History of Dane County, Wisconsin, Part 105

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899; Western Historical Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Company
Number of Pages: 1304

USA > Wisconsin > Dane County > History of Dane County, Wisconsin > Part 105

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The Indians were very loath to leave their old fishing and hunting grounds in the vicinity of the lakes, and for several years hovered around in camps in the neighborhood of Madison, and it frequently happened after obtaining liquor that they became very noisy and troublesome,

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particularly in their dextrous mode of thieving, which was almost equivalent to professional sleigbt-of-hand performances.

The following good story is told of Calimanee, an old Winnebago head chief, who was invited to Washington to arrange some matters between his tribe and the Great Father. Cali- manee was accompanied by a second chief named Snake. During their absence from Wiscon- sin, they had learned to talk some English and had paid some attention to the rules of etiquette. When they returned, they were furnished with new blankets, plenty of trinkets, and money to pay their way home, also an order from the War Department on the commanding officer at Fort Dearborn, Chicago, for two horses to carry them. They left Chicago in grand style, the old man considerably inflated with vanity and importance at the attention paid him, and we hear no more of them until they arrive at Blue Mounds, which place they reached about noon. Calimanee knew Brigham, for he was known by everybody in the country. The chief thought he had found a good opportunity to display the politeness as well as shrewdness he had learned from his pale-face brothers on his recent tour to the national capital. Riding up to the house, he accosted the old hero thus : " How ! how ! Brigham !" Then dismounting, he presented his man Snake, saying, " Brigham, Mr. Snake ; Mr. Snake, Brigham." Pointing to the house, he said : "Brigham, dinner ; " then to the stable, "Brigham, horse, corn. Big man, me." Mr. Brigham kept a bachelor's ranche and did his own cooking, but to expedite matters for his most important guests, he called in one of his workmen to aid in preparing dinner. From the manner in which they devoured the victuals, it was considered doubtful whether they had broken fast between Chicago and Blue Mounds, a distance of over two hundred miles. After dinner, Calimanee called out, " Brigham, horse." The horses were brought, the Indians mounted, saying, "Brigham, good-bye," and rode off at full speed. Mr. Brigham, finding himself badly sold, remarked to the bystanders that he thought they might have paid him some- thing after putting him to so much trouble, especially as the chief had made a display of a quantity of silver coin furnished him by the Government to pay his expenses.

For many years, the Winnebagoes had made the head of the Fourth Lake their winter camping-grounds, from which locality they sallied out in small parties for the purpose of fish- ing and hunting. Their camps were distributed around on the streams in the vicinity. Sugar River was one of their favorite places of resort for game.

Mr. Brigham relates the following singular incident which took place some years before Madison was located. He (Mr. Brigham) happened to be at the camp at the time, which was situated on Sugar River Crossing, near Grand Springs. An aged Indian became reduced by sickness and disease. He had the consumption and was failing rapidly. The medicine-man of the camp had exhausted his best skill on the patient in vain. The chiefs of the tribes were summoned in consultation. The spirits were invoked and an incantation held with them, accompanied by singing and dancing, and when concluded the decision arrived at was that the sick man must be removed to the headquarters at Four Lakes. The snow was about a foot deep at the time. Hunters were sent out to kill a buck, which they did, and brought into camp next day. The animal was carefully skinned by the squaws and the invalid securely sewed up in the green buckskin and tied to the tail of a stout pony. In this manner he was dragged to the Four Lakes camp, a distance of about twenty miles. As the narrator did not accompany this novel expedition, he was unable to say whether the subject so tenderly cared for was killed or cured.

After a few years, the Indians were all removed from the vicinity of Madison, by orders from the Government, to their reservation west of the Mississippi, much to the relief of the citi- zens, for close contact with them soon removed every spark of the romance and poetry with which they had in our imaginations been surrounded from the reading of Cooper's novels and other like literature.

