History of Vernon County, Wisconsin. Together with sketches of its towns and villages, educational, civil, military and political history; portraits of prominent persons, and biographies of representative citizens.

              HISTORY OF VERNON COUNTY.
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said two must remain with me, and four go—to settle among themselves who should go and who should remain. They carried some goods to pay for the meat, and two quarts of corn were roasted and pounded for their journey.
Before daylight the next morning they were on their way, and were to be back in nine long, anxious days. The Yankton band, to which Ance belonged, had left in Red Thunder's charge a horse with a dis¬ located shoulder, and could not recover. The corn was all now but gone; the bitter sweet within a reasonable distance had been devoured, and I brought to poverty and to my wit's end; and yet four days before the men could return.
Hard is the task my poverty compels, To get my living amid savage yells.
I sent for Red Thunder to consult about our future. His only hope, however, lay in the chance of the coming of the buffalo; but I was not of his way of thinking, and suggested the killing of the horse. But he said no—he dared not, for the Yankton would be very angry. Before I was up the next morning, however. Red Thunder came thumping at my door and calling at the top of his voice, my Sioux name—"Wee- yo-te-huh! (The Meridian Sun) the horse is dead." The old chap had stuck the horse, and when I got to the spot, he had skinned the ani¬ mal's head and part of the neck; and parts of it were soon stuck on sticks roasting, and parts being made into broth in the Indian lodges. I got for my part a piece of the upper portion of the neck; it was eatable, but, in truth, I would have preferred roast lamb. My Indian friends kept cooking and eating without relaxation, night or day, until the old horse, save hoofs and bones, had been consumed.
The nine days for the men's return had passed, and they came not. On the eleventh day I went six or eight miles, in hopes to meet them, but returned disappointed and grieved. When within a mile of the house, about dusk, I   met   with   one   of  those  scabby   buffaloes
and managed to end his misery; and reporting my success to Red Thunder, his In¬ dian friends, with knives, tomahawks and torches, were soon on their way to this lucky God'send, in their estimation. To partake of such meat, I knew I could not. My last pint of corn was being roasted. I had some apprehen¬ sions that my absent men had been killed, which was the least of my fears; but there was greater danger that they had been lost or buried in the snow—particularly the latter; thoughts of such accidents had often occurred to my mind. In any case, if they failed to return with supplies, my only alternative was to write an account of matters and things, and make up my last bed.
On the twelfth day of their abscence, I had been straining my eyes with melancholy reflec¬ tions till about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when I retired to the house to smother care . and anxiety in smoke. I had not long been at the pipe when a general shout of joy was raised at the Indian camps—"The white men are com¬ ing!" I was not slow to see for myself; and here they came, loaded with dried buffalo meat, and the welcome news that Broken Leg with a lot of his young men would bring ample sup¬ plies in a few days. This was good news. When, with marks of reproach, I asked them why they had not returned sooner, they told me they had been two and a half days buried in the snow. I could not doubt them, for I was aware that such things happened every winter on these plains.
Not many winters before this, an Indian, with eight white men, saw a storm approaching, and with all haste made for a little clump of trees for shelter. But when within half a mile of the goal, they were compelled by the severity of the storm, to lie down and be covered with the avalanche of snow falling. The wind and drift are so powerful that people cannot face them and breathe. These nine persons remained under snow for three days; and but for the Indian, the whites would all have perished. He had been caught before; he kept himself