first wounded him in the arm, the second hit him in the back and killed him.

  Danjel Andreasson survived his son by only a few moments.

  Ivar Eriksson was going after the egg thieves and intended to give them a good talking to, but when they started to use their guns he stopped and looked about; what must he do now? Within the span of the same minute he saw father and son fall from the Indians’ bullets and remain lying where they had fallen. What could he do? He was unarmed—all three Indians had guns. If he wished to save his life, there remained for him nothing but flight. But his children—they were inside the cabin.

  He turned and rushed toward the house.

  The Indians, however, had their eyes on him and fired several shots. Eriksson was hit in the shoulders and neck, and fell a few paces from the corner of the cabin. His wounds bled copiously but he remained conscious.

  While this took place outside, three of the Sioux were inside the cabin of the young couple. They walked into the kitchen before any shots had been fired outside, and the young wife, busy at her dishes, had no suspicion of treachery. Ragnhild recoiled a little at the vile smell of their dirty bodies but she was not afraid of them. They asked for some milk. Many times before Indians had asked for milk, it was a drink new to them and they liked it.

  The wife went to the cupboard for her earthen crock where she kept the morning milk. The uninvited guests drank in turn from the crock and soon emptied it. She hoped they would leave when they had quenched their thirst.

  Just as they handed her the empty crock, the first shot was heard from outside. The young woman cried out in fright and rushed to the window; she had heard the shot that robbed her husband of his life out in the field. As Ragnhild peered through the window, the Indian who had first drunk of her milk lifted his tomahawk and struck her in the head from behind. She sank down to the kitchen floor, lifeless.

  Ragnhild Danjelsson followed her husband in death as quickly as Danjel Andreasson had followed his son.

  The Indians threw the empty milk crock to the floor, scattering the pieces against the walls. Then they pulled out their scalping knives and cut open the body of the pregnant woman; they pulled the child from her womb and hung it on the fireplace hook.

  They were looking for edible things in the cabin. In the next room they came across the Eriksson children, the four-year-old boy and the three-year-old girl, who were playing on the floor. They grabbed the children by the legs and flung them against the wall, crushing their skulls. With their knives they deftly cut the bodies into many pieces.

  They stayed in the log house and ate all the food they could lay hands on.

  Meanwhile, the three Indians outside had scalped their white victims. But one of them was still alive: Ivar Eriksson, who had fallen near the house, was still conscious. A bullet had entered his neck and come out through his throat. He tried to stop the profuse bleeding by pulling up grass and pushing it into the bullet hole. As the Indians came by and noticed their victim was still alive, they cut his throat from ear to ear.

  Ivar Eriksson had used snuff ardently and when his body later was found it was revealed that the Indians had allowed themselves a joke with the snuffbox they had found in his pocket. His thumb and right index finger, which he used while taking snuff, had been cut off and put in the snuffbox. The savages knew that the finger, the thumb, the snuff, and the box belonged together, and they wanted to gather all the pieces in one place.

  The Indians had now fulfilled their mission to the Sven Danjelsson cabin: Here were no more whites alive. They set off for the next white homestead.

  But it so happened that one life had escaped them. Olof, Danjel’s younger son, had seen his brother and father hit by Indian bullets and fall. He had realized they were dead and had run for his life toward the forest. He was a good runner and managed to hide behind trees before the Indians were aware of it.

  But he was afraid the savages would find him in the forest, where he knew of no sure hiding place. Unnoticed he made his way down to the little lake; he waded out into the water until he was in up to his neck. Here he meant to hide. He covered his head with the broad leaves of water lilies that floated on the surface. If he could keep this position, his head hidden by the leaves, no Indian eyes from shore would spy him, however sharp they were. The question was: Could he endure remaining in this place? His mouth was just above the surface, permitting him easy breathing, and the thick leaves protected him against the burning sun, but the water was slimy with silt, hungry mosquitoes swarmed about his head, and leeches crept and crawled onto his body. And his legs felt weaker as they sank into the mire.

  But Olof Danjelsson endured, and remained in his hiding place throughout the rest of the day, this whole, long Sunday afternoon. As soon as it grew dark he crept out of the water. He dared not go to his brothers cabin—the Indians might have remained there after the attack. Following unfamiliar paths through the woods he managed to get away from Acton.