As yet, there was little farming done or produce raised in Dane, and I was obliged to make sundry wagon trips to Green County, to procure butter, beef, pork, potatoes and other kinds of vegetables to keep our house going. There were then no bridges on the road to Monroe, and

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there was difficulty in crossing the streams. To be "stuck " with a loaded wagon was a daily occurrence in almost every stream on the road. When " stuck," it generally became necessary to carry your load out on your back, or with your hands, by piecemeal, deposit it on the further bank, then, with your horses hitched to the end of the wagon tongue, where they would most likely get dry footing, you must wade into the water waist deep with a sapling to pry out the wheels. By this means, with considerable language more expressive than elegant, directed especially at your horses, you reach dry ground and then re-load, but, when your stock consisted of potatoes and turnips in bulk, and you had nothing but a wooden bucket at your service with which to transfer your load, you can imagine the amount of philosophy it required to do this good naturedly, and more especially in a wet or rainy day, and the probabilities very strong that you would have to repeat the process at the next stream.

I shall always remember one particular occasion on which I was returning from one of these periodical trips. After much persuasion, I had induced my good sister, Mrs. McFadden, of Grand Springs, to fill a patent pail with choice fresh butter, which I carefully stowed away in the back part of my well-loaded wagon. Any one living in Madison at that time may possibly realize the value of a bucket of nice dairy butter. The owner would be envied by all his neigh- bors for being the fortunate possessor of such a prize. I drove along, happy at the thought of being able to cater to my guests, to the envy and jealousy of others, and enjoying, in anticipa- tion, the welcome I would receive on reaching home with it. But, before long, I experienced the sad truth of the old rhyme,

"'Twixt cup and lip, there's many a slip."

There were many bowlders and deep ruts in the road, the wagon jolted and the bucket of butter rolled out. Driving carelessly on, unconscious of my loss, I had traveled some four or five miles before I missed my treasure. As soon as I made the discovery, I unharnessed one of my horses, mounted him bare-backed, and went back at a cantering speed, and reached the ill-fated spot where I had met the sad misfortune just in time to scare off a pack of wolves that had not only devoured the entire contents of the bucket, but had actually eaten the greater part of the bucket itself, it had become so impregnated with the golden butter.

We were very much troubled for help during the first year of our sojourn in Madison. To spend four or five days in traversing Rock and Green Counties in search of a cook or chamber- maid and return without one, and be compelled to turn in and assist in doing your own cooking and make your own bed, required the cultivation of much patience and fortitude, which bordered on genuine heroism.

To provide for the winter, I had a large quantity of hay cut on the marsh east of the capi- tol, between the lakes. The grass was best at the lower end of the marsh, but the surface was so underlaid with quicksand, although it would support a man it would not an animal. After the hay was made, we found we could not approach it either with horse or ox teams. We over- came the difficulty by placing crates or racks on two long poles fastened together in style of a stretcher or hand-barrow, and fastened clapboards to the bottoms of the boots of the carriers, who could then carry out large loads, and thus we saved our crop.

During the summer of 1838, a two-horse stage line was put in operation from Mineral Point to Madison, owned by Col. Ab Nichols. The distance was about fifty miles, and the only post offices on the route were Dodgeville, Ridgeway and Blue Mounds. The latter point was made the midway or half-way house, where passengers and horses were fed on the way. The line was afterward extended to Fort Winnebago, and Rowan's made a stopping-place on the route. At Madison, we entertained all the stage passengers and most of the drivers. With the latter we always kept on good terms, and were often under obligations to them for kind favors in bringing our supplies of groceries and other things from the "Pint," or " Shake-rag," as they called it.

Tom Haney drove in the first stage from the Point. He kept his headquarters at the " Worser," in which the stage proprietor was interested. Tom was a good friend of ours, a hail

