And so it seemed to me the time had come when some better understanding should be reached in regard to these things. I called the principal men of the village--Oo-pe-ya-hdaya, Inyangmane, and Wakanmane, and others--and told them that, as Dr. Williamson was called away by the Lower Indians, my wife and I had been sent back to Lac-qui-parle, but we would stay only on certain conditions. We knew them and they knew us. If we could stay with them as friends, and be treated as friends, we would stay. We came to teach them and their children. But if then, or at any time afterward, we learned that the whole village did not want us to stay, we would go home to our friends. For the help we gave them, the water we used must be free, the wood to keep us warm must be free, the grass our cattle ate must be free, and the field we planted must be free; but when we wanted their best timber to build houses with, which we should do, I would pay them liberally for it. This arrangement they said was satisfactory, and soon afterward we bought from them the timber we used in erecting two frame houses.
From this time onward we did not suffer so much from cattle-killing, though it has always been an incident attaching to mission life among the Indians. For the years that followed we were generally treated as friends. Sometimes there was a breeze of opposition, some wanted us to go away, but we always had friends who stood by us. And they were not always of the same party. The results of mission work began to be seen in the young men who grew up, many of them desirous of adopting, in part at least, the habits and the dress of the whites.
There was another reason for a cessation of hostilities on their part; _viz._, that starvation did not so much stare them in the face. They had better corn crops than for some years previous. And, besides this, for two seasons the buffalo range was extended down the Minnesota far below Lac-qui-parle. For many years they had been far away, west of Lake Traverse. Now they came back, and for two winters our Indians revelled in fresh buffalo meat, their children and dogs even growing fat. And the buffalo robes gave them the means of clothing their families comfortably.