One night Mr. Pond was at the Old Sibley House at Mendota when a number of traders were there. During the evening as they told stories and made merry, many of the traders told of the joys of sleeping out of doors with nothing between them and the starry sky; how they never minded how hard the bed was if they could only see the green trees around them and the stars above. Mr. Pond, who also had had experience in outdoor sleeping, said that he liked nature too, but he preferred to sleep, when he could, with a roof over him and a good bed beneath him. After some laughter and joking on the subject, the traders, one by one, stole out and gathering up all the feather beds the house afforded, heaped them upon the bed in the attic which Mr. Pond was to occupy, thinking that he would at once see the joke and return their beds to them. Instead, he climbed upon the mountain of feathers, laughing at the joke on his would-be-tormentors and slept comfortably all night while they had to spend the night on hard boards. He loved to tell this story of how the laugh was on them. Mrs. E. R. Pond--1843. After the Indian outbreak the different tribes were broken up and outside Indians called to the leadership. A little, wavy-haired Indian named Flute was one of these. He had never learned to wear the white man's foot gear. With a number of others he was taken to Washington. He went as a chief and soon after his return came one day to my door. He was a keen observer and, I knew, would have something interesting to tell of his journey, so I was glad to ask him about it. He began by saying that when he had seen the young Indians all dressed up in suits of store clothes, especially in long boots, he thought, they must be very comfortable. He was very glad when he reached Yankton, to put on a suit of white man's clothes. He said all those who were going on the trip were put into a car where there was not room to lie or sit down and were in it for two nights. When he got off at Chicago he found his feet and legs were very sore from his new boots. When he saw all the people in Chicago he thought, "It seems very strange that Little Crow should be such a fool as to think he could conquer the white man. Little Crow had been to Washington and knew how many men 'Grandfather' (president) had." He knew he had a great many soldiers but he also knew he was having a big war.