Mrs. Mary B. Aiton.
When the treaty was made at Mendota in 1851, the Indians who ceded the land gave up their settlement at Kaposia, (South St. Paul), leaving behind them their dead, buried on the hill, and the land endeared to them by association. With them, when they moved westward to Yellow Medicine, went their faithful missionary and teacher, Doctor Thomas Williamson. That same year his sister, familiarly know as "Aunt Jane," made a visit to her old home town in Ohio, where I lived, and her interesting accounts of her experiences so filled me with missionary zeal that I went west, with her, as a teacher to the Indians.
With "Aunt Jane," I landed at Kaposia, and after a short rest, we began the overland journey to Yellow Medicine. The last night of our journey, two of our horses strayed away, and in the morning the ox-teams with the freight, and us women went on, leaving Dr. Williamson to search for the runaways. When we rode down into the valley, we saw ahead of us, the missing horses. We two women volunteered to go back to tell Dr. Williamson, and the rest of the party went on. We found the doctor, and to save us fatigue, he suggested that we take a short-cut across country to the agency, while he followed the road to rejoin the travelers.
Somehow we failed to follow directions and traveled all the rest of the day, coming at night to a river. Here on the bank we decided to rest. In the distance we could see a prairie fire, gradually eating its way towards the river; but we felt safe near the water and lay down to sleep. Just after we fell asleep, I was awakened by a loud call, and I realized the joy of knowing that we were found. The men who had been sent in search of us were calling, in hopes that we would answer and we continued our journey without further incident.
One morning in the spring of 1851, our little mission house at Kaposia was full of bustle and confusion, for we were busy preparing for an Indian wedding. The prospective bride was a pretty Sioux maiden, and her fiance was a white trader. Everything was in readiness for the ceremony, but no groom appeared. The hours wore on; the bride wept; but no news of the groom came until late in the afternoon a rumor reached us that he was celebrating the occasion by a drunken revel, and was not in condition to take his part in the ceremony. A white mother would have wept over daughter's grief, but not this Indian mother. When told that the ceremony must be postponed, she replied with stoical Indian patience: "It is well; I like his white skin; but I hate his drunken ways."
Dr. A. C. Daniels.
When I was agency physician at Lac qui Parle, I often saw the humorous side of Indian life. One day when the Indians had received their government allowance, a party of them too freely indulged their appetites for liquor; and one, a big brave, who had adopted the patriotic name of George Washington, led a band of Indians to the home of the Catholic sisters, and demanded food. The sisters saw the Indians' condition, barred the door, and told the braves to go away. George, however, was insistent in his demands, and finally put his giant strength against the door, and splintered the upper part. He had put his head into the opening, and was about to crawl through it, when one of the sisters seized a rolling pin, and rained sturdy blows upon his head and shoulders. He raised a yell that brought me to the spot just in time to see a funny sight. Just as George was about to beat a retreat, his squaw came running up and began to belabor him from the rear, while the nun continued the assault. There he was with part of his body in the house and part of it out, crying out in a manner most unseemly for an Indian brave. When the women desisted, he was both sober and repentant.
In early days, the Indian agent at Lac qui Parle hoisted the American flag each morning over the agency. During a serious drought, the Indians conceived the idea that the Great Spirit was displeased at the sight of the flag, and begged the agent to take it down. The patriotic agent tried to reason with them but to no avail, so one afternoon he took the flag down for a time. In a little while, a black cloud appeared and then a heavy downpour of rain followed. The Indians, as you know were very superstitious, and they were firmly convinced that the flag was a true barometer, so the agent had to be cautious in his display of the flag.
Mr. Z. S. Gault.
One morning as I rode a horse down to the Minnesota River to water it, I noticed a stolid looking Indian, with a gun by his side, sitting on a boulder by the river bank. Just as my horse began to drink, the Indian raised his gun and fired; the horse kicked up his heels, and I promptly became a Baptist by immersion. I can still show you the boulder, but you will have to imagine the Indian.