The ice was as smooth as glass. The buffaloes could not stand up on it. One after another they slipped and fell. The lazy Indian was not lazy that day. He saw a chance to get out of his poverty. He ran about on the ice, killing the buffaloes.
For many days he and his squaw worked. They skinned the buffaloes, and dried the skins. They prepared the stomachs of the buffaloes, and stuffed them with the chopped meat, making it look like great sausages as big as pillows. They put a few cranberries in with the meat to give the pemmican a good taste. Then they poured the smoking fat of the buffalo into this great sausage. The fat filled up the small spaces. When it got cold, the pemmican sack was almost as hard as a stone. It could be cut only by chopping it with a tomahawk.
At last spring came, and the tribe came home from the hunt. You may suppose that Lazy-man was proud that day. Instead of being the poor beggar whom everybody laughed at, he was now one of the rich men in the tribe. He had more buffalo robes and more pemmican than any other man in the village. He exchanged his buffalo robes for ponies. After that he always went on the hunt, and lived like the other Indians. He did not wish to sink into laziness and poverty again.
PETER PETERSEN.
A STORY OF THE MINNESOTA INDIAN WAR.
Peter Petersen was a very little boy living in Minnesota. He lived on the very edge of the Indian country when the Indian War of 1862 broke out.
Settlers were killed in their cabins before they knew that a war had begun. As the news spread, the people left their houses, and hurried into the large towns. Some of them saw their houses burning before they got out of sight. The roads were crowded with ox wagons full of women and children.
Peter Petersen's father was a Norwegian settler. When the news of the Indian attack came, Peter's father hitched up his oxen, and put his wife and daughters and little Peter into the wagon. They drove the oxen hard, and got to Mankato in safety.
The town was crowded with frightened people. Many were living in woodsheds and barns. In their hurry, these country people had not brought food enough with them. Before long they began to suffer hunger.