St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 2:
River of Pine (continued)

Frontier Logging: Life in the Forest

Logging on the St. Croix during the 1840s and 1850s was a primitive, small-scale, frontier enterprise. The size of a logging crew was small -- between ten and fifteen men. Typical was the eleven man team deployed by the ill-fated John Boyce in 1837. That year there were at least five crews operating on the St. Croix. By 1854 this number had swelled to eighty-two crews, twenty-two of whom were established along the Snake River where some of the finest white pine was to be found. Each of the crews included several oxen. In 1837 Boyce had six of the beasts of burden. They were used to drag felled pine from where they were cut to the river landing where they were stacked for transportation in the spring. The early loggers had the advantage of being able to work stands of pine adjacent to the river. Since the logs were only dragged a short distance, a simple wooden travois, called a "go-devil," attached to a single oxen, was the only equipment needed to transport logs. The crews were divided into a few specialized tasks. Most valuable were the choppers, men skilled with using an axe and in making a tree fall where they wanted. They were usually the best-paid men in the crew. Once a pine was felled, the swamper came in and cut off any branches. Another man called the barker peeled off the bark on the underside of the tree, to create a smooth surface for dragging on the snow. Next the chainer connected the oxen to the log and guided it through the drifts to the landing. What may be the location of one of these river landings can be found on the Upper Namekagon River above Hayward, Wisconsin (T40N, R11W, Sec. 14, NE1/4, NE1/4). At the site a ramp was clearly excavated into the bank of the river to allow for the easy sliding of logs into the river. During this early period of logging axes and handspikes were the only tools used. Brute strength and teamwork made up for the lack of technology. After a long day of working in the woods in sub-freezing temperature the men were bone-weary and cold. One contemporary remarked that the "boys" had been "transformed into men like unto Abraham of old" -- the black whiskers of youth having been made "white as the driven snow" by the frost. [13]

Logging camps from this primary, primitive period of the logging frontier are the type most likely to be found within the narrow boundary of the National Scenic Riverway. Camps from this era were built near the banks of the St. Croix and its tributaries although they seldom consisted of more than one or two structures. The men lived and ate in a single shanty constructed of rough logs cut on the site. "Took a look around to see what a camp was," wrote a journalist who visited a logging site on Wood Lake in 1855. "Found it to be about 25 feet square with a roof running almost to the ground. The gables were built up with logs, and no windows. A door opened into the domicile and was secured with a wooden latch." The bunks were aligned under the low hanging eves of the shanty, with the deacon's seat at the foot of each bed. "This is a seat running on both sides of the fire from one end of the camp to the other." In the center of the camp was a great open hearth while "on the roof was a chimney, and the smoke receded from the center to the cavity above without the aid of a back wall." Some of these camps were built without the aid of a single nail, from the materials available on the site. There was no illusion of building for the future, after a winter, or at most two, the buildings were abandoned. Remarkably, only a handful of actual logging camps sites have been identified within the Riverway. In many places archeologists have discovered the outlines of buildings from the mid to late nineteenth century but positive identification is difficult. One possible logging camp sites was identified on the Wisconsin side of the river near the site of Nevers Dam. Until further studies are made it will remain unclear if this site was actually a camp where lumberjacks cut timber or if it was associated with driving logs on the St. Croix. The physical remains found on the southeast bank of the Namekagon River in Sawyer County (T42N, R8W, Sec. 21) are more clearly associated with an early lumber camp. The site consists of the outline of four structures and a depression that likely was the site of a root cellar. Artifacts found at the site included clay pipes and portions of kerosene lamps. Archeologists dated the site as from 1850-1900. According to local tradition the site was known as Doran's Crossing and Lumber Camp. [14]

The biggest challenge to the early lumbermen was supplying their camps. An advance party would be sent up river in the late autumn, usually via a bateau or some other river craft. They would build the shanty and bring in a store of preliminary supplies. Later after the snow fell overland transportation to the camps became possible. Lumbermen maintained a large warehouse in Taylor's Falls that would be stocked by steamboat deliveries during the fall and would serve as the starting place for winter supply sleds. Platted in 1851, the village of Taylors Falls was an important supply center for the logging camps because it stood at the head of steam navigation on the St. Croix. The town's merchants had to literally carve their town out of the trap rock at the foot of the falls of the St. Croix River. Taylors Falls was also a useful supply center because of its locations on the Point Douglas-Superior Military Road. Completed in 1858, this road served loggers by providing partial access to the pineries along the Snake River with tote roads blazed by the lumberjacks branching out from it and leading deep into the forest to the camps. Crude shelters for man and beast were set-up at several spots along the road to provide a safe overnight site for the supply sleds. [15]

