and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids
them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the
manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance.
The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across the
backs of their ponies, swing their pappooses to one side and perhaps a
joint of fresh meat to the other, then mount on top astride, dig the
pony's neck with their moccasined heels and start off at a trot.
Sometimes a large party of Indians, men, women and children, camp on
Skunk River and fish. In the spring they make a general hegira to a
wooded section two or three days' journey to the northward for the
purpose of tapping the maple trees and boiling down the syrup into
sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their
dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried
sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and
try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through
another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of
the pack-ponies had strayed behind the train, and a squaw rode back to
drive them ahead. A number of town-boys, thinking this an excellent
opportunity to have some fun, threw sticks at them and drove them off on
by-streets and up back alleys. The squaw tried patiently again and again
to get them together and join the train, but it was not until a brave
turned back and came to her assistance that she succeeded. Neither of
the Indians uttered a word or betrayed by sign or expression that they
noticed the insults of the boys.

Often, when the mud is too deep for teams, farmers go by on horseback,
with their horses' tails tied into a knot to keep them out of the mud.
They have come to town to learn the price of wheat, corn or hogs, to
bargain for some article of farm use, or perhaps to pay the interest on
their mortgages. Many of them have not yet paid entirely for their
farms, and comparatively few are free from debt in some form. Some,
being ambitious to have large farms, have taken more land than they can
profitably manage or pay for in a number of years, and are what is
called "land poor:" others, though content with modest portions of sixty
or a hundred acres, have not yet been able, by reason of poor crops,
their own mismanagement or some other cause, to clear their farms of
debt. They work along from year to year, supporting their families,
pa