Three Score Years and Ten, Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other Parts of the West

by Van Cleve Charlotte Ouiscons 1819-1907

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Genres: History

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1888

Reviews

[Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this thin volume of a memoir to be mawkish and tedious. The overt patriotism and unabashed fervor for temperance were pretty funny at first (she goes so far as to say of the gil (about 4oz) of liquor per day afforded men doing extra labor: "...with the added light and wisdom of sixty years, all right-minded people would now regard it as every way evil." She doesn't have any sidebar declaration of evil regarding public executions or the scalping of children, however.), but ultimately this may be the most saccharine and grandmotherly memoir I've yet read.

I value it as a first hand account of the aftermath of the horrifying case of the Tully family and the infamous 1827 Running of the Gauntlet execution at Fort Snelling, as well as for containing unique memories of Fort life (such as the chasing of muzzled wolves for sport) and the everyday difficulties of travel, but I get the impression that many of her memories are tainted by her abundant nostalgia and her obvious biases, or may be supplemented by things she learned (or simply invented) rather than personally witnessed. For instance, it's curious that her overly romantic account of the Gauntlet episode differs in major ways from those given by several other witnesses. Still, a primary source is a primary source, and I would have been remiss to not read it having known of its existence and easy availability.

Final ruling: for the completists among us only.

[Jason Weidemann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes, you read a whole book for one single word. And the single word I gleaned from this text was worth the read.