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Updated: June 20, 2025
Jan and Marie ran over the plank at once, and Mother De Smet soon followed with the babies. Then, while Marie watched them, she and Jan brought out the onions and a pan, and soon the air was heavy with the smell of frying onions. Joseph and Jan slipped the bridle over Netteke's collar and allowed her to eat the rich green grass at the river's edge.
"No," Father De Smet called back, "I didn't name her after the Kaiser. I think too much of my mule!" The soldier shook his fist after them. "I'll make you pay well for your impudence!" he shouted. "You and I will meet again!" "Very likely," muttered Father De Smet under his breath.
Father De Smet, the celebrated Jesuit priest, says of it in his letters to the bishop of St. Louis, in 1841: The first rock which we saw, and which truly deserves the name, was the famous rock Independence.
Soon a gangplank was slipped from the boat to the little wooden steps on the bank, and Mother De Smet, with a squirming baby under each arm, came ashore. "I do like to get out on dry land and shake my legs a bit now and then," she said cheerfully as she greeted Granny. "On the boat I just sit still and grow fat!" "I shake my legs for a matter of ten miles every day," laughed Granny.
The revered Father De Smet, who traversed the then dreary wilderness of the Platte Valley, as long ago as fifty-seven years, thus writes in his letters to the bishop of St. Louis, of a tornado he witnessed:
But Netteke had had no military training, and she simply kept on. In one more step she would have come down upon the soldier's toes, if he had not moved aside just in time. He was very angry. "Why didn't you stop your miserable old mule when I told you to?" he said to Father De Smet. "It's a balky mule," replied Father De Smet mildly, "and very obstinate."
But I have the distinction of having preserved the only virtuous creature in the settlement for further usefulness. Sometimes, perhaps, you will pray for Ninon." Father de Smet never forgot those prayers. These were wild times, mind you. No use to keep your skirts coldly clean if you wished to be of help. These men were subduing a continent. Their primitive qualities came out.
She held to the gangplank and murmured prayers to all the saints she knew, while Jan and Joseph trotted briskly along the tow-path, and Netteke, assisted by the current, made better speed than she had at any time during the day. Meanwhile his captors were busy with Father De Smet. "Come! Drink to the Kaiser!" shouted the first soldier, "or we'll feed you to the fishes!
"Indeed!" sneered the soldier; "then, I suppose you have named him Albert after your pig-headed King!" "No," answered Father De Smet, "I think too much of my King to name my mule after him." "Oh, ho!" said the German; "then perhaps you have named him for the Kaiser!" Netteke had marched steadily along during this conversation, and they were now past the soldier.
"Then, perhaps, a few supplies for our brave army. There is no hurry. After supper will do; but first we'll drink a health to the Kaiser, and since you are host here, you shall propose it!" He pointed to the pail of milk which Father De Smet still held. "Now," he shouted, "lift your stein and say, 'Hoch der Kaiser." Father De Smet looked them in the face and said not a word.
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