The Story of Guri Endreson
The Heroine of Kandiyohi

July 2, 1908. By Agnes C. Laut.
It is very much easier to be a hero of the regiment marching in uniform and pomp to music of bugle and drum, than a hero of the pick and the axe and the whipsaw and the spinning wheel and the milk pail and the frying pan. Yet the conquest of the frontier was wrought by the heroes and the heroines of the homespun, by the men and women too--with rifle in one hand and implements of toil in the other.

Of no class is this truer than the little groups of Norwegians and Swedes, who began coming to the Northwest from 1850 to 1870. Many -- one might almost say the majority -- were young people well educated in their own language, but absolutely penniless, looking for the shoulder-swing of room and opportunity in a larger land. Nearly all arrived at Boston or New York, unable to speak one word of English. Without money, without language, without knowledge of American customs--how, then, did they reach the West? Worked their way; street jobs in the big cities to pay stage or railroad fare to Buffalo; then up the lakes as sailor men or deck hands or stevedores to Wisconsin or Illinois--big, shock-haired men with guttural utterance and muscles like ironwood and determination of pure adamant; then across country to the Mississippi as shoveler's on railway contracts, through low-lying lands that shook the giant frames with ague so that wages seldom averaged more than half time during the period of acclimatizing; then up the Mississippi to the Promised Land, with barely enough money to pay for registration fees and provisions to begin homesteading.

Such was the beginning of thousands upon thousands of Scandinavian settlers in the West--men and women who have risen to positions of note in their adopted country. Usually, the wife did not come the first year; but in the cases she did come, her earnings as camp cook, as mender of the boys clothing, helped to eke out the existence of the family for the hard pioneer years--and this, not of peasant women (thanks be to God, there are no peasants in America), but of young girls who had been highly educated in Sweden and Norway before coming to America. I met many of them on my trip to the Far West, today in positions of affluence, presidents of women's clubs for the study of Browning, of Tennyson, of history, of philosophy, of civics. They make no boast of the past. They are neither proud nor ashamed of it. It was simply all in the Day's Work; a part of the Game; and the fun was in the game; not in the winnings.

Wherever they could--these Vikings of the Plains--they selected timber lands for the simple reason they were too poor to buy lumber for shanties. You find nearly all of the early Norse settlements on the wooded river bottoms, the house near the water, the farm running back in prairie from the cottonwoods. First work was to build the cabin, second to lay up hay for the stock, though I know of cases where the stock consisted of two pigs, or less yet, two chickens, which the coyotes got before the winter passed; and I know of one case--the man is today a senator--where the family finances totaled exactly $1.50 after the bride and the "piggies" and the cabin had been established on the homestead. Before the days of railroads in the West, money could be earned the first winter by trapping for the fur traders, or chopping wood at the munificent price of seventy cents a cord, the wife staying alone in the cabin, while the coyotes made weird music to the moon; the husband wrapped in a buffalo robe sleeping round campfires, where the wolves made another kind of music if they were not watched. The man who became senator gave me an inventory of his possessions when he set out in an ox cart from the Mississippi with his bride. It consisted of a stove, two kegs of nails, a spade, a whipsaw, two tin trunks and, most important of all, in his own language--"a determination to make good or bust." That family was down to rations of potatoes only during the first winter, varied by prairie chicken and game as spring came and to know what sensations short rations produce, you live in a cabin one hundred miles from anywhere, with the wolf pack nightly howling from hunger.

The foundation fortunes of another young Swedish student were laid by manufacturing a wagon out of an oak log, solid transverse sections rounded off for the wheels, with which he acted as carter for the other incoming settlers. This hero was too poor to buy candles to study law by night, so his bride manufactured a lamp out of lard melted on a cotton wick. It may be added this man became an American consul.

The governor of Minnesota, John A. Johnson, need scarcely be cited as an example of the Norse who has made good. He is today, the people's idol of the West, and may yet be the idol of the Nation.

