Taming Wild Horse

Since there were no trees on the tree claim to use for lumber the family set about to construct a sod house. Sod buildings were constructed by using sod for bricks. When the pond dried up in the summer, Adam and his sons used a plow to turn up strips of sod eight to ten inches wide and about three inches deep. Around the pond grasses would form a sod, so at the right time of the year blocks could be cut from it.

For the sod houses the family cut strips about 14 to 18 inches long and laid them like bricks, with no mortar or anything else needed. There weren't that many sod houses, but the Hochstetler's was one of the larger ones around.

Ours was one of the few sod houses. It was warm in the winter, cool in the summer. We even had a cellar under it, and a second story. I always wanted to go back to see it.

When all the children were grown, during World War II, Lucille was living in Wichita. She wanted to go to western Kansas to visit some friends. She wanted a man to go with them. I took the opportunity to go back to Colorado.

I got off the bus in Kit Carson and located one of our neighbors. I also learned that a son of a rancher I knew in Kansas lived across the street from the lady.

I went to talk to him and he wanted to take me out to the ranch. When we got there there were not any buildings left, not even a pile of sod. No timber, just one stick.

When we moved to Colorado we had a separator for the cream. The bowl of that cream separator was setting there, with one stick and a snake (not left from when we lived there) that had moved in.  

They also built a foursquare barn out of the sod. [Foursquare refers to the four large rooms set inside the large square perimeter. They were often very large and used primarily in cold climates where a great deal of fodder for livestock needed to be stored for the severe winters.] The barn had to be built large enough to house not only the milk cows but the calves and horses as well.

Adam had rented a little house about three miles from the claim to live in until they were able to build their sod house. When he had purchased the land the previous fall Adam and contracted with a man who had machinery and could put out a small crop of wheat.

In the spring, when the ground was rich and fertile the crop looked good as it came up. Adam anticipated a good crop of wheat the first summer.

But when summer arrived there was not even enough grain to plant another crop. The lack of rain had taken its toll, so Adam took some of the savings and purchased enough new grain to plan a full crop.

Eastern Colorado turned out to be a difficult place to earn a living. Sometimes the crop would be ruined when a rancher would cut the wire fence down and let the range cattle eat the plants to the ground. Even the feed crops were not immune from difficulties. Russian thistles and tumbleweed would get in the crops and were impossible to remove and made the hay worthless. It became incredibly difficult to make a living as the years passed and the savings dwindled.

Moving to Colorado

After a number of years Uncle Joe and his family and our family were the only ones left in Brown County.

One winter Father went west to Oregon to visit his brother Daniel and family and came back by way of Colorado to visit a settlement of Amish northeast of Wild Horse, in eastern Colorado near Kit Carson, Colorado where the Union Pacific railroad goes through the two towns. [Wild Horse is almost exactly 100 miles directly east of Colorado Springs.]

While Father was there he had a notion he wanted to settle there, too. He got in touch with a land agent and traded his Indiana land for 320 acres of barren prairie land: no trees, shrubbery, nothing like that. Just barren buffalo grass and loco weed.

Loco weed comes up in the spring. Sometimes, because there is no grass around, stock (especially cattle and young calves eating away from their mother) start nibbling that and go crazy. They'll quit eating anything else because they just want that. Like a drunk. They get thin and finally die.

After Father came home from trading the land he told us we were going to move, that we'd have a sale in the fall. (This was in the spring of the year.)

The next spring Father chartered a boxcar to take our furniture and a couple of heifer calves from Edinburg (12 miles north of we lived) to Colorado. The children all came home for that. When the boxcar was loaded, they fixed a place to eat in the boxcar, on either side of the doors. On one side were the stock and a few hens, and on the other was the furniture and the living area they had fixed.

Amasa and Annan went in the car and took the dog with them. It was a wonderful, wonderful cow dog. He was a dog we could send out in the evening to get the cows in the woods or pasture. He was so good we wanted him in Colorado.

Sometimes they'd stop the car and get out to get water for the stock while the steam engine stopped
for water of its own.

They wanted to take the opportunity for the dog to have a little run and do his dirty work while the train was stopped. Usually there was no trouble getting the dog back on, but one time the train started more quickly than expected.

