home. He was a great brag and not
noted for truth telling. He was very fond of telling how he shot the
renegade Inkpadutah. This was all imagination. He had an old flint lock
musket with the flint gone and would illustrate his story by crawling
and skulking, generally, to the great delight of the boys. One rainy day
my mother was sick and was lying in her bed which was curtained off from
the rest of the living room. As Cut Nose, who did not know this, told
his oft repeated story, illustrating it as usual, he thrust his gun
under the curtains and his face and shoulders after it to show how he
shot the renegade chief from ambush. My mother dashed out with a shriek,
but was no more frightened than Cut Nose, at the apparition of the white
squaw.

One day my brother and I took a peck of potatoes each and went to an
Indian camp to trade for two pairs of moccasins, the usual trade. We
left the potatoes with the squaws for a moment and ran outside to see
what some noise was. When we returned there were no potatoes to be seen
and no moccasins to be traded. We began looking about but could see
nothing. The fire was burned down well and was a glowing bed of coals in
its depression in the center of the tepee. After a while, one of the old
squaws went to the ashes and digging them with a stick, commenced to dig
out the potatoes. As the fire was about four feet in diameter, the usual
width, there was plenty of room for our half bushel of potatoes. They
gave us some of them which had a wonderful flavor, but we never got any
moccasins.

Among the Indians living at the lake one winter was a white child about
three years old. My father tried to buy her, but they would not let her
go or tell who she was. They left that part of the country later, still
having her in their possession.

If it had not been for ginseng in Minnesota, many of the pioneers would
have gone hungry. Mr. Chilton of Virginia came early and built a small
furnace and drying house in Wayzata. Everyone went to the woods and dug
ginseng. For the crude product, they received five cents a pound and the
amount that could be found was unlimited. It was dug with a long narrow
bladed hoe and an expert could take out a young root with one stroke. If
while digging, he had his eye on another plant and dug that at once, he
could make a great deal of money in one day. An old root sometimes
weighed a half pound. I was a poor ginseng digger for I never noticed
quickly, but my father