show to a succeeding generation what "The Early Day" of our Western
homes had been. It never entered the anticipations of the most sanguine
that the march of improvement and prosperity would, in less than a
quarter of a century, have so obliterated the traces of "the first
beginning," that a vast and intelligent multitude would be crying out
for information in regard to the early settlement of this portion of our
country, which so few are left to furnish.

An opinion has been expressed, that a comparison of the present times
with those that are past, would enable our young people, emigrating from
their luxurious homes at "the East," to bear, in a spirit of patience
and contentment, the slight privations and hardships they are at this
day called to meet with. If, in one instance, this should be the case,
the writer may well feel happy to have incurred even the charge of
egotism, in giving thus much of her own history.

It may be objected that all that is strictly personal, might have been
more modestly put forth under the name of a third person; or that the
events themselves and the scenes might have been described, while those
participating in them might have been kept more in the background. In
the first case, the narrative would have lost its air of truth and
reality--in the second, the experiment would merely have been tried of
dressing up a theatre for representation, and omitting the actors.

Some who read the following sketches may be inclined to believe that a
residence among our native brethren and an attachment growing out of our
peculiar relation to them, have exaggerated our sympathies, and our
sense of the wrongs they have received at the hands of the whites. This
is not the place to discuss that point. There is a tribunal at which man
shall be judged for that which he has meted out to his fellow-man.