The wedding dinner was fish, cranberry sauce and bread and butter.
One day a lot of Sioux Indians who were on their way to fight the Chippewas borrowed my sister's washtub to mix the paint in for painting them up. They got their colored clay from the Bad Lands. They were going to have a dance.
Hole-in-the-Day used to stay all night with us. He always seemed to be a friend of the whites. When the Indians first came to the house, they used to smoke the peace pipe with us, but later, they never did.
Bears and wolves were very plentiful. We had an outdoor summer kitchen where we kept a barrel of pork. One night a bear got in there and made such an awful noise that we thought the Indians were on a rampage. We often saw timber wolves about the house. They would come right up to the door and often followed my father home.
A French woman by the name of Mrs. Traverse lived near us. She came from Little Canada. Her husband bought some dried apples as a treat and she served them just as they were. Poor thing! She was very young when her baby came and she used to get wildly homesick. One day, she started to walk to Little Canada carrying her baby. A cold rain came on and she was drenched when she was only half way there. She took cold and died in a few weeks from quick consumption. Strange how so many who had it east, came here and were cured, while she got it here.
In the Spring when the wheat was sprouting, the wild ducks and geese would light in the field and pull it all up. They would seize the little sprouts and jerk the seeds up. They came by battalions. I have seen the fields covered with them. They made a terrible noise when rising in the air. I have seen the sun darkened by the countless myriads of pigeons coming in the spring. They would be talking to each other, making ready to build their nests. In the woods, nothing else could be heard.
We had one wild pair of almost unbroken steers and a yoke of old staid oxen. The only way father could drive the steers was to tie ropes to their horns and then jump in the wagon and let them go. They would run for miles. I was always afraid of them. They were apt to stampede and make trouble in finding them if there was a bad storm. One evening father was away and a bad storm approached. I took the ropes and told mother I was going to tie the oxen. She begged me not to, as she feared they would hurt me. I had a scheme—I opened the front gate and as they came through the partly opened gate, threw the ropes over them and quickly tied them in the barn. The old oxen, I got in without any trouble. I tied them and went to reach in behind one, to close the barn door and bolt it. He was scared and kicked out, knocking me with his shod hoof. I did not get my breath for a long time. The calk of the iron shoe was left sticking in the barn door.
Some drovers stayed near us with a large drove of cattle in '45 or '46. They were on their way to the Red River of the north country. We kept the cattle in our yard and used to milk them. I picked out a cow for Mr. Larpenteur to buy as I had milked them and knew which gave the richest milk. He put her in a poorly fenced barnyard. She was homesick and bellowed terribly. The herd started on and was gone two days when she broke out and followed them and the Larpenteurs never saw her again. They had paid thirty dollars for her.
I was very anxious to see the Falls of St. Anthony so in the summer of 1844, my brother borrowed an old Red River cart and an old horse from Mr. Francis who lived in St. Anthony. He drove it over to our house in the evening. The next day, Sunday, we put a board in for a seat and all three climbed onto it. We drove over and saw the Falls which roared so we could hear them a long way off and were high and grand. We did not see a person either going or coming the six miles although we were on what was called the Main Road.
The French people always kissed all the ladies on the cheek on New Year's day, when they made calls.