William Muller Biography This biography appears on pages 1205-1210 in "History of Dakota Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://usgwarchives.org/sd/sdfiles.htm WILLIAM MULLER. (AUTOBIOGRAPHY.) I was born in Colmar, Department of Upper Rhine (Alsace) then French capital of the Department, on the 27th of May, 1837. As soon as I reached school age, about five or six years old, I went to primary private school with a Miss Cara for teacher, accompanying my sister about three or four years my senior, and continued in French schools until November, 1851, when I emigrated with my father, a book-binder by trade, for America, taking the railroad train through Paris to Havre, where we took passage on the good three-masted Astracan for New Orleans, with about five hundred others from all parts of central Europe. Some spoke French and some German, and the congregations on deck on a fine day were enlivened by French and German choruses of love lore and patriotic songs. I had for companions two fine young fellows from Savoy, who taught me several ditties from the French Alps. Every morning we went down to the lower deck which might be called the ship's cellar, where the mate distributed the water at the rate fixed per capita for each mess. On deck there was a hearth lined with brick and bars of iron to hold the pots and kettles for cooking the rations daily from the bags in the hold. I was head cook and steward for our party of two. After sailing fifty-two days we reached New Orleans about Christmas. From there we took the steamer Glendenin for St. Louis, and proceeded as far as the mouth of the Ohio river. The river was full of ice and we had to wait for a thaw. A party of returning Californians purchased saddles and horses which the Missouri farmers brought to the boat and sold at fifty dollars each, with saddle and bridle. Father and a few others hired a team and wagon to take them to St. Louis, while I stayed on the steamer, which reached St. Louis a few weeks afterwards. I spent a few weeks with my uncle Nicholas Riehl, who owned a nursery a few miles from St. Louis, near Riviere des Peres. I went to school in the timber with my uncle's children. In the spring I went to Wisconsin with a man by the name of Geiger of the firm of Raffauf & Geiger, of Cassville, Grant county, with whom my Aunt Riehl was acquainted. Mr. Geiger was in the habit of going to St. Louis to buy goods in the spring and fall of each year, so my father let me go with him for one year at twenty-five dollars, and the next year I was to receive fifty dollars, and board. After that I earned up to five hundred dollars and boarded myself. After I reached twenty-one a nephew of one of the partners, Jacob Raffauf by name, came from Coblenz, Germany, and took my place in the store. We kept everything that was called for in the way of merchandise, from a grindstone to a babyjumper, and handled everything in the way of produce that the farmers had to sell, grain, hides, etc. These were shipped to St. Louis, while the butter and eggs, dressed hogs, etc., after being packed and salted, were shipped to St. Paul and up to the pineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota. We also handled clothing, kept a lumber yard, bought lumber in the rafts which floated down the Mississippi from the Wisconsin, Black and St. Croix rivers. There were rafts floating past Cassville in those days early and late during daylight, which went cheer down to St. Louis. In the fall of 1858, being out of a job, I proposed to my brother August, seventeen years old, that we go to New Orleans. Navigation had closed and the river was filled with floating ice, it being late in November. We found a roustabout Irishman and a jovial, florid looking Englishman, both of whom were desirous of going South, so we bought a boat frozen in the ice, chopped it out, launched it and were off. After going a few miles we found our boat was leaking through a crack, caused by the melting of the ice with which it had been filled, so we had to land and caulk it up with an old shirt. After three days we reached Davenport, Iowa, one hundred fifty miles by river from our starting point, Here we found the stern-wheel steamer Luella which w as bound for the South. At that time our parents lived in Davenport, and we went and bade them good by, and the next morning took the steamer for St. Louis. Before we left we found out that our partners had sold the boat and had not accounted to us for the receipts. From St. Louis we took steamer for New Orleans, and after looking around for something to do for a living, I proposed to my brother that we go to the levee where they were unloading ships, and try to secure a job. We watched a lot of men walking in file down the levee, and a little Creole Frenchman sang out, "Come along! Come along! You walk like you go to a funeraille." I stepped up to the stevedore and addressed him in French and asked for work. He looked at me and said, "That is not for you. You can do better," but I asked him to try me. I had been used to handling grain on a truck in warehouse. So I got a truck and brother August held the tail rope to ease the weight on me, and we did as well or better than the other men. We