“Me no let dance. Me no let fight. Them say no Winnebago, me Menominee.”
The two white families made such preparations as were possible to withstand an attack, but no harm appeared during the night, and a cautious investigation the following day showed the camp deserted; the women and children as well as the war party gone.
Two days later the cause for the strange action of the Indians was learned, when Captain Hunt, in charge of a squad of regular soldiers, appeared at the home of Mr. Thompson. The Indians had been warned that the petition of the lumbermen had been granted by the authorities at Washington, and that they were to be forcibly removed from their forest home to the inhospitable plains of the South. They did not seek war with their brothers, but they would not tamely give up their home. They would take the women and children to the friendly care of the Menominee, and then, if they must, they would die as befitted a brave race.
The soldiers easily caught the trail of the fleeing band, and on the third day after the war dance, the entire band, women, children, and warriors, were surrounded, captured, and taken away to the Indian Territory.
I may say that the stay of these Winnebagoes upon their reservation was not long. One after another, stragglers from the band came back, until before the close of the second season the majority were again living in their beloved forest home.
CHAPTER VII
THE FLOATING BOG
In settling up some business affairs, Mr. Allen had come into possession of a tract of two thousand acres of swamp land lying toward the western side of the bed of the ancient sea. At the time of which I write there were vast tracts of such supposedly valueless land owned by the state, and which could be purchased for ten dollars per “forty,” twenty-five cents per acre. Timber scouts had ranged over it, and selecting the forties upon which there were sand knolls covered with a goodly amount of pine timber, the land would be purchased by their employers, the lumber companies, to be cut over at their convenience.
The low-lying prairies, flooded in the spring season, and the lower marshes covered with water much of the year, were thought to be not worth the twenty-five cents per acre asked by the state. In later years, by a system of drainage, and through scientific farming, much of this land became highly productive and valuable.