The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1905-01-11
OXEN BURIED BY BLIZZARD.
Memorable Incident of the Severe
Winter of 1885 on the Mimi
esota Prairies.

story which would otherwise be in
credible. The winter of 1885 was the
coolest in the experience of Minnesota
farmers and the live stock suffered ter
ribly, says the Chicago Chronicle.
About a mile from the clergyman's
house was a piece of timber. He kept
his oxen busy, he says, hauling wood to
his house. The snow lay three feet deep,
and the shedding was good. On Jan
uary he yoked his oxen, and, in addi-
ton to the yoke, used some heavy har-
ness, including thick leather traces 1t
was one o'clock when he left home, and
in an hour or so he was loading the wood
on the sled. He adds:
Meanwhile binding blizzard blew
up, sweeping over the prairie at the rate
OF 80 miles an hour, and piling up the
snow in drifts from eight to ten feet
deep. AS the winds increased both my
self and my oxen became chilled to the
marrow, and l knew that it was certain
death to man and beast to stay out any
| longer.
| Turning the heads of my oxen home
ward in the very teeth of the binding
storm urged them on across the open
space between the timber and my house.
But oxen, however, willing, are never
rapid, and teh one mile seemed ten to me
as the heavy beasts pushed onward.
Feeling that should surely freeze to
death in short time, jumped down
from my load, plunged homeward
through the snow and reached my barn
in half an hour.
Il knew that my oxen could feel their
way home, and fully expected them to
appear at my barn by nightfall, if, per-
chance, they were not blinded by the
storm or lost by the increasing drifts.
But night came on and no oxen
'The storm abated and started out
with my hired man to find my missing
cattle and my load of wood. We 1oun-
dered through the snow toward the tim
Der, but the oxen were nowhere to be
seen. We hunted all night long and
arrived home just in time for breakfast,
puzzled and mystitied. After breakfast
out we started again, helped this time
by some of our neighbors, but after
Irlitless search we come back, van
pushed
mo neighbor had seen the oxen and
their disappearance became the sensa-
ton of the neighborhood. They had
either been lost for good, frozen to death
in the deep snow or else had wandered
off across the prairie to some distant
farmers barn. We advertised in the
country papers, Offering reward of
5000 for the return of the oxen and the
wood. One week, two, three, passed by,
but still no solution.
1T was January 81. There had been
a thaw for several days and much of the
snow on the prairie had disappeared,
leaving only one foot in depth, except in
the deep hollows of my ranch. l was
driving team of heavy farm horses
over to the timber to get another load
of wood, when. on passing through a
small ravine little to one side of the
ordinary road l noticed movement in
the snow.
Drawing in my reins, alighted
walked about ten feet from my horses,
and, 10! there were my oxen alive, yoked
together, standing in four feet of snow,
with just enough of their bodies visible
above the snow to make movement Wis
ible.
They had been caught between the
stumps of two trees and there they had
been for 80 days, unable to move, and
saved from freezing to death only by the
deep snow that so mercifully had COW
cred them.
"They had eaten everything within
reach, including the leather harness,
most of the wood of the sled pole, the
bark of the tree trunks, the twigs and
sticks lying around and the roots of the
trees to a depth of three feet. There they
had stood for 80 days. They were living
skeletons. Every bone was visible. Yet
they were able to walk home, and after
careful feeding for another 80 days they
were as strong as ever, and were faith
tul animals on my farm for ten years
lfterward"