An important stopping place on the Namekagon River was the hamlet of Veazie. Beginning in the 1860s it was a depot for camp supplies and a shelter for teamsters. Located on the river between Trego and Earl, Wisconsin, Veazie was given the name Trout Brook when a post office was established there in 1881. That name did not stick. Everyone called the place Veazie, after William Veazie, the Marine lumberman who built the first structures there. But after the logging camps exhausted the good pine near the Namekagon, they had to be established deeper in the interior and Veazie ceased to be a convenient stopping place and the depot was abandoned. In 1886, William Veazie himself left the St. Croix valley for the thicker forests of Washington State. [16]

Because of the rough track over which the supply sleds had to traverse, the goods they brought were only the bare necessities. These were purchased at a very dear price. The lack of agricultural development along the river in the 1840s and 1850s meant that most of the food had to come from downriver, often from as far away as Illinois or St. Louis. During his first year on the St. Croix, Franklin Steele had to pay four dollars for a barrel of beans, two dollars for a gallon of molasses, eleven dollars for a barrel of flour, and a whopping forty dollars for a single barrel of pork. Those lumbermen who did not send buyers downstream for supplies found it difficult to secure edibles at any price. In 1846 Stephen B. Hanks, a cousin of Abraham Lincoln, purchased supplies for a Stillwater lumberman. In St. Louis he bought several tons of beans, hominy, eggs, and dried apples. On his way up river he stopped in Bellevue, Illinois and secured fifty barrels of flour and several more of whiskey. This still left him short of a critical item–pork. [17]

Pork and beans was fuel that powered the pioneer logger. "Pork and beans are all the go," recorded the visitor to a 1850s camp in the valley. The cook would prepare these in a dutch oven over an open fire in the shanty. "He baked his beans thus wise: a hole made in the earth floor near the fire, was partly filled with live coals and the oven set upon them. In time the lid would be removed and beans would be nicely baked." Stick-to-your-ribs staples such as pork and beans and potatoes, washed down with black tea dominated the menu at breakfast, lunch, and supper. A crew of fourteen men had no trouble devouring ten bushels of beans and six barrels of pork over a season. One lumberjack later joked that when the men awoke they would "tremble and start from the land of dreams to the land of pork and beans." [18]

The demand for local produce by the logging camps on the upper St. Croix provided an opportunity for the Chippewa. With the decline of the fur trade the St. Croix bands had expanded their involvement in agriculture and looked to hunting and gathering to provide new products with which to procure European-American goods. Camp cooks sometimes exchanged maple sugar; wild rice, cranberries, and venison for salted beef, pork, and flour. Yet, these exchanges did not take place on the St. Croix with the same frequency as in the nearby Rum River valley. An early lumberman on the Rum River reported, "I must say that the Indians are very friendly and accommodating in various ways." The eagerness of the Mille Lacs band to trade with lumbermen made that area, in the opinion of the St. Paul Minnesotan, "the most desirable point for lumbering that has yet been discovered in Minnesota." [19]

On the St. Croix relations between the Chippewa and the lumbermen were more strained. This may in part be the result of the persistence of unsavory whiskey traders among the Snake River and St. Croix bands. The St. Croix Chippewa appear to have had fewer surpluses to sell and there were occasional incidents where hungry Indians broke into storehouses or slaughtered lumbermen's oxen. Such disputes led to an 1855 encounter that left two loggers wounded following "outrages perpetrated by the Indians." In March of 1847, loggers turned out enmasse when Henry Rust, who operated a whiskey shack on the lower Snake River, was found shot to death. They buried him, then destroyed his whiskey and burned his trading post. The lumbermen resolved to prevent further such incidents by destroying the whiskey of three other traders in the area. Two Chippewa were charged with the murder and in one of the valley's first trials were found not guilty. The court blamed Rust for his own death since he facilitated the drunkenness that led to his shooting. [20]

A more serious clash occurred in 1864 when two Chippewa shot and killed Oliver Grove and Harry Knight near Pipe Lake, in Polk County, Wisconsin. The incident was a crime of opportunity motivated by a desire to rob the two lumbermen, who had been cruising for timberlands. The bodies of the murdered men were cut into pieces, weighed with rocks, and sunk to the bottom of the lake. After they went missing as many as three hundred loggers participated in a search of the forest. After several months a rumor circulated among the Chippewa that soldiers were on their way to investigate, if necessary, and punish the perpetrators. This led to an unofficial confirmation of the identity of the principle perpetrator. Lumberman James Bracklin, supported by his loggers, took it upon himself to seize the suspect. A tense standoff followed in which Bracklin tried to prevent several hundred Chippewa from retaking the man. Fortunately, there was no further violence. The incident ended when the accused Chippewa shot himself, "fearing the vengeance of the white man." Several hundred dollars and the personal effects of the victims were recovered. [21]