watched the papers for something better, and in a few days I saw an ad. in the "Picayune," "Man wanted to work in a grocery store." I applied for and secured the position, in W. H. Hedden's store. The first job he gave me to do was to make firewood with an ax of a roomful of empty boxes and barrels, and while I was at work he watched me from his desk through an open door. My work seemed to please him, as well as the fact that I could speak three languages, French, German and English. I was to receive twenty dollars per month and my board. A few days later my brother secured a position in a bookstore, where he gained experience in arranging shelves, which served him well in after life. The Hedden family consisted of Mrs. Hedden, two young ladies in their teens, and two younger boys, all attending the schools. Mr. Hedden had in his employ besides myself one young German boy, a very useful, steady, sensible young man, and a spirited Irish boy, both of whom were orphans bound by the city to Mr. Hedden, their parents having died of yellow fever. They helped in the store and boarded with the family. For household help there was a young negro woman, very black, but with caucasian features. She had a little girl about ten years old, black as your hat, and as droll in her speech and actions as Topsy. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the first English book I read understandingly. She also had a little boy of a lighter hue. These three were Mr. Hedden's property, his slaves, according to the laws of Louisiana at that time. Then there was John, the delivery man, a well-raised mulatto, who was an invaluable servant and helper in the store, and had the care of the delivery horse. He was also a slave, tho he was married to a free woman. Mr. Hedden allowed twelve dollars a month for his board and permitted him to live with his family. There was also a drayman, a Welshman, whose duty it was to deliver the goods, either at the store or the warehouse in the suburbs, where the horses were kept. While I was in Mr. Hedden's family he sold Millie, the cook, and her family, to a trader, who dealt in slaves on a commission. New Orleans at that time was the leading market for slaves in the United States, and those from Maryland and Virginia were in great demand. All of the commission houses had dance halls where the slaves were exhibited for sale. At one time Mr. Hedden bought over 100 dozen brooms, and got the drayman to haul them to his warehouse. This warehouse was only visited by John and the Welshman, and by and by Mr. Hedden noticed that the brooms were disappearing from the warehouse. Each of these men placed the blame upon the other. Finally Mr. Hedden told us not to let John behind the counter, A few days later John took Mr. Hedden to one side and told him that as long as he did not trust him any more, he had been looking up another place. He said, "I have found a man who will pay you two thousand dollars, the price you paid for me. You better sell me." Mr. Hedden concluded that under the circumstances John was right, and the trade was made. Later, however, he found that John was not the guilty party. To take Millie's place Mr. Hedden purchased a well-bred Mulatto woman about fifty years old, for six hundred dollars. This woman was a Methodist. One Sunday Mr. Hedden was unable to find the key to his safe, and hunted for it until it was too late to go to church. The new cook began to reprimand him, and said, "'Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.' If you had not found your key you would not have gone to church at all." That did not please Mr. Hedden, and he looked up the human market for another home for the old lady, without any pecuniary loss. He did a fine business, turning his capital with large profits five or six times a year. He made a specialty of the famous Orange County Goshen butter, of New York State, always having about a ton of it on the way by steamer. He invested his earnings in improved city property, which he rented at good prices. I worked for him until the fall of 1860, when I returned to Wisconsin in time to cast my first presidential vote for that great commoner Abraham Lincoln. Brother August went back with me, and at the breaking out of the war enlisted in Company C 6th Wisconsin Regiment, and fought during the war back and forth on both sides of the Potomac, until Gettysburg, where he had his wrist shattered, and went into the hospital for treatment. There he was given the position of librarian and studied medicine. He was honorably discharged July 16, 1864, and gave his attention to cases in that hospital. After years of study and practice he opened an office for himself in Philadelphia. He died in 1904, leaving his practice to his oldest son, William K. Muller, of Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia. His widow lives with the younger children at 5308 Green St., Germantown, at the present time. After I returned from New Orleans in the fall of 1860 I resumed work in the Geiger store. In 1863 I married my best and only girl, Mary Grattan, after my return from New Orleans. I built a one story brick home in the town of Cassville, and we settled down and we lived happily. She was a good