Such were the experiences of the early settlements of Norwegian and Swedish people in the Great Northwest, and such a settlement was Kandiy-o-hi County--land of the kandi (buffalo fish) ohi (abounding)--in endless chains of lakes, sheltered and hidden by heavy timber, where game abounded plentiful as fish in the lakes. All the year there were deer, and always in the winter the buffalo came for shelter in the woods from the prairie blizzards. Here, in 1857, had come the first settlers, Americans from Wisconsin and Irish and Norwegians from the Old World. There was no use raising grain, for there was no one to buy it; but by '62 cattle had multiplied, and wheat had increased from the first two bushels brought in by Solomon Foot sufficiently to supply the settlement with flour for bread. The first grist mill deserves to be immortalized in this country of the greatest flour mills in the world. It consisted of an oak stump hollowed out and hardened by fire. Though there was no one to buy grain the American Fur Company, managed by Ramsey Crooks, yearly sent up a man for pelts, and by farming with one hand, and fur hunting with the other, an industrious man could clear as much as $600 a year; and this was affluence. Until the whiskey trader came, there was neither vice or police in Kandiyohi. Religion was observed by reading a Lutheran sermon in some settler's cabin and singing hymns to that somewhat dolorous accompaniment of a mandolin. When the Fourth of July came round was the grand event of the year--the Kandiyohi picnic, a feast spread under the trees, a porker roasted whole displaying an ear of green corn in his mouth, procession by beat of drum to place at table, and then the speeches--stump speeches in earnest, for they were delivered from the rostrum of the stump.

Over this Arcadian scene of simple life broke the Sioux conspiracy of '62 like a hurricane. Up to the coming of the whiskey trader, Kandiyohi settlers and the Sioux had been on friendliest terms, hunting and camping together; but a change began to be evident. The Sioux affected contempt for the farmer, especially the frugal German and Scandinavian. Stock began to disappear. One day a settler traced the moccasin tread from his rifled pigpen down to the Sioux camp, and demanded reparation. The Indians laughingly denied the offense, but the settler followed the direction indicated by his nose, and came on a porker being roasted whole above a tepee fire. The thief bolted from the tent to escape. The settler stuck out his foot and tripped the delinquent headlong. A free fight followed, when Little Crow, great chief of the Sioux, strode from his tepee, commanding peace. As the combatants fell apart Little Crow stooped and drew his dagger on the sand:

"This..........Mississippi River, all this............mine; all buffalo, all deer, all pigs, all woods and rivers mine! White man must move away.....way beyond the Mississippi and the chief drew himself very erect. How much Little Crow meant by those words, the settlers did not dream. Another day a woman was busy baking bread, when two young warriors, with their faces painted black and with an unnecessary flourish of rifles, strode in and demanded food. The good dame, who was of Herculean frame and Irish brogue, gave them what she thought was enough. Promptly, one jumped up and grabbed her to hold her, while the other began to plunder. With a sudden twist, the giantess freed herself, caught the culprit by the belt, hurled him through the door. Before the other knew what was happening, he too, went sprawling through the space. The rifles followed helter skelter; and the door banged shut. Far as the Irish lady was concerned, she considered the incident closed.

Then the call came for volunteers in the Civil War. Out of each home went an able-bodied defender; and the time was ripe for the Sioux. Vague rumors had come of trouble in the eastern settlements, but "Indian scares" were always in the air, and Kandiyohi settlers had paid no heed to the rumors till about sunset of Thursday evening, August 21st, when half a hundred young bucks in war paint were seen riding along the lanes heavily armed.

Upon the north side of Solomon Lake lived Lars Endreson, and his wife, Guri Endreson with their two sons and three daughters, fresh out of Norway, but prosperous exceedingly, and this Thursday night busy about the log cabin with evening chores. Inside, Ole, the smallest boy, and his two sisters had lighted the candle and were spreading the supper table. Outside, Lars, the father, and Endre, the oldest son, were attending the stock, while out in the root-house, Guri, the mother, and the youngest girl, a mere baby, were rummaging stores for the next days meals.

