The Last Letter Home Read online

  Behind the rider the sky was fire-red; he rode to get help and to warn those who could help themselves—those who still might flee.

  The settlers had been busy with harvesting, and they slept soundly in their beds, worn out from the work in the fields. They slept peacefully in their ignorance but were rudely wrested from the sweetness of sleep by thundering horse’s hoofs, a rider outside the house who banged against the door, calling with all the strength of his lungs: The Sioux are on the warpath! They are murdering all whites—men, women, and children! They’re burning houses, plundering, ravishing the whole country! They’re coming this way—hurry! Send women and children away! Hide if you can—in the woods, in cellars, in caves, in haystacks! Shakopee’s band is coming this way! Hurry! Hide from the Sioux!

  Startled out of their sleep and still dazed, people stuck their heads out through the door, but the rider was already gone, on his way to another house. What was it he had called? Could they believe him? But it was not a dream—everyone in the house had heard the call: The Sioux are on the warpath!

  Some believed the message, others did not. But as they looked toward the west and saw the sky yellow-red in flames, then they knew. Indeed, the rider had said: They’re burning everything.

  Young William knew what he was doing, he knew whereof he spoke, knew the danger he warned against. But how many would have believed him if he had had the time to relate all he had seen and experienced in the regions where Chief Shakopee and his band had ravaged yesterday and the day before? Most would probably say: Such things could not happen! But none would ever see what he had seen, to none could he lend his eyes; the horror of it was still with him.

  Shakopee and his band had left their camp at Lake Kandiyohi and spread out along the left shores of the river. This feared Sioux chieftain had gathered more scalps than any other of their chiefs, and yesterday William had encountered him, between Red Wood and Fort Ridgely, where he and his warriors swung their tomahawks in bloody battle.

  William J. Sturgis was young, his mind was impressionable, he had seen something that again and again would return to his inner eye, until his eyes lost their light in death.

  A settler is leaning backward against the picket fence enclosing his field. He might be resting thus after his harvest work. But he is nailed to the pickets by spears that have been stabbed through his groin. The grass at his feet is as red as roses in bloom. The man is screaming with all his might. His eye sockets are empty, the bloody globes lie in the gore on the ground. As William pulls out the spears the man suddenly becomes silent. He falls forward along his fence; he is dead.

  Private Sturgis is fleeing to the fort and hides in the tall grass. He stumbles over a dead woman, her body cut open, her innards removed. Instead of intestines he sees parts of a cut-up child. A pregnant woman has had her child returned to her body, after death.

  A dead boy about six or seven years old lies a few paces away from her. The little forehead is crushed, the nose cut off. The right hand still clutches a knife he must have used to defend himself.

  Two settlers lie naked in their wheat field, their torn clothing some distance away. Both lie on their backs, their scythes beside them; they were surprised in their harvesting and lie now among sheaves they’ll never gather. Their heads are crushed to a pulp—Chief Shakopee’s warriors prefer to use their tomahawks and do not waste bullets unnecessarily. Each of the harvesters’ bodies had a red blotch in the crotch: Their male organs have been cut off and stuck in their mouths.

  Outside a shanty sits an old man, his back leaning against the door; he looks comfortable, as if enjoying his afternoon siesta. But he cannot be awakened, he has been scalped, and both arms have been cut off and laid in a cross before the dead. He sits as if he were dreaming pleasant dreams beside his lost limbs.

  Face down, across the threshold, lies a man’s naked body. On a hook above the door hang the man’s testicles.

  The heat is intense, the smell of decaying flesh follows, pursues William; this odor will soon contaminate the air in all this region.

  Crushed, shot, scalped, maimed—the entire way from Red Wood Ferry to Fort Ridgely he had seen only one living individual. From inside a hollow oak came a pitiful complaint as from a hurt animal. It was a child’s cry. He went over to the oak: A little girl crept out of a hole in the trunk. She whined, wept with dry eyes, hiccupped for breath, stammered, but could not reply to his questions. She seemed to have lost her power of speech through fear. He spoke reassuringly to her for a while, and then she began to tell her story.

  Her father and mother had been in the field, she alone inside with her older sister. Then some strangers came, they had feathers in their hair, and their faces were painted red. Four of them. They had tied the hands of her sister, torn off her clothes, and laid her on her back on the floor. Then each man in turn had lain down on her stomach and laughed terribly. But her sister only cried and asked them to stop. She herself had at first hidden behind a bed but when one of the redskins looked at her, she had jumped out through the window and run through the bushes until she found the oak with the hole in it. She had stayed in this hiding place the whole night and hardly dared move, she was so afraid the Indians who had treated her sister so badly would find her.

  In the whole region—from Red Wood to the fort—he had found only a single human being alive, a ten-year-old girl, saved in a hollow oak.

  He took the girl with him to the fort, and when they were almost there they met a woman with wild eyes and flying hair who kept screaming: Where is the haystack? Where are my children? The woman seemed to have lost her mind, but by and by he managed to calm her and learned that she had hidden her children in a haystack when she heard the Indians were coming; one child was only six months old. She herself had hidden in a well and thus saved her life. But when she crawled up again she couldn’t find the haystack where she had hidden the children. There were so many haystacks and she had looked in every one without finding the little ones. She had forgotten to observe which stack she hid them in; she had been so excited, she had pushed them into the first one she saw.