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fellow, exceedingly obliging and accommodating. He had and deserved many friends. In extending the stage line to Fort Winnebago, a span of extra horses was required at Madison, and it was arranged that Tom Haney should bring them through one at a time. Accordingly, one extra horse was duly entered on the way bill with orders for the proprietors of the stage house in Madison to take charge of the animal, and look out for another by the next stage. Tom set out as usual with his stage load of passengers from Mineral Point, and the extra horse lashed to the hind axle-tree with a stout windlass or well rope. All went well and smoothly-Dodgeville, Ridgeway and the Mounds were all left in the distance, Nine Mile Prairie was passed and the woods entered. Some distance this side of the prairie there is quite a descent from a high rolling plateau down into the valley, which is nearly on a level with the lakes. The slope is not steep but gradual. The rains had washed the ruts so that it became necessary to make another track on the hill side. These tracks diverged in the valley at the base of the hill in the shape of a letter V, and about half way up the hill formed a junction similar to the V reversed or the letter A without the bar. In the junction, or the apex of A, stood an oak tree. Usually there is nothing significant in an oak tree, especially when the surrounding forest is composed of oak trees. They may stand on either side of the road or between the two roads, they are simply forest trees placed where they are by Providence, subservient to the use of man, but this one placed at the forks of this road had its mission to perform, as we will soon see. Persons accustomed to traveling in stage coaches know that when the drivers approach a city, a station or even a post office, they resort to fast driving. Tom Haney was not behind his fellow Jehus in that line. Now, having reached the brow of the hill, instead of putting on the brakes and driving down slowly, as careful drivers should have done, he started his team with a yell and crack of his whip and came rattling down at full speed, the stage taking the road on one side of the tree and the extra horse the road on the other. The rope brought the horse with such sudden force against the tree as to break his neck. The extra horse was not receipted for, nor was the other sent by the next stage. When Haney reached Madison his feelings were some- thing akin to those of your humble servant when he found the wolves had devoured his butter rolls.

Extravagances such as this, with many other unforeseen mishaps and derelictions of drivers, created the necessity of placing agents upon the route. The first agent, or superintendent rather, of this two-horse enterprise, was Jonathan Taylor, accompanied by a tall, lean, lank Kentuckian, whom he introduced as Micajah Thacher, a new driver. We found Thacher a most obliging fellow, well posted in horse flesh, as drivers generally are. Mr. Taylor hailed from Wabash, Ind., a noble specimen of a Hoosier, remarkably good looking, and generous to a fault. Although somewhat deficient in education, he was possessed of good hard sense and a remarkable knowledge of men and the world. He was very shrewd at a trade and soon evinced fine business qualities, which, with his kind heart and frank, open countenance, made him very popular. He quartered with us, and an attachment for our family soon sprung up, and he remained with us nearly ten years. After the stage line passed from Uncle Ab's hands, Mr. Taylor commenced the world with a two-horse team purchased on credit. He hauled goods from Chicago and Milwaukee to Madison, and in the winter season brought sled loads of Mackinaw trout from Green Bay, carried them to the Point and Galena, returning with articles needed at Madison, Fort Winnebago, Fond du Lac and Green Bay. I have not time to follow his career; sufficient to say he prospered, and now lives on Fifth avenue in New York City and counts his wealth by hundreds of thousands.

Being desirous of adding something useful to the capital city in the way of domestic ani- mals, I brought some fine shoats from Green County-the first brought to Madison. They thrived well and increased rapidly in numbers. When autumn came and acorns were plenty, I turned them out to forage for themselves. The drove wandered down to the lake shores, and, when I thought them in a sufficiently good condition to kill, I undertook to drive them home, but, to my utter astonishment, I found them perfectly wild ; they would neither be led, driven or corralled. So hunting parties were made up, and my beautiful porkers were hunted down with

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dogs, shot and captured as wild game, and once more we had to depend on Green County for supplies for the winter. Daniel Baxter furnished us a great deal of acceptable produce that winter.

The next season I procured some pigs of a more, domestic breed, and kept them penned close to my house near to the old cabins, but, in spite of neighbor's dogs and all the care I could bestow on them, they were carried off by the prairie wolves.

The wolves continued to annoy the people of Madison very greatly, until we petitioned the county authorities to pass an order fixing a bounty on their scalps. The Board of Commissioners finally yielded to this request, and established a bounty. A wolf-hunter soon turned up, in the person of William Lawrence. He undertook to catch them with steel traps, but as their name was legion he found that process entirely too slow, and resorted to poison. By a skillful distribu- tion of strychnine, he succeeded in soon bringing in a large number of scalps, and leaving a large number of their carcasses on the town site, and in this manner a quietus was placed upon their further depredations and annoyances.

In the fall of 1838, the first session of the Territorial Legislature was held at Madison, and with it came crowds of people. The public houses were literally crammed, shake-downs were looked upon as a luxury, and lucky was the guest considered whose good fortune it was to rest his weary limbs on a straw or hay mattress. We hired some feather beds from Mr. Nute, of Jefferson County, and paid $10 in advance for the use of each during the session.

