, suffered as
pioneers, can never be fully understood. After that, whenever father was
late, little as I was, and I was only four, I knew what mother was going
through and would always sit close to her and pat her.

Our home only had a shake roof and during a rain it leaked in showers.
My little sister was born just at this time during an awful storm. We
thought it would kill mother, but it did not seem to hurt her.

The Indians used to come and demand meat. All we had was bacon. We gave
them all we had but when they ate it all up they demanded more. We were
much frightened, but they did not hurt us. Father used to tap the maple
trees, but we could not get any sap for the Indians drank it all. That
winter we lived a week on nothing but potatoes.

Our nearest neighbor was Mrs. Wass. She had two little girls about our
ages. They had come from Ohio. We used to love to go there to play and
often did so. Once when I was four, her little girls had green and white
gingham dresses. I thought them the prettiest things I had ever seen and
probably they were, for we had little. When mother undressed me that
night, two little green and white scraps of cloth fell out of the front
of my little low necked dress. Mother asked at once if Mrs. Wass gave
them to me and I had to answer, "No." "Then," she said, "in the morning
you will have to take them back and tell Mrs. Wass you took them." I
just hated to and cried and cried. In the morning, the first thing, she
took me by the hand and led me to the edge of their plowed field and
made me go on alone. When I got there, Mrs. Wass came out to meet me. I
said, "I've come to bring these." She took me up in her arms and said,
"You dear child, you are welcome to them." But my mother would not let
me have them. I never took anything again.

We had a Newfoundland dog by the name of Sancho, a most affectionate,
faithful beast. A neighbor who had a lonely cabin borrowed him to stay
with his wife while he was away. Someone shot him for a black bear. No
person was ever lamented more.

In '54 my father built the first furniture factory at Minnetonka Mills.
Our house was near it. The trail leading from Anoka to Shakopee went
right by the house and it seemed that the Indians were always on it.
There were no locks on the doors and if there were, it would only have
made the Indians ugly to use them. Late one afternoon, we saw a big war
party of Sioux coming. They had been in a scrimmage with the Chipp