Suddenly, the mother was startled to hear wild shouts followed by rifle shots in quick succession. She sprang to the root-house door, just in time to see her husband reel back dead before the flash of a rifle. The cabin was surrounded by a Sioux band of warriors, whooping, yelling, waving fresh scalps, and already in the barnyard rounding up the stock to stampede the herd. The root-house was nothing more than a dugway or cellar roofed over. Guri Endreson slammed the door shut and withdrew with her baby girl inside through the dark to the farthest end, numbed and panting with horror. The girl presently fell asleep, but to the mother's ears came the dulled sounds of her daughter's screams, loud laughter, jeers, the bellowing of the terrified cattle, then the swift tramp of many riders at furious pace receding from the cabin. Then abruptly, as the calamity had broken, there was silence but for the heavy breathing of the sleeping child. Guri felt her way to the root-house door and looked out. Darkness had fallen misty and wet. In the barnyard, all was deathly quiet. From the house, not a sound but the whining of the old dog as if in great distress; and from the wooded shores of Solomon Lake, over on the trail, round the end toward the place of the son-in-laws, Oscar Erickson's, voices faint in the night darkness, like men shouting at runaway horses; but no more scream, no sound of her girl's voices! Where were her daughters? She opened the root-house door and stepped out with the child in her arms. The old dog growled savagely, then came bounding over where she stood, whining and trying to tell what he knew, till she put her hand on his head to quiet him. Then she listened! There was not even the sound of voices from the woods. A silence immense, palpable, infinite, lonely as death, oppressive and tight-drawn like a nightmare--enveloped the little foreign woman standing before the root-house, praying and trembling. Then the call of some night creature--it might have been a wild-cat down in the brush-wood or a coyote out on the prairie--brought her to herself with terrible realization that her husbands body lay exposed to beasts of prey. Pausing at every few paces to listen, startled and in terror at what the savage growling of the dog might mean, Guri groped her way through the dark to the house. At the threshold, she stumbled. A body lay at her feet. She ran her hand over it. The body was cold, stripped of clothing, blood-boltered and dishonored by the slayers. It was her son, Endre. Afraid to strike a light and clinging tremblingly to the whining dog she felt her way across the yard to the place where her husband had fallen. His body had been dragged nearer the house for the indescribable mutilation of the warriors. Lifting it, she carried it in to the cabin floor. Then she groped through the dark house for some sign of her daughters or little Ole. The boy's body, she found lying on its face, cold and damp, with the furrow of a deep wound across the shoulder; but the bodies of the daughters were not there. She knew now what the screams had meant. The girls had been carried off captives by the warriors. Bereaved and desolate, she was alone in the dark with her dead. Sinking down, she tried to think; but what was there to think with the bottomless abyss beneath her feet and no sign of help from man or God. At any moment the Sioux might come back. The wind in the grass, a dead leaf tossed against the window, the cracking of the unseasoned timbers in the floor, the lone cry of some night bird down in the brushwood, stirring uneasily as things animate and inanimate move to life when midnight merges to dawn--these and other sounds caught by her straining senses roused her from her stupor. There was still a chance that her daughter married to Oscar Erickson, living round the end of Solomon Lake near Swan Lake, might have escaped; and there was still the baby daughter to be saved. She resolved to try and reach the Erickson cabin before dawn. Hoping against hope, once more in the half-light, she scans the house for the younger daughters. Then taking sheets and pillows from the linen press, so dear to the Norwegian woman's heart, she arranges the dead reverently as for burial, covers the bodies with the sheets, and steals quietly out, closing the door, followed by the dog.

Whether she was too dazed to know what direction she had followed, or passed the hours in a complete stupor, she found herself at daylight not a mile from her own house in full exposure of the open prairie. Instinct was guiding her back to the hiding of the root-house when she abruptly stopped in her wanderings. Smoke was curling up from her own cabin chimney. Now Indians don't kindle fire inside white people's stoves. Guri Endreson's heart leaped with a great hope; and she ran fast as her short legs could carry her for the cabin. Then, with the caution born of a terrible fear, she peered in at the window. Ole! It was Ole, the youngest boy risen from the dead, moving painfully about with a shattered shoulder, trying to prepare breakfast. One can guess that the Norse woman's first exclamation was thanks to God, and her second to find what the boy knew of his sisters--which was little enough. There her worst fears were realized.

