home to care for the younger
children. While they were gone she committed suicide by hanging herself.

The Indian tents were heated by making a fire on the ground in the
center, the smoke partially escaping through a hole in the top. On each
side of this fire they drove a forked stick into the ground and laying a
pole across these sticks hung on it their utensils for cooking. To this
pole this poor Indian girl had tied a rope attached to a strap about her
neck and, the pole being low, had lifted her feet from the ground and
hanged herself rather than marry a man she did not love.

One day when I was alone in my house at Oiyuwega or Traverse de Sioux an
Indian man came softly in and sat down by the stove. I soon saw that he
was drunk, which frightened me a little. I said nothing to him except to
answer his questions because I did not wish to rouse his anger.
Presently he reached to the stove and lifted a griddle and I thought he
was going to strike me. The griddles on the cook stoves then, each had
its handle attached instead of having a separate handle. I slipped out
of the door and soon he went away. Later he came back and said, "They
tell me I was going to strike you the other day. I was drunk and that is
my reason. I would not have done it if I had been sober." I accepted his
apology, thinking it a good one for an unlearned Indian.

The treaty between the U. S. government and the Dakota Indians was made
in July of 1851. The commissioners of the government three in number,
came in June. Their chief was Luke Lee. There were no houses where the
white people could be entertained, so they camped in tents on the bluffs
of the Minnesota river near an old trading house, occupied at that time
by Mr. Le Blanc. The bluff was not an abrupt one, but formed a series of
terraces from the river to the summit. The camp was on one of these
terraces. There was a scarce fringe of trees along the river but from
there to the top and as far back as the eye could see, perhaps for two
miles back on the bluff, there was not a bush or tree.

A great many white men assembled, Gov. Ramsey, Gen. Sibley, Hon. H. M.
Rice, editors also from some of our newspapers, among them Mr. Goodhue
of the Pioneer Press, were there. Traders, too, came to collect debts
from the Indians when they should receive the pay for their land. Mr.
and Mrs. Richard Chute of St. Anthony came. Accidentally their tent had
been left behind and they found a boarding place with