History of the Sioux war and massacres of 1862 and 1863

Preface

The writer of the following pages has resided in the State of Minnesota twelve years, commencing at a time anterior to the removal of the Sioux from their ancient possessions to their reservations upon .the Minnesota River. He was a member of General Sib¬ ley’s expedition against the savages in 1862 , from its arrival at St. Peter’s in August until its return in No¬ vember, and acted as the Recorder of the Military Commission which tried some four hundred of the participants in the outbreak. During that time and since, he devoted particular attention to obtaining from Indians, half-breeds, traders, white captives, fu¬ gitives from massacres, and others, particulars of the various outrages and the causes of the massacre. He has also carefully read the public treaties and other documents connected with Indian affairs, and the vari¬ ous newspaper articles pertinent thereto.

From the information thus derived, he has endeav¬ ored to form a connected and reliable history. He regrets that the haste required to place it before the public, while attention is directed to the subject, has militated against the symmetry of arrangement and finish of composition which should accompany such a

VI

PREFACE.

work. It was his desire that portraits of Colonel Crooks, Colonel Miller, Major Brown, Major Forbes, the Rev. S. R. Riggs, and other noted men connected with the war, accompanied by personal notices, should have a place in the volume, but the publishers were not willing to incur the addititional expense.

He avails himself of this opportunity to acknowl¬ edge his great indebtedness to Mr. Antoine Frenier, the Sioux interpreter, for his patient interpretation of the many interviews he found it necessary to hold with the Indians. He now submits the result of his labors to the charitable perusal of the reader.

New York City, September 30,1868.

Chapter I. The Scene And The Actors

The Actors.—Travelers and Traders.—Treaties.—Condition of the Indians.—Little Crow.—The Reservations.Page 13

Chapter II. Causes Of The Outbreak

Predisposition to Hostility.—Extortion of the Traders.—Corruptions in the Indian Department.—Red Iron and Governor Ramsey.— Lean Bear.—Sufferings of the Indians.—Intense Excitement.— Visit of the Sissetons and Wahpetons to the Upper Agency.—The Lower Agency.—The Lower Reservation.—The “ Soldiers’Lodge. ”

—Council at Rice Creek... 31

Chapter III. A Spark Of Fire

A Quarrel.—A Murder.—The Alarm given. 52

Chapter IV. Commencement Of The Massacres And The Battle Of Red¬ Wood Ferry

Council at Crow’s House.—The “ Signal-gun” and the Attack.—Es¬ cape of Rev. Mr. Hindman.—Burning of “the Agency.”—Flight on all sides.—Captain Marsh and the Fifth Minnesota Volunteers. —Battle at the Ferry.—Council of Upper Indians.—Other Day 59

Chapter V. The Attacks Upon New Ulm And Fort Ridgely

The Alarm given at St. Peter’s.—Re-enforcement of Fort Ridgely.— Fight at New Ulm.—Attack on Fort Ridgely by Little Crow.— Arrival of the Upper Indians.—General Engagement at New Ulm. —Repulse of the Indians.. 78

Ylll

CAMP RELEASE.

Need of Cavalry.—Release of Captives.—Military Commission ap¬ pointed.—Godfrey.... 181

CHAPTER Xin.

GODFREY’S STORY.

Godfrey’s personal History.—Painted by the Indians.—What Godfrey did and what he saw. 191

CONTENTS.

ix

Chapter XIV

CAPTIVITY OP THE FAMILY OF JOSEPH B. BROWN.

Narrative of Samuel Brown.—The Warning.—Encounter with the Indians.—Cut-nose.—Little Crow’s Protection.Page 202

A sad Birthday.—Alarm at Lac qui Parle.—The Flight.—Walking Spirit.—Sacred Nest.—Good Day’s Proposition.—A Fright.—A long Journey. 209

CHAPTER XVI. homeward bound.

A Hurricane.—Homeward March.—Trials at the Lower Agency.— The Prairie Fire.—Attack on the Prisoners at New Ulm.—Esti¬ mate of Losses in 1862.—Incomplete Preparation.—Loss of the In¬ dians. 231

CHAPTER XVII. trials of the prisoners.

