leave with them; and who will protect them
from the Chippeways!

However inclement the season, their home must be for a time on the open
prairie. As far as the eye can reach, it is a desert of snow. Not a
stick of timber can be seen. A storm is coming on too; nothing is heard
but the howling blast, which mocks the cries of famished children. The
drifting of the snow makes it impossible to see what course they are to
take; they have only to sit down and let the snow fall upon them. It is
a relief when they are quite covered with it, for it shelters them from
the keenness of the blast!

Alas! for the children; the cry of those who can speak is, Give me
food! while the dying infant clings to its mother's breast, seeking to
draw, with its parting breath, the means of life.

But the storm is over; the piercing cold seizes upon the exhausted
frames of the sufferers.

The children have hardly strength to stand; the father places one upon
his back and goes forward; the mother wraps her dead child in her
blanket, and lays it in the snow; another is clinging to her, she has no
time to weep for the dead; nature calls upon her to make an effort for
the living. She takes her child and follows the rest. It would be a
comfort to her, could she hope to find her infant's body when summer
returns to bury it. She shudders, and remembers that the wolves of the
prairie are starving too!

Food is found at last; the strength of the buffalo yields to the arrow
of the Sioux. We will have food and not die, is the joyful cry of all,
and when their fierce appetites are appeased, they carry with them on
their return to their village, the skins of the animals with the
remainder of the meat.

The sufferings of famine and fatigue, however, are followed by those of
disease; the strength of many is laid low. They must watch, too, for
their enemies are at hand.

CHAPTER III.

In the summer of 1844 a large party of half-breeds and Indians from Red
river,--English subjects,--trespassed upon the hunting grounds of the
Sioux. There were several hundred hunters, and many carts drawn by oxen
for the purpose of carrying away the buffalo they had killed. One of
this party had left his companions, and was riding alone at some
distance from them. A Dahcotah knew that his nation would suffer from
the destruction of their game--fresh in his memory, too, were the
sufferings of the past winter. What wonder then that the arrow which was
intended for th