OCR Text |
Show 298 TEAVELS AND ADVENTUEES IN THE FAE WEST. have been foolish. It is better for me to labor in building a house or a fort, to get out fencing timber, and wood to consume through the winter, when I have nothing else to do, and not be under the necessity of leaving my grain on the ground to do those things. Harvest is no time to build forts, neither is it the time to do it when we should be plowing and sowing. Now the harvest is upon us, I wish to say a few words concerning it. I desire you to tell your neighbors, and wish them to tell their neighbors, and thus let it go to the several counties around-now i3 the time for women and children to assist in the harvest fields, the same as they do in other countries. I never asked this of them before; I do not now ask it as a general thing, but those« employed in the expedition south, in the work of defending their brethern from Indian depredations, who have heavy harvests on hand, rather than suffer the grain to waste, let the women get in the harvest, and put it where the Indians cannot steal it. And when you go into the harvest field, carry a good butcher knife in your belt, that if an Indian should come upon you, supposing you to be unarmed, you would be sure to kill him. Tell your neighbors of this, and go to work, men, women, and children, and gather in your grain, and gather it clean, leave none to waste, and put it where the Indians cannot destroy it. Does this language intimate anything terrific to you ? It need not. If you will do as you are told, you will be safe continually. Secure your bread stuff, your wheat, and your corn, when it is ripe, and let every particle of grain raised in these valleys be put where it will be safe, and as much as possible from vermin, and especially from the Indians, and then build forts. |