s
surroundings, and never faltered in her love for that first home in the
West. A barrel of pork was among the supplies she had brought, and
people came as far as twenty miles to beg a little of it, so tired were
they of fresh meat from the woods, and fish from the river; and they
never went away empty-handed, as long as it lasted.

They came, as I have said, in 1839, and I the year following. There is a
vague, misty period at the beginning of every life, as memory rises from
mere nothingness to full strength, when it is not easy to say whether
the things remembered may not have been heard from the lips of others.
But I distinctly recall some very early events, and particularly the
disturbance created by my year-old brother, two years younger than
myself, when he screamed with pain one evening and held his bare foot
up, twisted to one side.

My mother was ill in bed, and the terrified maid summoned my father from
outside, with the story that the baby's ankle was out of joint. He
hurried in, gave it one look, and, being a hasty, impetuous man, he
declared, "Yes, the child's ankle is out of joint; I must go for a
doctor;" and in another moment he would have been off on a seven-mile
tramp through the dark to Watertown. But the mother, a level-headed
woman, experienced in emergencies, called out from her bed, "Wait a
minute; bring me the child and a candle;" and a minute later she had
discovered a little sliver which pricked him when he set his foot down,
and extricated it between thumb and finger. "There," said she; "I don't
think you need walk to Water-town to-night."

Indians were so numerous that I don't remember when they first came out
of the haze into my consciousness, but probably in my third year. They
were Winnebago and Pottawatomi, the river being a common inheritance of
both tribes. In the winter of 1839-40, about thirty families of the
former tribe camped for several weeks opposite our home and were very
sociable and friendly. Diligent hunters and trappers, they accumulated
fully a hundred dollars worth of otter, beaver, bear, deer, and other
skins. But a trader came up from Watertown in the spring and got the
whole lot in exchange for a four-gallon keg of whisky. That was a wild
night that followed. Some of the noisiest came over to our house, and
when denied admittance threatened to knock the door down, but my father
told them he had two guns ready for them, and they finally left. He
afterwards said that h