November 20, 1862

November 20, 1862

Dear Parents: --

I had no letters the past week but look for one this afternoon. Things go on rather quiet most of the time. Our log shanties are all finished and I am now with the boys. I'll tell you, I am keeping a diary and I will give you a copy of it for a week in this letter: -- Nov. 10 -- Took a shave to-day. One of the boys said my beard made me look like a goat. Had my first dinner at the shanty, Obe is a good cook. Supply train loaded with provisions went by for Sauk Center and Paynesville. Some men, trappers I guess, from the Red River country went toward St. Cloud, they stopped for dinner. Said all quiet in the up country. They wore leggins like Indians and their stories if true, made them out more savage. According to their talk all Indians are red devils.

Nov. 11
-- A nice Indian summer day, a smoky, hazy, dreamy day. Took my gun and went rat hunting. Shot five but got only four. Came back to camp hungry as a dog. Had a glorious supper of beef, bread, potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie.

A big supply train bound for Fort Abercrombia pulled in for the night. Gen. Pope has ordered all infantry south. We may get to see Dixie yet. Hurrah! Snow all gone and big prairie fires to the east to-night.

Nov. 12
-- No letter from home to-day, plague on it. Wrote one to Geo. Wooster. Beautiful weather. Men Bump just from St. Cloud reports another one of the boys dead from measles. I believe I am all right except my wind ain't quite so good on a long double quick. Nothing to do, went out and shot a rat. Some of the lakes are covered with rat houses thick as hay cocks and as big. Sold my hides for 10 cents a piece. Boys trying their guns at a mark, found a great deal of fault with them. I found some papers at the hotel called "The Dacota Friend," that I have been reading. They were left by a woman who had been stopping. This paper was a missionary paper for the Indians and had letters in it from Bishop Whipple. He is certainly a good man. I read some of his letters about the honesty of the Indians when the white man was honest with them. It made me think of good old One Eye and his band that came so many times to our place. I spoke of Bishop Whipple to the trappers and what he said of their honesty, but they said Whipple was an old woman in breeches.

Nov. 13
-- I dreamed last night of One Eye's band, of the boys that I
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played with, and when we got hungry how we went to Chief Charley's tepee and found his mother cleaning the entrails of a beaver which she intended for soup. The boy talked to her in Sioux and she unfolded some buckskins and a robe or two and gave us a big hunk of elk steak. We put it on the fire and she went back to her job of dressing the beaver guts. In my dreams I saw the beautiful buffalo robes we lay upon while our steak was roasting. I could even smell them just as they smelt four years ago.

In this miserable Indian war I often wonder what has become of Lightfoot (father gave him that name because he could beat me in a race) and of his brothers and of Owena. They promised to come back in the fall of 1860 whe they broke camp the spring before two miles below us but they never came. I haven't lived long, but long enough to think this is a strange world. When I think of the Indians and remember how good they were to me and my father and mother, and reading in this "Dacota Friend" paper how the traders have made them drunk in order to cheat them, and how the government bought 35 million acres of them and has been owing them for it against their promise for 30 years, and because they were starving and broke into a warehouse for food, and this brought on a war, I am for the Indians as much as the whites.

Nov. 14
-- Cold and freezing this morning. A cannon from Fort Abercrombia came by this morning. They fired it a few times just for fun. Obed Hilliard and I went hunt ing, shot five rats, one partridge and one rabbit. On return to camp found a supply train in corral near us and 300 cavalry as guard. The fife and drum were out to-night, in honor of our guests I suppose. The visitors have some big fires going to-night and the crowds around them are very happy. The cavalry men who have been on the frontier are full of Indian yarns. I don't like their talk. If half they tell about their own rascally tricks is true, there is plenty of reason for the Indians to fight and fight to the death.

Nov. 15
-- There was quite a wild time last night. Some beer was stolen from the saloon and farmers came in this morning claiming soldiers stole their chickens. The cavalry did it. Our boys denied it and I am sure they told the truth. The cavalry made quite a show as they dashed off after the wagon train. I went to church to-day, the first time in a long while. Cold and freezing to-night. I nearly froze my fingers on dress parade.

Nov. 16
-- Everything froze tight this morning. This has been a lone-some day. Molasses was rationed out, the first since we came. It run awful slow. Drilled this afternoon. Snow began falling while we were drilling. The Colonel arrived from Paynesville. I have been reading all the evening in Bishop Whipple's paper, "The Dacota Friend." I have made up my mind the Indians are not to blame for this war. It is the traders, the contractors, the trappers and the Indian agents. O, the injustice of the strong against the weak in this world.

Nov. 17-18
-- Went hunting deer, no luck at all. I shall let the deer go to grass hereafter and hunt for rabbits only. Late this afternoon had a tilt snowballing. The boys had a lively time dodging my balls. They didn't know I had kept a pile of stones at every fence corner for years for blackbirds, and that a blackbird's head at ten steps was an easy mark. The ice on the Sioux is fine. Bought a pair of skates and had little fun on them. There is a big farmer, a Swede, three miles up river with a nice family of boys and girls. If the ice is good, will go up there in the morning.

Nov. 19
-- Was on the river skating all the forenoon. Ice not quite safe on the rapids. Several of the boys on a drunk. Had quite a scrap but no one much hurt. Had a spelling school to-night. Word came late to-night that we were to go south in a week, hope it is true.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.