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The first settlers arrived during the 1850's attracted to the fertile land and an abundance of timber and game. The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 left the township abandoned for several years. The advent of the railroad in Kandiyohi County in 1869 brought new settlers. Many were of Swedish and Norwegian origins; hence the predominance today of residents of Scandinavian heritage.
Monson Lake State Park was established in 1923 as a memorial to the members
of the Broberg and Lundbergh families who died in the U.S.-Dakota Conflict of
1862. Anna Stina Broberg Peterson, the only survivor, was 16 years old when
the settlement was attacked on August 20, 1862. Before her death in 1933, she
dictated an eye-witness account of that day's event. Her story is available
at the park office.
Acton
Acton was the location of the start of the Sioux Uprising of 1862. Here stands a monument with the following text:
On a bright Sunday afternoon. August 17, 1862, four young Sioux hunters, on a spur-of-the-moment dare. They decided to prove their bravery by shooting Robinson Jones, the postmaster and storekeeper at Acton in western Meeker County. Stopping at his cabin they requested liquor and were refused. Then Jones, followed by the seemingly friendly indians, went to the neighboring Howard Baker cabin, which stood on this site.
Here the whites and the Indian engaged in a target-shooting contest. Suddenly, the Indians turned on the settlers and without warning shot Baken Viranus Webster, another settler and Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Baker, Mrs, Webster, and several children escapes by hiding. Then the Indians rode off shooting Jone's adopted daughter, Clara D. Wilson as they passed the Jones cabin.
The indians fled south to their village forty miles away on the Minnesota River. There they reported what they had done, and the Sioux chiefs decided to wage an all-out war against the white triggered the bloody Sioux Uprising of 1862.
The bodies of the settlers were buried in a single grave in the New Lutheran Cemetery. Near present-day Litchfield. In 1878 the state of Minnesota erected a granite monument there. This site, where the Makers cabin stood. Was similarly marked in 1909.
Within a few days the 107 white captives and 162 mixed blood captives were turned over to Sibley at a place near the present-day city of Montevideo. Sibley named the place Camp Release and a 51-foot granite shaft was placed there as a monument to the end of the Dakota Uprising.
From the Norwegian-American Historical Association Website:
Over the grave of Guri Endreson stands a monument erected by the state of Minnesota in commemoration of her heroism at the time of the Sioux Massacre in 1862. {3} The story of what she did after an attacking party of Indians has slaughtered her husband and one son, wounded another son, and carried off two of her daughters as captives has been told and retold many times and is familiar to thousands of people. {4} Particular attention has be devoted to the tale of how she aided two severely wounded men from a settler's cabin to an ox-drawn wagon, after dressing their wounds and attending to their wants; then started with them, her small daughter, and her wounded son for Forest City, about thirty miles distant; guarded the party through an all-night vigil; and doggedly pushed on the next day until the haven of safety was reached. Though much has been published about these and other details of the saga of this frontier heroine, her own story of the events of 1862 has not been known. Indeed, it has been altogether unknown to historians that she every wrote anything about the tragic happenings of that summer. She has been regarded as one of those inarticulate spirits who have left a legacy of courage expressed in action alone. The truth is that Guri Endreson did write her own story - but she waited four years, and then set it down in the form of a letter to her relatives dwelling thousands of miles away in a lonely district of western Norway. The letter was treasured and preserved in the family circle.
A few discrepancies between Guri Endreson's own narrative and the well-known tale of her deeds will be apparent, and the reader will be struck by her omissions. Her story, it must be remembered, is written in the language of simplicity and sorrow and comes from a woman who would perhaps naturally understate or avoid mention of her own services to other people. Meanwhile, the letter supplies something that has been lacking from the familiar tale: a picture of a very human woman, with no inkling that she is a heroine, sustained in her sorrow by a pious faith in God, taking up the tasks of life again in the reconstruction period that followed the early sixties in Minnesota, retaining ownership of her land with a view to resumption of farming, and looking with courage to the future. For those who like to interpret human actions in the glowing terms of heroism, the spectacle of Guri Endreson four years after her harrowing Sioux War experience, making 230 pounds of butter from the summer product of her cows, writing encouragingly about America to her daughter in Norway, and holding aloft the promise of her faith, is not less impressive than that of the same woman helping others in the August days of 1862, when she was carrying the burden of fresh agony in her heart. Her letter is of interest not only for the light it sheds upon the character of Guri Endreson but also for the picture that it gives of the resumption of normal conditions in the area that had been visited by the horrors of the Sioux Massacre. It should be noted that the surname of the Endresons was Rosseland. Lars Endreson Rosseland was the full name of Guri's husband. She signs her own name simply as "Guri Olsdatter."