After breakfast, the question was what to do. They could not stay on here. The savages had literally rifled the house of food. Besides they would probably come back. Outside, they had stolen the light wagon, but an old sleigh still remained. All the stock had been stampeded except a pair of wild, unbroken steers, which the Sioux had evidently not been able to catch. Bringing out bedding and such scraps of food as could be found, Guri rigged up the sleigh as a sleeping conveyance. Then she caught the untamed young oxen, yoked them with an infinite deal of trouble to the sleigh and late Friday afternoon set out with the loaded rifle on her shoulder, leading the team, the wounded boy going ahead to scout by turns, resting in the sleigh with the younger child when his strength failed.

As they slowly rounded the north end of Solomon Lake, keeping among the brushwood where they could, hiding behind the roll of the prairie where there was no wood--the glare of burning haystacks lurid against the sky told of the Sioux' work at other homesteads. About a half a mile away, they could see that things seemed to be unnaturally quiet around the Erickson cabin. The barnyard stock had all been driven off. Not a soul appeared about the place, and their own dog running forward, set up a most unearthly howling. Leaving his mother with the ox team, hidden behind a roll of the prairie, the boy crept through the long grass within hearing distance of the cabin. Doors and windows had been barricaded by trunks, and were splintered by bullets. The logs of the cabin were literally peppered with shots. Clay had been knocked out from between the logs and through the chinks projected they see barrels of guns and rifles, and on two or three places round the cabin were unmistakable signs of blood having been shed; but worst of all to the boy's terrified ears were the ravings and groaning of someone inside. When Guri Endreson heard her son's report, she did not know what to do. Without a doubt some of the Erickson's were wounded inside; but what meant the firearms bristling through the logs? Heading the ox team back to her own cabin, she spent a second night beside the bodies of her husband and elder son.

Whoever was over in that Erickson cabin must be helped and at any risk. That was the decision of Guri Endreson on Saturday morning after a sleepless night of perplexity and prayer. This time, little Ole went boldly up and peered between the chinks of the logs. On the floor, covered with flies, lay a wounded man, Solomon Foot, the pioneer trapper and settler of Kandiyohi, whose gaze met the boy's blue eyes behind the chinks. Foot called to the boy "to come in," but Ole did not understand English. Foot then called to someone upstairs, and Erickson's voice sounded weakly from the upper floor, bidding the boy gain entrance to the house by a cellar trapdoor to the rear. An hour later Guri Endreson was at the cottage, washing and dressing the wounded men in clean clothes. Erickson was paralyzed from his wounds, literally slashed by bullets, but still had the use of his hands. Here, too, all the stock had been run off; but an old light wagon was left. To this, the indomitable little woman hitched her unruly oxen. She had now on her hands, a baby, a wounded boy, and two utterly powerless men. In the wagon she laid mattresses. The broken shoulder of the boy prevented him helping with the men. Unaided, Guri first carried Foot, then Erickson, out to the wagon, and placed them on the mattresses. How did the little woman do it? For both men were of large and heavy build? Ask the Powers that endow some small bodies with great souls how she did it; for I don't know. I only know that she did it; and thought nothing of it. Foot lay in the wagon propped up with pillows, his loaded rifle across his knees. Erickson was in such misery he had pleaded with the others to kill him and end his sufferings. That night, when they camped on the road to Green Lake, mother and boy did sentry duty by turns.

Foot's experiences was one of the most terrible in the pioneering of the West. Somebody has said it, and other people have gone on thoughtlessly repeating it--that the settlers of Minnesota allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep by the Sioux, that they did not fight to defend their homes. In the light of this statement, let us follow the details of the Kandiyohi attack.

The night before the Indians had appeared at the Endreson homestead, Solomon Foot and one Andrew Nelson, had been in a hayfield near Erickson's when a horseman passed with word of the break in the eastern settlements. Foot could hardly believe the news. He had hunted with the Indians now for five years, and many of them were his friends. Nevertheless, his wife realized the peril, and wanted him to hide in the brushwood till danger had passed. Cramming their coat pockets with ammunition, the Foot family donned dark-colored clothing and hurriedly hitched up a wagon and set out for the lower settlements. Near Erickson's cabin, as they drove through the timbered ravines, a cow bell was heard, as if cattle were being stampeded. Remarking that it looked like rain, Foot at once proposed that they spend the night at Erickson's. The wagon was hauled inside the Erickson fence and the oxen left yoked. Though he would not believe the news, seasoned hunter as he was, Foot insisted on the Erickson's bringing in barrels of fresh water and not lighting any candles in the house that night. Then he strayed down the lane and perched on the fence to listen.

