home at Fourth Street and Second Avenue North, we
followed an Indian trail. There was generally a big cow with a bell to
turn out for somewhere on it.

Mrs. Mary Staring Smith--1856.

When we first came to live at Eden Prairie I thought I had never seen
anything so beautiful as that flowering prairie. In the morning we could
hear the clear call of the prairie chickens. I used to love to hear it.
There were great flocks of them and millions of passenger pigeons. Their
call of "pigie! pigie!" was very companionable on that lonely prairie.
Sometimes when they were flying to roost they would darken the sun,
there were such numbers of them. Geese and ducks were very numerous,
too. Black birds were so thick they were a menace to the growing crops.
I used to shoot them when I was twelve years old.

Once my father and uncle went deer hunting. They got into some poisonous
wild thing, perhaps poison ivy. My uncle's face was awful and father
nearly lost his sight. He was almost blind for seven years but finally
Dr. Daniels of St. Peter cured him.

Once during war time we could get no one to help us harvest. I cut one
hundred acres strapped to the seat as I was too small to stay there any
other way.

We had a cow named Sarah. A lovely, gentle creature. Mr. Anderson
brought her up on the boat. My dog was an imported English setter. These
and an old pig were my only playmates. I used to love to dress my dog up
but when I found my old pig would let me tie my sunbonnet on her I much
preferred her. She looked so comical with that bonnet on lying out at
full length and grunting little comfortable grunts when I would scratch
her with a stick.

I never saw such a sad expression in the eye of any human being as I saw
in "Otherdays" the Sioux friend of the whites. It seemed as if he could
look ahead and see what was to be the fate of his people. Yes, I have
seen that expression once since. After the massacre when the Indians
were brought to Fort Snelling I saw a young squaw, a beauty, standing in
the door of her tepee with just that same look. It used to bring the
tears to my eyes to think of her.

There used to be a stone very sacred to the Indians on Alexander Gould's
place near us. It was red sandstone and set down in a hollow that they
had dug out. The Sioux owned it and never passed on the trail that led
by it without squatting in a circle facing it, smoking their pipes. I
have often stood near and watched them. I never heard