where now
stands the city of Galena, Illinois.

In the spring of 1826, owing to the great rise of water in the
Mississippi and its tributaries, and in the Red and Assinniboine
rivers, caused by the unusual deep snow of the preceding winter, which
had melted with warm and heavy rains, the losses sustained by the
settlers at La Fourche were so heavy that no attempt was made to
repair them, and nearly all the French settlers there became
thoroughly discouraged and left their home. Over the same route their
friends had traveled three years before they came to Fort Snelling,
and nearly all took passage in a small steamboat for the lead mines at
and near La Pointe, Illinois.

I remember well when this party arrived. One of them, a very pretty
girl named Elise, was employed in our family as a nurse for our baby
sister, and remained with us some time.

General Chetlaine closes his very interesting article thus: "The
descendants of these colonists are numerous, and are found scattered
throughout the Northwest, the greater part being in the region of the
lead mines. Most of them are thrifty farmers and stock breeders. A few
have entered the professions and trade. All, as far as is known, are
temperate, industrious, and law-abiding citizens."

_CHAPTER X._

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.

Like the old man in Dickens' "Child's Story," "I am always
remembering; come and remember with me." I close my eyes and recall an
evening some sixty years ago, when in one of the stone cottages near
Fort Snelling, which was our home at that time, a pleasant company of
officers and their families were spending a social evening with my
parents.

The doors were thrown open, for the weather was warm, and one of the
officers, Captain Cruger, was walking on the piazza, when we were all
startled by the sound of rapid firing near us. The Captain rushed into
the house, much agitated, exclaiming: "That bullet almost grazed my
ear!" What could it mean? Were the Indians surrounding us? Soon the
loud yells and shrieks from the Indian camp near our house made it
evident that the treaty of peace made that afternoon between the Sioux
and Chippewas had ended, as all those treaties did, in treachery and
bloodshed. The principal men of the two nations had met at the Indian
Agency, and in the presence of Major Taliaferro, their "White Father,"
had made a solemn treaty of peace. In the evening, at the wigwam of
the Chippewa chief, they had ratified this tre