who was playing outside, saw him raise the window and aim his gun
across the river. She told my father, who went in and made him desist
and nailed up the window. When we went to bed that night father did not
take pains to lock the Indian in. After we were asleep he crept out and
slipped away, and before morning, the Chippewas descended upon the
sleeping Sioux and killed every one of them.

Christmas in those hard times did not mean to us little pioneer children
what it does now. There was no spare money with which to buy presents.
We always hung up our stockings, but got nothing in them but a little
cheap candy, and perhaps a few raisins. But one year, father determined
to give us and the other children of the village a little better
Christmas than usual. So he went out to his woods and cut enough fire
wood to exchange in St. Cloud for a barrel of apples. Then he divided
off one end of our sitting room with a sheet and arranged a puppet show
behind it. And with the village children in one end of the room eating
apples, and father in the other managing the puppets, we celebrated the
day in a very happy way.

Mrs. F. Hoefer of Mound was an old settler of Watertown, and gives some
interesting information of the prices of food-stuffs after the war, as
follows:

"Flour was $15 a barrel, wheat was $5 a bushel, potatoes were $2.50 a
bushel and calico was thirty-five cents a yard. My husband's salary for
that summer season was $5. During the winter months we had barley coffee
and pancakes, no bed clothes and no clothes for the children. Our bed
quilt was a bear skin. When my first child was six weeks old, I went out
washing, walking twelve miles to my work, washing all day and then
walking the twelve miles back home again."

Ex-Governor Samuel R. Van Sant--1857.

My father with his family moved to Illinois in 1837, coming on the
"Adventure," on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Like most of the early
pioneers he was poor and had to work. Tickets were sold at a less price
if the passenger would help to wood the boat; my father took advantage
of this proposition. On board as a passenger, was the old Indian Chief,
Black Hawk. He was much interested in my little sister and gave her a
very fine string of beads. The beads, or a part of them, are still in
our family.

My father took up a claim near Rock Island on the banks of the Rock
River. While there, the family suffered all the privations of early
settlers in a new country