My own special effort in the class-room during the first years was in teaching a knowledge of figures. The language of counting in Dakota was limited. The "wancha, nonpa, yamne"--one, two, three, up to ten,--every child learned, as he bent down his fingers and thumbs until all were gathered into two bunches, and then let them loose as geese flying away. Eleven was _ten more one_, and so on. Twenty was _ten twos_ or _twice ten_, and thirty _ten threes_. With each ten the fingers were all bent down, and one was kept down to remember the ten. Thus, when ten tens were reached, the whole of the two hands was bent down, each finger meaning ten. This was the perfected "bending down." It was "opawinge"--one hundred. Then, when the hands were both bent down for hundreds, the climax was supposed to be reached, which could only be expressed by "again also bending down." When something larger than this was reached, it was a _great count_--something which they nor we can comprehend--a million. On the other side of _one_ the Dakota language is still more defective. Only one word of any definiteness exists--_hankay_, half. We can say hankay-hankay--_the half of a half_. But it does not seem to have been much used. Beyond this there was nothing. A _piece_ is a word of uncertain quantity, and is not quite suited to introduce among the certainties of mathematics. Thus, the poverty of the language has been a great obstacle in teaching arithmetic. And that poorness of language shows their poverty of thought in the same line. The Dakotas are not, as a general thing, at all clever in arithmetic. * * * * * Before the snows had disappeared or the ducks come back to this northern land, in the spring of 1840, a baby girl had been added to the little family in the upper chamber. By the first of June, Mary was feeling well, and exceedingly anxious to make a trip across the prairie. She had been cooped up here now nearly three years. There was nowhere to go. Lac-qui-parle is the "Lake that speaks," but who could be found around it? And no one had any knowledge of any great Indian talk held there that might have justified the name. But the romance was all taken out of the French name by the criticism of Eagle Help, that the Dakota name, "Mdaeyaydan," did not mean "Lake that talks," but "Lake that connects." And so Lac-qui-parle had no historic interest. It was not a good place to go on a picnic. She had been to the Indian village frequently, but that was not a place to visit for pleasure. And on the broad prairie there was no objective point. Where could she go for a pleasure trip, but to Fort Snelling? And so we made arrangements for the journey. The little boy "Good Bird" was left behind, and the baby Isabella had to go along, of course. We were with Mr. Renville's annual caravan going to the fur-trader's Mecca.