Trial of Godfrey.—Punishment commuted.—Manner of Proceeding. —Excuses of the Prisoners.—Humors of the Court-room.—Cut-nose.— Sentences given and their Justice.—Instances of New England £ ‘ Barbarity”... 251

CHAPTER XVIII.

EXECUTION.

Reading of the President’s Order to the sentenced.—Regulations.— Statements of the Prisoners. — Death-dance and Song.—Ascent of the Scaffold.—The Execution and Burial. 272

CHAPTER XIX.

DEATH OF LITTLE CBOW.

Devil’s Labe.—Little Crow at St. Joseph.—Renewed Massacres.— Little Crow shot by Mr. Lampson and “done up” for the Historical Society.—Son of Little Crow. 296

CHAPTER XX.

THRILLING AND FATAL ADVENTURE OF MESSRS. BRACKETT AND FREEMAN.

Mr. Brackett’s Narrative.—Encounter with the Indians.—Freeman shot.—Lone Prairie Grave. 313

A 2

X

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE BATTLES ON THE MISSOURI.

The Battle of Big Mound.—Battle of Dead Buffalo Lake.—Battle of Stony Lake.—Skirmish on the Missouri. .Page 321

CHAPTER XXII.

THE FUTURE.

Continuance of Hostilities.—Disaffection among the Tribes.—Danger of War with the Chippeways.—Cost of the Sioux War.—Some practical Suggestions. 337

Appendix

AN APPEAL FOR THE RED MAN.

By Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota. 343

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Portrait of General Sibley. Frontispiece.

Indian Tepees......■*•••

House of Chaska, a civilized Indian. 19

Dr. Williamson’s House. 23

Squaws winnowing Wheat. 29

Little Crow. 60

The Captive saved. 63

Other Day... 75

Charles E. Plandreau. 79

Escape of the Missionaries. 87

Mrs. Estlick and Children. 110

Hole-in- the-Day. 114

Red Iron. 155

Standing Buffalo. 160

Little Paul. 166

W. E. Marshall. 174

Indian Camp taken by Colonel Sibley. 180

Old Betz. 182

Indian Boy..-. 185

Cut-nose.,. 204

Wild-Goose-Nest Lake. 230

Indian Camp at Red-Wood.<. 233

The Court-house of the Military Commission. 238

Prairie on Eire. 241

The Attack at New Ulm. 245

Camp Lincoln. 249

Interior of Indian Jail. 273

One of the executed Indians. 292

Devil’s Lake. 297

St. Joseph, from Pembina. 301

Fort Garry. 305

Lone Prairie Grave. 320

THE SIOUX WAR AM) MASSACRE.

Chapter I. The Scene And The Actoes

In the month of August, 1862, the Indians of the Upper Minnesota initiated a massacre which stands prominent in the bloody drama which attends the ad¬ vance of the white race across the continent. The atrocities by which it was attended—the attempt of the actors to enlist other savage tribes on their behalf —the mysterious part enacted by the negro Godfrey, who received from the Indians the name of “ Otakle,” or “he who kills many”—the course of their great orator and chief, Little Crow, who was not second to Philip, Pontiac, or Tecumseh—the perilous condition of the captive whites, their shameful treatment, and the peculiar manner in which their deliverance was accomplished—the trial of over four hundred of the accused, and the simultaneous execution of thirtyeight of their number, are full of thrilling interest.

Those engaged in the massacre were, with but few exceptions, members of the M’dewakanton, Wahpekuta, Wahpeton, and Sisseton tribes of the great Sioux, or Dakota nation. They formerly occupied the north¬ eastern portion of Iowa, part of the western border of Wisconsin, the southwestern half of the State of Min¬ nesota, and adjoining possessions in Dakota; a vast,

THE SIOUX WAR AND MASSACRE.

fertile, and beautiful land, with great undulating plains, over which herds of buffalo roamed; with groves and woodlands in which the deer found a hiding-place; with countless lakes, and streams, and mighty rivers filled with choicest fish, and swarming with myriads of wild-fowl, the duck, the goose, the swan, and the brant; and their shores alive with the otter, the mink, and the beaver.

