CAMP-FIRES OF A NATURALIST. 



CHAPTER I. 



Nursed by a Squaw Boyhood and Early Manhood How an 

 Education was Obtained. 



,NE raw March evening, in the early days 

 of Kansas, a covered wagon drawn by 

 oxen stopped on the bank of the Wauka- 

 russa River. In the wagon lay a babe 

 close to the side of its mother, whose illness was so 

 severe that but little attention could be paid to the 

 child. The sturdy pioneer, who had left his Eastern 

 home to make a new one in the West, cheered his 

 wife with a word and placed the child on a bed of 

 grass before a bright fire. Near the spot selected for 

 the camp was the winter village of a band of Indians, 

 and the fire had been hardly started when a number of 

 the red men gathered around the wagon. The con- 

 dition of the sick mother appealed to the womanly in- 

 stincts of the squaws, and tender hands ministered to 

 her wants. The infant was taken from its improvised 

 bed, and soon was drawing a new life from a red 

 breast. For weeks the mother hovered between life 

 and death, and all the while the babe was cared for in 

 the village of the Indians. He thrived, and when the 

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