1837.—First Knowledge of the Sioux.—Hennepin and Du Luth.—Fort Snelling.—Lakes Harriet and Calhoun.—Three Months at Lake Harriet.—Samuel W. Pond.—Learning the Language.—Mr. Stevens.—Temporary Home.—That Station Soon Broken Up.—Mary’s Letters.—The Mission and People. Native Customs.—Lord’s Supper.—“Good Voice.”—Description of Our Home.—The Garrison.—Seeing St. Anthony.—Ascent of the St. Peters.—Mary’s Letters.—Traverse des Sioux.—Prairie Travelling.—Reaching Lac-qui-parle.—T. S. Williamson.—A Sabbath Service.—Our Upper Room Experiences.—Church at Lac-qui-parle.—Mr. Pond’s Marriage.—Mary’s Letters.—Feast.
About two hundred and forty years ago, the French voyagers and fur traders, as they came from Nouvelle, France, up the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, began to hear, from Indians farther east, of a great and warlike people, whom they called Nadouwe or Nadowaessi, enemies. Coming nearer to them, both trader and priest met, at the head of Lake Superior, representatives of this nation, “numerous and fierce, always at war with other tribes, pushing northward and southward and westward,” so that they were sometimes called the “Iroquois of the West.” But really not much was known of the Sioux until the summer of 1680, when Hennepin and Du Luth met in a camp of Dakotas, as they hunted buffalo in what is now north-western Wisconsin. Hennepin had been captured by a war-party, which descended the Father of Waters in their canoes, seeking for scalps among their enemies, the Miamis and Illinois. They took him and his companions of the voyage up to their villages on the head-waters of Rum River, and around the shores of Mille Lac and Knife Lake. From the former of these the eastern band of the Sioux nation named themselves Mdaywakantonwan, Spirit Lake Villagers; and from the latter they inherited the name of Santees (Isanyati), Dwellers on Knife. These two representative Frenchmen, thus brought together, at so early a day, in the wilds of the West, visited the home of the Sioux, as above indicated, and to them we are indebted for much of what we know of the Dakotas two centuries ago. The Ojibwas and Hurons were then occupying the southern shores of Lake Superior, and, coming first into communication with the white race, they were first supplied with fire-arms, which gave them such an advantage over the more warlike Sioux that, in the next hundred years, we find the Ojibwas in possession of all the country on the head-waters of the Mississippi, while the Dakotas had migrated southward and westward. The general enlistment of the Sioux, and indeed of all these tribes of the North-west, on the side of the British in the war of 1812, showed the necessity of a strong military garrison in the heart of the Indian country. Hence the building of Fort Snelling nearly sixty years ago. At the confluence of the Minnesota with the Mississippi, and on the high point between the two it has an admirable outlook. So it seemed to us as we approached it on that first day of June, 1837. On our landing we became the guests of Lieutenant Ogden and his excellent wife, who was the daughter of Major Loomis. To Mary and me, every thing was new and strange. We knew nothing of military life. But our sojourn of a few days was made pleasant and profitable by the Christian sympathy which met us there—the evidence of the Spirit’s presence, which, two years before, had culminated in the organization of a Christian church in the garrison, on the arrival of the first missionaries to the Dakotas. The Falls of St. Anthony and the beautiful Minnehaha have now become historic, and Minnetonka has become a place of summer resort. But forty years ago it was only now and then that the eyes of a white man, and still more rarely the eyes of a white woman, looked upon the Falls of Curling Water;[2] and scarcely any one knew that the water in Little Falls Creek came from Minnetonka Lake. But nearer by were the beautiful lakes Calhoun and Harriet. On the first of these was the Dakota Village, of which Claudman and Drifter were then the chiefs; and on whose banks the brothers Pond had erected the first white man’s cabin; and on the north bank of the latter was a mission station of the American Board, commenced two years before by Rev. Jedediah D. Stevens. [2] Minnehaha means “Curling Water,” not “Laughing Water,” as many suppose. Here we were in daily contact with the Dakota men, women, and children. Here we began to listen to the strange sounds of the Dakota tongue; and here we made our first laughable efforts in speaking the language. We were fortunate in meeting here Rev. Samuel W. Pond, the older of the brothers, who had come out from Connecticut three years previous, and, in advance of all others, had erected their missionary cabin on the margin of Lake Calhoun. Mr. Pond’s knowledge of Dakota was quite a help to us, who were just commencing to learn it. Before we left the States, it had been impressed upon us by Secretary David Greene that whether we were successful missionaries or not depended much on our acquiring a free use of the language. And the teaching of my own experience and observation is that if one fails to make a pretty good start the first year in its acquisition, it will be a rare thing if he ever masters the language. And so, obedient to our instructions, we made it our first work to get our ears opened to the strange sounds, and our tongues made cunning for their utterance. Oftentimes we laughed at our own blunders, as when I told Mary, one day, that pish was the Dakota for fish. A Dakota boy had been trying to speak the English word. Mr. Stevens had gathered, from various sources, a vocabulary of five or six hundred words. This formed the commencement of the growth of the Dakota Grammar and Dictionary which I published fifteen years afterward. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens were from Central New York, and were engaged as early as 1827 in missionary labors on the Island of Mackinaw. In 1829, Mr. Stevens and Rev. Mr. Coe made a tour of exploration through the wilds of Northern Wisconsin, coming as far as Fort Snelling. For several years thereafter, Mr. Stevens was connected with the Stockbridge mission on Fox Lake; and in the summer of 1835 he had commenced this station at Lake Harriet. At the time of our arrival he had made things look quite civilized. He had built two houses of tamarack logs, the larger of which his own family occupied; the lower part of the other was used for the school and religious meetings. Half a dozen boarding scholars, chiefly half-breed girls, formed the nucleus of the school, which was taught by his niece, Miss Lucy C. Stevens, who was afterward married to Rev. Daniel Gavan, of the Swiss mission to the Dakotas. As the mission family was already quite large enough for comfort, Mary and I, not wishing to add to any one’s burdens, undertook to make ourselves comfortable in a part of the school-building. Our stay there was to be only temporary, and hence it was only needful that we take care of ourselves, and give such occasional help in the way of English preaching and otherwise as we could. The Dakotas did not yet care to hear the gospel. The Messrs. Pond had succeeded in teaching one young man to read and write, and occasionally a few could be induced to come and listen to the good news. It was seed-sowing time. Many seeds fell by the wayside or on the hard path of sin. Most fell among thorns. But some found good ground, and, lying dormant a full quarter of a century, then sprang up and fruited in the prison at Mankato. Also of the girls in that first Dakota boarding-school quite a good proportion became Christian women and the mothers of Christian families. But the mission at Lake Harriet was not to continue long. In less than two years from the time we were there, two Ojibwa young men avenged the killing of their father by waylaying and killing a prominent man of the Lake Calhoun Village. A thousand Ojibwas had just left Fort Snelling to return to their homes by way of Lake St. Croix and the Rum River. Both parties were followed by the Sioux, and terrible slaughter ensued. But the result of their splendid victory was that the Lake Calhoun people were afraid to live there any longer, and so they abandoned their village and plantings and settled on the banks of the Minnesota. During our three months’ stay at Lake Harriet, every thing we saw and heard was fresh and interesting, and Mary could not help telling of them to her friends in Hawley. The grandfather was ninety years old, to whom she thus wrote:— “We are now on missionary ground, and are surrounded by those dark people of whom we often talked at your fireside last winter. I doubt not you will still think and talk about them, and pray for them also. And surely your grandchildren will not be forgotten. “We reached this station two weeks since, after enjoying Lieutenant Ogden’s hospitality a few days, and were kindly welcomed by Mr. Stevens’ family, with whom we remain until a house, now occupied by the school, can be prepared, so that we can live in a part of it. Then we shall feel still more at home, though I hope our rude habitation will remind us that we are pilgrims on our way to a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. “The situation of the mission houses is very beautiful,—on a little eminence, just upon the shore of a lovely lake skirted with trees. About a mile north of us is Lake Calhoun, on the margin of which is an Indian village of about twenty lodges. Most of these are bark houses, some of which are twenty feet square, and others are tents, of skin or cloth. Several days since I walked over to the village, and called at the house of one of the chiefs. He was not at home, but his daughters smiled very good-naturedly upon us. We seated ourselves on a frame extending on three sides of the house, covered with skins, which was all the bed, sofa, and chairs they had. “Since our visit at the village, two old chiefs have called upon us. One said, this was a very bad country,—ours was a good country,—we had left a good country, and come to live in his bad country, and he was glad. The other called on Sabbath evening, when Mr. Riggs was at the Fort, where he preaches occasionally. He inquired politely how I liked the country, and said it was bad. What could a courtier have said more? “The Indians come here at all hours of the day without ceremony, sometimes dressed and painted very fantastically, and again with scarcely any clothing. One came in yesterday dressed in a coat, calico shirt, and cloth leggins, the only one I have seen with a coat, excepting two boys who were in the family when we came. The most singular ornament I have seen was a large striped snake, fastened among the painted hair, feathers, and ribbons of an Indian’s head-dress, in such a manner that it could coil round in front and dart out its snake head, or creep down upon the back at pleasure. During this the Indian sat perfectly at ease, apparently much pleased at the astonishment and fear manifested by some of the family.”