Their existence, customs, and manner of life have long been familiar to the whites. A hundred years before the American Revolution, the adventurous Hen¬ nepin, the first man who gave to the world a drawing of the cataract of Niagara, visited them, and on his re¬ turn published a narrative of his adventures. Carver, Nicollet, Long, Schoolcraft, Cass, Fremont, Marryatt, and other travelers of repute, followed afterward. Catlin, the great Indian painter, has preserved the faces of their prominent chiefs on his immortal canvas, and Schiller and Longfellow have sung of them in their melodious verse.

As early as 1700 Dakotas visited Montreal, and Wabashaw, their head chief, was received at Mackinaw with greater honors than the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Ojibeways, who were also present. The British officer in command wrote a song in honor of his com¬ ing, of which the following is the last refrain:

“ Hail to great Wabashaw!

Soldiers! your triggers draw!

Guards! wave the colors, and give him the drum ;

Choctaw and Chickasaw,

Whoop for great Wabashaw,

Raise the portcullis, the king’s friend is come.”

Quickly following the earliest traveler came the

INDIAN TEPEES.

THE SCENE AND THE ACTORS. 17

traders, to exchange the commodities of civilization for furs, and, intoxicated with the wild and romantic life, and supplied by their principals at home with luxuries, intermarried with the natives, and establish¬ ed themselves permanently in the country.

At first they were received unwillingly, and occa¬ sional difficulties arose; but so necessary were they to supply the increased wants of the Indian, that when the English withdrew their traders from the country on account of the murder of one of their number, and refused to allow their return until the guilty parties were delivered for punishment, Wabash aw, the grand¬ father of the present chief of that name, to relieve the distress of his people, worked his toilsome way to Que¬ bec, and gave himself up to be punished in the place of the murderer, who could not be found.

So, too, when the war of 1812 broke out, these tribes, although they had made a treaty of peace with the United States, and ceded a tract of land at the mouth of the Minnesota for the establishment of a military post, were easily induced by the traders, who were English subjects, to act as the allies of their gov¬ ernment, and they composed a portion of the forces which compelled the surrender of the post at Macki¬ naw and besieged Fort Meigs.

Some time after peace was declared our own trad¬ ers gained a foothold, and in 1825 a convention was entered into at Prairie du Chien between the tribes and the United States, by which it was agreed that every act of hostility committed by either of the contracting parties against the other should be mutually forgot¬ ten and forgiven, and that perpetual peace and amity should thereafter exist between them. In 1880 and

18 THE SIOUX WAR ASTD MASSACRE.

1886 they ceded part of their lands in Iowa, and in 1837 all that portion lying east of the Mississippi Eiver. In 1849 Minnesota was organized as a terri¬ tory, and the emigration rapidly settling upon the eastern shore of the Mississippi soon began to require and encroach upon the more fertile country opposite.

So in 1851 the Indians were induced to sign treat¬ ies by which they transferred to the United States over thirty millions of acres, embracing all their lands in Iowa, Dakota, and Minnesota, except a tract along the Upper Minnesota, which they reserved for their future occupancy and home. This commenced just below Fort Ridgely, and extended 150 miles to Lake Traverse, with a width of ten miles on each side of the river.

The Senate in 1852 approved the treaty, provided that the Indians would agree to an amendment by which the reservation should also be ceded, and they be located in such land as the President should select; and to this the Indians assented. The President nev¬ er having made the selection contemplated, and the Indians having moved upon the reservation made in the first treaties, the government recognized their right to its possession, and in 1858, by treaties which were approved in 1860, purchased from them all that portion of the tract on the north side of the river. They continued to reside on the remainder until the outbreak, the M’dewakantons and Wahpekutas occu¬ pying in common all below the Yellow Medicine Riv¬ er, which was called the “Lower Reservation,” and the other two tribes the part above the river, which was styled the “ Upper Reservation.”

Pursuant to the various treaties, large amounts of

THE SCENE AND THE ACTORS.

money and goods were annually delivered to them, and labor performed for their benefit. For the super¬ intendence of these matters, an agent resided among them, and two places for the transaction of business were established, one fourteen miles above Fort Ridgely, on the Minnesota River, and known as the “ Low¬ er” or “Redwood Agency,” and the other at the mouth of the Yellow Medicine, and designated as the “Upper” or “Yellow Medicine Agency.”

