1906-7. TRANSACTIONS. 107 



manner. Several women and children had escaped in the woods, 

 where the enemy chased them on horseback; but the willows and 

 brush were so intricate that every one of them escaped. A boy 

 about twelve years old, whom a Sioux pursued, crawled into a 

 hollow under a bunch of willows, which the horseman leaped over 

 without perceiving him. One of the little girls who escaped tells 

 a pitiful story of her mother who was killed. This woman, 

 having two young children that could not walk fast enough, had 

 taken one of them on her back and prevailed upon her sister-in- 

 law to carry the other. But when they got near the woods and 

 the enemy rushed upon them with hideous yells and war whoops, 

 the young woman was so frightened that she threw down the child, 

 and soon overtook the mother, who, observing that the child was 

 missing, and hearing its screams, kissed her little daughter — the 

 one who relates the story — saying, with tears streaming from her 

 eyes; 'Take courage, my daughter! try to reach the woods — and if 

 you do, go to your eldest sister, who will be kind to you; I must 

 turn back and recover your younger sister, of die in the attempt — 

 take courage — run fast, my daughter!' Poor woman! she actually 

 did recover her child, and was running off with both children, 

 when she was felled to the ground by a blow on the head with 

 a war club. She recovered instantly, drew her knife, and plunged 

 it into the neck of her murderer; but others coming up, she was 

 dispatched." 



Fortunately there is a brighter side to the picture, or it 

 would be altogether repulsive. In spite of the difficulties of 

 their position, and the evil influence of rival interests, many of 

 the fur-traders not only treated the Indians justly and humanely, 

 but made at least some effort to prove that the boasted civiliza- 

 tion of the white men was more than skin deep, and that the con- 

 tact of white man and red was not altogether detrimental to the 

 latter. 



