INDIANS AS OCCASIONAL GUESTS AND VISITORS
While still speaking of life and conditions in the Turkey Creek Valley
and surrounding country as it was during the winter of eighty and
eighty one, and even later, I ought to mention our occasional Indian
visitors. They used to travel thru that country in considerable
numbers at that time over the Sioux Falls road already mentioned. As a
boy I have seen possibly twenty or thirty teams in a single
procession. They sometimes camped near the brush bordering the ravine
which was close by our house. The women would excavate the snow,
sometimes several feet deep, and pitch the tepees, while the children
scampered around them on the snow bank. The following incident may not
be out of place as showing the heartaches and difficulties for the
Indian incident to his transition from the free life of the plains to
that of civilization. One day an Indian family consisting of a man and
wife with some children, as also an old squaw which was evidently the
grandmother of the children, camped near our house. The man and the
younger squaw were trying to boil their kettle in the camp fire while
the old squaw went out into the adjoining gulches, presumably to dig
roots or hunt. The pot did not boil very fast and Father, by signs,
invited them to come into the house and boil their pot. They seemed
perfectly willing to do this, and coming inside they sat around our
fire with the pot on the stove. But in a little while the old squaw
returned, and not seeing her children by the fire where all good
Indians would be supposed to be, she suspected something wrong and
came into the house where she found her degenerate offspring located
as above described. We could not, of course, understand the words she
said, but we could easily make out that she was not complimenting them
any on their new-found quarters, for the language was very emphatic
and her face stern. She also got some immediate action. Having scolded
them soundly for forsaking the firesides and ways of their fathers to
enter the lodges of the palefaces, she snatched the kettle from the
stove and walked out followed by the now chastened son and daughter
with their children.
We had many visits from the Indians and they never did us any harm.
However, I suspect that they were more welcome to us youngsters than
to our mothers who never seemed quite at ease with them.
Most of those who came thru the country at that time had wagons. But
some used the travaux, consisting of two rails lashed to the saddle of
the pony, one on each side, and crosspieces behind the horse with
blankets or skins covering. The ends of the rails, of course, slid on
the ground. On this rude contrivance the Indian loaded his few
belongings, sometimes the squaw and children, and journeyed over the
country.