home builder and a good mother as well as wife, and I have never regretted during the entire period joining her in matrimony. There were eight children born to us of whom six are still living. William Grattan, Henry August, Mary Margaret, John Robert, Catherine Julia, and Gerald Emil. Thomas was killed in an accident in early youth, and Maud died at the age of three. I was a great admirer of Horace Greeley in his memorable campaign and concluded to take his advice and "Go West." I wrote a friend who lived near Scotland in Bon Homme county, South Dakota, and after receiving a good report, decided to try the new country. I had a good team, a small mare and a milk cow. I drove to Dubuque and entrained to Yankton, then the nearest railroad station to Scotland. I drove to Scotland on a scout trail and surprised my friend Mr. Maywold. On arrival there I took the harnesses off my horses and turned them out on the luscious grass as I had been accustomed to do in Wisconsin. Next morning I could not find them. I hunted for them for several days, and then started for Springfield, intending to advertise them in the Springfield Times. When I arrived in Springfield, I inquired of a man whom I met, as to whether he had seen my horses. He said he had seen them on the Yankton Reservation in the hands of an Indian, Gray Face, v. ho was a chief. I rode over there, twenty miles, and found them in his yard. Some of the tribe had driven them in on their way home from the Pipestone quarries. They wanted a considerable sum of money, but consented to accept the three dollars which I tendered them. I then returned to my friend Maywold's place, and told him that I had seen some land which suited me near Choteau creek in the southwest corner of Bon Homme county, and that I intended to settle there. The next morning as 1 was leaving Maywold's a few Indians passed, and Mr. Maywold told me that they were my neighbors and that they would scalp me. However, I am here yet, but Maywold and his son have both disappeared. In June, 1873, I filed on a preemption and timber claim in the southwestern portion of Bon Homme county near where the old Fort Randall trail crossed Choteau creek. At that time all mail between Yankton and up river Missouri points was carried by stage which made tri-weekly trips along the old trail. We got our mail at the Choteau creek post office, three times weekly. I did some breaking on my timber claim and by preemption during the summer of 1873. At that time there was very little settlement in Bon Homme county. Springfield and Bon Homme were the only towns. Scotland, Tyndall and Runningwater were not on the maps. The whole western portion of the county was vacant. There were a few settlers at and near Emanuel creek. Jimmy Keegan, Frank Donnelly, Bill Schaffer, Bill Meyer and John Collins had settled along the Missouri river and were the real pioneers of the western part of Bon Homme county. John Mead kept the ranch at the crossing of Choteau creek. The ranch was store and post office, apothecary shop and hotel. In August of 1873, I was employed by Major Birkett, then agent of the Ponca reservation on the west side of the Missouri between Ponca creek and Niobrara river to put up hay for Agency use that winter. There were numerous rumors and constant fears among the Poncas that the Sioux were coming to give them a fight. It seems that the Poncas were considered trespassers on that portion of the Great Sioux reservation and the Tetons, both Spotted Tail and Red Cloud tribes, considered them enemies and attempted to drive them out of that section of the country. There were between five and six hundred of the Poncas. During the summers of 1872, 1873 and 1874 war parties of the Tetons at various times made raids upon the Ponca village. In the fall of 1873, while I was making hay, it was the custom of the authorities of the agency to send out two or, three scouts posted upon high points to watch for incoming bands of Sioux. That country was a vast expanse of open territory and if any band of horsemen or moving objects were seen anywhere, they were usually believed to be hostile Tetons until the contrary was established. Several times during the early part of the month of September, one or the other of the out-posted scouts came riding back and warned the agency that the Tetons were coming. In the latter part of September, the scouts announced that a large band of Tetons had been seen to the southwest of the agency buildings and they were togged out for war. Preparation was made during the night for the defense of the village by the local authorities, the Indians and a small troop of regular army soldiers who were stationed at the agency, and whose equipment consisted of the army rifles and two muzzle loading cannons. The village was all excitement during the night and bestir in the early dawn. As soon as it was light there was a general commotion in the village. The Poncas began the war song, the squaws were chanting. I asked a half-breed Indian the cause of the commotion and he pointed to the southwest at the point of a high ridge about two miles west of the agency proper and said, "See there, they want to fight, They say, come out," and I looked, and just with the