Peering at the Past Pioneers Lived, Survived by Ingenuity

At night in bed, asthma sufferer Henry Christian Bunge, Sr.  sought relief from severe coughing by taking hold of a rope that he had attached to an overhead beam and lifted himself into a sitting position. Life as a southeast Minnesota pioneer during the last half of the 1800s called for as much ingenuity as possible. Success depended on self-sufficiency. Doctors were scarce, and only a few necessities were purchased.  Other objects were handmade or they did without.

It was necessary to purchase anything made of metal – a plow, a saw, a stove, pots, pans, axes, wagon wheel rims, harness for horses. Almost everything else was made at home. Yarn was carded and spun from wool. Candles were cast from tallow and wax. Honey was used for sweetening. Vegetables were grown and then stored in a basement. Fruit, especially apples, were dried and stored for availability during the winter. Sugar, butter and coffee were not available; lard and goose fat with salt were spread on bread. Flour might be obtained at the grist mill, but if not, crushed corn sufficed.

Hogs and cattle were butchered at the arrival of cold weather and then salted, smoked and cured for use during the winter and following summer. Men raised their own tobacco and after cutting it fine enough for a pipe, would dry it in a stove oven. Matches were made from proper soft board, dipped into the fire in the stove and then lit father’s pipe, the wax candle or the kerosene lamp.

A man would have a workshop in the machine shed where the few machines were maintained. There he would spend many hours during inclement weather, making wooden shoes and other articles needed. He would cut large oak trees, hew and trim the sides and shape pieces as needed. The oak pieces would be dried, seasoned and worked into desired items. To hold ends together, wooden pegs took the place of nails.

Seasoned oak lumber would be used to fashion wagon parts, sleighs, neck yokes, crossbars for harnesses, fork handles, ax handles, tools and bed frames. Ropes would be strung crossways through the ends and sides of beds and couches. Women filled strong cotton bags (ticking) with corn husks to use for mattresses. Shoes and harnesses would be repaired at home, as was soldering damaged pots and pans.

Soon after the necessary buildings were constructed, pine and deciduous trees might be planted to the north and west as a winter windbreak. Apple trees and grape vines were also valuable. Basswood trees might attract bees, which would provide nectar and highly-valued honey, which would be extracted in autumn for household use. The residue could be used to make candle wax and honey beer.

Honey beer would be corked into bottles and taken to the basement to age. Sometimes, the contents of those bottles would react and eject the corks with an explosive bang and with such force that corks would hit the ceiling.   

Pioneer men all had a gun, often an old-fashioned muzzle loader on which a cap had to be fastened under the hammer before it could be fired. This firearm was used to keep marauding animals away and for hunting wildlife for food. Bunge, living near Eitzen, always stressed firearm safety to his grandsons, but the only family accident involved only grandpa himself.  “Late in fall, sparrows would gather in the basswood trees and chatter under his window … getting on his nerves …  wanting to save shot, he had loaded the gun with fine sand, hoping that the sand would spread in all directions, thus scaring the sparrows.  The sparrows had been scared away alright, but the sand had acted to choke the barrel of the gun which, when fired, had exploded next to his ear, rupturing his ear drum. 

For the 1860s Houston County pioneers in Winnebago Township, the closest doctor was  La Crosse, Wis., about 40 miles from Eitzen.  The pioneers, who thus depended on home remedies, either survived or died. Bunge was described as the “very symbol of strength and endurance and gave the impression of one who could withstand any storm, endure any hardship and overcome any difficulty pioneer life had in store for them.”  Sometime before Bunge emigrated from Germany in 1858, family lore described him seeing a doctor with a nagging cancer on his lower lip. Before the availability of anesthesia, the doctor tied his patient to a tree with a rope and then with a knife cut out the troublesome sore from the lip.

Later as a Minnesota grandfather, this hardy pioneer frequently complained about a stiff shoulder, which he said resulted from the shoulder being out of joint after getting “tangled up with the mechanism of a horse power.”

In addition to his nighttime, overhead asthma rope, Bunge would get some daytime asthma relief by putting some powder on hot coals from the stove in a metal container on the table and then place a bent, hard cover to fit his nose and forehead and inhale the smoke from the coals and powder.

A family grandmother fell through a 3-by-3-foot opening for throwing hay down from the loft. Falling about eight feet, she broke her wrist. With no doctor nearby, she received no medical attention and lived the rest of her life with some disability. At age 65, she underwent serious surgery in La Crosse and lived almost to age 93.

A grandson, about age four, was watching the men hauling hay into the barn when his thumb was caught in the hay pulley. The men came to the rescue, but the hand was badly mangled.  With no doctor nearby, his mother tore up a clean bed sheet to wrap around the hand, which she then soaked in carbolic acid as disinfectant. The wound finally healed but left a stiff thumb with a long scar reaching past the wrist joint. Looking back years later, he thought a doctor might have amputated his thumb.

Source: “The Bunge Story,” by Rev. Walter M. Bunge (1958), expanded by Anne Griffith (1981), updated by Ida M. Bunge (2000)