poles, a corner at the top being turned back, to allow an exit to the smoke of the wood fire which is always kept burning below. Within, one would often find the head of the family stretched lazily on the ground, and half asleep, with nothing to cover his nakedness but a cloth round the loins, while the female members of the household were busily employed in cooking, or other domestic duties, But the squaws were always fully clothed. The men, when in an industrious frame of mind, were generally engaged in the manufacture of a bow, or arrows, or in cutting out a redstone pipe, in the carving and ornamenting of which the Sioux shows much ingenuity.
But in all the tents which we entered, we squatted down, without challenge, as members for the time being of the family circle, and were soon at home with the rest, chatting and bargaining, so far as the few words of Sioux we had picked up would allow us, with the help of signs. There is no portion of an Indian’s property that has not its price, and you have only to bid high enough to buy everything he has, from a bead necklace to a squaw. The offer of a squaw we had on more than one occasion politely to decline.
It seems strange that these people, in whose tents we spent in this friendly way some six or seven hours, without a suspicion of harm on our part, or, apparently a thought of harm on theirs, should have since been guilty of those fearful massacres which have almost exterminated the whites of the neighbourhood. And yet their victims, though the attack may have taken them unexpectedly at the moment, had little ground for surprise that an attack should come. The extensive plundering of the Indians, which had been carried on for years under the cloak of authority, by each successive agent, was well known to have created great discontent amongst them. This feeling was kept in abeyance by promises held out from time to time that a change of agent would bring with it a redress of grievances, and in some measure also, doubtless, by a wholesome fear of the regular garrison of Fort Ridgeley. But agents were changed, and still there was no redress forthcoming, while their fears had now been in great part removed by the substitution of volunteers for regulars at the fort, for volunteers were held by them in no great consideration. The whites at the Upper Agency regarded the approaching payment there (which was to follow that at the Lower) with considerable apprehension, and expressed great anxiety that there should be a detachment of troops on the spot to prevent a disturbance.
On the next day (which was Tuesday, the 25th), we returned to the Lower Agency. The Indians there had considerably increased their numbers during our absence, the payment being expected to come off the next morning. “Sholto” we met, but scarcely recognised our old friend in the “reach-me-down” check suit with which he now paraded his civilisation, the metamorphosis was so complete.
We made two out of a party of six in our old bed-room that night. When morning came there were still further preparations necessary, which would postpone the payment till the middle of the day, or perhaps the afternoon, and having waited till nearly two without seeing it commence, we drove off on our way back to St. Paul, being now in a hurry to rejoin our friends, the more so as we understood that there was little interest in the ceremony itself.
So we moved forward across the prairie in a van of the same kind as that which had carried us to Yellow Medicine, and after a drive of thirty miles came to a halt for the night at a German settlement, called New Ulm. A further stage of thirty miles brought us by about the middle of the next day to Mankato, a larger settlement, mostly German, and the scene of the execution of the thirty-eight leading criminals in the massacres. Here we were unfortunate enough to miss a steamer, and were induced, by the misrepresentations of our landlord, to wait two days in the vain expectation of another. The river was getting low, and few boats now ascended so far.
8o, on Saturday the 29th, we drove on to St. Peter, a small place lower down the river, joined a boat, slept on board that night, started on Sunday morning, reached St. Paul sometime on Sunday night in a state of sleep, and, on waking, rejoined our friends in the early morning of Monday the 1st of July. And so ended our rough, though pleasant, excursion.
“ONE IN A THOUSAND.”
Roses, roses, oh! brilliant and bright
In the gorgeous month of June,
Raising your blushing queenly heads
In the glare of summer noon.
There are roses crimson, roses red,
Roses of amber hue,
Gazing with upturned loveliness
On heaven’s deep azure blue.
Stately in presence, dazzling in tint,
Shaming the setting sun,
From the rounded cup of the open flow’r
To the bud but scarce begun.
Too bright are ye in your conscious pride,
And your wealth of summer hue;
No bond, no tie, could ever unite
This weary heart and you.
There’s a little rose, by a little house,
On a little plot of ground,
Whose every root, and every branch,
Around my heart is wound.
’Tis a fair small thing of tender pink—
With no flaunting crimson dye—
And a world of sunny sweetness looks
From out its modest eye.
Unseen, maybe, by many who pass,
And known, perhaps, by few—
Oh! little rose, thou know’st full well
The tie betwixt me and you.
Oh! roses brilliant, and roses bright,
All lovely though ye be,
That little rose by the little house
Is the only rose for me!
