Daily the Indians had their feasts, dances and games of different sorts. They seemed a little afraid to treat, were afraid of being wronged and were very cautious. The commissioners were very kind to them and treated them with great respect. They prepared for a great celebration of the Fourth of July. The mission families, Hopkins and Huggins, were invited to be present. Mr. Hopkins was asked to make an address and lead in the opening prayer. He rose early that fair beautiful morning and went, as was his custom, for a bath in the river. I made haste to prepare breakfast for my family of seven. My youngest child was seven weeks old that day. But the father never came back and the body was found three days later.
There were four white women at the place at that time, Mrs. Huggins, the wife of the other missionary, Miss Amanda Wilson, a mission school teacher, Mrs. Chute, a fair, beautiful young woman visitor and myself. We were just a short distance from the old crossing called by the Dakotas, Oiyuwega, (O-e-you-way-ga) and by the French Traverse de Sioux.
In September I went back to my mother in Ohio with my three little children. Mr. and Mrs. Riggs were going east, too, for a visit, and again I journeyed with them. As there was a large party of us and the American board which paid our expenses was not wealthy, Mr. Riggs thought we ought not to travel first class, so we went in the second class coaches. The seats were hard, like benches. My daughter, Sadie, then two and a half years old, was taken sick and cried and begged for water but there was none. I was in the deepest distress at not being able to give the poor sick little thing a drink. In the night the train stopped somewhere for water and a young man whom I could not remember ever having seen before got off and bought a cup of water for twenty-five cents and gave it to the poor, sick baby. If I have thought of that young man once I have thought hundreds, perhaps thousands of times of him and wished that I could thank him again and tell him what a beautiful thing he did.
I remained with my mother till I was married to Mr. Pond in April 1854. Again this northwest became my home. The Indians had sold their land to the government and been sent farther west. The country was filling up with white settlers. Bloomington has been my home ever since.
When I came to Bloomington as a bride there were seven motherless children of the first Mrs. Pond, the eldest being about fifteen years old. I brought with me my three fatherless children, so our family numbered twelve. Our home was a log house of six rooms. There were no schools anywhere within our reach. Every morning our children and some of our neighbor's gathered about our long kitchen table which was our dining table as well, for their lessons taught by the mother or one of the older children. There were no sewing machines to make the numerous garments necessary for our family, no lamps, no kerosene. We made our own candles as well as our own bread and butter and cheese and soap. Our lives were as busy as lives could be.
In the summer of 1856 we made bricks on our own place with which we built the house where I have lived ever since. Mr. McLeod was our nearest neighbor. North of us I cannot remember that we had any nearer than Minneapolis. Down toward Fort Snelling lived Mr. Quinn in a little bit of a house.
One night Mr. Pond was at the Old Sibley House at Mendota when a number of traders were there. During the evening as they told stories and made merry, many of the traders told of the joys of sleeping out of doors with nothing between them and the starry sky; how they never minded how hard the bed was if they could only see the green trees around them and the stars above. Mr. Pond, who also had had experience in outdoor sleeping, said that he liked nature too, but he preferred to sleep, when he could, with a roof over him and a good bed beneath him. After some laughter and joking on the subject, the traders, one by one, stole out and gathering up all the feather beds the house afforded, heaped them upon the bed in the attic which Mr. Pond was to occupy, thinking that he would at once see the joke and return their beds to them. Instead, he climbed upon the mountain of feathers, laughing at the joke on his would-be-tormentors and slept comfortably all night while they had to spend the night on hard boards. He loved to tell this story of how the laugh was on them.
Mrs. E. R. Pond—1843.
After the Indian outbreak the different tribes were broken up and outside Indians called to the leadership. A little, wavy-haired Indian named Flute was one of these. He had never learned to wear the white man's foot gear. With a number of others he was taken to Washington. He went as a chief and soon after his return came one day to my door. He was a keen observer and, I knew, would have something interesting to tell of his journey, so I was glad to ask him about it. He began by saying that when he had seen the young Indians all dressed up in suits of store clothes, especially in long boots, he thought, they must be very comfortable. He was very glad when he reached Yankton, to put on a suit of white man's clothes. He said all those who were going on the trip were put into a car where there was not room to lie or sit down and were in it for two nights. When he got off at Chicago he found his feet and legs were very sore from his new boots. When he saw all the people in Chicago he thought, "It seems very strange that Little Crow should be such a fool as to think he could conquer the white man. Little Crow had been to Washington and knew how many men 'Grandfather' (president) had." He knew he had a great many soldiers but he also knew he was having a big war.
"There were so many people in Chicago that I thought he must have summoned the young men from all over the country that we might be impressed by their number. And they were all in such a hurry. No one had time to stop anywhere. We finally reached New York and were taken up, up, in a building and allowed to stay there and rest several days. We wondered a good deal what they would do in case of fire, but supposed they never had any. We asked the interpreter about it. One evening there was an unusual noise. It was always noisy, but this was everything noise. Then the interpreter came and said, 'Come quick now and see how grandfather fights fire.' We went downstairs quick and every man was calling as loud as he could. All of a sudden we heard a great bell ringing and there were a number of those little men with horses hitched to something that looked like buffalo's paunch with entrails rolled around it. They had a great many ladders and how they did it I don't know, but they went to work like squirrels and climbed, one ladder above another, until they reached the top. White men are wonderful. They ran up just like squirrels and took the buffalo entrails with them. Threw water, zip! Pretty soon, all dark! Fire gone!"