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Produced by Roger Frank.





                      THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI

                                   BY

                                D. LANGE

       AUTHOR OF "ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX," "THE SILVER ISLAND
              OF THE CHIPPEWA," "LOST IN THE FUR COUNTRY,"
                  "IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH," AND "THE
                        LURE OF THE BLACK HILLS"

                       ILLUSTRATED BY W. L. HOWES

                                 BOSTON
                       LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

                        Published, October, 1917

                      COPYRIGHT 1917, BY D. Lange
                      THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI

                             Norwood Press
                          BERWICK & SMITH CO.
                             NORWOOD, MASS.
                                U. S. A.

[Illustration: "Come out, you white men, and fight!"]




FOREWORD

The story told here has for its scenic background the Mississippi River
and its fine northern tributary, the Minnesota, the "Sky-tinted Water"
of the Sioux Indians.

The story opens in the spring of 1861. The Civil War has begun. Lincoln
has called for 75,000 volunteers, while to regiments and batteries of
the small regular army orders have been issued to hurry to Washington as
fast as possible.

Colonel John C. Pemberton embarks his battery on the _Fanny Harris_, at
Fort Ridgely on the Minnesota River. Hundreds of sullen Indians watch
the troops leave, and visions of regaining their rich hunting grounds in
the Minnesota valley arise in the minds of the starving savages, who
have been brooding for several years over real and fancied wrongs.

Within a year of the departure of the soldiers, a furious Indian war
sweeps over the young State of Minnesota, while on the Mississippi from
Cairo to