Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/555

 EISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 475 Cut this one was somewhat peculiar in her manner, and attracted attention. There was a wild look in her eyes, and though in girl's dress, her hair had been cut off in front like an Indian boy's hair. She appeared very anxious to learn to read, applying herself with an unusual ardor, but would not say anything about her true resi- dence -and former history. The other children could tell us noth- ing about whence she came I think she was here about two months or more. Her departure was as unexpected as her coming. It was but a short time after the wild girl left that the follow- ing account appeared in the St. Paul "Pioneer": "In the spring of 1850, at one of the villages on the Minnesota river, a young girl, fourteen years of age, shot another girl, with whom she was quarreling. The deceased was the daughter of a sullen man named Black Whistle. The affrighted girl, after she had fired the gun, fled to the trader's house, and was by him aided to make her escape down to Wabasha's village. While stopping at Red Wing's village, some hundred miles from where the deed was com- mitted, the incensed father overtook her. His first plan was to carry her home and sacrifice her at his daughter's burial scaffold; but, through the influence of some advisors, he changed his plan, and resolved to make her his slave, or his wife. For some time she endured what to her was a living death, and one night she suddenly disappeared. "Not many days after there appeared at Good Road's village a young Indian boy, stating that he was a Sissetonwan just arrived from the plains. He was well received, no one dreaming that he was the fugitive Indian maiden. "While in this disguise she went out one day to spear fish, when her enemy, the revengeful father of the girl she had shot, met her and recognized her. He avowed his intention to kill her. She very coolly assented to the justice of what he said, and left. She next appeared at Kaposia, Little Crow's village. Here she passed herself off as a Winnebago orphan, in which disguise she succeeded for a time. Her sex being suspected, she was again obliged to seek for safety by flight, and took up her abode at Red Wing's village, where she dressed like other maidens, and attended the mission school." The subsequent history of the girl is not known to anyone now living. On the Wisconsin side, in the early days, there lived a man named Hawley, who had no family with him. He lived in a shanty, alone. He was a cripple, one leg bent almost double at the knee, and yet could walk about tolerably well. He seemed to be holding a claim and trading with woodchoppers, but deriving most of his income from the sale of whiskey to the Indians. Some of the latter, having returned and encamped near the month of