first rays of sunrise I saw an Indian. The upper portion of his body naked from the loins, apparently black in color, riding in a circuit around the top of the ridge and waving a black blanket, which was understood by the Poncas to be a challenge to come out and fight. It was only a few minutes until apparently every male Ponca who was able to muster any kind of a gun was on the way toward the ridge, creeping, crouching, following up gullies and ravines, and finally getting within easy rifle range of the Tetons who were further west along the ridge that runs down between the Ponca creek and the Missouri river, and there the battle raged from morning until night. Poncas shooting at the Tetons and Tetons shooting at the Poncas. We could see them crawling from gulch to gulch, behind trees, over ridges and getting new positions, changing places all the time, and about three o'clock in the afternoon there was an unusual commotion in the village and the squaws set up a great cry and the attention of the on-lookers was directed towards a low ridge that ran down from the main divide towards the agency. There we saw a Ponca Indian, crippled by what afterwards proved to be a rifle ball through his thigh, endeavoring to make his get away and about fifteen Tetons after him, shooting and yelling. The shots and yells could be plainly heard from where we were watching. After he had hobbled and crawled about one hundred yards he was finally shot through the body and dropped, and his pursuers circled around him dancing and yelling while the foremost Indian to reach him, dispatched him with another shot and fell upon him and scalped him in plain view of the entire village and left the body and returned to their place of hiding on the ridge. Three Poncas were killed in that fight and several were wounded. The funerals of the Indians killed were very simple. In those days the mode of burial among the Poncas was to wrap the dead in a blanket and place it on the limb of a high tree and lash it there with raw hide thongs. The bodies of grown persons were sometimes placed upon scaffolds built on the high hills in the neighborhood of the agency. I attended the funeral of young Michelle, the Indian whose killing I have just described. In the evening after the fight was over, the squaws went out and brought in the dead and those that were wounded. The bodies were lifted upon the backs of ponies and lashed there and brought to their respective cabins. The bereaved squaw prepared the body for burial, and the preparation was very simple. Two poles were bound together with raw hide thongs and laid upon the floor. The body was wrapped in blankets and laid upon these poles and lashed firmly with more raw hide thongs or lariats as they were called, and without further ceremony she started the funeral which consisted of raising one end of the poles upon, which the body rested and fastened them to the saddle of his trusted pony, then leading the pony to the high ridge where he was to be buried, she set up four crotches about six feet above the ground and placed the poles across the top of those crotches, led the pony underneath, untied the poles from the pony's back and with the aid of another squaw or two, she raised one end of the poles bearing the body and then the other up to cross poles resting upon the crotches, and when the funeral was over, Michelle's body lay resting on the poles wrapped in blankets, about six feet above the ground. His squaw led the pony a short distance from where the body was resting, sat down on the ground, drew her blanket around her head and wailed a queer, shrill, sort of chant which was kept up by her and other squaws at intervals for several weeks. Usually they sat upon the top of their cabins and wailed. When my job of haying was finished, Major Birkett allowed me just half what he agreed to pay for the work, and when my expenses were paid out of that it left me broke and with no funds to pay my way back to Wisconsin. I took the matter up with Bishop Hare who was then beginning his great missionary work among the Indians, soldiers and pioneers of Dakota Territory and through his efforts Major Birkett was dismissed from government service because of his trick in swelling the vouchers and keeping half of the money himself. I finally made a raise of enough to take me back to Wisconsin and I spent the winters of 1873 and 1874 at my old home in Cassville preparing to move my family to that portion of the great American desert called Dakota Territory which has since bloomed as no country ever did and which has returned so many beautiful crops and in which there is such wonderful prosperity today. I arrived at Yankton with my family of five, on April 14th, 1874. My earthly possessions were two teams, two wagons, two cows and a few household goods. We loaded our furniture and other possessions at Yankton on the two wagons and started for our new home. We left Yankton early on the morning of the 16th of April, and drove the entire distance from Yankton to Springfield. We stopped at the International Hotel, put our teams and cows in the barn, and when we settled our bill in the morning, Mr. Davidson who ran the hotel told us the bill was five dollars and