that they are a doomed race, and must submit to indignities that they
dare not resent. They seem, too, so unused to sympathy, often comparing
their lives of suffering and hardship with the ease and comfort enjoyed
by the white women, it must be a hard heart, that could withhold
sympathy from such poor creatures. Their home was mine--and such a home!
The very sunsets, more bright and glorious than I had ever seen, seemed
to love to linger over the scenes amongst which we lived; the high
bluffs of the "father of many waters" and the quiet shores of the
"Minesota;" the fairy rings on the prairie, and the "spirit lakes" that
reposed beside them; the bold peak, Pilot Knob, on whose top the Indians
bury their dead, with the small hills rising gradually around it--all
were dear to the Sioux and to me. They believed that the rocks, and
hills, and waters were peopled with fairies and spirits, whose power and
anger they had ever been taught to fear. I knew that God, whose presence
fills all nature, was there. In fancy they beheld their deities in the
blackened cloud and fearful storm; I saw mine in the brightness of
nature, the type of the unchanging light of Heaven.

They evinced the warmest gratitude to any who had ever displayed kind
feelings towards them. When our little children were ill with scarlet
fever, how grieved they were to witness their sufferings; especially as
we watched Virginia, waiting, as we expected, to receive her parting
breath. How strongly they were contrasted! that fair child, unconscious
even of the presence of the many kind friends who had watched and wept
beside her--and the aged Sioux women, who had crept noiselessly into the
chamber. I remember them well, as they leaned over the foot of the bed;
their expressive and subdued countenances full of sorrow. That small
white hand, that lay so powerless, had ever been outstretched to welcome
them when they came weary and hungry.