When we came through Chicago, the mud was up to the hubs everywhere. Much of the time the bottom of the stage was scraping it. In one deep hole where the old road had been, a big scantling stuck up with these words painted on it, "They leave all hope who enter here."
I remember killing a snake over seven feet long down near Minnehaha Falls. Snakes were very abundant at that time.
When I was in the Indian war, one of the Indian scouts showed me how to find the Indians' underground store houses. Only an Indian could find these. The soldiers had hunted for days without success, but the Indian succeeded in a short time and found a community store house holding several hundred bushels of corn. This was six feet under the ground and looked exactly like the rest of the ground except that in the center a small tuft of grass was left, which to the initiated showed the place.
I had a serious lung trouble and was supposed to have consumption as I was always coughing. After I was married my wife induced me to take the water cure. She kept me wrapped in wet sheets for several days. At the end of that time an abscess of the lungs was relieved and my cough was cured. This climate has cured many of lung trouble.
I have to laugh when I think how green I was about these western places. Before I left my old home at Troy, New York, I bought twelve dollars worth of fishing tackle and a gun, also quantities of cartridges. I never used any of them for the things here were much more up to date. When I went to church I was astonished. I never saw more feathers and fancy dressing anywhere.
In 1860 hogs were $2.00 a hundred and potatoes 14c a bushel.
Mrs. Samuel B. Dresser—1850.
We took a steamer from Galena to Stillwater, as everyone did in those days.
They were paying the Sioux Indians at Red Wing. A noble looking chief in a white blanket colored band with eagles' feathers colored and beautifully worked buckskin shirt, leggings and moccasins was among them. He stands out in my mind as the most striking figure I ever saw. There was so much majesty in his look.
We took a bateau from Stillwater to Clouse's Creek. My uncle came the year before and had a block house where Troutmere now is, four miles from Osceola and we visited him.