Part 17 (1/2)

Speaking of codfish, re their way to the river I halted hi back for You see wethe same way

”Well,” said he, ”I' back east if I live to get there” ”Why what's the , only it's too bla fer codfish--and I'uess he was homesick He looked, and he talked it and the whole outfit said it plain enough You can't argue with hoood wife lived up there on the hill One day in the early 60's an Indian appeared in Mrs Stone's kitchen and asked for so down to dinner and he was invited to join the family The butter was passed to him, and he said, ”Me no butter knife” ”I told Arnold,” said Mrs Stone, ”that when it gets so the Injuns ask for butter knives it's high time we had one”

ANTHONY WAYNE CHAPTER

Mankato

LILLIAN BUTLER MOREHART

(Mrs Williaaret Rathbun Funk--1853

I came to Mankato in the year 1853 on the Steamer Clarion from St Paul

I was eleven years old My father, Hoxey Rathbun, had left us at St

Paul while he looked for a place to locate He went first to Stillwater and St Anthony, but finally decided to locate at the Great Bend of the Minnesota River We landed about four o'clock in the , and father took us to a little shack he had built on the brow of the hill west of Front Street near the place where the old Tourtelotte Hospital used to be Back of this shack, at a distance of a couple of blocks were twenty Indian tepees, which were known as Wauqaucauthah's Band As nearly as I can remember there were nine families here at that time and their names were as follows: Maxfield, Hanna, Van Brunt, Warren, Howe, Mills, Jackson and Johnson, our own fa the ninth

The first winter here I attended school The school house was built by popular subscription and was on the site of the present Union School on Broad Street It was a log structure of one rooe, square, iron stove The pupils sat around the roo wide boards, projecting out from the walls Miss Sarah Jane Hanna was my first teacher I cah the snow in the bitter cold of the winter Oftentih the crust of the snow and had a hard tioing to school, was about a young Indian e called Josh, who pretended he was very anxious to learn English Most every day he would come to the school, peer in at the s, shade his eyes with his hand and hten us very much The education the children received in those days had to be paid for either by their parents or by someone else who picked out a child and paid for his or her tuition That was how I received my education My parents were too poor to pay for mine, and a man in toho had no children volunteered to pay for same I went to school for a few years on this man's subscription

The first winter was a very cold one and although ere not botheredfor soh the Indians had never harmed us ere afraid of the, and when these Indians ca into the house with us and placed hihtened thes, as there were very few in this country at that time One time when father was on his way home he saw an Indian boy who had been thrown from his horse He picked him up and put him back on his horse and took him to his tepee Later this sa us that the Indians were planning an uprising and telling us to leave the country

My father was the first h this part of the country

John Marsh and his brother, George Marsh contracted with hi previously contracted with the government He was to carry the mail from Mankato to Sioux City and return He made his first trip in the summer of 1856 The trip took about three weeks Hethe summer His last trip was in the fall of 1856, when he started froovernular intervals of about twentycold weather and storlected He often slept under hay stacks, and wherever shelter was afforded

On his way to Sioux City he encountered some very severe weather, and froze one of his sides The lady where he stopped in Sioux City wanted hi home, and until his side had been treated and he had recovered, but he would not have it so, and started on his return trip during exceedingly cold weather He did not return on schedule time from Sioux City on this trip, and mother became very much worried about him She went to the men who had contracted with father to carry the mail and asked them to send out men to look for hi team This contented ain went to these men and this time they sent out three men with a horse and cutter to look for hi over the route for some time they came to a shack on the Des Moines river, near where Jackson, this state, now is and in this shack they found my father, badly frozen and barely alive He lived but a fewhands with the ht the body back to Mankato and he was buried out near our place of residence, at the foot of the hill The weather was so extreo out to the burial

Later, after I was married, myself and husband came down to what is now the central part of town for the purpose of buying a lot for building a home, and we selected the lot where I now live, at the corner of Walnut and Broad streets We purchased the same for 487 We could have had any lot above this one for 200, but selected this for the reason that it was high The country around us was all timber and we had no sidewalks or streets laid out at that time

At the titon street, directly across from where the German Lutheran school now stands The Indians started their outbreaks during the Civil war They started their ust of 1862

I can distinctly re in the doorway ofover the hill This was Little Priest and his band of Winnebagoes These Winnebagoes professed to be friendly to the white people and hostile to the Sioux They claio maiden, and for that reason they were enemies to the Sioux To prove that they were their enemies they stalked the Sioux who had ing back to show us his tongue, heart, and scalp, and also dipped their hands in the Sioux's life blood and painted their naked bodies with it

Mrs Mary Pitcher--1853

The old Noers and decks and hold loaded with freight bound for St Paul was the first boat to get through Lake Pepin in the spring of 1853 The journey froh on either side of the Mississippi the Indians were the chief inhabitants, nothing of exciting nature occurred until Pigseye Bar on which was Kaposia, the village of the never-to-be-forgotten Little Croas reached Then as the engines were slowed down to aze that startled even the captain The whole village of several hundred Indians was in sight and aand old was running about crying, wailing, with faces painted black and white They did not see spectacle that the captain deemed it best not to land, but there were twofroot into a boat and went ashore

They learned that there had been a fight in St Paul the day before between this band of Sioux and a party of Chippewas in which one of the Sioux was killed and several wounded It was not a very pleasant thing to conte to St

Paul with their families to make homes in this far aest