  Perhaps the Indians had found her children and killed them?

  Where is the haystack? Where are my children?

  Private William had left the mother without being able to help her. But her screams he would hear forever.

  He had seen it all, with these very eyes which now tried to penetrate the darkness as he rode toward St. Paul. He felt those sights would be with him always, he could never shake them off, they proved to him man’s powerlessness when such forces were let loose.

  Private William J. Sturgis rode through Minnesota and spread his alarm through its settlements, shouted to the mothers: Hide your children! Hide them in haystacks and hollow trees!

  He knew the danger he was warning them against.

  —2—

  At three o’clock in the morning Sturgis reached St. Peter, where he changed horses. And twelve hours later, at three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, he rode into Fort Snelling, where he at once delivered his message to Governor Alexander Ramsey.

  Through a country primarily without roads, the courier from Fort Ridgely had covered a distance of 120 miles in fifteen hours. He had made the fastest ride known to anyone in Minnesota.

  Private William J. Sturgis, one of the eight survivors of the Red Wood Ferry massacre, was himself granted a long life. Fate allowed him to see a new century—he died in 1907, on his farm near the Rocky Mountains. During the many years after it happened, he had had the opportunity to tell his neighbors, over and over again, about his fast ride from beleaguered Fort Ridgely to St. Paul on August 19, 1862. It was his life’s great accomplishment: He had warned the people about the Sioux uprising and in so doing saved thousands of lives.

  Because of his ride Private Sturgis has found a place in the history of Minnesota.

  The Panic:

  —1—

  Above the shores of Lake Chisago the sandstone Indian head rose like a guardtower
over the St. Croix Valley. A wreath of greenish bushes decorated the Indian head this summer as in other summers. His broad stone forehead was turned toward the east, and from his elevated position his black cave eyes surveyed the land the white intruders had taken from his kinfolk. The stone Indian at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had watched as the whites came in endless droves to build their houses on his people’s hunting grounds, he watched them open roads through his forefathers’ graves, watched them change the beautiful, good land between the rivers. The intruders had spread, until those born in these regions had to withdraw. All around the great water where he had seen hundreds of campfires, lit by his people, the stone Indian could now see only a lamplight here and there.

  The proud, free hunter people were being degraded to beggars. “As the white man comes the Indian must go.”

  The settlers around Lake Chisago were aware of this sandstone cliff, the Indian head, and to them it was a monument to the natives’ savagery and unfetteredness. They saw before them a constant reminder of the people who before them had possessed this valley. Now they had become masters of this land, but back there the Indian still stretched his defiant neck against the sky and threw his dark shadow over the lake’s water. The stone Indian seemed to them an ever remaining threat. There he stood and there he would remain. The high sand cliff was a fortress no one could conquer. It would never fall. The redskins could be conquered, obliterated, but this cliff could not be moved or obliterated: The Indians could be banished—but not The Indian!

  The stone Indian would remain long after those now living—the final victor.

  —2—

  When news of the great Sioux rising to the west reached the St. Croix Valley, panic spread among the people.

  Ever since their arrival the immigrants had feared the country’s old inhabitants. To the settlers the Indians were a wild, savage people, and they looked upon them as treacherous, unreliable, and cruel. Yet the Chippewa of the St. Croix Valley had been peaceful, and hardly anything could be remembered that indicated cruelty and bloodthirstiness in the redskins. But as long as the Indians remained they would be a constant cause of apprehension among the whites; their camps in the vicinity of white settlements were always felt as a danger: No one knew what they might have in mind or when they might attack. Time and time again rumors of uprising spread: The Indians were on the warpath! Each time fright seized the settlers. Through repeated false alarms the Indian fear was sustained over the years.

  During those few days in August the Indian scare spread rapidly across the St. Croix Valley. All the old fear that had accumulated in their minds rose to the surface; they remembered all the old stories of Indian cruelty in war, the way of all savages, merciless, relentless warfare. They killed everyone, regardless of sex or age, they spared not even the unborn children in the mothers’ wombs. They treated human beings in the same way they treated fallen prey during a hunt—as carcasses to slaughter.

  Under the settlers’ fear lay a feeling of guilt, more or less conscious; they felt there was an unsettled matter between them and the country’s former owners: The Indians wanted to rid themselves of the whites. This they must count on and fear: One day the redskins would try to exact their revenge on them, and exact it in blood.

  That day had come.

  Indian panic spread through the St. Croix Valley. The people were drawn from their daily chores by a new urgent concern: their own lives. They knew they were all intended as slaughter-prey for Little Crow and Chief Shakopee’s warriors.

  The Sioux war cry, which was aimed at every white inhabitant of Minnesota, echoed over the valley in those days. People feared to repeat five words which were soon known to everyone—the flaming red letters in the sky, as it were:

  Every white man must die!