Amasa and Annan called and called for the dog but couldn't get him. They didn't want to be left, so they stayed in the boxcar. The dog never did show up.

If anybody ever missed a dog, I missed that dog in Colorado. He saved me from having to go after the cattle. It would have been easier in Colorado for him, with no woods or hills.

The rest of the family went by passenger train to Colorado while the boxcar took four or five days.

Father made arrangements with some of the Amish men who were already living there to go with their boxwagons to Kit Carson to get the furniture, heifers, and Amasa and Annan.

We were standing there when the train came in. The colored porter and the conductor were standing there on the platform. One of them said to the other, seeing us in Amish clothes, "see them barn doors," referring to the Amish pants we wore with buttons on both sides in front. I didn't know what they were referring to, but my brother did.

We rented a little house in Colorado about three miles from the half section (320 acres) of land. Father had a chance to get a tree claim. I don't know why they called it a tree claim - there were no trees on it! You'd have to live on it a certain length of time and it would be yours. It was a good piece of land, with a pond on it when it rained. Sometimes it'd get so warm and lacking in rain in the summer that the pond would go dry. In the spring of the year, after the snow melted, it'd be a pretty good sized pond. Enough for the cattle to drink, and sometimes there'd be enough water that the ducks traveling north or south would stop. There were no fish in it, because it'd dry up in the summer time.

[Note: A tree claim granted 160 acres with the agreement that at least 2700 trees per acre would be planted on ten acres of the claim within four years of filing the claim, and that at least 675 of those trees per acre would be thriving after eight years.]

Life in Colorado

Originally Amasa and Annan and Eli (whose mother had died) and his father were there.

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My brother Annan and I tried to get some money once. In our family the children didn't receive an allowance, and any money we earned was needed to support the family.

It was winter and a bad storm had passed through with a lot of snow.

David tells the story:

The range cattle, which are supposed to feed on the prairie, couldn't get anything to eat. As you rode along you would see cattle in the fields who had starved to death. If someone saw a dead steer they would skin the cattle, bring the hide in to the bank in Kit Carson, and get 75 cents for each hide they presented. The bank would look for the brand to see whose cattle it was, since several herds would graze at once on the free range.
Annan and I knew where there was a dead critter near a deserted house and the barn where I had stashed the pair of trousers I had sliced up. Annan and I thought that maybe if we skinned the critter at night, and not on Dad's time, we could have the money to divide between us.
In order for us to get it we took the hide over to a neighbor's that had also skinned some range cattle, for him to take with his hides to the bank. When he went in the inspector wasn't in so he just left the hides. The inspector would keep track and whenever someone came in from our neighborhood the inspector would give him everyone's money.
Sooner or later someone came back from town and gave Dad all the money that was meant for our family, including the 75 cents. Not quite understanding why the money was there, but knowing that we must have arranged for the skin to be taken in, Father accepted the money.
The problem was that the family needed the money so badly that Father just used it to buy necessitites for the home, and we never did see the money.

Amish people didn't give money to spend. If you worked for a neighbor the father would get the money. When the child was grown the father would set up the children. [Usually with 40 acres and a team of horses and some cattle.] 

Blizzards would sometimes come quickly and without enough warning to adequately prepare.

Once, a shepherd was in the process of moving the sheep from one corral to another. Before he got to the main corral the blizzard had hit. He noticed a smaller corral that the sheep would fit into and put them there. The corral contained just a fence and a shepherd's shack. But that would do until the storm passed over.

He herded all the sheep into the corral and headed into the shack. Luckily the shack had a stove in it which used cow chips for fuel. The shepherd settled down for the night and waited for the storm to end.

The next morning when he walked outside he realized that the 700 sheep, in order to keep warm, had huddled together. As the snow piled higher and higher they moved closer and closer together to stay warm. Eventually the snow completely covered them. It wasn't long until the snow kept out not only the cold but the air as well. The 700 sheep had smothered to death in the snow trying to keep from freezing to death.

Adam and his sons went over to see the sight where the sheep had died. David realized as never before how difficult it was to make a living in Colorado.

