perishing during severely cold weather. The father absent on a winter's hunt, the mother could not leave her children to apply to the fort for assistance, even had she strength left to reach there. The frozen bodies would be found in the lodges. The improvident character of the Indian is well known. Their annuities are soon spent; supplies received from government are used in feasting; and no provision is made for winters that are always long and severe. Though they receive frequent assistance from the public at the fort, the wants of all cannot be supplied. The captain of the post was generous towards them, as was always my friend Mrs. F., whom they highly esteemed. Yet some hearts are closed against appeals daily made to their humanity. An Indian woman may suffer from hunger or sickness, because her looks are repulsive and her garments unwashed: some will say they can bear the want of warm clothing, because they have been used to privation.

The women of the Sioux exhibit many striking peculiarities of character—the love of the marvellous, and a profound veneration for any and every thing connected with their religious faith; a willingness to labor and to learn; patience in submitting to insults from servants who consider them intruders in families; the evident recognition of the fact that they are a doomed race, and must submit to indignities that they dare not resent. They seem, too, so unused to sympathy, often comparing their lives of suffering and hardship with the ease and comfort enjoyed by the white women, it must be a hard heart, that could withhold sympathy from such poor creatures. Their home was mine—and such a home! The very sunsets, more bright and glorious than I had ever seen, seemed to love to linger over the scenes amongst which we lived; the high bluffs of the "father of many waters" and the quiet shores of the "Minesota;" the fairy rings on the prairie, and the "spirit lakes" that reposed beside them; the bold peak, Pilot Knob, on whose top the Indians bury their dead, with the small hills rising gradually around it—all were dear to the Sioux and to me. They believed that the rocks, and hills, and waters were peopled with fairies and spirits, whose power and anger they had ever been taught to fear. I knew that God, whose presence fills all nature, was there. In fancy they beheld their deities in the blackened cloud and fearful storm; I saw mine in the brightness of nature, the type of the unchanging light of Heaven.

They evinced the warmest gratitude to any who had ever displayed kind feelings towards them. When our little children were ill with scarlet fever, how grieved they were to witness their sufferings; especially as we watched Virginia, waiting, as we expected, to receive her parting breath. How strongly they were contrasted! that fair child, unconscious even of the presence of the many kind friends who had watched and wept beside her—and the aged Sioux women, who had crept noiselessly into the chamber. I remember them well, as they leaned over the foot of the bed; their expressive and subdued countenances full of sorrow. That small white hand, that lay so powerless, had ever been outstretched to welcome them when they came weary and hungry.

They told me afterwards, that "much water fell from their eyes day and night, while they thought she would die;" that the servants made them leave the sick room, and then turned them out of the house—but that they would not go home, waiting outside to hear of her.

During her convalescence, I found that they could "rejoice with those that rejoice" as well as "weep with those that wept." The fearful disease was abating in our family, and "Old Harper," as she is called in the Fort, offered to sit up and attend to the fire. We allowed her to do so, for the many who had so kindly assisted us were exhausted with fatigue. Joy had taken from me all inclination to sleep, and I lay down near my little girl, watching the old Sioux woman. She seemed to be reviewing the history of her life, so intently did she gaze at the bright coals on the hearth. Many strange thoughts apparently engaged her. She was, of her own accord, an inmate of the white man's house, waiting to do good to his sick child. She had wept bitterly for days, lest the child should be lost to her—and now she was full of happiness, at the prospect of her recovery.

How shall we reconcile this with the fact that Harper, or Harpstinah, was one of the Sioux women, who wore, as long as she could endure it, a necklace made of the hands and feet of Chippeway children? Here, in the silence of night, she turned often towards the bed, when the restless sleep of the child broke in on her meditation. She fancied I slept, but my mind was busy too. I was far away from the home of my childhood, and a Sioux woman, with her knife in her belt, was assisting me in the care of my only daughter. She thought Dr. T. was a "wonderful medicine man" to cure her; in which opinion we all cordially coincided.

I always listened with pleasure to the women, when allusion was made to their religion; but when they spoke of their tradition, I felt as a miser would, had he discovered a mine of gold. I had read the legends of the Maiden's Rock, and of St. Anthony's Falls. I asked Checkered Cloud to tell them to me. She did so—and how differently they were told! With my knowledge of the language, and the aid of my kind and excellent friend Mr. Prescott, all the dark passages in her narration were made clear. I thought the Indian tone of feeling was not rightly appreciated—their customs not clearly stated, perhaps not fairly estimated. The red man, considered generally as a creature to be carried about and exhibited for money, was, in very truth, a being immortally endowed, though under a dispensation obscure to the more highly-favored white race. As they affirmed a belief in the traditions of their tribe, with what strength and beauty of diction they clothed their thoughts—how energetic in gesture! Alas! for the people who had no higher creed, no surer trust, for this and for another world.

However they may have been improved, no one could have had better opportunities than I, to acquire all information of interest respecting these Indians. I lived among them seven years. The chiefs from far and near were constantly visiting the Fort, and were always at our house. Not a sentiment is in the Legends that I did not hear from the lips of the Indian man or woman. They looked on my husband as their friend, and talked to him freely on all subjects, whether of religion, customs, or grievances. They were frequently told that I was writing about them, that every body might know what great warriors they were.

The men were sometimes astonished at the boldness with which I reproved them, though it raised me much in their estimation. I remember taking Bad Hail, one of their chiefs, to task, frequently; and on one occasion he told me, by way of showing his gratitude for the interest I took in his character, that he had three wives, all of whom he would give up if I would "leave Eastman, and come and live with him." I received his proposition, however, with Indian indifference, merely replying that I did not fancy having my head split open every few days with a stick of wood. He laughed heartily after his fashion, conscious that the cap fitted, for he was in the habit of expending all his surplus bad temper upon his wives. I have sometimes thought, that if, when a warrior, be he chief or commoner, throws a stick of wood at his wife's head, she were to cast it back at his, he might, perhaps, be taught better behaviour. But I never dared to instil such insubordinate notions into the heads of my Sioux female friends, lest some ultra "brave," in a desperate rage, might substitute the tomahawk for the log. These opinions, too, might have made me unpopular with Sioux and Turks—and, perchance, with some of my more enlightened friends, who are self-constituted "lords of creation."