There was the usual summer sounds of an August night--a catbird uttering querulous complaint in the bush, field sparrows now past song time, chirruping cheerily from sprig to grass, crickets fifing on the road side, meadow larks lilting as on the wings of the wind dropping flute notes liquid and silver from mid-heaven. The man listened, jabbing impatiently at the fence with his heel. Suddenly, some dark objects loomed against the sky down the lane. Foot sprinted for the house, and in a manner much calmer than he felt, announced that "there were Indians after all; lights must be kept out; coats and quilts must be hung across windows; there was no danger, but it would be well to see what the fellows wanted without giving them target for any fancy shooting."

In answer to the moccasined salutation through closed doors of "How! How! How!" Foot bade the red-rovers be off or he would shoot them. Thereupon the red-rovers hobbled their ponies for the night and piled fagots against the darkened house, for what reason Foot could imagine. About that time, luckily, rain began to fall; so there was no danger of being smoked out before morning. When the Foots had arrived, one Swede Charley had chanced to be at the Erickson's. That night, Foot and Charley kept guard while the rest of the household retired upstairs; but there was little sleep; for till day-dawn the monotonous pum-pum of the Indian tom-tom could be heard round the campfires, where the savages were pounding the earth in a war dance. Foot had places tin trunks and table tops across the windows, leaving only the smallest peekholes and apertures for rifle barrels. More than once during the night, moccasined tread and loud growling from the dogs told of the enemy spying close to the house.

Nothing commands respect from an Indian like front, and when morning had come without any tragedy, Foot, determined to take Fate by the beard. The Indians were outside the garden fence. Foot marched boldly out and shook hands with the leaders across the gate. Their faces were painted, indicating they were a war party; and they asked for food. Foot called for Swede Charley to get them some potatoes. At the same instant, he observed two startling facts. Guns were concealed beneath every blanket and two evil-visaged villains were edging round to his own and Swede Charley's backs. Foot wheeled on the hostile nearest, and in the redskin's look of concentrated hate read the truth of the news he had refused to credit. Before he could call out warning, Swede Charley had fallen and he, himself, staggered to knees with a gunshot wound in his hip. Upon the instant, he turned on his enemy and succeeded in reeling rather than running to the door, where he fell on the threshold and was dragged in by his wife. Handing his rifle to his wife, with the words, "Shoot! Shoot quick!" he fainted.

When he revived, burning with thirst and pain, his wife and Erickson had rammed the rifle barrels through the log chinks and were pumping lead into the redskins as fast as Mrs. Erickson would load weapons, the strange spectacle being presented of bullets ricochetting over the cabin floor where the babies, all unconscious, played. Crawling across the floor to one of the water barrels, Foot quenched his thirst and dragged back to load weapons for his wife and Erickson, while Mrs. Erickson carried the children upstairs. Prying his own rifle past one of the lower logs, Foot lay on the floor taking aim, and had the satisfaction of seeing two of his enemies fall.

"Thank God," he was saying, "there goes another redskin where -- redskins don't matter;" and his wife was gasping back between shots, "For goodness sake, Solomon, don't use such bad language" when the ping of a bullet caught his right arm and another ball punctured his right lung. He had but called on his wife and Erickson to keep low or they would be shot, when Erickson spun across the floor, screaming and crazed, wounded terribly, to be dragged up the ladder to the loft by Mrs. Erickson. This left the whole defense of the household to Mrs. Foot. Already, a ball splintered the door, passing through her clothing, and now smoke began to ooze through the logs on one side of the house, where the Indians were trying their best to set things on fire. Mrs. Erickson poured water down from the inside, and the wet mist outside served to put out the fire; but the bullets still peppered windows and doors, the savages emitting shrieks of delight as they heard poor Erickson's cries of pain. By midnight the Indians had used up all the powder they cared to waste on this house; and the shooting ceased. Gathering up their dead warriors, they drove off the stock and rode away with a final thud of balls as they abandoned the house. By this time, Mrs. Foot had only two caps and two balls left. Foot guessed that Swede Charley's wife and other neighbors had taken refuge on some the secluded islands in the lake; and he now begged his wife and Mrs. Erickson to do likewise. If they could reach Green Lake, word could be sent to the eastern forts. By remaining they could do no good to the injured men. by going, they could at least save their families and perhaps bring back help to the cabin.

