d Indian, and had her baby with her, neatly
dressed and strapped to a board. A bandage across the forehead held the
head in place, and every portion of the body was as secure as board and
bandages could make them, except the arms from the elbow down, but no
danger of the little fellow sucking his thumb. His lady mamma did not
have to hold him, for he was stood up in a corner like a cane or
umbrella, and seemed quite comfortable as well as content. She had
traveled seven weeks, had come seventeen hundred miles to purchase some
dresses and trinkets, and would no doubt be a profitable customer to St.
Paul merchants, for the lady of the train was a person of wealth and
authority, always the wife of the commander-in-chief, and her sentence
of death might have been fatal to any man in it.

In these trains were always found Indians filling positions as useful
laborers, for the English government never gave premiums for idleness
and vagabondism among Indians, by feeding and clothing them without
effort on their own part. Their dexterity in turning griddle cakes, by
shaking the pan and giving it a jerk which sent the cake up into the air
and brought it down square into the pan other side up, would have made
Biddy's head whirl to see. The "Gov. Ramsey" was the first steamboat
which ran above the falls of St. Anthony, and in the spring of '59 she
was steamed and hawsered up the Sauk Rapids, and ran two hundred miles,
until the falls of Pokegamy offered insurmountable barriers to further
progress. It was thought impossible to get her down again, there was no
business for her, and she lay useless until, the next winter, Anson
Northup took out her machinery and drew it across on sleds to the Red
River of the North, where it was built into the first steamboat which
ever ran on that river.

Before starting on his expedition, Mr. Northup came to the _Democrat_
office to leave an advertisement and ask me to appeal to the public for
aid in provisions and feed to be furnished along the route. He was in a
Buffalo suit, from his ears to his feet, and looked like a bale of furs.
On his head he wore a fox skin cap with the nose lying on the two paws
of the animal just between his eyes, the tail hanging down between his
shoulders. He was a brave, strong man, and carried out his project,
which to most people was wild.

Nothing seemed more important than the cultivation of health for the
people, and to this I gave much earnest attention, often