nkins" to let in the air. We filled in the
cracks except where these chinkins were, with mud. The roof was made by
laying popple poles so they met in the middle and fastening them
together. Over this we laid a heavy thickness of wild hay, and over that
the popple poles again well tied with hand twisted ropes of wild hay, to
those below. It was a good roof, only it leaked like a sieve. The floor
was just the ground. Over it we put a layer of the wild hay and then
staked a rag carpet over it. A puncheon shelf to put my trunk under, and
the furniture placed, made a home that I was more than satisfied with.
It took my husband over two weeks with a pair of trotting oxen to go for
the furniture to St. Paul.

My baby was born three weeks after we moved in. There was no doctor
within a hundred miles. I got through, helped only by my sister-in-law.
What do you women nowadays, with your hospitals and doctors know of a
time like this? When it rained, and rain it did, plenty, that October,
the only dry place was on that trunk under the shelf and many an hour
baby and I spent there. Whenever there was sunshine that carpet was
drying.

We were much troubled with what the settlers called "prairie dig." It
was a kind of itch that seemed to come from the new land. It made the
hands very sore and troublesome. We did everything but could find no
cure. The Dakota Sioux were our neighbors and were very friendly. They
had not yet learned to drink the white man's firewater. A squaw came in
one day and when she saw how I was suffering, went out and dug a root.
She scraped off the outer bark, then cooked the inner bark and rubbed it
on my hands. I was cured as if by magic. She buried all parts of the
root, so I think it was poison.

The next year we raised the first wheat on the Des Moines River. We put
the sacks in the bottom of the wagon, then our feather beds on top of
them. The children were put on these and we started for the mill at
Garden City, one hundred and thirty miles away. We had two yoke of oxen;
the leaders were white with black heads and hoofs and great, wide
spreading horns. They were Texas cattle and were noble beasts, very
intelligent and affectionate. I could drive them by just calling "Gee
and Haw". They went steadily along. My husband and I spelled each other
and went right along by night as well as day. We were about forty hours
going. The moonlight, with the shadows of the clouds on the prairie was
magnificent. We nev