  After a half night of wandering in the dark he reached a shanty beside Norway Lake, where a Norwegian trapper lived. The shanty’s owner was horrified when he saw the youth come through his door; mud and slime on his face and clothing had dried in cakes until he looked like a black apparition. The trapper must be forgiven if he thought the devil in person was calling on him in his shanty this night.

  That was how Danjels younger son saved his life.

  But it was a long time before the sole survivor of the Indian attack was able to relate what he had experienced this Sunday and make known that the Sioux uprising had begun.

  —2—

  From this Sunday, August 17, 1862, the young state of Minnesota had its own civil war.

  A setting hens nest was robbed by hungry Indians—and the owner became the first victim. The great Sioux uprising was started by people who long had gone hungry, and hunger was its cause.

  The Call to Alarm:

  All through the gloom and the light

  The fate of a thousand Minnesotans was

  Riding that night.

  (Freely after Longfellow)

  —1—

  On the night of the eighteenth of August an Indian alarm was issued from Fort Ridgely. It was carried by a common soldier, William J. Sturgis, Company B, of the Fifth Minnesota Regiment.

  On Monday, the eighteenth, Fort Ridgely had been completely surrounded by Indian warriors, but toward midnight Sturgis, aided by the intense darkness, managed to slip out from the fort with his horse. He rode eastward, down the Minnesota Valley. To the right he had the river to guide him. His way led through the most beautiful regions of Indian country; here stretched great lush leafy forests, here lay broad meadows, rich valleys—a region of fertility and growth. On recently broken clearings the crops stood yellow and ripe. The valley at this time of year flaunted its great abundance. Private William J. Sturgis rode through a good and fruitful land, wherein people of many nations had built for themselves new homes and found sure sustenance.

  But he carried a message of death and fire, of cruelty and blood. The sky behind him was streaked with flames that lighted the sultry August night: Fires were rampant; flames rose from settlers’ houses, from immigrants’ homes.

  William J. Sturgis was only nineteen years old and he had enlisted as a private only a few months earlier. Yesterday morning he had for the first time participated in the duty that primarily is the soldier’
s: To take enemy life and defend your own. His company had been sent out from the fort against the rebelling Sioux—Chief Shakopee’s band had begun to murder, plunder, and burn down settlers’ houses near and far. At the bend of the river near Red Wood Ferry the forty-five soldiers had been caught unaware by Chief Shakopee. So sudden had been the surprise that he had seen his captain as well as many of his fellow soldiers fall, victims of Indian bullets. William was one of eight survivors of the group who had been able to return to the fort by fleeing along little-known forest roads.

  In the evening he was ordered by his superior, Lieutenant Thomas P. Gere, to ride as courier to Governor Ramsey in St. Paul. The state’s highest official must be notified of yesterday’s happenings.

  The Sioux had during the summer gathered in Meeker and Renville counties and were now on the warpath under their chief, Little Crow. On Monday they had attacked the Lower Sioux Agency at Red Wood. This attack had come without warning and the whites were wholly unprepared for it. The attack was successful in every way; by evening all the whites in Red Wood had been killed, all the houses burned down. The Agency was a smoking pile of embers.

  After Chief Shakopee’s victory over Company B the Sioux warriors had surrounded the two forts on the Minnesota River—Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, the two defense posts for the Minnesota Valley. For Fort Ridgely’s defense there were now only twenty-nine soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Gere; the lieutenant was twenty-three years old. As commanding officer—after the captain had been killed—he now sent his courier to the governor with a report of the attack and with an urgent request for aid.

  Relief immediately! Those were the most important words in the message young William was carrying to Minnesota’s capital.

  Lieutenant Gere had supplied his courier with the fleetest horse available at the fort, and William pushed the animal to its utmost. For long stretches he galloped through the roadless country, along unfamiliar paths, often hindered and delayed by ravines, fallen giant trees, unexpected precipices. He was often forced to detour and urged his horse ever harder to regain the lost time. His ride with its perils seemed the ride of an insane man, but it was undertaken by a cool, courageous person, to save human lives.