Belmont Massacre -
1862
So early as June
reports reached the Belmont settlers that there
was likely to be trouble with the Indians. On only
one occasion, however, did the Indians who
sometimes visited the settlement show any signs of
hostility; the exception was the wanton killing of
an ox belonging to Ole Larson, of Christiania
township.
Finally the rumors of an outbreak were
confirmed. A German fleeing from New Ulm brought
news of the attack on that village, which had
occurred only a few days before. He could not
impart the details of the tragedy on account of
his ability to speak English, but the settlers
could understand enough to know that New Ulm had
had trouble with the Indians. The Belmont
settlers seem to have been undecided what course
to pursue. Nights they gathered at the different
cabins that seemed to offer better protection or
where the firearms and ammunition were kept, their
fears were not so great during the day time, and
generally they returned to their homes in the
morning to attend to the farm work. A decision was
finally reached that stockades should be built,
and Monday August 25, was the date set for the
settlers to get together and select the sites. On
the day before this was to have been done the
attack was made and there had been enacted the
drama of brutal and beastly bloodshed which
depopulated the county.
It was a few days after
the attack on the Lower Agency and four days after
the massacre at Lake Shetek, in Murray county,
that about fifty of White Lodge’s band of Sisseton
Sioux proceeded down the Des Moines river,
apparently to repeat the performance of Inkpaduta
of five years before. They proceeded as far south
as Englebret Olson Slaabaken’s home on the
southeast quarter of section 22 Belmont township
without making their presence known. Then instead
of proceeding down the river, they began the
at-tack, and retraced their steps up river. The attack
began at 10:00 forenoon. The route
of the Indians into Jackson county Is not known
definitely but it is supposed they came by way of
Fish Lake. Lower’s lake and Independence lake and
they followed the river bank. It Is almost certain
they would have been discovered before reaching
the point where the attack was
begun.
So far as is known Lars
Olson was the only man in the settlement who saw
the Indians in a body consequently he was the only
competent authority as to the number
participating. He
estimated the number at fifty. Mr. Olson, who
was an old man living on section 30 Christiania
had been down into Belmont township on Sunday, and
while returning, when a little north of the Ole
Fohre home, he came upon the party of savages in
the woods, before the attack was begun. He was not
seen by the Indians, nor were the Indians
recognized as such by him. He supposed they were
soldiers, come to the defense of the settlers, and
was accordingly thankful for their arrival.
Mr.
Olson continued his journey home, and
neither he nor his wife saw the Indians afterward,
although the red men must have passed close to his
house.
The attack was begun at
ten o’clock in the
forenoon.
The attacking savages
divided into small parties and, going swiftly from
cabin to cabin, they took the inmates by surprise
and encountered no resistance except in one
instance. The men, women and children were shot
down without warning and without an effort to save
their lives except in
flight.
At the Ole Fohre home,
on the northwest quarter of section 22, Belmont,
several families had gathered, namely, Johannes
Axe and wife, Lars G. Jornevik and wife, Mrs.
Carrie Fohre, the wife of Ole Fohre, and her
twelve year old son, Ole Olson Fohre, and eight
small children belonging to the several families.
Here the massacre was begun at ten o’clock in the
forenoon. When the Indians were seen approaching,
Mrs. Fohre, Mrs. Jornevik and Mrs. Axe with the
eight small children went into the cellar, the
trap door was closed, and twelve year old Ole
Olson Fohre piled clothing, boxes and trunks over
it. The others remained upstairs. They
barricaded the doors, but being without arms,
their efforts to guard the cabin were
futile.
The Indians approached
the cabin from the east and burst in the east
door. All who were in the cabin, except the
boy.
were instantly killed, and no one knows the
particulars of their taking off. Johannes Axe was
evidently pounded to death, as no bullet wounds
were found on his body. Lars Furnes and Lars G.
Jornevik were
shot.
Lars G. Jornevik was a
man with a violent temper and in some particulars
lacking In Judgment. When he was advised, some
days previous, that It was possible the Indians
would come and to prepare himself. Mr. Jornevik
flew into a violent rage, stating that he was
ready for the Indians any time they wanted to
come. He filled his pockets with stones and
considered himself amply protected. When his dead
body was found, his pockets were filled with the
missiles which he had not opportunity to
use.
