| Summary: | 512 EARLY HISTORY OF NORTH DAKOTA Open the door, for here's Old Shady A-comin', a-comin', Hail, mighty day! Chorus—Den away, den away, etc. Good-bye, Mass' Jeff, good-bye. Mass' Stephens; 'Suse dis niggah for taken his leavins, I 'spec by and by you'll see Uncle Abraham, A-comin', a-comin'. Hail, mighty day! Chorus—Pen away, den away, etc. Good-bye, hard work without any pay; I's goin' up north where the white folks say Dat white wheat bread and a dollar a day Am a-comin', a-comin'. Hail, mighty day! Chorus—Den away, den away, etc. Oh! I's got a wife and a nice little baby Way up north in the lower Canady; Won't they shout when they see Old Shady A-comin', a-comin'. Hail, mighty day ! Chorus—Den away, den away, etc. Durant thus spoke of the old commander and the old times: "After the entry at Vicksburg, General Sherman was stationed on the Big Black River, and, whenever he came to town he would generally quarter with General McPherson. I have always found the general to be a very agreeable gentleman—always approachable, and very strong in his attachments to the soldiers." "I left the army at Vicksburg, in December, 1863, and returned to Ohio, and commenced steamboating. I settled in St. Paul, Minn., having moved to that city in 1866." "Old Shady" had lived at Grand Forks for twenty years before, his death. His son is a graduate of the North Dakota University. THE HALFBLOOD OF NORTH DAKOTA The Metis, or halfbloods, were mostly the product of the Hudson's Bay Com-pany. The company engaged men from Canada, Scotland and England as employes in their fur trade in the Northwest, and these men often remained in the Hudson's Bay service their lifetime. They were usually men of vigorous, hardy physique and their labors were onerous, full of hardship, and often of danger and excitement. Many of them, in the absence of white women, took to themselves Indian wives, and the offspring in time augmented in number, by in-coming settlers, and natural increase, until at one time there must have been about 3,000 scattered through what is now North Dakota and Manitoba. The Internet Archive
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