The habitations of the Indians were of a very com¬ fortable character. Some lived in low circular houses, made by themselves from wood, and covered with bark; others in brick houses a story and a half high, constructed by the government; and others in tepees of canvas, resembling the Sibley tent now in use in our army, which was modeled after their tepees by the rebel General Sibley when stationed in Minnesota.

The different bands, under their hereditary chief, oc¬ cupied separate villages, with the exception of some hundred families who had been induced by divers con¬ siderations to become “ white men,” and who lived to¬ gether without distinction of bands. They had their hair cut short, wore coats and pantaloons, attended church and schools, cultivated the soil, elected their president or chief after the manner of a republic, were married by a clergyman, and buried their dead in the ground. The others remained Indians , left their hair unshorn, wore the breechcloth, blanket, and leggins, married as many wives as they pleased, after their own fashion, placed their dead on scaffoldings in the open air, made themselves brave with paint and with the feathers of the eagle, went upon the war-path against the Chippeways, and tortured, killed, scalped, and mutilated men, women, and children. In addition to the Indian population were many half-breeds or mixedbloods, and a large number of whites, consisting of traders, employes of the government, and others. Around the agencies were churches, and schools, and warehouses, and stores, and residences, and shops, forming thriving villages. A few miles above the Yellow Medicine were the churches and schools of the Eev. S. E. Briggs and Dr. Williamson, long missiona¬ ries among the Sioux. At Lac qui Parle there was the dwelling-house and school of another missionary, the Eev. Mr. Huggins, and a store-house and black¬ smith-shop belonging to the government; and on Big Stone Lake, at the upper extreme of the reservation, and at other points, trading-posts were established. The reservation was fertile and well adapted to farm¬ ing purposes. There was an excellent road through it, upon which had recently been placed, over the sloughs and streams, eighteen well-constructed bridges, two of them fifty and one sixty-seven feet in length. About three thousand acres had been plowed, fenced, and planted, and which, as was afterward estimated, would have yielded, had the Indians remained and made a proper harvesting, over one hundred thousand bushels of corn, potatoes, and turnips, besides five hundred bushels of wheat, and large quantities of beans, peas, pumpkins, and other vegetables. At both agencies were saw-mills and corn-mills, and at the upper agency a brick-yard, where was manufactured a fine article similar to that made from the Milwaukee clay; also at both agencies were blacksmith and car¬ penter shops, where wagons, sleds, and farming uten¬ sils were made, and other ordinary work done. The

THE SCENE AND THE ACTORS. 25

Indians liad plows, hoes, scythes, cradles, ox-gear¬ ing, harness, carts, wagons, and the usual farming im¬ plements, and oxen, cows, calves, and sheep, and horses.* Large quantities of hay had been cut and partially cured, and the materials for the erection of some seventy or eighty new buildings prepared. The “ Farmer” Indians had coats, pants, shirts, coffee, tea, salt, sugar, candles, soap, vinegar, molasses, rice, and lard, and tubs, buckets, churns, hardware, and queensware, and other household articles. New blacksmith shops were being put in operation at different points, and at the “ Lower Agency” a bed of clay suitable for the manufacture of brick, and similar to the one at Yellow Medicine, had been discovered, and work com¬ menced upon it for the purpose.

The agent, Mr. Galbraith, who was energetic and faithful, visited the whole reservation shortly before the outbreak, and congratulated himself on the thriv¬ ing appearance of affairs. A conversation which he had with Little Grow, their head chief, three days be¬ fore the fatal 18th of August, furnished no indica¬ tion of what was about to transpire. Being aware of Crow’s influence among the Blanket Indians, Mr. Gal¬ braith had previously promised to build him a good house if he would aid in bringing around the idle young men to habits of industry and civilization, and would abandon the leadership of the Blanket Indians. Crow assented to this, and the carpenter-work had been ordered and nearly completed; and in the con¬ versation before alluded to, Little Crow selected a lo¬ cation for it, and seemed to be well pleased with its position. He had shortly before been defeated for the

* See Agent Galbraith’s Report.

