x children and always found them
very fair in their play. We used to like to go in their tepees. There
was a depression in the middle for the fire. The smoke was supposed to
go out of the hole in the top of the tent. An Indian always had a smoky
smell. When they cooked game, they just drew it a little--never took off
the feathers much or cut the head or feet off.

Some of our Indians got into a fuss with a band from Faribault and one
of our Indians killed one of them. He brought a great knife that he had
done the killing with and gave it to my father all uncleaned as it was.
He said it was "seechy" knife, meaning bad. As they were still fighting,
my father took it just as it was and stuck it up in a crack above our
front door in our one room. Then he sent to Morristown for Mr. Morris
to straighten out the fight. He had lived among the Indians for a long
time and knew their language. He brought them to time. Later they came
and wanted the knife but my father would not give it to them.

Geese and ducks covered the lakes. Later we had the most wonderful
feather beds made from their feathers. We only used the small fluffy
ones, so they were as if they were made from down. Wild rice, one of the
Indians' principal articles of diet, when gathered was knocked into
their canoe. It was often unhulled. I have seen the Indians hull it.
They would dig a hole in the ground, line it with a buffalo skin, hair
side down, then turn the rice in this, jumping up and down on it with
their moccasined feet until it was hulled. I could never fancy it much
after I saw this.

We had great quantities of wild plums on our own place. Two trees grew
close together and were so much alike we always called them the twins.
Those trees had the most wonderful plums--as large as a small peach. We
used to peel them and serve them with cream. Nothing could have a finer
flavor.

Just before the outbreak, an Indian runner, whom none of us had ever
seen, went around to all the Sioux around there. Then with their ponies
loaded, the tepee poles dragging behind, for three days our Indians went
by our place on the old trail going west. Only a few of Bishop Whipple's
Christian Indians remained.

Mr. Warren Wakefield--1854.

My father came to Wayzata with his family, settling where the Sam Bowman
place now is. We had lived over a year in southern Minnesota. As the
hail took all our crops, we had lived on thin prairie chickens and
biscuits made of sprouted wh