When the east door was
broken down and the Indians entered the cabin, Ole
Olson Fohre, the boy, who was standing guard at
the west door, bolted out that door and ran down a
trail that led to a spring. Hearing the door slam,
the boy looked over his shoulder while running and
saw an Indian taking aim at him. With
presence of mind he made a quick jump to the left
into the brush. He dodged Just in time to save his
life, for the bullet struck him, tearing away the
tip of his right elbow. Ole hid in the brush, and
the savage who had fired followed and searched for
him. When the Indian was only about three feet
from the boy’s hiding place, he gave up the search
and returned to his companions at the cabin—the
Indian’s love of “firewater” saved a life. One of
the first acts of the savages was to search the
wagons, which had been brought from Mankato the
day before, loaded with provisions, and just as
the Indian was about to discover the boy in the
brush, the others at the cabin found a jug of
whisky in one of the wagons and raised such a
shout of joy that the one after the boy gave up
the hunt and hastily rejoined the others. Safe
from immediate pursuit, Ole ran through the timber
down the river to find a place of refuge and to
notify the other settlers of their danger. About the
time these events were taking place at the Fohre
home, Ole Fohre, the owner of the cabin, was found
by the Indians in the timber, between his house
and the river, and killed. The place of this
murder was on section
21.
The anxiety of the
fugitives in the cellar while the murders were
being committed over their heads cannot be
described; so still were they scarcely
breathed.
Their fears were made worse by the crying
of the two year old babe of Mrs. Lars G. Jornevik.
That lady, with heroism seldom equaled in the
annals of Indian warfare, knowing that the painted
demons surrounded the house, deliberately came out
of the cellar to accept her fate. To the
other ladies she said: “I understand my time has
come I must go up again. Your children are smaller
than mine and they keep quiet if I stay here the
Indians will find us. She came up from the cellar
with the child and was killed, her body being
horribly mutilated.
Fortunately the Indians were busy with
their whisky and did not learn from whence Mrs.
Jornevik had come. The child
was unharmed, but soon it began to cry. The door
of the cabin had been left open, and the baby was
frightened at the hogs, which came into the
cabin.
One of the ladies came up, found the child
in its mother’s blood, and took it back into the
cellar and cared for it. Then it
was learned for the first time that the savages
had left the vicinity. For the time being let us
leave the two women and the children in the
cellar, debating the course of action to pursue,
while we consider events that were taking place in
others parts of the
settlement.
Close to the Fohre
home, Mikkel Olson Slaabaken was killed and his
nephew, Anders Olson Slaabaken, the thirteen year
old son of Englebret Olson Slaabaken, was
seriously wounded and left for dead. The
Englebret Olson Slaabaken home was half a mile
south of the Fohre home, and also on section 22.
About the time the attack was begun, Mikkel and
his nephew started from that place for the home of
Ole Fohre. They heard the firing but thought
nothing of it, as they supposed the neighbors were
shooting blackbirds. They soon,
became aware of the seriousness of their
condition. The Indians were stationed along the
trails in the timber, and the unfortunate white
men were soon discovered. The savages fired and
the white men set out on a run through the timber.
Mikkel was hit at the first fire and exclaimed: “I
am wounded and cannot on any farther.” Immediately
he was hit again and killed instantly. A bullet
from the first volley passed through the hat brim
of the boy, and a moment later another one
inflicted a slight scalp wound, plowing a furrow
through his hair. Anders was not stunned or badly
hurt, but he was so scared that he fell and lay
with his face to the ground. The savages came up
and one of them plunged a knife into his left side
and, as the victim described the event in after
years, “twisted it around before he pulled it
out.” The Indians left him for dead and Anders
lost consciousness. When he
came to his senses he crawled to his father’s
home. There was no one there; the Indians had
visited the place and taken everything in the line
of provisions. The
wounded boy made his way to the log stable and hid
in a manger, where he remained three days with
nothing to eat except two raw eggs. When the cows
came home at night he tried to milk them, but they
would not allow him to approach them on account of
the blood on his clothes. From the time of the
attack on Sunday until Wednesday Anders remained
in the manger then he was found by a rescuing
party and taken to Estherville, where he slowly
recovered from his
wounds.
From the Fohre house
the Indians went to the home of Englebret Olson
Slaabaken.
a half mile south, but all the whites
except the two mentioned, had gone to church.
Here, after ransacking the premises, the Indians
gave up the idea of going farther south, and began
their trip to the north. Had it not been for the
fact that many of the settlers were away from
home, gathered at the Rainlo house and other
places in religious worship, there is every reason
to believe that the massacre would have been much
more terrible than it was. When the murdering
savages came to the house of Englebret Olson
Slaabaken and the houses of others who were at the
meeting and found them unoccupied, they feared the
settlement was aroused and that the people had
gathered at some place to put up a fight. As an
Indian detests a fair fight more than anything
else, they decided not to go farther south, but to
begin their bloody work and make their escape
before it became necessary to
fight.
