poles from the front, running rapidly and then taking a fresh start to push it again. These boats could make about twenty miles a day. They almost reached Shakopee the first day. At ten o'clock the boat tied up and breakfast was served. This was a very hot, thick soup made of peas and pork which had been cooked all night over hot coals in a hole in the ground, covered snugly over with earth. It had been wrapped in a heavy tarpaulin and buffalo robe and when served was piping hot, as it came from this first fireless cooker. Hardtack was served with this soup and made a most satisfactory meal. The other meal consisted of bacon and hardtack and at the end of the eighth day, had become quite monotonous. Whenever these meals were prepared, the boat was tied to the bank.
The mosquitoes, even in the daytime were so terrible that it was almost impossible to live. I looked forward to the time when we would tie up for the night, with great apprehension on this account. However, the clerk of the boat came to me and asked me if I had a mosquito net with me and when I said, "No" invited me to sleep under his as he said it would be unbearable without one. Just before they tied up for the night the clerk came to me saying that he was sorry, but he had forgotten that he had a wife in this village. I spent the night in misery under my tarpaulin, almost eaten alive by the mosquitoes. The half breeds did not seem to mind them at all. I again looked forward to a night under the mosquito bar and was again told the same as the night before. During the eight days which this journey consumed, I was only able once to sleep a night under the friendly protection of this mosquito bar, as it was always required for a wife.
When the boat tied up at Traverse des Sioux, Mr. Williamson met me. The trader sent a man to invite the three white men to dine with him. The invitation was accepted with great anticipation. The trader's house was a log cabin. The furniture consisted of roughly hewn benches and a table. An Indian woman brought in first a wooden bowl full of maple sugar which she placed on one end of the table with bowls and wooden spoons at the three places. We were all eyes when we saw these preparations. Last, she brought in a large bowl of something which I could see was snow-white and put that in the center of the table. All were then told to draw up to the table and help themselves. The bright anticipations vanished when the meal was seen to consist solely of clabbered milk with black looking maple sugar.
Mr. Williamson left me at Traverse to go East. Before going he helped me load all our supplies into the two Red River carts which he had brought. There were six hundred pounds on each. The trail was very easy to follow and I walked along by the side of the slow going oxen. By keeping up until late, and getting up at daybreak, I made the trip in seven days. For the first four days I was followed by a great gaunt shape that made me uneasy. I knew if it was a dog it would have come nearer. I slept under the cart the first night, but was conscious of its presence as the cattle were restless. On the fourth day of its enforced company, I met a little caravan of carts owned by a Frenchman who was with the half breeds. I told him of my stealthy companion, 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
