The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1909-11-17
MOSES DELIVERS THE FROGS.
Story of Morton Frog Hunters as Told in
Evening Journal.

A correspondent of the Minneap-
oils Journal recently published an
account of the frog industry as car
ried on by the agency Indians that
will be of enough interest to many
of our readers to justify reprinting
here. The article bears Morton
date, but we suspicion that Geo.
Welsh told the story to member of
The Journal staff:
Moses Columbus, a full-blooded
Sioux Indian living on what for
merly was the lower Sioux agency.
the point from which Little Grow
and his men did their killing in '62,
is an important person among the
remnant of his tribe, for he has
mustache. Of course, it doesn't
amount to much when compared
with other hirsute decorations, but
for an Indians it is remarkable.
Coaxed into being by years of pa
tent care. the struggling growth en-
titles him to much distinction.
He always is chosen to umpire the
ball games played on the reservation
on the hill across the Minnesota riv-
er from here, and is vested with po-
lice authority at the annual picnic.
where he wears star, and swings a
club with as important an air as any
Irish cop ever had.
Moses is fortunate otherwise, too,
His squaw has not yet been corropt-
ed by modern ideas regarding the
sphere and duty and privileges of
women. She is willing to do all the
drudgery in the good old aboriginal
manner, and without complaint.
Those sprightly Indian maidens who
have come back from school with
dancing eyes and slim waists and
coiffures may sit on the porches of
their new built cottages on the hill
side and smile disdainfully at Mrs.
Columbus as she trudges along be-
hind her Moses. bearing nets and
gunny sacks for the frogs; but Mrs.
Columbus cares not. She has her
place in life, according to her inner
tied and unaltered ideas, and keeps
it with no repining.
Frogging is her especial work. and
she knows how to do it. When
Moses tells her, in Sioux, to fetch
the rake, and sets forth from his
house in the woods on the crest of
the hill, a little below the Indian
church. the squaw steps up as
she can; must be brisk to keep up
with her man, who stalks off briskly
toward the frog fields. Down the
winding path they go. through the
little forest so dense that the sun
seldom penetrates it damp for
est, full of springs which send forth
streams that trickle down the gull
lies and join the Minnesota. Down
they go to the frog fields.
And such fields! These frosty
nights nights have driven the frogs
back to their winter quarters in the
mud and leafy mould along the
spring and streams, and the time
has come when large catch can be
made with little effort. Selecting
promising looking place, Moses rakes
away the leaves and mud at the
waters edge and exposes a mass of
frogs stiffened with the cold and
huddled close together to harbor the
precious warmth of their bodies.
Mrs. Columbus gets busy garnering
the crop, Moses experimenting.
The frogs being numb and helpless,
it is an easy task.
In the dead of winter, when the
deepening ice begins to cut off the
air in the beds to which the amphi-
bians have repaired for their long
sleep, they struggle instinctively to
some open spring and there the
merciless Sioux with the rakes meet
them. They freeze stiff in the cold
est weather, but when the warm
spring sun dissolyes their prison
they crawl out to bask in its heat at
the foot Of, some projecting bank
putting out their sides and blinking
their eyes in pure delight Of resur-
rection.
If you are walking along the foot
of such bank. watch where you
step. A solid mass Of quivering