B speakership of the Lower Indians, but he said he cared nothing about this, for, if elected, the other Indians would be jealous of him. He .stated he had a store, a yoke of oxen, a wagon, and plenty of corn and pota¬ toes, and was now living more comfortably than ever before. He said he had just been grinding his scythe to cut hay, and that two or three of his young rela¬ tives were coming to help him, and that they would soon cure enough for winter. There was a young In¬ dian of his band present who, Crow said, could make good gunstocks, and he showed a well-finished stock which he had made, and requested that he should have sent to him a set of tools with which to work. Crow had spoken of this before, and Galbraith told him he had sent for a complete set, and that they would soon arrive. These, he said, were all the requests he had to make, and believed they’would be complied with. So far removed from the agent’s thoughts was the terrible tragedy which afterward ensued, that the day before its occurrence, leaving his family at Yellow Medicine among the Indians, he started for Fort Snelling with some forty-five men whom he had recruit¬ ed on the reservation, consisting of half-breeds, em¬ ployes of the government, and went as far as St. Pe¬ ter’s.

Over the soil which Indians had sold civilization had made rapid strides. From Ireland, Germany, Nor¬ way, and Sweden, and many another country of the Old World, and from every part of the New, had come a quarter of a million of people, and made the land their home. Through the once quiet waters of Lake Pepin, past the tall cliff from which Winona had taken her death-leap, countless steam-boats puffed their way,

THE SCENE AND THE ACTOKS. 27

and within earshot , of the cave where Carver heard the Dakotas moaning and weeping for their depart¬ ed, the locomotive uttered its harsh scream.

At St. Anthony’s Falls, over which the canoe of Scarlet Dove dashed when she sung her last song, and to which the trembling Indian brought

“Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,

Tributes to be hung in air To the fiend presiding there,”

prosperous villages had; sprung up, and its mad wa¬ ters whirled industry’s vast machinery in obedience to the voice of man. Far and wide, where the buf¬ falo roamed, herds of cattle and the quiet sheep-flock grazed, and the plowman turned the glebe. The scaf¬ folding on which the Indian placed his dead passed away, and the cemetery, with its cross and whitened marbles, took its place. Almost within stone’s-throw of the reservation- was the prosperous town of New' Ulm, and emigrants even crowded upon the land invacated by the treaty of 1858. Every where appear¬ ed those works by which the great Caucasian mind asserts itself supreme. Nor did the whites fear the Indians. It is true that Inkpaduta and eight of his band, in 1858, had killed some forty persons, but they were outlaws from their tribe, their acts were discoun¬ tenanced by their nation, and one of them fell by the Fand of Other Day, a native Dakota.

The weird religion of the savage, his mad dances, his antique traditions, his strange attire, attracted at¬ tention and interest, which were increased by the cer¬ tainty of his not very distant extinction, and the fact that he would never be forgotten while river, and lake, and hill, and state, and county, and city, and town should owe to his language their beautiful and har¬ monious names. He passed unmolested on his hunt¬ ing excursions through the settlements, and was en¬ tertained at the homes of the whites, and bartered with them the game -which he killed. He battled with the Chippeways in view of the town of Shakopee, and danced his scalp-dance, and swung the reeking trophy of his victim within sound of the steam printing-press of St. Paul. The people of the state, and even stran¬ gers from abroad, crowded unarmed and fearless to the agencies when the payments were made, although a thousand armed warriors, in their plumes and paint, were present.

How many prophecies of danger there were the fol¬ lowing chapter shall disclose.

CAUSES OF THE OUTBREAK.

Chapter II. Causes Of The Outbreak

The Indians were predisposed to hostility toward the whites. They regarded them with that repug¬ nance which God has implanted as an instinct in dif¬ ferent races, for the preservation of their national in¬ tegrity, and to prevent the subjection of the inferior in industry and intelligence to the superior. When they first caught sight of Hennepin they saluted him with a discharge of arrows.

