Pemmican was also made by drying the meat and pulverizing it. The bones were then cracked and the marrow melted and poured into this. No white man could ever make pemmican right. It took a half breed to do it.
The Red River people had cattle very early. The stock at the mission at Lac qui Parle came from there.
I returned to Illinois in the summer of '43 and threshed. In the Fall I returned and built a house for Gideon Pond. It was a wooden house where their brick house now stands.
In 1844, I was building a mission building at Traverse. An Indian came in one day and told me there was a very sick man about twenty miles away at his camp. I went back with him and we brought the white man to the mission. After he was better, he told me that he was one of six drovers who had been bringing a herd of three hundred cattle from Missouri to Fort Snelling. They had lost their compass and then the trail and wandered along until they found a road near what is now Sauk Center. There they met a band of Sioux. The Indians killed a cow and when the drovers remonstrated, they killed one of them and stampeded the cattle. The drovers all ran for their lives. Two of them managed to elude the Indians, and took the road leading east. Our man was one, the other was drowned while crossing the river on a log raft, the rest were never found. Many of the cattle ran wild on the prairies. The Indians used often to kill them and sell the meat to the whites. One of the claims at Traverse de Sioux was for these cattle from the owners of the herd.
Mrs. Missouri Rose Pratt—1843.
In 1842 my father was going to the Wisconsin pineries to work, so mother and we children went along to keep house for him. We came from Dubuque to Lake Pepin. Mr. Furnell, from the camp, had heard there were white people coming so he came with an ox team down the tote road to meet us and our baggage, and take us to camp. We found a large log house which we thought most complete. We lived there that winter and Mr. Furnell and some others boarded with us. A romance was started there.
The next Spring we took our household goods in a cabin built on a raft, floated down to Nauvoo and sold the lumber to the Mormons. Joseph Smith was a smart speaker, mother said, when she responded to the invitation to hear the "Prophet of the Most High God" preach. The children of these people were the raggedest I have ever seen. Mr. Furnell had his raft lashed to ours and sold his lumber to them too.
We went to St. Paul on the Otter. Mr. Furnell went with us. When mother saw "Pig's Eye" as St. Paul was then called, she did not like it at all. She thought it was so much more lonesome than the pineries. She begged to go back, but father loved a new country. On landing, we climbed up a steep path. We found only six houses there. One was Jackson's. He kept a store in part of it. In the kitchen he had three barrels of liquor with spigots in them. The Jackson's were very kind and allowed us to live in their warehouse which was about half way down the bluff. We only slept there nights for we were afraid to cook in a place with powder stored in it, the way that had, so we cooked outside.
My sister Caroline had light hair, very, very blue eyes and a lovely complexion. The Indians were crazy about her. It was her fairness they loved. She was engaged to Mr. Furnell and wore his ring. The Indian braves used to ask her for this and for a lock of her hair to braid in with theirs but of course, she would never let them have it. She was afraid of them. The interpreter told her to be careful and never let them get a lock of her hair for if they did and braided it in with theirs, they would think she belonged to them. One day when she was alone in the warehouse, an Indian came in his canoe and sat around watching her. When he saw she was alone, he grabbed her and tried to cut off some of her hair with his big knife. She eluded him by motioning to cut it off herself, but instead, ran shrieking to father at Jackson's. He came with a big cudgel but the Indian had gone in his canoe.
In the election of '43 in St. Paul, every man there got drunk even if they had never drunk before and many of them had not. Early in the evening, Mr. August Larpenteur came into Mrs. Jackson's kitchen to get a drink of liquor. He was a very young man. She said, "August, where's the other men?" just as he was turning the spigot in the barrel. He tried to look up and tell her, but lost his balance and fell over backward while the liquor ran over the floor. Then he laughed and laughed and told her where they were.