“Yesterday Mr. Riggs and myself commemorated a Saviour’s love for the first time on missionary ground. The season was one of precious interest, sitting down at Jesus’ table with a little band of brothers and sisters, one of whom was a Chippewa convert, who accompanied Mr. Ayer from Pokeguma. One of the Methodist missionaries, Mr. King, with a colored man, and the members of the church from the Fort and the mission, completed our band of fifteen. Two of these were received on this occasion. Several Sioux were present, and gazed on the strange scene before them. A medicine man, Howashta by name, was present, with a long pole in his hand, having his head decked with a stuffed bird of brilliant plumage, and the tail of another of dark brown. His name means ‘Good Voice,’ and he is building him a log house not far from the mission. If he could be brought into the fold of the Kind Shepherd, and become a humble and devoted follower of Jesus, he might be instrumental of great good to his people. He might indeed be a Good Voice bringing glad tidings to their dark souls.”
TO HER MOTHER. “Would that you could look in upon us; but as you can not, I will try and give you some idea of our home. The building fronts the lake, but our part opens upon the woodland back of its western shore. The lower room has a small cooking-stove, given us by Mrs. Burgess, a few chairs and a small table, a box and barrel containing dishes, etc., a small will-be pantry, when completed, under the stairs, filled with flour, corn-meal, beans, and stove furniture. Our chamber is low, and nearly filled by a bed, a small bureau and stand, a table for writing, made of a box, and the rest of our half-dozen chairs and one rocking-chair, cushioned by my mother’s kind forethought. “The rough, loose boards in the chamber are covered with a coarse and cheap hair-and-tow carpeting, to save labor. The floor below will require some cleaning, but I shall not try to keep it white. I have succeeded very well, according to my judgment, in household affairs,—that is, very well for me. “Some Indian women came in yesterday bringing strawberries, which I purchased with beans. Poor creatures, they have very little food of any kind at this season of the year, and we feel it difficult to know how much it is our duty to give them. “We are not troubled with all the insects which used to annoy me in Indiana, but the mosquitoes are far more abundant. At dark, swarms fill our room, deafen our ears, and irritate our skin. For the last two evenings we have filled our house with smoke, almost to suffocation, to disperse these our officious visitors.”
“Until my location here, I was not aware that it was so exceedingly common for officers in the army to have two wives or more,—but one, of course, legally so. For instance, at the Fort, before the removal of the last troops, there were but two officers who were not known to have an Indian woman, if not half-Indian children. You remember I used to cherish some partiality for the military, but I must confess the last vestige of it has departed. I am not now thinking of its connection with the Peace question, but with that of moral reform. Once, in my childhood’s simplicity, I regarded the army and its discipline as a school for gentlemanly manners, but now it seems a sink of iniquity, a school of vice.”
