stock; and they have raised abundance of corn, some wheat, potatoes, oats, and garden vegetables; have made butter and cheese; and raised fruit, etc., etc. They dwell in good log-cabins, and some have extremely neat houses, well furnished. They have their outhouses, stables, well-fenced lots, and some have good barns.” There are seventy scholars in one school alone that are taught by the Friends; and the teacher reports: “It is truly astonishing to see the rapidity with which they acquire knowledge. The boys work on the farm part of the time, and soon learn how to do what they are set at. The girls spend a part of their time in doing housework, sewing, etc. Many of them do the sewing of their own, and some of the clothes of the other children.”
In 1853 the Delawares are recorded as being “among the most remarkable of our colonized tribes, By their intrepidity and varied enterprise they are distinguished in a high degree. Besides being industrious farmers and herdsmen, they hunt and trade all over the interior of the continent, carrying their traffic beyond the Great Salt Lake, and exposing themselves to a thousand perils.”
Their agent gives, in his report for this year, a graphic account of an incident such as has only too often occurred on our frontier. “A small party of Delawares, consisting of a man, his squaw, and a lad about eighteen years of age, recently returning from the mountains, with the avails and profits of a successful hunt and traffic, after they had commenced their journey homeward the second day the man sickened and died. Before he died he directed his squaw and the young man to hasten home with their horses and mules—thirteen in number—their money (four hundred and forty-five dollars), besides many other articles of value. After a few days’ travel, near some of the forts on the Arkansas, they were overtaken by four white men, deserters from the United States Army—three on foot, and one riding a mule. The squaw and young man
