Old Rail Fence Corners. Various
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and he sent some of the half breeds after it with their bows and arrows. They followed it four miles into a swamp and then lost it. They seemed suspicious about this particular animal, and went after it half heartedly. The trader gave me a piece of dough and told me if it came again to put this in meat and drop it. He said "Kill him quick as one gun."
My sister, Mrs. Huggins, wife of the farmer at Lac qui Parle, was overjoyed to see me. Think what it must have meant to a woman way off in the wilderness in that early day to see anyone from civilization, let alone her brother. I had not seen her in several years. They had a nice little garden and quite a patch of wheat, which I was told was fine for the climate. The seed came from the craw of a wild swan that they had shot. It was supposed to have come from the Pembina country for those people had wheat long before the missionaries came. It was always called "Red River Wheat."
Pemmican, which I first tasted on this journey was made by boiling the flesh of any edible animal, usually that of buffalo or deer, pounding it fine and packing it tight into a sack made of the skin of a buffalo calf, then melting the fat and filling all interstices. When sewed up, it was absolutely air tight and would keep indefinitely. It was the most nourishing food that has ever been prepared. For many years it was the chief diet of all hunters, trappers, explorers and frontiersmen.
Pemmican was also made by drying the meat and pulverizing it. The bones were then cracked and the marrow melted and poured into this. No white man could ever make pemmican right. It took a half breed to do it.
The Red River people had cattle very early. The stock at the mission at Lac qui Parle came from there.
I returned to Illinois in the summer of '43 and threshed. In the Fall I returned and built a house for Gideon Pond. It was a wooden house where their brick house now stands.
In 1844, I was building a mission building at Traverse. An Indian came in one day and told me there was a very sick man about twenty miles away at his camp. I went back with him and we brought the white man to the mission. After he was better, he told me that he was one of six drovers who had been bringing a herd of three hundred cattle from Missouri to Fort Snelling. They had lost their compass and then the trail and wandered along until they found a road near what is now Sauk Center. There they met a band of Sioux. The Indians killed a cow and when the drovers remonstrated, they killed one of them and stampeded the cattle. The drovers all ran for their lives. Two of them managed to elude the Indians, and took the road leading east. Our man was one, the other was drowned while crossing the river on a log raft, the rest were never found. Many of the cattle ran wild on the prairies. The Indians used often to kill them and sell the meat to the whites. One of the claims at Traverse de Sioux was for these cattle from the owners of the herd.
Mrs. Missouri Rose Pratt—1843.
In 1842 my father was going to the Wisconsin pineries to work, so mother and we children went along to keep house for him. We came from Dubuque to Lake Pepin. Mr. Furnell, from the camp, had heard there were white people coming so he came with an ox team down the tote road to meet us and our baggage, and take us to camp. We found a large log house which we thought most complete. We lived there that winter and Mr. Furnell and some others boarded with us. A romance was started there.
The next Spring we took our household goods in a cabin built on a raft, floated down to Nauvoo and sold the lumber to the Mormons. Joseph Smith was a smart speaker, mother said, when she responded to the invitation to hear the "Prophet of the Most High God" preach. The children of these people were the raggedest I have ever seen. Mr. Furnell had his raft lashed to ours and sold his lumber to them too.
We went to St. Paul on the Otter. Mr. Furnell went with us. When mother saw "Pig's Eye" as St. Paul was then called, she did not like it at all. She thought it was so much more lonesome than the pineries. She begged to go back, but father loved a new country. On landing, we climbed up a steep path. We found only six houses there. One was Jackson's. He kept a store in part of it. In the kitchen he had three barrels of liquor with spigots in them. The Jackson's were very kind and allowed us to live in their warehouse which was about half way down the bluff. We only slept there nights for we were afraid to cook in a place with powder stored in it, the way that had, so we cooked outside.
My sister Caroline had light hair, very, very blue eyes and a lovely complexion. The Indians were crazy about her. It was her fairness they loved. She was engaged to Mr. Furnell and wore his ring. The Indian braves used to ask her for this and for a lock of her hair to braid in with theirs but of course, she would never let them have it. She was afraid of them. The interpreter told her to be careful and never let them get a lock of her hair for if they did and braided it in with theirs, they would think she belonged to them. One day when she was alone in the warehouse, an Indian came in his canoe and sat around watching her. When he saw she was alone, he grabbed her and tried to cut off some of her hair with his big knife. She eluded him by motioning to cut it off herself, but instead, ran shrieking to father at Jackson's. He came with a big cudgel but the Indian had gone in his canoe.
In the election of '43 in St. Paul, every man there got drunk even if they had never drunk before and many of them had not. Early in the evening, Mr. August Larpenteur came into Mrs. Jackson's kitchen to get a drink of liquor. He was a very young man. She said, "August, where's the other men?" just as he was turning the spigot in the barrel. He tried to look up and tell her, but lost his balance and fell over backward while the liquor ran over the floor. Then he laughed and laughed and told her where they were.
We built a cabin a few miles out of town. Our nearest neighbors were the DeNoyers who kept a halfway house in a three roomed log cabin. Their bar was in the kitchen. Besides this, there was a scantily furnished sitting room and bed room. Mrs. DeNoyer was a warm hearted Irish woman when she had not been drinking, but her warm heart never had much chance to show. They bought their liquors at Jackson's.
Our house was made from logs hewed flat with a broadax. My father was a wonder at hewing. The ax was eight inches wide and had a crooked hickory handle. Some men marked where they were to hew but father had such a good eye that he could hew straight without a mark. The cracks were filled with blue clay. For windows, we had "chinkins" of wood. Our bark roof was made by laying one piece of bark over another, kind of like shingles. Our floor was of puncheons. This was much better than the bark floors, many people had.
I used to take much pleasure in watching and hearing the Red River carts come squawking along. They were piled high with furs. The French half breed drivers would slouch along by them. It seemed as if the small rough coated oxen just wandered along the trail. Sometimes a cow would be used. I once saw one of these cows with a buffalo calf. It seemed to be hers. Was this the first Cataloo?
When I was nine years old my father sent me to the spring for a pail of water. I was returning with it, hurrying along as father had just called to me to come quick, when I was surrounded by a band of Sioux warriors on their way to Shakopee to a scalp dance. They demanded the water but I would not let them have it and kept snatching it away. It tickled them very much to see that I was not afraid. They called to the chief, Little Crow, and he too ordered me to give it to them, but I said, "No, my father wants this, you can't have it." At this the chief laughed and said, "Tonka Squaw" meaning brave woman and they left. They had on everything fancy that an Indian could—paint and warbonnets and feathers. They always wore every fancy thing they had to a dance, but in actual war, they were unpainted and almost naked.
The first soldiers I saw in 1843 were from Fort Snelling. They had blue uniforms with lots of brass buttons and a large blue cap with a leather bridle that they used to wear over the top. Their caps were wide on top and high. The soldiers used to come to DeNoyer's to dinner so as to have a change. Mrs. DeNoyer was a good cook if she would stay sober long enough.
We had splint bottom chairs made out of hickory and brooms made by splitting it very fine too. These were all the brooms we had in '43. Our hickory brooms were round but Mr. Furnell made a flat one for my sister.
Once when father was roofing our house, a storm was coming and he was very anxious to get the shakes on before it came. We had had a bark roof that was awful leaky. Some Indians came along on the other side of the river and made motions that he should come and get them with his boat, "The