On their trip north
(probably), at a point a few rods west of the Ole
Fohre home, the Indians came upon Knud Midstad and
his wife Breta and murdered them. These
unfortunate people lived on the west side of the
river, and were on their way to Ole Fohre’s when
they were ambushed on the
trail.
To return to the women
and children in the cellar of the Ole Fohre cabin.
When it was learned that the Indians had left the
immediate vicinity, Mrs. Fohre and Mrs. Axe
decided to seek another place of concealment.
Accordingly they came forth with the children and
hid in a cornfield. The
savages, returning from their visit to the
Slaabaken home below, again came to the place of
the original attack and when they found that
refugees had been hidden in the cellar at the time
of the first attack but had now escaped, they were
very angry and spent considerable time searching
for them, after the murderers had gone the second
time the women started out with the children for
the south and spent Sunday night in a blacksmith
shop on the Englebret Olson Slaabaken farm. The
next morning, not having had anything to eat since
the attack, they started out again for the south
in an endeavor to find a place of safety. They had
proceeded to a point southwest of the present site
of Jackson when they met Knud Langeland returning
from Spirit Lake, and were pointed to a place of
safety.
After the second visit
to the house of Ole Fohre, the Indians (at least a
part of them) crossed the river to the west side,
but did not encounter any whites and returned.
Then the band proceeded up the river to the home
of Knud Langeland, where he resided with his
family on the southeast quarter of section 16.
There no warning had been received, and five human
lives were taken. Mr. Langeland was down by the
river rounding up his cattle at the time of the
attack and so escaped. At the
house his wife, Anna Langeland, and four children,
Anna, Aagaata, Nicolai John and Knud Langeland,
were murdered. Martha Langeland escaped the fate
of the rest of the family by hiding in a
cornfield. Two of these children who were killed
were hid in the cornfield at the time of the
attack, but when they saw the Indians attack their
mother they rushed out to her assistance and were
murdered, Mr. Langeland went to the house after
the Indians departed and viewed the terrible work
of the monsters. He thought he witnessed signs of
life in two of his children. Gathering them in his
arms, he carried them all the way to Spirit
Lake.
One of the children, died soon after his
arrival the other
recovered.
From the Langeland home
the Sioux proceeded on their way up the river to
the homes of Ole Estenson and Ole Torgenson, where
they arrived in the evening about dark. These men
were the only ones in the settlement to make any
effort to save their lives except in flight, they
had the old Berserker blood in them and put up a
good fight. Messrs. Estenson and Torgenson
barricaded one of their houses situated on the
southeast quarter of section 31, Christiania
township and made other preparations to defend
their families. They had
guns and ammunition and the knowledge and
disposition to use them. When the
Indians appeared, they called all the white men to
come to them. Instead, the white men ordered their
families to lie down and returned the fire of the
enemy so successfully that they fought off every
attack. Volley after volley was poured into the
house, and the bullets penetrated the walls and
roof, knocking down several articles that were on
shelves.
The white men loaded their army muskets
with slugs, and, as it had become dark, they fired
only at the flashes of the Indians guns. No one
within the cabin was hit, and the attackers
finally departed. The
defenders did not know whether or not they hit any
of the savages, and had no evidence that they
did.
After their repulse the
Indians went down the river and made camp Sunday
night on the southeast quarter of section 8,
Belmont township. The next day they proceeded up
the river on the east side without renewing
hostilities. The Des Moines river was crossed, and
Monday night camp was made on the southwest
quarter of section 24, Delafield township. Thence the
Indians continued their journey to the north and
out of Jackson
county.
The Belmont massacre was
over. Thirteen innocent people had been murdered
in cold blood. Several of the bodies were
mutilated, but no scalps were taken. None of
the cabins and no property was burned. The savages
carried away much property, and some of this was
abandoned or destroyed on the march out of the
country, otherwise there was no destruction of
property.
Killed
Johannas
Axe
Lars
Furnes
Lars G,
Jornevik
Mrs. Lars C.
Jornevik
Ole
Fohre
Mikkel Olson
Slaabaken
Knud
Midstad
Breta
Midstad
Mrs. Anna
Langeland
Anna Langeland
(child)
Aapaata
Langeland
Nicolai John
Langeland
Knud
Langeland
Wounded
Ole Olson
Fohre
Anders E. Olson
Slaabaken
Langeland
(girl)
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Memorial in
Jackson that was erected in 1909 In Memory of
those of the Belmont Massacre
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