Among our boarders that winter, I remember the names of the following members of the Legislature : James Maxwell and O. Beardsley, of Walworth County ; Morgan L. Martin and Alex. J. Irwin, of Brown County. Then there were Ben C. Eastman, Joseph G. Knapp, Peter B. Grignon, Theodore Green, of Green Bay, who officiated as clerks, reporters, etc., of the . Legislature. Mr. Knapp says these were the "aristocracy of Wisconsin." We thought so, too, and treated them as such.

We had then no theaters or any places of amusement, and the long winter evenings were spent in playing various games of cards, checkers, and backgammon. Dancing was also much in vogue. Maxwell was very gay, and discoursed sweet music on the flute, and Ben C. Eastman was an expert violinist. They two furnished the music for many a French four, cotillion, Virginia reel and jig, that took place on the puncheon floors of the old log cabins, that were enjoyed, probably, quite as much as are now the round dances and Germans on the waxed floors of fashionable dancing halls, to the witching strains of Dodsworth's fine band. Want of cere- mony, fine dress, classic music and other evidences of present society life, never deterred us from enjoying ourselves those long winter evenings.

Log cabins stand no chance in competition with new, fashionable hotels-rivals of Delmon- ico's, Fifth Avenue and the Grand Central-not that patrons fared any better than at the cabins, but " the aristocracy," the unerring barometer of the people in all countries and in all places, soon gave convincing proofs of the decline of business, and that shake-downs were no more necessary, and puncheon floors absolutely vulgar, then, in our anguish of soul, in the language of Othello, we found our " occupation gone ;" and as we were, Micawber-like, "waiting for something to turn up," the mail, a much rarer visitor then than now, brought us a letter inclosing an agreeable surprise, which was nothing more nor less than a commission from Gov. Dodge, appointing me to the office of Treasurer of the Territory of Wisconsin. This was done at the instance of our good friend " Uncle Ab," at the " Point," without our knowledge. The salary was fixed at $60 per annum, and no stealings. I accepted, gave bonds, entered upon the duties of, and continued acting as, such officer, until my bond mysteriously disappeared from the archives of the Executive Department. By this act of prestidigitation, I was teetotally cleaned out and exterminated from the high and honorable position as Treasurer. I have not the slightest recollection of a single dollar of money ever passing through my hands as disbursing officer of the Territory, yet some important financial paper transactions took place. The issuing of the Baxter bonds to complete the capitol were perhaps as important as any. These were signed by your humble servant, as Treasurer, and countersigned by N. C. Prentiss as Commissioner of Public Buildings. They were issued on fine paper, and passed current in Chicago.

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HISTORY OF DANE COUNTY.

In the meantime, Dane County was organized according to the laws of the Territory. At the first election, in 1839, I was put in nomination for the office of Register of Deeds. We had then no party politics to influence and control elections. My competitor, Darwin Clark, was considered a good man. He came to Madison with Bird's party of laborers, to work on the capitol, had shared their hardships, toiled with them, and claimed their votes, whilst I had come there with my family to reside as a citizen. I was the candidate of the resident population, and was sustained by them. We both ran on our merits and good standing in the community. We canvassed the county fairly, honorably, and without the slightest attempt at disparagement of each other. No canvass could have been more fairly or honorably made. After the canvassing, I reported to my friends that I would be elected by a majority of one. I was advised to re- canvass, which I did as thoroughly as before, and arrived at the same result. It was insisted that I should use means to turn some of my opponent's votes in my favor. This I positively refused to do, stating that I would rather be defeated than resort to anything underhanded to obtain my election. I was perfectly willing to risk my election with a plurality of a single vote. On counting the votes after the poll, I found myself elected by a majority of two votes, which much surprised me, and remained a mystery until some time after, when a friend explained to me, after exacting a promise of secrecy on my part, that the extra vote was obtained by strategy, to make my election sure.