With the month of September came the time of our departure for Lac-qui-parle. But Mary had not yet seen the Falls of St. Anthony. And so we harnessed up a horse and cart, and had a pleasant ride across the prairie to the government saw-mill, which, with a small dwelling for the soldier occupant, was then the only sign of civilization on the present site of Minneapolis. Then we had our household goods packed up and put on board Mr. Prescott’s Mackinaw boat, to be carried up to Traverse des Sioux. Mr. Prescott was a white man with a Dakota wife, and had been for years engaged in the fur trade. He had on board his winter outfit. Mary and I took passage with him and his family, and spent a week of new life on what was then called the Saint Peter’s River. The days were very enjoyable, and the nights were quite comfortable, for we had all the advantages of Mr. Prescott’s tent and conveniences for camp life. His propelling force was the muscles of five Frenchmen, who worked the oars and the poles, sometimes paddling and sometimes pushing, and often, in the upper part of the voyage, wading to find the best channel over a sand-bar. But they enjoyed their work, and sang songs by the way. FROM MARY’S LETTERS “Dr. Williamson arrived at Lake Harriet after a six days’ journey from home, and assured us of their kindest wishes, and their willingness to furnish us with corn and potatoes, and a room in their house. We have just breakfasted on board our Mackinaw, and so far on our way have had cause for thankfulness that God so overruled events, even though some attendant circumstances were unpleasant. It is also a great source of comfort that we have so good accommodations and Sabbath-keeping company. You recollect my mentioning the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Prescott, and of his uniting with the church at Lake Harriet, in the summer. “Perhaps you may feel some curiosity respecting our appearance and that of our barge. Fancy a large boat of forty feet in length, and perhaps eight in width in the middle, capable of carrying five tons, and manned by five men, four at the oars and a steersman at the stern. Near the centre are our sleeping accommodations nicely rolled up, on which we sit, and breakfast and dine on bread, cold ham, wild fowl, etc. We have tea and coffee for breakfast and supper. Mrs. Prescott does not pitch and strike the tent, as the Indian women usually do; but it is because the boatmen can do it, and her husband does not require as much of her as an Indian man. They accommodate us in their tent, which is similar to a soldier’s tent, just large enough for two beds. Here we take our supper, sitting on or by the matting made by some of these western Indians, and then, after worship, lie down to rest.”
“Again we are on our way up the crooked Saint Peter’s, having passed the Sabbath in our tent in the wilderness, far more pleasantly than the Sabbath we spent in St. Louis. Last Saturday I became quite fatigued sympathizing with those who drew the boat on the Rapids, and with following my Indian guide, Mrs. Prescott, through the woods, to take the boat above them. The fall at this stage of water was, I should think, two feet, and nearly perpendicular, excepting a very narrow channel, where it was slanting. The boat being lightened, all the men attempted to force it up this channel, some by the rope attached to the boat, and others by pulling and pushing it as they stood by it on the rocks and in the water. Both the first and second attempts were fruitless. The second time the rope was lengthened and slipped round a tree on the high bank, where the trader’s wife and I were standing. Her husband called her to hold the end of the rope, and, as I could not stand idle, though I knew I could do no good, I joined her, watching the slowly ascending boat with the deepest interest. A moment more and the toil would have been over, when the rope snapped, and the boat slid back in a twinkling. It was further lightened and the rope doubled, and then it was drawn safely up and re-packed, in about two hours and a half from the time we reached the Rapids.”
“In good health and spirits, we are again on our way. As the river is shallow and the bottom hard, poles have been substituted for oars; boards placed along the boat’s sides serve for a footpath for the boatmen, who propel the boat by fixing the pole into the earth at the prow and pushing until they reach the stern. “At Traverse des Sioux our land journey, of one hundred and twenty-five miles to Lac-qui-parle, commenced. Here we made the acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable French trader, by name Louis Provencalle, but commonly called Le Bland. The Indians called him Skadan, Little White. He was an old voyager, who could neither read nor write, but, by a certain force of character, he had risen to the honorable position of trader. He kept his accounts with his Indian debtors by a system of hieroglyphics. “For the next week we were under the convoy of Dr. Thomas S. Williamson and Mr. Gideon H. Pond, who met us with teams from Lac-qui-parle. The first night of our camping on the prairie, Dr. Williamson taught me a lesson which I never forgot. We were preparing the tent for the night, and I was disposed to let the roughness of the surface remain, and not even gather grass for a bed, which the Indians do; on the ground, as I said, that it was for only one night. ‘But,’ said the doctor, ‘there will be a great many one nights.’ And so I have found it. It is best to make the tent comfortable for one night.”