One winter after one of the blizzards the family couldn't find some of their cows. They went looking for them and finally located them.

The storm had traveled south and the cows had followed the storm. They had crossed over fences which were covered high with snow drifts. It took several days to find them, which meant they had not been milked in that time.

By the time they were found their udders were frozen. "The lower parts were black and blue, and the tits had icicles on them." David was given the task of milking them and he soon discovered their udders were so frozen no milk would come out.

"I looked around for a solution and found a chicken feather. I took the feather, dug a hole through the shaft with baling wire to hollow it out, and forced the feather through the lower part of the tits. It was quite painful for the cows, but not as painful as it would have been had the milk not been removed."

In the spring of the second year we were in Colorado Eli and his father, Amasa and Annan went to western Kansas. They went by horseback and settled near Ellis, Kansas.
Later Amasa and Annan went on to Hutchinson, and found work there. And by the time I had gone to Hutchinson Eli's father and stepmother had also moved to Hutchinson. They would live there the rest of their lives.

Father, Sister and I were all that were left in Colorado.

Childhood

The family moved to Brown County, Indiana, but not intact. With mother Catherine gone decisions had to be made on what to do with seven children. Lena, Amasa, and Lydia were old enough to stay with their father and help out, but the others would have to be raised by other family members.

The youngest, baby David, would go to live with Grandfather and Grandmother Hochstetler "until I was able to help father, at about age nine or ten. "Grandpa and Grandma gave me a wonderful home, treated me like their own child."



Annan and Fanny would be taken by an aunt and uncle who lived in Ohio, a substantial distance by buggy. David would have ample opportunity to spend time with his oldest siblings and his father, but never again would all the children live together.

David remembered a happy childhood; he had cousins nearby to play with, sons of his Uncles Levi, Sam, and Joe. While they didn't have "boughten" toys they had much to play with. David's grandfather once made David a sled, for instance.

One of his closest cousin friends was Elmer. "Elmer had a sharp pocket knife that he was always using to carve with. He once carved sticks into play horses," David shared. "When I tried to carve a horse I realized Elmer was much better at carving than I was." As Elmer grew his talent with wood grew. He eventually made his own wagon, and as an adult was a carpenter.

"I went to school in Brown County and had different winters and different teachers there. I remember one of the last ones was Charles Campbell."

"When we were old enough we went back to Father. I, being the youngest, was the last to return to the home." The home had one large room downstairs, one upstairs. "It had been a storebuilding. There was enough room upstairs for all of us children. Me being the youngest, I got to sleep with Dad downstairs. We lived in that house a long time."

A child younger than eight or nine would carry drinking water to the field, collect eggs, and do other chores. In the summer we'd wrap gunny sacks around the jugs to keep them cold on the way to the field.

I started to help milk the cows when I was too small to hold the bucket betwen my legs. I would hold a cup in one hand and milk the cow with the other, then empty the cup into the bucket. 

One day David was driving the cows up a grade in one of the pastures, and he noticed two cows, a large red and white one and a little black one. They were walking next to each other, and he noticed their tails swishing back and forth. "I'll just tie those two cows' tails together," he thought. He assumed they would "push out their bodies in the back parts," but instead they began to walk away from each other. Since the knot had been tied in a "hard knot" the harder the cows pulled away from each other the tighter the knot got. Something had to give. Since one cow was bigger than the other, one cow went back to the barn with two tails and the other didn't have one.

"It was the spring of the year and the flies were really bad, eating on the cows, including those bad flies with the short stickers, that suck the blood out.

"That evening my sisters Fanny and Lydia and I were milking the cows. We had so many cows that it took three of us to milk them. It was after dark, and I heard one of my sisters say to the other 'Something's happened to this cow's tail. She don't swish too good.'

"I kept myself real still and didn't say a word. And I didn't say anything to anybody until after we had left Indiana." The family remained in Indiana fro another six years.

"Eventually Grandpa and Grand moved to the north part of Indiana, so Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe moved to Brown County and Uncle Levi moved to Howard County, Indiana."

Catching Rabbits and Upsetting Father

David (my grandfather) tells the story about making a friend shortly after moving to Colorado:


Soon after we moved there I heard that there was a boy about my age who was sick. I rode over to their house on our black horse to see him. He must have had typhoid fever, because he wasn't supposed to have anything to drink.

