came waves of pioneers. Here stopped the new settlers and their families, eagerly looking for new homes. They came here from Wisconsin, New York, Ohio, Iowa and Canada, and from over the Atlantic came bashful, curious and eager Norwegians, Swedes, Scotch, Irish and English, etc. They came in covered wagons, drawn by oxen and horses, in Democrat wagons, on horse back and on foot, all anxious to be located on a piece of Murray County soil. Most of them headed for the Bart Low place, one of the reasons being that there was shade, water, and wood in abundance, and the pioneers rested both their wearied bodies and the livestock. Bart with his clever wit, genial ways, and his knowledge of the country, was the main attraction and the hungry never left the place unfed.
To the home came the prospectors, land locators, government officials, sheriffs and their deputies from other counties and states, looking for some young fellow who had forgotten to pay a formal adieu to the woman who loved him or the man who had driven towards the west and some of his neighbor's livestock happened to mix in with his. Then there was the itinerant preacher making his rounds on horseback, the lawyers looking up claim rights, etc., a motley array all playing their parts in laying the foundation and the making of Murray County, one of the best counties in Minnesota.
When the county was organized in 1872 early county office seekers made the "Gateway House" their western headquarters. One could get a bed there in the attic; in most homes the only available beds were on the floor.
The Low house was built on the site of an old, old Indian village, a village far older than these United States. Thirteen known tribes had used the little clearing as a home for over four hundred years before the Lows arrived. Some tribes used it only during the fishing, hunting and trapping season, other tribes lived there the year round,
The house was constructed of the finest logs in the timber that surrounded it. The building was 14 x 20, a big house in those days. Most of the logs were twenty feet long and many of them were hewn square. The corners of the building were dovetailed so that the building could not spread in any direction. Wooden pins of oak held the door and windows in position.
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They were just as firm and hard in 1946 as they were seventy-five years before. The windows were hauled from Mankato but the lime for plastering came from a kiln in Lake Sarah Township, and the sand from the shores of Bear Lake. The mortar was just as solid and firm as if it had been built of the most modern products.
No tract of land in western Minnesota is as rich in history as section 10 in Lowville township. At one time, it came into possession of a widow of John Keating, a private in Captain Payson's company of the Maine militia in the war of 1812. The British flag flew on this section before the days of the coming of the American Fur company, that in 1833 erected a stockade and trading post on the same section. Joe LaFramboise, in charge of the post being part French changed the name of Bear Lakes to La Grande Lisiere du Bois. "The Great Skirt of Woods."
The lordly elm trees which surrounded the little clearing echoed the dying cries of many an Indian brave. Tradition has it that many a battle was fought over the site of the village, but there is one authentic account of a battle which took place there ten years after the American Fur Co. had abandoned its trading post.
These so-called battles were nothing but massacres, following the regular pattern of Indian warfare. In 1849 Wa-wandi-a-akapi, Chief of the Wapekuta band, and his followers were encamped in the clearing and little expected an attack. One night when the village slept the notorious Inkpa-duta and his renegade band slipped into the timber and pounced upon the sleeping Wapekutas. Before an alarm aroused the village, Wa-wandi-a-akapi and seventeen of his braves had been stabbed to death. Inkpa-duta withdrew without the loss of a man. The father of Inkpa-duta had been a co-chief of the Wapekutas. Those murdered in the Bear Lake clearing were Inkpa-duta's tribal brothers. No explanation can be given for the massacre, except that it is an example of the cruel cunning that characterized lnkpa-duta's career. Murders of whites at Spirit Lake, Iowa, and Jackson, Minnesota, by the same band of renegades, and other raids did much to spread distrust and hatred against all Indians in the minds of the settlers. The distrust tended to
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