Dane county is composed of what was originally a part of the counties of Milwaukee, Brown and Iowa. The titles to the lands lying within these counties had been recorded in the original counties. Under an act of the Territorial Legislature, it became my duty, as Register of Deeds, to have these records transcribed for the use of Dane County. In the prosecution of these labors, I visited Milwaukee and Green Bay, on horseback, and made arrangement for the transcripts of those portions of the records necessary. In the county of Iowa I did the tran- scribing myself, often working twelve, fourteen, and sometimes sixteen hours a day. This work was well and satisfactorily done. No more than ordinary (and I think less) fees were paid for this work in county scrip, and nothing for expenses of travel, so that no money was made by the operation. At the next election I was nominated for re-election, but this time more than one vote was covered by strategy on the other side, and I was defeated by a small majority.

On a beautiful Sunday morning, when the religious community of Madison were assembled in the Representative Hall in the capitol, attending divine service, a servant came hastily from the American House to the door of the hall and inquired for Dr. Lull, who was called out with Mr. Fake, the landlord of the hotel. On perceiving them hurrying across the park, Mr. Sholes and myself, with several others, followed and overtook them as they reached the house, where we were informed that Mr. Duncomb, one of the guests, had locked himself in his room, stood up before the mirror, and deliberately cut his throat with a razor, the act having been witnessed by a servant in the back yard, through the windows, which were open. We were not long in forcing the door open, when, to our horror, we saw this man Duncomb standing on the floor with his throat cut from ear to ear, the bloody instrument still in his hand, which was instantly wrested from him. Both main arteries and the wind-pipe had been severed. He looked like a madman. The sight was awful. Mr. Fake fainted. Those most resolute took hold of the man, all covered with blood, which was still flowing from his throat and gashes in his arms, and laid him on the floor, where it took the united strength of four men to keep him. He could not speak, but wrote with a pencil on paper, " All I want is to see my wife," which dying request could not be granted. The scene is as vivid in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. He had been observed to act strangely in the morning, and tried to persuade his wife not to go to church, but she feared to remain with him.

It was discovered that he had cut the arteries of both arms, and had written his name on the walls of his room with his finger dipped in his own blood, and had broken open his wife's trunk and sprinkled her clothes with it, and scattered them over the floor. He expired in about twenty minutes after we entered the room. Jealousy was the only cause ever assigned for the dreadful deed, and it was considered very fortunate his wife had absented herself, or in his frenzy he would probably have murdered her also.

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Our good neighbor, Mr. Rasdall, once owned a valuable gray horse, but, from long usage and old age, the animal became useless, and was turned out to browse; when, through with life's weary wanderings, he had reached that period so graphically expressed in the song of the departed soldier-

"Old fellow, you've played out your time,"

he hied himself to the summit of an elevated knoll of ground on Lake Monona's shore, in a southwesterly direction from our house, and there, in full hearing of the melancholy murmurings of the waters as the waves rolled against the shores, he laid himself down and gave up the ghost. The soft and balmy breezes from that direction, not exactly perfumed with the rose or lavender, gave us timely warning thereof. Scavengers, there were yet none, and, in the absence of other or better authorities, we engaged some boys to perform the act of cremation on this defunct quadruped. A funeral pyre of dry brush was built over the subject, and the torch applied ; this ended only in smoke. Another and another fire of the same material caused a denser smoke, perfumed with unambrosial odor. Finding our first experiment at cremation proving a total failure, we caused a pit to be dug, and the unconsumed remains of the horse, with the smoldering ashes, to be swept therein and covered up, when the air soon became purified. This spot was for a long time protected by a flag-staff and pennant, erected there by the boys of the village, who also buried sundry favorite dogs and cats on the same ground, always with a procession and military honors. They called it the hecatombs.

Father Quaw, a very clever old gentleman, made his first appearance in black ; he was the advance guard of the clergy, a Presbyterian, hailing from the British Provinces. Afterward, the highly esteemed Bishop Kemper visited Madison, and organized an Episcopal Church there, It will be found by the records of that church that I was appointed a vestryman of that organ- ization. I was also pressed into service as the leader of singing choirs at religious meetings of. all kinds and in all places, and it was understood that my house was open and free to all traveling clergymen, of any and all denominations, and there were not a few who availed themselves of this information .*

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History of Dane County, Wisconsin, Part 105

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899; Western Historical Co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Company Number of Pages: 1304

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899; Western Historical Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Company
Number of Pages: 1304