While whites emphasized the murder and robbery aspects of this case, there were other reasons for tension between the lumbermen and the Chippewa. The dams built by loggers to ensure the transport of their winter's cut played havoc with the Indian's use of the river. Large amounts of logs sent down stream on a head of water damaged canoes, swept away fish weirs, and made river travel hazardous. In 1851, Indian Agent John S. Watrous experienced this first hand when a dam at the foot of Cross Lake was opened and his canoe was wrecked and all of his supplies were lost. The prolonged standoff over the fate of the Indian suspected of murder in 1864 was in stark contrast to the 1848 murder of Henry Rust where the two Chippewa suspects turned themselves in for trial. The 1864 standoff occurred at a time when the Chippewa were protesting a dam built on Rice Lake that had raised the water level and drowned the all important wild rice crop. Not only did lumberman James Bracklin refuse to do anything to modify the Rice Lake dam, he set to work that summer on a second dam at Chetek Lake knowing full well this would destroy more Chippewa rice beds. It required considerable restraint on the Chippewa's part for the incident to conclude with only the death of the one suspect. [22]

The potential for conflict with loggers and the abuses of the whiskey traders inclined the United States government to remove the St. Croix bands from their homeland. The Chippewa objected citing the provision of the 1837 Treaty that allowed them to hunt and gather upon the sold lands until they were needed for settlement. "We agreed to sell on the condition that we should not be disturbed for many years," they petitioned the President. After a poorly coordinated attempt to remove the Chippewa in 1851 the government abandoned that policy. Lumbermen and the Chippewa continued to share the river. Unlike in the Mille Lacs region, where lumbermen provided financial compensation to the Chippewa for the flooding of their rice marshes, the St. Croix and its tributaries were manipulated to suit the lumbermen with little concern for the interest of the Chippewas. [23]

Most of the loggers operating in the valley during the mid-nineteenth century had little contact with the Chippewa. They did not journey into the upper river valley until late November or early December, a time when most of the Chippewa had repaired to their family hunting grounds. Men from Maine, with a sprinkling of Germans, Canadians, and Swedes dominated the crews. They were mostly young men, in their twenties or early thirties. "Boys they were," recalled one pioneer from that period, "willing to toil at the most strenuous labor if it brought but a reasonable promise of return." During this pioneer era in logging only a fine line separated the crew from the boss. "Most of the early lumbermen," another early settler recalled, "were young men of limited means who came to better their condition. A man with capital enough to buy a couple of yoke of oxen could get credit for supplies and hire a crew of men and cut a million feet of logs or more in a winter." The result of such opportunity was hundreds of small camps operating independent of one another. The small size of the crews often made them close-knit and very efficient. In 1855, the foreman of a crew on the Groundhouse River, a tributary of the Snake River, wrote back to his hometown newspaper in Maine boasting that his men had put up between two and three million logs in 117 days, a record he challenged any of the eastern crews to match. Men looked out for each other in the conduct of their highly dangerous work and socialized in the crowded quarters after dark. [24]

Card playing, pipe smoking, and occasionally signing were recreations common in the shanty house after meals. "Some sang songs," recorded a journalist visiting a camp in 1855, "and it is but justice to them to say that we were agreeably disappointed in finding some fine singers there. The songs are principally of a love nature and usually to the better feelings of mankind and sympathy." Nils Haugen, a Norwegian immigrant, recalled the camp in which he worked during the winter of 1866-67 as "primitive" but the crew was "clean, and not a cootie or other bug was discovered all winter." He spent his winter evenings reading from the boss's collection of Sir Walter Scott novels. The linkage of lumberjacks and literature was not entirely exceptional. James Johnston, a Canadian immigrant who spent the winter of 1856-57 logging on a branch of the Snake River, was delighted to find in camp a copy of Ivanhoe and a collection of Captain Maryatt novels. Later he "made it a custom to have some book in camp and sometimes at the request of the boys would read aloud while the crew would listen." On one improbable occasion he was reading Jane Eyre to the men who sat in rapt attention as the young orphan Jane was humiliated by one of her teachers. One of the men, who regarded Jane Eyre as "one of God's little lambs," shouted out a curse "from the very bottom on his soul" at the insult to the heroine. The rest of the crew then "broke out in cheers and laughter." [25]

Figure 14. A lumber raft from Harper's Magazine, March, 1860. Rafts assembled on the St. Croix for transport down the Mississippi wre often much larger.