CHAPTER XI.

THE INDIANS VISIT US--THEIR STRANGE AND PECULIAR WAYS.


Some three or four years after we came to the country there came a
tribe, or part of a tribe, of Indians and camped a little over a mile
southwest of our house, in the timber, near the head of the windfall
next to the openings. They somewhat alarmed us, but father said, "Use
them well, be kind to them and they will not harm us." I suppose they
came to hunt. It was in the summer time and the first we knew of them,
my little brother and two sisters had been on the openings picking
huckleberries not thinking of Indians. When they started home and got
into the edge of the woods they were in plain sight of Indians, and they
said it appeared as if the woods were full of them. They stood for a
minute and saw that the Indians were peeling bark and making wigwams:
they had some trees already peeled.

They said they saw one Indian who had on a sort of crown, or wreath, with
feathers in it that waved a foot above his head. They saw him mount a
sorrel pony. As he did so the other Indians whooped and hooted, I
suppose to cheer the chief. Childlike they were scared and thought that
he was coming after them on horseback. They left the path and ran right
into the brush and woods, from home. When they thought they were out of
sight of the Indian they turned toward home. After they came in sight of
home, to encourage his sisters, my little brother told them, he wouldn't
be afraid of any one Indian but, he said, there were so many there it was
enough to scare anybody. When they got within twenty rods of the house
they saw some one coming beyond the house with a gun on his shoulder. One