A Little Girl in Old Chicago

by Amanda M. Douglas

For some time I think I lived mostly in the past. I began to go to school again. Spring came in early and everybody was astir. Indians came down with pelts they had gathered through the winter and there were some wigwams put up out on the prairies where they held powwows and dances and laid out in the sun and smoked pipes. They were a lazy lot and they hung around until all their money was spent. They were paid largely in clothing, blankets and useful articles, but they kept trading them off, and though there were some stringent rules about selling them any quantity of whiskey, they managed to get it all the same. Then, by degrees they started off north again to join their brethren who objected to civilized life.

But there was quite a stationary residue. The squaws seemed to improve much faster than the braves, though they had all the hard work to do. They dug up the ground and planted corn and other vegetables, they dressed skins and made clothing and moccasins and ornamental bead work, which they sold. Occasionally some of the traders bought a store of it to take to the eastward.

Father kept adding to his stretch of prairie land all the time. He had the true Yankee thrift as I came to know afterwards. Yet at this early date Yankees were not held in very high esteem and peddlers were rather tabooed. Indeed, at one time there had been a license of fifty dollars exacted for selling wooden clocks in the whole State. The law was against "bringing in and selling." But the shrewd Yankee evaded this by some parties bringing them in, and quite another party selling them. So it was proved that neither man was amenable to the law, which presently fell into desuetude.

There had been another funny point in the license of Mr. Mark Baubein when his ferry was first established. He kept two racing horses and was very fond of getting up a trial of speed with some of the young Indians who were crazy over this amusement. So he was ordered to ferry the citizens of Cook County from daylight in the morning until dark without stopping, and the query was whether the citizens were compelled to go without stopping.

The Tremont Hotel was being builded anew, and some of the seventeen houses erected again. Much more care was taken. There seemed to be a general awakening throughout the town. Streets were lengthened and Wolf's Point at the junction of the two branches of the river did not seem near so far away.

There were public and private schools, the latter being used mostly for girls. I began to make friends with them, living over the river and going only in pleasant weather had kept me out of their latitude and influence. I had been rather a shy little girl and Norman had been company enough. But I came to have a wistful sort of longing for some of my own kind.

Mrs. Hayne was very sweet and motherly. She tried to persuade father to move over her side of the river. It had the most advantages, she would argue.

"You wait and see," father would reply. "We're going to spread out, I can tell you. There's room enough for two cities, and I have so much outlying land. I'm in for raising hogs now and I want plenty of room."

Then he would look doubtfully at me and with a half laugh say: "I wish I had two girls instead of one," and I wished it as well.

Mr. Harris brought his sister to see us. She was a Mrs. Chadwick, a very sweet, quiet-looking woman, with none of the breeziness of Mrs. Hayne. Her husband was very much interested in the government and improvement of the town, and as there were no public halls the men generally gathered at some of the better class taverns and discussed the public weal. Father often went, though he did not take any active part. Neither did Mr. Harris, for he attended closely to business and spent his evenings at home.