Kissing their husbands farewell, what seemed an eternal farewell, the two women prepared to set out, each with a baby in her arms, followed by the larger girls. Before going they re-barricaded windows and doors. Water and the last charge of ammunition was placed on the floor beside Foot downstairs. Water was left beside Erickson in the loft. Then the wives let themselves out by the cellar trap-door. From the place where he lay on the floor behind the front door, Foot rose on his elbow in the silence and through a crack in the panel watched the two figures retreat down the lane and disappear into the rushes of the lake shore. Then the man breathed a great sigh of relief! Likewise, he fainted!

When Foot regained consciousness, he found himself covered with flies and his wounds in an unspeakable condition. The sun was beating on the house like a furnace and room in a buzz with innumerable insects that had crawled through the shivered windows. The wounded man became conscious, with that peculiar and inexplicable feeling which every one has had at some time -- of a human presence, that someone was looking at him, that he had been awakened sensing an approach. At the same instant, his eyes met a pair of blue eyes on the other side of the log chinks.

"Who's that?" he called. No answer. Little Ole Endreson didn't know English very well and a man who had been unconscious for thirty hours didn't speak very loud. He roused himself, beat on the floor and called up to Erickson in the loft. Then Ole Endreson entered by the cellar trapdoor, followed by a little woman, almost as broad as she was long, which wasn't saying much; and for the rest of the day, the two men labored under the delusion that they were being attended by an angel of light, though she was nothing more nor less than a little Norwegian woman, who could yoke steers at a pinch. I confess I had rather have that little woman for my ancestress than the noblest duchess of a Bourbon or a Stuart line. It takes women with big souls to rear a race with high ideals which make good.

As far as I can follow the itinerary Guri Endreson camped that first night with her invalids somewhere near what is now called Diamond Lake; but I confess when you take scrappy records of half a dozen dead people and the fuller reports of a many again, who are living, and they all differ on details and all agree on essentials, then I confess I don't vouch for such trifles as the number of children in each family, and their names, and the camping places.

Anyway, as you can see if you look at the map of Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, they must have camped that first night some four or five miles east of Eagle Lake, in a bee line for Forest City. For the first time since Tuesday, the sun went down in full glory, a shield in pageantry of clouds, such as pagans might worship, and in stillness of death. When the little woman kneeled to say her prayers before doing sentry duty, her family of invalids may have wondered if the Angel of Records were sending out special delivery messengers to keep invisible watch beside her that night. Anyway, the night passed without alarms, but noontide found her charges mighty hungry. Ole reconnoitered a deserted house, coming back with a single raw egg and a ripe tomato. That keeps them going to the next deserted homestead, and to the next, and to the next, till on the third day, the weary ox team shambles into Forest City.

There, to the joy, the joy unutterable of all, Erickson and Foot found their families safely housed, and Guri Endreson found her two daughters. When she had told her story, and they had told theirs, her only words were: "Well, you must give me something to do to keep me from thinking! I must have work, or I shall lose my reason."

The daughters had been carried off as she surmised, but you recall how, near the roothouse, she had heard the Indians shouting as if for runaway horses. About a mile from the homestead, the warriors had paused to apportion the plunder, chief of which of course, were the two white girls. Something startled the ponies. They galloped off. The Indians pursued. On the instant, both girls dashed to hiding in the brushwood of the lake, wading half the night to throw the pursuers off the trail. All next day they hid (this according to the version of the story told me,) but by the second night they were famished for food. Coming to a stray cow, they milked her by turns, and so appeased hunger. Two days later, they were found by scouts of Forest City and conveyed to the town.

The Endreson and Erickson families afterward returned to live at Kandiyohi, where they and their descendants reside to this day. Guri Endreson became a mother in Israel to the Pioneers, and died full of honor and years, in 1881. She was buried in the Solomon Lake churchyard, and one may see the monument to this Daughter of the Vikings here today. Personally, I think the best monument of all is the brain and the brawn and the spirit such heroism breeds in the race.