“If the soldiers go away and take the big guns, we can get back the land along our river. We have been cheated out of it, and the Whites have never paid us for it,” a middle-aged warrior remarked.
“We can do more,” added a fierce-looking young man, known as the Boaster; “we can drive all the Whites out of Minnesota. But we shall keep their horses and their squaws and we shall make big feasts of their oxen. The Winnebagoes will help us. We shall make peace with the Chippewas and they will help us.
“We shall have our villages again at Kaposia and at Wabasha, on the Great River, and the Whites will have to stay on the other side of the Great River. This is our country and Manitou will send back the buffalo and the elk, and the deer will become numerous again. We shall have plenty of meat and skins as in the days of our fathers before the Whites had poisoned the land with their plows, for the black soil which the plows turn up is bad medicine for buffalo and elk and deer.”
When the shadows of the trees began to be reflected on the grayish current, the last morning blast of the _Fanny Harris_ echoed over the flooded valley. The three howitzers left at the fort fired a salute, the few remaining men cheered their departing comrades and the soldiers on board replied with a ringing hurrah for Abe Lincoln and Fort Ridgely. Then the pilot rang a bell, the hawsers were drawn on board, the big stern-wheel churned the water to a white foam, the heavily-laden steamer backed into the current, turned around slowly, and headed down stream for Fort Snelling near St. Paul.
On board, besides the soldiers, were Bill and Tim Ferguson, Sam Baker, a trapper, and Black Buffalo, an Indian scout.
The Ferguson brothers were Southern boys from Vicksburg, who had come North with a man they called Cousin Hicks, and with whom they lived in a squatter’s cabin a few miles below Fort Ridgely. Hicks, about whose business in the Indian country there were many conflicting rumors afloat, had been away for a week visiting the Indians on the upper Minnesota, and in his absence Baker and Black Buffalo had invited the Ferguson boys to go with them to Fort Snelling and St. Paul.
The trip of the _Fanny Harris_ from Fort Ridgely to La Crosse was never forgotten by any one on board. The _Fanny Harris_ being a stern-wheeler, was naturally difficult to steer in a strong current. The Minnesota is one of the most twisted and crooked rivers in the West. In April, 1861, the water was so high that the placid, winding river had grown a mile wide, flooding its valley from bluff to bluff, and in many places the water flowed with a rushing current, crossing the river bed at all angles and making innumerable short cuts across fields, marshes, and woods.