The next morning, after breakfast, we took leave of our hosts, and prepared to pursue our journey.  The bourgeois, from an early hour, had been occupied in superintending his men in getting the boat and its loading over the Kakalin.  As the late rains had made the paths through the woods and along the banks of the river somewhat muddy and uncomfortable for walking, I was put into an ox-cart, to be jolted over the unequal road; saluting impartially all the stumps and stones that lay in our way, the only means of avoiding which seemed to be when the little, thick-headed Frenchman, our conductor, bethought him of suddenly guiding his cattle into a projecting tree or thorn-bush, to the great detriment not only of my straw bonnet, but of my very eyes.

But we got through at last, and, arriving at the head of the rapids, I found the boat lying there, all in readiness for our re-embarking.

Our Menomonee guide, Wish-tay-yun, a fine, stalwart Indian, with an open, good-humored, one might almost say roguish countenance, came forward to be presented to me.

“Bon-jour, bon-jour, maman,” was his laughing salutation.  Again I was surprised, not as before at the French, for to that I had become accustomed, but at the respectable title he was pleased to bestow upon me.

“Yes,” said my husband, “you must make up your mind to receive a very numerous and well-grown family, consisting of all the Winnebagoes, Pottowattamies, Chippewas, and Ottawas, together with such Sioux, Sacs and Foxes, and Iowas, as have any point to gain in applying to me.  By the first-named tribe in virtue of my office, and by the others as a matter of courtesy, I am always addressed as ’father’—­you, of course, will be their ‘mother.’”

Wish-tay-yun and I were soon good friends, my husband interpreting to me the Chippewa language in which he spoke.  We were impatient to be off, the morning being already far advanced, and, all things being in readiness, the word was given: 

“Pousse au large, mes gens!” (Push out, my men).

At this moment a boat was seen leaving the opposite bank of the river and making towards us.  It contained white men, and they showed by signs that they wished to detain us until they came up.  They drew near, and we found them to be Mr. Marsh, a missionary among the Waubanakees, or the New York Indians, lately brought into this country, and the Rev. Eleazar Williams,[7] who was at that time living among his red brethren on the right bank of the Fox River.

To persons so situated, even more emphatically than to those of the settlements, the arrival of visitors from the “east countrie” was a godsend indeed.  We had to give all the news of various kinds that we had brought—­political, ecclesiastical, and social—­as well as a tolerably detailed account of what we proposed to do, or rather what we hoped to be able to do, among our native children at the Portage.