They went once a year to Detroit or some point in that region to receive pay for lands relinquished to the state. When they came back, money was plenty to pay for powder and lead and calicos, and when that was exhausted they obtained their goods by exchanging for them venison and skins. Mother soon became a favorite. They called her "the good white squaw," and took great pains to teach her their language, in which she soon became quite proficient. She could control them as well as their old chief, Sagamaw. They had not taken to whisky then as they did soon afterwards, and, as a rule, were honest and reliable. The chief was a personal friend of the Smith family and used to make its weekly visits with his family, staying from one to two days. He was very strict with his tribe as to any violation of our rights or social privileges. Once mother lost a silver thimble, and, suspecting it was stolen, stated her case to old Sagamaw. He promised to attend to it, and if her suspicions were correct he would know. A few days after a knock was heard at our door, and mother admitted a pretty, meek looking young squaw, with a long tough buck whip in one hand and the missing thimble in the other. The thimble had a hole in it where she had strung it to wear around her neck. She gave it to mother, then the whip, and said. "Sagamaw say, you whip squaw," but being so pretty and amiable, mother relented, thinking she was almost justified in helping herself to ornaments for her comely person, and so the girl went her way rejoicing. One day the chief, very delicately suggested to father that it would be proper for such good friends as they were to exchange wives, and even offered father two of his prettiest squaws for a bona-fide bill of sale of my mother, but somehow the trade was never consummated. I presume, in that event, I would have been thrown in to make a complete exchange of goods, and thus I failed to become an Indian chief, and Sagamaw never owned a white squaw. They were constantly bringing me presents of live birds, fawns, young foxes and wolves, and once when I was on a sick bed, with a high fever, an Indian brought me the half of a dressed deer, to tempt my appetite. They were very kind in sickness, but of little use about a sick bed. There were no wise Indian doctors in those days, such as now come to cure us of every imaginable disease. This first year we had to go 60 miles to a flour mill, consequently had to subsist upon corn, in lieu of wheat bread, and this sometimes made from pounded corn at that. One day Mrs. Calhoun sent mother a pan of flour as a rare treat, but when she learned that it was all she had of the precious stuff, she objected to taking it. Mrs. C. insisted that she must not refuse it, for mother was not used to going without, and she was. We had very little pork or beef, but so much venison and wild game that they soon became a drug. Vegetables and wild fruit being so plenty, we lived as well as we