This was our first introduction—Mary’s and mine—to the broad prairies of the West. At first, we kept in sight of the woods of the Minnesota, and our road lay among and through little groves of timber. But by and by we emerged into the broad savannahs—thousands of acres of meadow unmowed, and broad rolling country covered, at this time of year, with yellow and blue flowers. Every thing was full of interest to us, even the Bad Swamp,—Wewe Shecha,—which so bent and shook under the tramp of our teams, that we could almost believe it would break through and let us into the earth’s centre. For years after, this was the great fear of our prairie travelling, always reminding us very forcibly of Bunyan’s description of the “Slough of Despond.” The only accident of this journey was the breaking of the axle of one of Mr. Pond’s loaded carts. It was Saturday afternoon. Mr. Pond and Dr. Williamson remained to make a new one, and Mary and I went on to the stream where we were to camp, and made ready for the Sabbath. “My Ever Dear Mother:— “Just at twilight I seat myself upon the ground by our fire, with the wide heavens above for a canopy, to commune with her whose yearning heart follows her children wherever they roam. This is the second day we have travelled on this prairie, having left Traverse des Sioux late Thursday afternoon. Before leaving that place, a little half-Indian girl, daughter of the trader where we stopped, brought me nearly a dozen of eggs (the first I had seen since leaving the States), which afforded us a choice morsel for the next day. To-morrow we rest, it being the Sabbath, and may we and you be in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”
“The date will tell you of our arrival at this station, where we have found a home. We reached this place on Wednesday last, having been thirteen days from Fort Snelling, a shorter time than is usually required for such a journey, the Lord’s hand being over us to guide and prosper us on our way. Two Sabbaths we rested from our travels, and the last of them was peculiarly refreshing to body and spirit. Having risen and put our tent in order, we engaged in family worship, and afterward partook of our frugal meal. Then all was still in that wide wilderness, save at intervals, when some bird of passage told us of its flight and bade our wintry clime farewell. “Before noon we had a season of social worship, lifting up our hearts with one voice in prayer and praise, and reading a portion of God’s Word. It was indeed pleasant to think that God was present with us, far away as we were from any human being but ourselves. The day passed peacefully away, and night’s refreshing slumbers succeeded. The next morning we were on our way before the sun began his race, and having ridden fifteen or sixteen miles, according to our best calculations, we stopped for breakfast and dinner at a lake where wood and water could both be obtained, two essentials which frequently are not found together on the prairie. “Thus you will be able to imagine us with our two one-ox carts and a double wagon, all heavily laden, as we have travelled across the prairie.”
Thomas Smith Williamson had been ten years a practising physician in Ripley, Ohio. There he had married Margaret Poage, of one of the first families. One after another their children had died. Perhaps that led them to think that God had a work for them to do elsewhere. At any rate, after spending a year in the Lane Theological Seminary, the doctor turned his thoughts toward the Sioux, for whom no man seemed to care. In the spring of 1834 he made a visit up to Fort Snelling. And in the year following, as has already been noted, he came as a missionary of the A. B. C. F. M., with his wife and one child, accompanied by Miss Sarah Poage, Mrs. Williamson’s sister, and Mr. Alexander G. Huggins and his wife, with two children. This company reached Fort Snelling a week or two in advance of Mr. Stevens, and were making preparations to build at Lake Calhoun; but Mr. Stevens claimed the right of selection, on the ground that he had been there in 1829. And so Dr. Williamson and his party accepted the invitation of Mr. Joseph Renville, the Bois Brule trader at Lac-qui-parle, to go two hundred miles into the interior. All this was of the Lord, as it plainly appeared in after years. At the time we approached the mission at Lac-qui-parle, they had been two full years in the field, and, under favorable auspices, had made a very good beginning. About the middle of September, after a pretty good week of prairie travel, we were very glad to receive the greetings of the mission families.... A few days after our arrival, Mary wrote: “The evening we came, we were shown a little chamber, where we spread our bed and took up our abode. On Friday, Mr. Riggs made a bedstead, by boring holes and driving slabs into the logs, across which boards are laid. This answers the purpose very well, though rather uneven. Yesterday was the Sabbath, and such a Sabbath as I never before enjoyed. Although the day was cold and stormy, and much like November, twenty-five Indians and part-bloods assembled at eleven o’clock in our school-room for public worship. Excepting a prayer, all the exercises were in Dakota and French, and most of them in the former language. Could you have seen these Indians kneel with stillness and order, during prayer, and rise and engage in singing hymns in their own tongue, led by one of their own tribe, I am sure your heart would have been touched. The hymns were composed by Mr. Renville the trader, who is probably three-fourths Sioux.” Doctor Williamson had erected a log house a story and a half high. In the lower part was his own living-room, and also a room with a large open fire-place, which then, and for several years afterward, was used for the school and Sabbath assemblies. In the upper part there