New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1880-03-31
ga Lurid Tale. .

SnOulQ nave maze up One-SOmeCnnG !
hate to do most awfully, because ike
all my romances to have dash Of truth
in them.
There was. on time within the
memory b of the oldest inhabitant,
trouble among the Indians. The Mo.
hawks, if it was the Mohawks, and the
Milicetes, if that is the way you spell it,
fell in love with each other, and each
begged the other for a lock of his hair
to remember him by. And, at the same
time, the ardent sutton begged the poor
boon of being allowed to cut off tho
lock himself. Moreover, to show that
he meant business, he ground his little
thomashawk and honed up his persra-
sive little scalping- knife, and announced
that he was in the hair business, no
trouble to show goods, a new crate
just opened to-day, orders from the
country promptly attended to.
Well, customers came right along
from the day the sign was hung out on
either side, and both establishments
had all they could do. The supply
seemed to equal the demand, and the
demand was steady and constant, with
a rising tendency. Butafter awhile it
was evident that the Mohawks had the
most and the best men ont on the road,
and had got the dead wood on the
country trade, and vast quantities of
Milicete hair was worked up at prices
to suit the times. Things run on this
way until at last the Milicete Indians
were forced out Of the iobbing trade
entirely. buying in small lots and man
ufacturing only home orders, all sales
at thirty days, on a margin of about
two and one-half per cent. But the
greedy Mohawks put up few branch
stores to kill off this stand, and the
Milicetes were at last driven to little
puttering side-street business, hardly
getting enough hair to run the heading
machine.
Meanwhile, the demand in the Mo-
hawk market for Milicete hair con-
tiuued undated, and runners for the
house were untiring in. their efforts to
secure the new crops and whatever
there was already in the stack or bins.
And when they brought in word one
day that the rival firm had skipped out
of the country, taking all the Milicete
hair there was along with them, on
their heads, the Mohawks got up, put
on their war-paint, piled into their ca
noes, and started down the river in
fierce pursuit. Night closed in alike
on the pursued and the pursuers. but it
didn't stop the circus minute. The
Milicetes padded till their backs ached.
and the Mohawks made the ripples fiy
right behind them. At length the roar
OF the falls sounded in the ears of the
flying Milicetes, and they turned to the
shore, beached their light barks, and
struck for tall timber.
All but one. A woman, as usual, was
the last one in the train. A squaws
whose aboriginal name Ieither forgot
or never knew-Mary Jane johnson,
maybe-was sculling along at the tail
end Of the procession. For two or three
miles before reaching the falls she had
made up her womanly, or .squaWly,
mind that she would save her tribe, and
at the same time avenge them. So she
lighted kerosene lamp, or it may have
been pine knot, and set it in the stern
of her canoe. The pursuing Mohawks
saw it, thought it was the last act of
sullen, hopeless defiance, and they
howled till their corns ached, trying to
reach it. When the fugitivesI landed
above the falls, Mary Jane. johnson
landed, too, but she did not strike
for the woods. She picked up her kero-
sene lamp and trotted around the falls
on, the rocks. From rock to rock she
nimbly sprang and lightly scrambled
until she reached point far beyond
them where her f1an1ino siornal i,1st