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[[underlined]] Bright Eyes' Letter to Mr. Tibbles [[/underlined]] 4.
residence was handsomely built & finished off, and somehow looked strangely out of place among the tents and graves. When we came up to my uncle's tent, my cousin Rosalie sat [[left margin]] p.5 [[/left margin]] in the door of one of the shanties, looking so careworn as though all hope had gone out of her life. What a light broke out in her face when she saw that it was my father and I. My aunt, as sick as she was, rose out of her bed on the floor to greet us, looking more like a skeleton than a human being. My uncle said to me, "Daughter, all we have to offer you is a seat on the floor. All our chairs were taken from us when our land was taken from us." I asked my cousin how [[left margin]] make [[paragraph symbol]] [[/left margin]] the children were. She answered, [[paragraph symbol]] "My children have all been sick, but are better now. I think it so strange that not one of them has been taken from me. Not a family in the  tribe but have had to mourn for some loved ones, but God has been good to me & none of mine are dead. As it is, we tremble day & night for fear our turn has come. We watch our children with dread and anxiety, and all we think of is sickness & death. Oh! if we could only return to our own land in the north, if only to die there. You see how far apart our tents are from each other. The agent ordered us to do it, because he was afraid we would join together & break away from his control to return to our own land. When the sickness first commenced it would be days before we heard of the deaths of dear friends who might live in the next tent. There were not enough well to take care of the sick, and some died of thirst in their fever because there were none to hand them a cup of water. A woman died with her baby in her arms. They were the last of their family, and there were none to bury them, but two little girls, one seven and the other nine, who dug a hole in the ground, dragged them to it, and buried them. On the first piece of land we were taken [[left margin]] p. 6. [[/left margin]] to the ground was covered with water more than half of the time and was so rocky that when it rained, the water washed away