The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1859-10-21

Element, since l849, has been constant
record of Indian depredations, of robberies,
and murder, and ambuscade, yet the hope
that the promised assistance would come
soon has kept most of them there still
true to their allegiance to country, to
which they owe nothing but illusions and
disappointments.
Nothing but life of insecurity, Of constant
familiarity with danger, could reconcile
these people to the state of alarm in which
their situation keeps them. And in fact, the
Settlement has latterly largely decreased,
at least one-third of the houses in St.
Joseph having been deserted and their occu.
pants removed to the British Settlements
for the shelter denied them on the Ameri-
can side of the line.
All the habits OF the people seemed FORM
ed and guided by the haunting presence
of some invisible danger lurking in the
woods and bushes around them. They live
as in an enemy's country. All the win
dows are furnished with thick, wooden shut
tiers, which are always closed at night, even
in the hottest summer months The trading
houses and the Nunnery are enclosed in
high stockades. No one goes into the
woods close by without his gun. The
cattle and horses which are not driven to
White Horse Plains for safe-keeking, are
every day counted over, and sometimes
driven into enclosures with guard at night.
Experience has taught them u nervous lear
of hidden foe in every bush and ravine and
clump of grass Almost every year some
of their number are killed near the village
by their ambushed enemies. A list, fur
nished US by CHAs GRANT, of the cattle and
horses lost by pillage since l849, has been
mslaid, but it amounts to over six or seven
hundred heads. We believe it was last year
that the hunters had just made every pre-
paration to 60 upon one of their hunts, and
had driven their horses into the village on
the night before their intended departure
and in the morning when they arose they
found nearly all their horses stolen by the
rascally Sioux. Nor are these outrages
confined to people of the obnoxious blood
of Chippewas and Crees. In 1850, Mr..
TERRY, brother of the well-known TERRY,
of st. Paul, and who had established
school there in connection with some mis-
sionary society, was killed within the pre-
cincts of the village, by discharge of ar
rows from some Sioux ambushed in pro.
montory of the adjacent woods. A few
years ago, Mrs. SPEN GER, wife of a Pro-
testant Missionary, who occupied one of the
neat log huts of the village, was seated one
sultry summer night upon her bed, with a
babe in her arms, and for the sake of air a
window shutter was left partly open, and
through this solitary aperture in all the
close shut town, fatal bullet came from
this lowering cloud of danger, and killed
both mother and child. Several times too
their stealthy foes have been caught con-
cealed in the neighboring bushes, when of
course they were butchered without mercy.
This haunting sense Of an unseen danger
all around them, whether present or not in
fact, paralyzes every effort of industry, and
has effectually stopped the growth of the
settlement, and contributed to its decay.
There is one thing which makes the
necessity for protection matter of extreme
urgency.
1t is in fact community of hunters, and
during the hunting season all the robust
men and women 60 to the plains, leaving
their old men and women and some of their
children in the village, exposed at any time
to the danger of a general massacre.
There are then two prominent reasons
why fort should be built there. First, to
protect the settlers and their property from
their Siouxenemies, and second, protect the
buffalo ranges in American territory. which
constitute the sole subsistence of thousands
of American citizens, from the depredations
at British hunters.
The claim of the HalfBreeds to this pro-
lection rests not only on the ground that
they are American citizens, but that not
having been born citizens, they have by
choice sought the shelter of our laws, and
the protection of our Government.
If the Government does not promptly
respond to this obligation, the settlement
must inevitably be broken up, for the pre-.
sent lberalized administration of the Hud-
son Bay Company's Government is fast en-
ticing back many of the settlers to the
denser and safer settlements on the British
side.
A military establishment with consid-
elable force stationed there, would have the
effect, if efforts were made to preserve the
bufaloes to American citizens. to increase
the settlement on this side, by making it
necessary for the British hunter to change
his residence if he wished to hunt on Anne
rican soil. Agriculture, at least on the
scale on which we see it practiced at Sell
kirk, would flourish under the protection of
the fort, whose large consumption would at
4bo conoo %irno offor 1oo,1 ;rJ,,oor,o,,% T.,