flowers and kind words for the living and flowers and tears for the dead. For our pioneer mothers gave more for us than we can ever know. CHAPTER IX INDIANS AS OCCASIONAL GUESTS AND VISITORS While still speaking of life and conditions in the Turkey Creek Valley and surrounding country as it was during the winter of eighty and eighty one, and even later, I ought to mention our occasional Indian visitors. They used to travel thru that country in considerable numbers at that time over the Sioux Falls road already mentioned. As a boy I have seen possibly twenty or thirty teams in a single procession. They sometimes camped near the brush bordering the ravine which was close by our house. The women would excavate the snow, sometimes several feet deep, and pitch the tepees, while the children scampered around them on the snow bank. The following incident may not be out of place as showing the heartaches and difficulties for the Indian incident to his transition from the free life of the plains to that of civilization. One day an Indian family consisting of a man and wife with some children, as also an old squaw which was evidently the grandmother of the children, camped near our house. The man and the younger squaw were trying to boil their kettle in the camp fire while the old squaw went out into the adjoining gulches, presumably to dig roots or hunt. The pot did not boil very fast and Father, by signs, invited them to come into the house and boil their pot. They seemed perfectly willing to do this, and coming inside they sat around our fire with the pot on the stove. But in a little while the old squaw returned, and not seeing her children by the fire where all good Indians would be supposed to be, she suspected something wrong and came into the house where she found her degenerate offspring located as above described. We could not, of course, understand the words she said, but we could easily make out that she was not complimenting them any on their new-found quarters, for the language was very emphatic and her face stern. She also got some immediate action. Having scolded them soundly for forsaking the firesides and ways of their fathers to enter the lodges of the palefaces, she snatched the kettle from the stove and walked out followed by the now chastened son and daughter with their children. We had many visits from the Indians and they never did us any harm. However, I suspect that they were more welcome to us youngsters than to our mothers who never seemed quite at ease with them. Most of those who came thru the country at that time had wagons. But some used the travaux, consisting of two rails lashed to the saddle of the pony, one on each side, and crosspieces behind the horse with blankets or skins covering. The ends of the rails, of course, slid on the ground. On this rude contrivance the Indian loaded his few belongings, sometimes the squaw and children, and journeyed over the country. CHAPTER X