THE BIRDS OF BATTLE GROVE, 
BOVE the steamer landing near the little town of 
Washburn there was once a beautiful grove con- 
sisting of cottonwood, elm, ash and boxelder trees. 
Underbrush was thick here, and varied in its kinds. In 
the autumn days when the red Indian roamed in his 
freedom, this grove was a hiding place for mating deer. 
In summer’s long hours it was the nesting place for a 
large congregation of birds. The robin was here, the 
yellowhammer was here; the thrush was here; the cow 
black bird was here; the singing lark was here ;the wood 
duck and pinnated grouse were here. Almost every bird 
that nested in this climate—save perhaps the eagle alone 
seemed to have had its representative in ‘‘Battle Grove,” 
so named by some of the frontier rovers of 1869-70, 
for it was under the leafless shades of its cottonwoods 
that two chiefs of warring tribes met and received their 
death wounds in the last year of the sixties, and the 
first decade of the last half of the 19th century. 
Even at that time so early in the season as May, the 
robins and the black birds were singing gaily from their 
hiding places inthe groves. Be the fortunes of war 
with the Sioux or with the Aricarees,it was all the same 
to the birds. They were safe from wanton harm in 
either event. 
