Mr. Ballin

But more than any dangers he faced,

Jean just really missed his family, especially his mom.

So he spent basically every spare minute he had, which was, you know, few and far between, sitting out in the woods by this one particular just huge, beautiful oak tree.

And he would sit at the base of it and he would make journal entries about basically everything he was doing so he could track it all and know what to tell his mom when he finally got to see her again.

He just wanted to tell her all about his experience.

Also, just for context, Jean had saved virtually all the money he had worked so hard to acquire, and his whole plan was to eventually send that money to his mother, who he loved so very much and missed so much.

But more and more, like the more homesick he became, the more he wished he could actually just go back to France and get out of America and literally hand the money to his mom and just see her again and be done with this whole America experiment.

But for now, Jean raised his axe over his head and he brought it down on the log that he was going to split.

And it did.

It split open.

And he raised the axe again to chop another log.

But as he did, he froze.

Because off in the distance, he could hear a series of repetitive booming noises, like really loud.

And for Jean, I mean, immediately his heart started to race and he was so scared because he knew what those were.

I mean, those were gunshots.

And he was terrified that the thing that he, and really everybody else in his town, had been scared of for days was now finally happening.

So right on the other side of the woods that surrounded the farm was the Minnesota River.

And over the last decade, lots of people had settled along this river and there'd been a town established right nearby and new homes were being built constantly.

However, all the expansion had literally forced out the indigenous tribe who had previously lived in the area, the Sioux.

And after being displaced, the Sioux had struggled to find food and a place to live, while the settlers just continued to expand and take more of their land.