twenty-five cents, which was just twenty-five cents more money than I had in my possession. I paid the five dollars and started out broke but not despondent. I located the family in the little frame house near the residence of George Mead in Springfield, and we got settled altogether on the 17th of April. Then I began hustling for work and on the morning of the 19th I went to work to sow grain for E. Bonesteel of the well known firm of Bonesteel & Turner, general merchants at Springfield, with my two teams. My eight year old son Henry driving one and I the other. The understanding was that I was to do the work and take it out in trade at the store and there we got our grubstake for the summer. In May myself and son started out to the claims. We lived in a covered wagon all summer. We broke prairie and planted crops, consisting of corn and vegetables, built us a log house plastered with mud and covered with earth and chalk-rock, and in the fall the family moved there and there we begun our long life in Dakota Territory. In August, 1874, the grasshoppers destroyed all our corn and vegetables except potatoes and squash. About two o'clock in the afternoon of the day that the grasshoppers lit, the sun became over- clouded and hazy and soon after the cause thereof appeared, for the grasshoppers began to light and they fell like a very heavy snow storm, lighted upon the corn and before sun down that evening, every stalk of corn in the field was stripped of all its foliage, the silk and husks were eaten, and all the vegetables except the potatoes were totally destroyed. The grasshoppers ate the onions down to the very roots, leaving holes in the ground where the onions had been. They fell in such large numbers that the ground was covered to a depth of one inch and the cornstalks were literally brown with a mass of grasshoppers feeding upon them. The potato crop yielded well and together with squash and a few turnips made up our vegetable diet for the winter and enabled us to live as only pioneers could, until the succeeding crop was sufficiently matured for use. The year of 1875 was a good year and crops were quite abundant and there were no grasshoppers. In 1876 the crops were partially destroyed again by grasshoppers and the crops were slightly damaged in 1877 and 1878 by what appeared to be local swarms of grasshoppers. Since that time grasshoppers have disappeared almost entirely and never returned in sufficient numbers to be a menace to the crops. My family grew strong and healthy, and as I look back now upon those pioneer days, my only wish is that I had the youth and strength to go through them again. There were many privations and some discomforts, but during it all we were happy and prosperous and it has indeed proved to be a "land flowing with milk and honey." In 1878 we established the first school organized in the western part of Bon Homme county. We called together all the residents living within a radius of five miles and we laid out the boundaries of a school district which was four miles square, and in the center of the district we built a one room log school house, chinked and mudded between the logs and covered with dirt. I furnished the logs, hauled them to the site of the school house, and we all got together and built the building. We bought two dollars and fifty cents worth of lumber to make the doors, the seats and the teacher's table, and then we hired Miss Kate Hogan and paid her fifteen dollars a month to teach the school for four months, and I boarded her for nothing in order that we might have a school and she would be with the children. We continued school in that building until after the winter of 1881 and 1882, and all of my children went to school there whenever there was school, which was usually about four months each winter. Subsequently we built a larger school, more comfortable and like modern country school houses. Four of my children subsequently taught school in the vicinity of our home. My daughter, Catherine Julia, is still teaching in the public schools in Minneapolis; my son, Gerald, is principal in the schools at Emery; my son, Henry, after teaching for three years began the study of law and is now practicing at Sioux Falls. William Grattan and John Robert are owners of some good and substantial farms in Bon Homme county and are still farming. William Grattan is the father of eight boys and girls and John Robert, two girls. My daughter, Mary Margaret Treffry, is living on a farm in Idaho with her husband and family of five boys. We accumulated considerable property and when I retired from the farm we possessed altogether, nineteen hundred acres of some of the richest of South Dakota's land. I know my span of life is nearly complete, but at the age of seventy-eight I look back over it all and contemplate it with satisfaction. It was a hard struggle but it was the making of the men and women that I leave behind me as I go over yonder. I am satisfied, I am pleased. Dakota is a bountiful State and gave ample reward to those who labored faithfully and true and who saved, and I feel that I have done my part under God's guidance to bring fruit and blessings out of that portion of the great American desert called "Dacota."