were three rooms, still in an unfinished state. The largest of these, ten feet wide and eighteen feet long, was appropriated to our use. We fixed it up with loose boards overhead, and quilts nailed up to the rafters, and improvised a bedstead, as we had been unable to bring ours farther than Fort Snelling. That room we made our home for five winters. There were some hardships about such close quarters, but, all in all, Mary and I never enjoyed five winters better than those spent in that upper room. There our first three children were born. There we worked in acquiring the language. There we received our Dakota visitors. There I wrote and wrote again my ever growing dictionary. And there, with what help I could obtain, I prepared for the printer the greater part of the New Testament in the language of the Dakotas. It was a consecrated room. Well, we had set up our cooking-stove in our upper room, but the furniture was a hundred and twenty-five miles away. It was not easy for Mary to cook with nothing to cook in. But the good women of the mission came to her relief with kettle and pan. More than this, there were some things to be done now which neither Mary nor I had learned to do. She was not an adept at making light bread, and neither of us could milk a cow. She grew up in New England, where the men alone did the milking, and I in Ohio, where the women alone milked in those days. At first it took us both to milk a cow, and it was poorly done. But Mary succeeded best. Nevertheless, application and perseverance succeeded, and, although never boasting of any special ability in that line of things, I could do my own milking, and Mary became very skilful in bread-making, as well as in other mysteries of housekeeping. The missionary work began now to open before us. The village at Lac-qui-parle consisted of about 400 persons, chiefly of the Wahpaton, or Leaf-village band of the Dakotas. They were very poor and very proud. Mr. Renville, as a half-breed and fur-trader, had acquired an unbounded influence over many of them. They were willing to follow his leading. And so the young men of his soldiers’ lodge were the first, after his own family, to learn to read. On the Sabbath, there gathered into this lower room twenty or thirty men and women, but mostly women, to hear the Word as prepared by Dr. Williamson with Mr. Renville’s aid. A few Dakota hymns had been made, and were sung under the leadership of Mr. Huggins or young Mr. Joseph Renville. Mr. Renville and Mr. Pond made the prayers in Dakota. Early in the year 1836, a church had been organized, which at this time contained seven native members, chiefly from Mr. Renville’s household. And in the winter which followed our arrival nine were added, making a native church of sixteen, of which one half were full-blood Dakota women, and in the others the Dakota blood greatly predominated. One of the noted things that took place in those autumn days was the marriage of Mr. Gideon Holister Pond and Miss Sarah Poage. That was the first couple I married, and I look back to it with great satisfaction. The bond has been long since sundered by death, but it was a true covenant entered into by true hearts, and receiving, from the first, the blessing of the Master. Mr. Pond made a great feast, and “called the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind,” and many such Dakotas were there to be called. They could not recompense him by inviting him again, and it yet remains that “he shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” “Yesterday the marriage referred to was solemnized. Could I paint the assembly, you would agree with me that it was deeply and singularly interesting. Fancy, for a moment, the audience who were witnesses of the scene. The rest of our missionary band sat near those of our number who were about to enter into the new and sacred relationship, while most of the room was filled with our dark-faced guests, a blanket or a buffalo robe their chief ‘wedding garment,’ and coarse and tawdry beads, brooches, paint, and feathers their wedding ornaments. Here and there sat a Frenchman or half-breed, whose garb bespoke their different origin. No turkey or eagle feathers adorned the hair, or parti-colored paint the face, though even their appearance and attire reminded us of our location in this wilderness. “Mr. Riggs performed the marriage ceremony, and Dr. Williamson made the concluding prayer, and, through Mr. Renville, briefly explained to the Dakotas the ordinance and its institution. After the ceremony, Mr. Renville and family partook with us of our frugal meal, leaving the Indians to enjoy their feast of potatoes, turnips, and bacon, to which the poor, the lame, and the blind had been invited. As they were not aware of the supper that was provided, they did not bring their dishes, as is the Indian custom, so that they were scantily furnished with milk-pans, etc. This deficiency they supplied very readily by emptying the first course, which was potatoes, into their blankets, and passing their dishes for a supply of turnips and bacon. “I know not when I have seen a group so novel as I found on repairing to the room where these poor creatures were promiscuously seated. On my left sat an old man nearly blind; before me, the woman who dipped out the potatoes from a five-pail boiler sat on the floor; and near her was an old man dividing the bacon, clenching it firmly in his hand, and looking up occasionally to see how many there were requiring a share. In the corner sat a lame man eagerly devouring his potatoes, and around were scattered women and children. “When the last ladle was filled from the large pot of turnips, one by one they hastily departed, borrowing dishes to carry home the supper, to divide with the children who had remained in charge of the tents.”
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