back to home (story icon)1949  From Wilderness to State  from It
Happened Here by Margaret G. Henderson, Ethel Dewey
Speerschneider, and Helen L. Ferslev   1949  WISCONSIN--a
wilderness! What was it like in those early days?  First of all,
it was a land of loneliness. Many a settler's nearest neighbor
was miles and miles away. Sometimes a man was sent four hundred
miles through the wilderness to get the mail. When he came back,
there was often great disappointment. People who had waited half
the year to hear from their old homes wept bitterly because
there was no letter for them.  Then, too, it was a land of fear.
Many of the Indians hated the white people who were robbing them
of the lands they had lived on so long. The settlers were afraid
of the red men, many of whom were ready to kill the "pale faces"
who had cheated them.  It was a land where a man rolled a barrel
of pork and a barrel of flour from Milwaukee to Burlington over
rough trails so that his family would have food throughout the
winter.  It was