The speaker said: "It makes the Indians sad to see the white man's house go up on their land. We don't want you to stay; you must go." Further on he said: "You shall go!" Mr. Ayer answered him. The party left at midnight, and the missionaries went to bed with heavy hearts, thinking they might be thurst out almost immediately. But before sunrise the next morning about two-thirds of the same party returned, and said they had come to take back what they said the night before. The war chief was speaker, but his words were mild. "Why," said he, "should we turn these teachers away before they have done us any harm?" They would like to have us stay, he said, but added that they did not want any more to come, for the result might be the loss of their lands. We might use whatever their country afforded, but they would not give us any land, or sell us any. "For," said the speaker, "if we should sell our land where would our children play?" Mr. Ayer finished his school house, and went on with his work as though nothing had happened. But evidently things were not as they should be. The chief seemed to "sit on the fence," ready to jump either way. The war chief was always friendly, but he had not so much control over what concerned us. He did what he could without giving offense, and was anxious that his daughter of fourteen years should be taken into the mission family. Mr. Ayer remained two years longer at Yellow Lake. In the meantime the chief of the Snake River band sent messages inviting the teachers to come and live among them. Accordingly in the spring of 1836 the mission was removed to Pokegama lake, eighteen miles up the river. The chief did all he had promised, and showed himself a man. Nothing was said here to remind the missionaries that they were using the Indians' wood, water and fish. On the contrary, when they sold their land, it was urged that the teachers' children should be enrolled for annual payment, the same as their own. The chief said that as they were born on the land it was no more than right, and he wished it might be done. In 1842 Mr. Ayer went with his family to the States; and in Oberlin was ordained preacher to the Ojibways. He soon returned to the Indian country, and David Brainard Spencer, an Oberlin student, with him. They spent the winter of 1842-3 in traveling from one trading post to another, selecting locations for missionary labor. For their own field they chose Red Lake. When Mrs. Ayer, with her two little boys, six and eight years old, went to join her husband at the new station, Alonzo Barnard and wife and S. G. Wright, all of Oberlin College, went with her. Other missionaries soon followed, and that station was for many years supplied with efficient laborers. More recently the work there was assigned to Bishop Whipple, and is still carried on. Mr. and Mrs. Ayer, in 1865, offered their services to the freed-men of the South and were employed at Atlanta, Georgia.