Autograph letter signed by Albert Gallatin Patten. Fort Ripley, Minnesota Territory, 4 May 1858. 4 pages, 4to, on blue paper. 

Albert Gallatin Patten (1831-1893) was originally a carriage-maker in Kennebunk, Maine, but enlisted in the US Army in July 1854, mustering into Company K of the 2nd Infantry. At the time of this letter, he was serving as a sergeant in the Quartermaster Department at Fort Ripley along the east bank of the Mississippi in Minnesota Territory. 

In the letter, he addresses three separate letters to his sister, mother, and niece. To the latter, he answers her curious questions about the local indigenous Americans: "The pretty girls here you alluded to, what, or how, shall I describe them. In the first place they wear no little hats at all, hair sometimes braided, and if cold a warm blanket serves both shawl and hat. Their other wearing apparel it is not best for me to enter into a minute detail until I can see you. I might ass without fear, that their complexion is such that you would not desire to call on Aunt (being much too dark). I am now getting quite out of the nation of young ladies (except [our] own folks) probably shall settle down somewhere, at sometime, an old squizzled up 'Bach.'" 

An interesting description of Native women's clothing on the Minnesota frontier.

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