E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 28870-h.htm or 28870-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/28870/pg28870-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28870/28870-h.zip) THE CABIN ON THE PRAIRIE by DR. C. H. PEARSON Author of "Scenes in the West," Etc. ILLUSTRATED [Illustration: CAPTURE OF THE FAWN. Page 20] Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by Lee And Shepard, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. TO MY SISTER, WHOSE SPIRIT HAS JUST GONE FROM PRAIRIE-LIFE TO THE HILLS OF PARADISE, I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK. C. H. PEARSON. A FRONTIER PROPHET. INTRODUCTORY. "If you stay here long, you will become so Westernized that you will lose all love for New England. That's my experience." So said a brawny pioneer, a man of large mind, and generous heart, and a sledge-hammer fist that never struck a coward's blow; but when swung in defence of the right was like "the jaw-bone" of Samson to the Philistines. He had emigrated from Maine twenty years before, and was one of the first settlers I met on the prairie near the scene of my story. Was his prediction fulfilled? Ah, how like sweetest music sounded the bells of Salem (city of peace) the first Sunday of my return to the Old Bay State! Besides, the frontiersman misrepresented himself. For, seated by his ample clay-stick-and-stone fireplace, how his eye kindled, and tones mellowed, as he treated us to reminiscences of his early days! And what a grip he gave the hand of a freshly-arrived Yankee! Then there were those east who said, "You will soon tire of the West." They, also, were mistaken. An invalid, with shadowy form and trembling limbs, when I left New England, I awakened to a new life in Minnesota. "Take a gun on your shoulders, kill and eat the wild game of the prairies," said my medical friends. I anticipated vicissitude and deprivation in following such counsel; but these toughened my weak frame, and added zest to frontier labors and pleasures; for I was soon able to do a man's share of the former, and in threading forest and prairie I was brought into delightful nearness to nature in its beauty, freshness, and magnitude, and in visiting the lodge of the Indian and the cabins of the settlers I met with plenty of adventure.