  And during these days of panic something strange happened: The tall cliff at Chisago Lake grew in height. The formation assumed greater proportions and threw its shadow ever wider. The stone Indian straightened his rebellious and proud neck and held his green-wreathed head higher in the sky. The unusually brilliant sun gave to the forehead a red glow which no one had seen before.

  And people turned to the cliff and said: Look! The Indian is coming to life! He has war paint on his face! Look!

  The Indian at Lake Chisago waited in stony immobility. From the west they would come, there behind his mighty back, there they were in motion; his kinfolk were approaching.

  The hunter people had arisen to drive out the intruders and take back their own land.

  XIII

  EVERY WHITE MAN MUST DIE!

  —1—

  On the afternoon of Wednesday, August 20, Karl Oskar Nilsson was busy shocking wheat on his last clearing. With an iron bar he made a hole in the ground, pushed a pole into it, and leaned eight sheaves against the pole; then he hung four more crossways on the pole as a “hat.” Each hat-sheaf he bent against his knee before he hung it so that heads and roots of the four top sheaves pointed downward and made a protecting roof in case of rainy weather. The wheat was tall enough to make stately shocks in straight rows, like a long line of soldiers in the field.

  In the past wheat had been cheap, as low as forty cents a bushel, but during the war it had constantly risen in price until it now brought a whole dollar a bushel. That was why he had planted three quarters of his field with this grain last spring. And all his wheat had now ripened at one time and must be cut and harvested as soon as possible while the favorable weather lasted. This year they had a great harvest rush at his farm.

  But today, as Karl Oskar raised shock after shock, his thoughts were not with the labor of his hands; instead they were inside the house where his wife was lying in bed.

  Kristina had taken sick last night. She had been seized with pain in her lower abdomen, and a flow of blood. These were the signs of a miscarriage, and he had sent Johan with the team to Stillwater to fetch Dr. Farnley. If for some reason the doctor was unable to come with him, Johan was to fetch Miss Skalrud, the Norwegian midwife.

  In the morning Manda Svensson had come to see Kristina and she had confirmed their suspicion; it was a miscarriage. It happened at the beginning of the fourth month.

  Now Marta was at home and looked after her mother, who had a high fever with spells of dizziness and great fatigue. Marta would call her father if he were needed.

  Karl Oskar put up one shock-post after another but worked as if he neither heard nor saw anything. He counted the sheaves wrong, he put seven around the pole and five on the hat, one too many on top and one too few at the bottom. At one point he put thirteen sheaves in one shock. It had never happened to him before that he couldn’t count to twelve at shocking time.

  Kristina was in bed.

  Johan could not be back from Stillwater with Dr. Farnley or Miss Skalrud before evening at the earliest, even if he drove the team at bolting speed. Karl Oskar had urged him to drive as fast as the wagon and harnesses would permit. But even if nothing delayed him, the entire day would be required for the round trip.

  Meanwhile, Karl Oskar would shock the wheat they had cut so far. He would work as long as daylight permitted him, as long as his eyes could distinguish between the top and bottom of the sheaves.

  The tillers hands picked up the sheaves by the straw bands, one after the other. But today he did not notice how full were the heads, how heavy; nor did it gladden his heart. He was not conscious of what he was handling. Eight sheaves against the post, four to the hat—he was not capable of this simple counting. Instead he was counting a few words, and they were old words: A half year ago he had heard them for the first time, that threatening reminder.

  Next . . . Next time . . . Even if he looked about while working he was not aware of what happened around him.

  He had not seen the man down on the road who now came running rapidly across his field. He had not heard the heavy, noisy boot-steps behind him.

  “Nilsson!”

  Only when his name was called did Karl Oskar turn around.

  It wa
s Petrus Olausson. He was no daily caller at this farm. Their neighbor had not come to see them for several years, because they had refused to close their door to the wife of Baptist minister Jackson.

  But today he must have an urgent errand, since he came in such a rush. He was a heavy man, yet he was running; he was bareheaded, and he had no time for a greeting. He puffed and sputtered as he blurted out:

  “The Indians! They’re coming!”

  Olausson had stopped a few paces from Karl Oskar, panting for breath. His face was shiny with perspiration, he dried his forehead with both his hands. You could both see and hear that he had been running a long distance.

  The words stuck in his throat:

  “A horrible Indian outbreak! They’re murdering the settlers . . . !”

  At first Karl Oskar was more aware of his neighbor’s behavior than of his words. He knew the church warden as a calm and placid man. Never before had he seen this easygoing farmer run. But here was his neighbor, agitated, distraught, running like one pursued.

  “They’ve warned us from Fort Snelling . . . ! The redskins are after blood . . . ! They’re killing every settler they get near . . . !”

  Olausson caught his breath and began to speak more coherently. When he was in Center City this morning, a man rode in from Fort Snelling with the Indian alarm; the Sioux to the west were on the warpath along the Minnesota River and had attacked all the settlements in their path. They had murdered every white and burned down every house. Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, which protected the Minnesota Valley, were surrounded by the red savages. People were fleeing toward St. Peter and Mankato, leaving behind a blood-red sky from burning settlements.