of the plow, and at noon the newcomer was neatly packed away in said box, amid a pile of blankets, and business was once more resumed, very carefully and slowly, however. I can remember Mrs. Calhoun's resting, the picture of contentment, while seated upon a stump, nursing No. 4. Soon other experiences were impressed upon my mind, such as the serenades of prairie wolves, who would gather about our doors and make night hideous with their dismal howls and barks. We kept the chickens in a box in the house, otherwise they would have been snatched up in short order by these hungry demons. These concerts were arranged upon a regular program, like our modern entertainments.

As soon as it was dark and the lights extinguished, some old veteran would begin with an opening solo in a minor key, with very little variation, then another would join in, and another and soon the entire pack would make the air tremble with the chorus of from twenty-five to fifty voices. These entertainments scared me, and, at first, kept the old folks awake, but they soon became used to them and could sleep on undisturbed. Occasionally we had other concerts, performed by big grey wolves, which were of a more serious nature. When the "sable curtain of night" closed on one of these celebrations, they savored more of business and sleep was not enjoyable. Men thought of their calves and pigs shut up in log stables, perhaps exposed to the depredations of those bloodthirsty, but cowardly brutes. Generally a rifle ball, shot in their midst, would disperse the pack. One night, before Mr. Calhoun had made his door, and still had a quilt hung up as a substitute, he was aroused from sleep by a scuffle between a grey wolf and his dog, who remonstrated against this invasion of the house. He sat up in bed and shivered (with cold of course,) while the wolf flogged his dog, went into the house, under the bed and ate up all his precious stock of soap grease. He never thought of the loaded rifle hanging within reach. In this case the wolf was probably the greater coward of the two, but poor Abner did not know it.

The Duncans and Calhouns were not our only neighbors. Within a radius of a few miles were other settlers; the Harrisons, Clarks, Barbers, Nesbitts, Hoyts, Knights, Shavers, Wygants, Bairs, Armstrongs and others, all hunters, each and everyone possessing peculiarities of character belonging to himself. Distributed all over the south half of Kalamazoo county, then called Brady, were 100 or more people from almost every state in the union. Hunting and trapping were the chief occupations of the times, with a liberal division of work, farming and house building, thus combining business and fun. Saturdays were always devoted to fun, such as horse-racing, wrestling and jumping, target shooting, etc. Sunday was the visiting day. Game was as common in the woods and on the prairie as cattle, horses and sheep are now. Whisky was the only luxury and cheaper even and better than it is said to be now. Everyone drank it to keep out cold, heat, pain of every kind; as an antidote against ague and a bond of sociability. And yet in those early days there was apparently less drunkenness than now.

Father received a small stock of goods about this time, belonging to Smith, Huston & Co. How he got them, I do not know, but probably in about the same way the Klondike miners receive their supplies. Some one also lent him a few barrels of whisky to sell on commission. Our one room was then divided in the center by a board partition, leaving the stove-pipe and back part of an ancient cook stove in our living room. Subsequently the stove, in our next and more pretentious house, gave place to a capacious fire place and brick oven. With the advent of this whisky, we became at once the center of attraction for 15 or 20 miles around. The Indians were our most numerous customers and neighbors.

They went once a year to Detroit or some point in that region to receive pay for lands relinquished to the state. When they came back, money was plenty to pay for powder and lead and calicos, and when that was exhausted they obtained their goods by exchanging for them venison and skins. Mother soon became a favorite. They called her "the good white squaw," and took great pains to teach her their language, in which she soon became quite proficient. She could control them as well as their old chief, Sagamaw. They had not taken to whisky then as they did soon afterwards, and, as a rule, were honest and reliable. The chief was a personal friend of the Smith family and used to make its weekly visits with his family, staying from one to two days. He was very strict with his tribe as to any violation of our rights or social privileges. Once mother lost a silver thimble, and, suspecting it was stolen, stated her case to old Sagamaw. He promised to attend to it, and if her suspicions were correct he would know. A few days after a knock was heard at our door, and mother admitted a pretty, meek looking young squaw, with a long tough buck whip in one hand and the missing thimble in the other. The thimble had a hole in it where she had strung it to wear around her neck. She gave it to mother, then the whip, and said. "Sagamaw say, you whip squaw," but being so pretty and amiable, mother relented, thinking she was almost justified in helping herself to ornaments for her comely person, and so the girl went her way rejoicing. One day the chief, very delicately suggested to father that it would be proper for such good friends as they were to exchange wives, and even offered father two of his prettiest squaws for a bona-fide bill of sale of my mother, but somehow the trade was never consummated. I presume, in that event, I would have been thrown in to make a complete exchange of goods, and thus I failed to become an Indian chief, and Sagamaw never owned a white squaw. They were constantly bringing me presents of live birds, fawns, young foxes and wolves, and once when I was on a sick bed, with a high fever, an Indian brought me the half of a dressed deer, to tempt my appetite. They were very kind in sickness, but of little use about a sick bed. There were no wise Indian doctors in those days, such as now come to cure us of every imaginable disease. This first year we had to go 60 miles to a flour mill, consequently had to subsist upon corn, in lieu of wheat bread, and this sometimes made from pounded corn at that. One day Mrs. Calhoun sent mother a pan of flour as a rare treat, but when she learned that it was all she had of the precious stuff, she objected to taking it. Mrs. C. insisted that she must not refuse it, for mother was not used to going without, and she was. We had very little pork or beef, but so much venison and wild game that they soon became a drug. Vegetables and wild fruit being so plenty, we lived as well as we do now taking our healthy, keen appetites into consideration. Small game, such as turkeys, partridges, quail, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels, also fresh fish, were the favorite meat diet of our family.

In the winter and spring of 1831, father built a log house on the south-east side of the Big Island, as it was called, a circular forest, of about a mile in diameter, with prairie all around it. This was known far and wide, and had been, for hundreds of years, the camping ground of Indians, traveling east and west. It was almost impassable from the thickets and windfalls of great trees, and filled with game of all kinds. So, in the spring, we bade adieu to our good host, Calhoun, and moved into a house of our own. This place soon became known as Schoolcraft, and a village plat was surveyed, with streets and a park. It was many years, though, before we knew just where these luxuries were located, without looking on the map. One street, Eliza street, was named after my mother. We soon had neighbors, however, and Schoolcraft and Big Prairie Ronde were known as the garden and grain supply of the state of Michigan.

I must have been about six years old when I attended my first school, which was taught by my aunt, Miss Mary A. Parker, in a log house on the bank of E. L. Brown's