Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

CHAPTER XIII
LIFE IN THE 'SIXTIES
T was harvest time, in August, 1862, when the
Sioux Indians came down upon the defenseless
settlers in a simultaneous uprising. I remember
the effect of this upon our family, although we
had little of which to complain when we compared
ourselves with the hundreds who suffered
the loss of all their possessions and saw their
own people meet most cruel death at the hands of Little Crow
and his band. Sister Ida writes of those first days in August:
I shall never forget one Sunday afternoon about the first of
August, when I went over to Lake Carnelian to call on the family of
Aunt Eliza Vandervort and found a dozen or so of Indians lounging
about the house and yard to whom she had given dinner. Again
about two weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, I drove over to
Aunt Eliza's and brought her daughter Mary home with me. We
went to bed at the usual time, but it seemed to both of us that the
very air was filled with strange mystery; it was as though we young
girls had some presage of the silent, stealthy oncoming of savages on
a near to-morrow to begin their cruel and bloodthirsty onslaught.
We could not sleep, so we got up and went down to the lake lying in
glorious moonlight. We thought that would quiet us, but not so.
Then we tried other rooms in the house and more walking, but not
until morning did we sleep.
After the long years, one can but shudder yet to think of
those two young girls walking out in the bright moonlight in
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