That was the first time I met Eli Hostetler and his family. They lived about two miles from where we lived. From that first visit on we were good friends until his death.

Christmas day when I was 16 I decided to get my hair cut and didn't want my father to cut it straight across the back. The style among some of the Amish boys at that time was to have it cut more tapered in the back. I wanted to have it like the other Amish boys had their hair cut, so I thought "I'll go over to Eli's house and have him cut it."

When I got about halfway there, where a man by the name of Dave Cuff lived, I saw Eli. He had come over to Dave's place for Christmas day and had brought his shotgun with him. Dave and Eli were in the field shooting rabbits.

The snow was deep, but it was a nice day. I had my dog with me. This dog was a long-legged black dog with a natural bobbed tail. He was a good rabbit dog. WIth the black dog and black horse I stood out against the snow.

I saw Eli and Dave in the field, not too far from the farm buildings, so I went over to where they were and told them that I was on my way over to have Eli cut my hair. They wanted to continue to shoot rabbits so I joined them.

I noticed a jack-rabbit sitting there in the snow. I got off Old Prince, my horse (he would stay wherever I'd leave him) and I easied over there where the rabbit was sitting in the snow almost all covered to where I could see only his head.

I stayed back where he couldn't see me till I got right close to him and I grabbed for him through the snow and got him. That's one rabbit I caught by hand.

The dog was busy catching rabbits, too. He would catch them and wait for me to come over and pick them up. Between the dog and me we'd caubght five Jack-rabbits and one cottontail. And we didn't use a gun to catch them.


After Eli and Dave had gotten all the rabbits they wanted and were ready to go to the house they told me to go with them. I said I wanted to go to Eli's house and get my hair cut. Mr. Cuff said "You can get it done at my house. We can take care of that." I figured we'd probably have some dinner, too, and wasn't sure, but his insisted so I went in.

After dinner he went and got the scissors. He said "Let me cut your hair."

"No, I want Eli to cut it."

No, let him cut it," Eli insisted.

Finally I just gave in and he started cutting. I could tell he wasn't cutting like Eli would have cut it. After he'd cut quite a while I reached up there to feel and Boy! That was short hair. Boy-Oh-Boy!

"What'll I do now?" I thought. I couldn't let my father see my hair cut like that or I'd really be in trouble. It was much too short.

I tried to keep my father from finding out by not letting him get in a position to see the back of my head. I'd leave the cap on as much as possible. Before meals he'd make me wash my hands and face and I'd still have my cap on. I'd wait until Father was already at the table before I'd come to sit down to eat.

It worked for one or two days. Finally, at one meal he wanted me to sit down first and I didn't want to sit down, but I didn't say anything. He finally said it strong enough that I figured I'd better go sit down.

"Who cut your hair?"

"Dave Cuff."

"It's the first time.... Why, you look like a babboon! It's the first time it's ever been cut like that and it better be the last time. You can't even get ahold of it!" he said as he ran his hand through it.

More than one way to skin a cat

The boys used to sleep upstairs, the girls downstairs. After the older boys had grown and left home I was the only one left upstairs. Father had one of the downstairs bedrooms, and Fanny had the other.

We were a sleepy-headed family. After a hard day's work we were trying to read and keep from going to sleep. Fanny eventually went to bed, leaving father and I nodding to sleep. Finally Dad woke up, realized it was time to go to bed, and tried to get me awake. He thought he had me awake, and I started up the steps

I was trying to get my pants off on the way upstairs. I wasn't awake enough to know what I was doing, and the pant didn't want to come off. So I reached into my pocket and got my pocket knife, opened it up, and started to cut my pants legs. I split them wide open, from the bottom up. I got one of them that way and started up on the other one, when I woke up enough to know what I was doing.

That was a pretty good pair of trousers, and I knew I'd done the wrong thing and didn't want my sister, who had made the trousers, to know what I'd done, because she'd tell Dad and I'd get a scolding.

I didn't like scoldings, because sometimes it'd be more than just a scolding, if you know what I mean.

