On his way to Sioux City he encountered some very severe weather, and froze one of his sides. The lady where he stopped in Sioux City wanted him to stay there for a while before returning home, and until his side had been treated and he had recovered, but he would not have it so, and started on his return trip during exceedingly cold weather. He did not return on schedule time from Sioux City on this trip, and mother became very much worried about him. She went to the men who had contracted with father to carry the mail and asked them to send out men to look for him. They promised to send out a Frenchman, and a dog team. This contented mother for awhile, but as father did not return she again went to these men and this time they sent out three men with a horse and cutter to look for him. After traveling over the route for some time they came to a shack on the Des Moines river, near where Jackson, this state, now is and in this shack they found my father, badly frozen and barely alive. He lived but a few moments after shaking hands with the men who found him. They brought the body back to Mankato and he was buried out near our place of residence, at the foot of the hill. The weather was so extremely cold at that time that the family could not go out to the burial. Later, after I was married, myself and husband came down to what is now the central part of town for the purpose of buying a lot for building a home, and we selected the lot where I now live, at the corner of Walnut and Broad streets. We purchased the same for $487. We could have had any lot above this one for $200, but selected this for the reason that it was high. The country around us was all timber and we had no sidewalks or streets laid out at that time. At the time of the Indian outbreak I lived on what is now Washington street, directly across from where the German Lutheran school now stands. The Indians started their outbreaks during the Civil war. They started their massacres in this neighborhood in July and August of 1862. I can distinctly remember seeing, while standing in the doorway of my home, a band of Indians coming over the hill. This was Little Priest and his band of Winnebagoes. These Winnebagoes professed to be friendly to the white people and hostile to the Sioux. They claimed that a Sioux had married a Winnebago maiden, and for that reason they were enemies to the Sioux. To prove that they were their enemies they stalked the Sioux who had married a maid of one of their tribes and murdered him, bringing back to show us his tongue, heart, and scalp, and also dipped their hands in the Sioux's life blood and painted their naked bodies with it. Mrs. Mary Pitcher--1853.