I managed to get that pair of pants out of the upstairs somehow without anyone knowing. I carried them off better than a mile from where we lived and put them in the attic of the little house where we first lived.

Introduction

Over 30 years ago my father sat down with my grandfather and had him recount some of the stories from his long life. My grandfather David was in his eighties, and living in Nevada, Missouri. (Pronounced Neh-VAY-da.) The stories were captured on long-gone cassette tapes and I had transcribed them onto legal-length yellow paper.

After Dovie and I were married and I was going through The Salvation Army's School for Officers Training in Chicago I took a creative writing class and Dovie agreed to transcribe my handwritten notes in some more chronological fashion into more legible typed notes. I used these notes (unsuccessfully - after multiple revisions I never got the viewpoint consistent) for the beginning of telling Papa's Story more completely. I never got beyond the following, but this blog will at least transcribe his stories another time for more to read.

Here is the ill-fated attempt at creative writing, combined with Grandpa's actual words (in quotes), and other research. This week's post:


My grandfather David was born David Adam Hochstetler on August 13, 1895 in Fayette County, Illinois, near Vandalia, the youngest of eight children. His mother Catherine, who was 35, and his father Adam, who was 33, had been married for almost ten years. Eight children in ten years was not unusual for Old Order Amish families; Adam was the oldest of twelve children.

Old Order Amish is a branch of the Swiss Anabaptist movement that fled Europe because of persecution. They settled primarily in Pennsylvania, but  had (and still have) communities in Ohio, Indiana, and other midwestern states.

The day came when Adam gathered the family together. Lena and Lydia, the two oldest girls, tended to the preparations for breakfast. The chores had been completed and everyone was hungry. "Grandpa Hochstetler had purchased quite a bit of land in Brown County, Indiana. Father got part, Uncle Joe and Sam and Levi got part. Enough for each to have a good farm to move onto, with buildings."

Adam could not tell the children the nature of Catherine's illness. It was of a kind that usually would only cause a few days of discomfort. But Catherine had worked so hard in preparation for the move, when she should have taken things easier. The children were not old enough to realize the seriousness of the situation,

On September 23, 1896 Catherine died. David was just over a year old, and what he would be told about his mother's death was very little. "Mother died in the process of getting ready to move from Illinois to Indiana. Others spoke of mother as being a small-like woman." From what was not said it is likely that there was hemorrhaging from complications that began with David's birth.


It had been three days since Catherine had died. Members of the local Amish community began to take over responsibilities of the household. Women prepared the food for the family and took care of the youngest children. Some Amish families would come by to sit in silent respect and support for the family. Young men handled all the chores and responsibilities of the farm while the family was left to grieve.

The burial would take place in the Amish cemetary at the top of a hill. At the end of September in Illinois the leaves are at their most colorful, and it would normally be a pretty drive along the stream that the road followed. A long procession of horse-drawn buggies came down the road.

At the end of the dirt road another road crossed. The procession stopped. The four pallbearers carried the pine casket to the top of a small hill. Next to the grave of the last Amish person to die was a recently dug grave. Slowly the men lowered the casket that contained the body of Catherine into the ground. She had been dressed completely in white; the family made the clothes she wore, the dress and hat. The cape and apron were the same ones she had worn on her wedding day.

Slowly the group turned to leave, and the relatives followed the family back to the house. For the first time since Catherine died the family would prepare a meal for everyone. This indicated the resumption of normal duties, the end of the funeral. The black clothes of mourning would be worn by the family for the next year.

[Years later, while I was visiting a friend near Vandalia he and I spent a hot afternoon searching through a field for the Amish cemetery where I eventually found Catherine's gravemarker at which I laid some wildflowers and took several photos.]


After a week the family loaded the wagon with their remaining belongings. Other personal property had already been shipped to Indiana by boxcar. After all the children were comfortably settled, with Lena (the oldest) taking care of the baby David, Adam climbed onto the driver's seat, unraveled the reins and unfastened the brake to the buggy. He was painfully aware of the empty seat beside him. It seemed as if it could never be filled again, and indeed it never would be.

When the house disappeared from view the family rode in silence, their thoughts focused on what lay ahead for them in Indiana.