This inborn feeling was increased by the enormous prices charged by the traders for goods, by their de¬ bauchery of their women, and the sale of liquors, which were attended by drunken brawls that often re¬ sulted fatally to the participants. Death to the whites would have followed years ago had not commercial dealings with them, as before stated, become a matter of necessity.

The prohibition by our government of their san¬ guinary wars upon the Chippeways was another source of grievance. To them it appeared a tyranni¬ cal act. When upbraided during last summer for evading this command, they answered with this home thrust: “ Our Great Father, we know, has always told us it was wrong to make war, yet now he himself is making war and killing a great many. Will you ex¬ plain this to us ? we don’t understand it.” This pro¬ hibition was not only distasteful on account of its imputed unreasonableness and tyranny, but because it also closed up the main avenue to distinction.

The imagination of the Indian can not exercise it¬ self in painting, sculpture, and literature, or in any of the arts or sciences which gain renown in civilized climes. His crown comes from the red hand of war. As their agent correctly says, “ The young Indian from childhood is taught to regard ‘ killing’ as the highest of virtues. In the dance and at the feasts, the warri¬ ors recite their deeds of theft, pillage, and slaughter as precious things, and, indeed, the only ambition of the young Indian is to secure the ‘feather? which is but the record of his having murdered, or participated in the murder of some human being—whether man, woman, or child is immaterial; and after he has secured his first feather, his appetite is whetted to increase the number in his hair, as an Indian brave is estimated by the number of his feathers. Without the feather the young Indian is regarded as a squaw , and, as a general rule, can not get a wife, and is despised, derided, and treated with contumely by all. The head-dress filled with these feathers and other insignia of blood is re¬ garded as £ wakari (sacred), and no unhallowed hand of man nor any woman dare touch it.”

If you enter an Indian encampment you will notice the little boys engaged in shooting arrows, or in hurl¬ ing miniature spears; and Over the platform upon which bleaches the bones of one of their heroic dead you will find suspended the scalp of some slaughtered foe. Honorable wounds are considered a sure pass¬ port to “ the happy hunting grounds, 2 ’ and the slaugh¬ ter of an enemy by a friend of a dead warrior is re¬ garded as a powerful propitiation to the Deity on his

CAUSES OF THE OUTBKEAK.

behalf. By his side, in his last resting-place, are laid the weapons of the fray, and friends periodically visit it to recite his gallant deeds.

The hostility arising from these causes was but trivial in comparison with that which arose out of the sale of their lands and the treaties therewith connected. The cession of their territory is necessarily enforced upon the Indians by the advance of the white race. Hunting and farming can not exist together, and the Indian can not and will not change his mode of life in a day, if ever. The whites cut down the trees; their steam-boats frighten the beaver and the wild-fowl, and their presence drives the deer and the buffalo far to the west. Were the treaties fairly obtained, and all their stipulations fully carried out, regrets for the homes they had lost, and the narrow limits, soon des¬ titute of game, into which they are crowded, would soon bring repentance of their bargain, and force a bloody termination of the conflict of the races. But the treaties are born in fraud, and all their stipulations for the future are curtailed by iniquity.

The traders, knowing for years before that the whites will purchase the lands, sell the Indians goods on credit, expecting to realize their pay from the con¬ sideration to be paid by the government. They thus become interested instruments to obtain the consent of the Indians to the treaty; and by reason of their familiarity with their language, and the assistance of half-breed relatives, are possessed of great facilities to accomplish their object. The persons deputed by the government to effect a treaty are compelled to pro¬ cure their co-operation, and this they do by provid¬ ing that their debts shall be paid. The traders obtain B 2

THE SIOUX WAR AND MASSACRE.

the concurrence of the Indians by refusing to give them farther credit, and by representing to them that they will receive an immense amount of money if they sell their lands, and thenceforth will live at ease, with plenty to eat and plenty to wear, and plenty of powder and lead, and of whatever else they may re¬ quest. After the treaty is agreed to, the amount of ready money is absorbed by the exorbitant demands of the traders and the expenses of the removal of the Indians to their reservation. After that, the trader no longer looks to the Indian for his pay; he gets it from their annuities. He therefore does not use the same means to conciliate their good will that he did when he was dependent on their honesty. Claims for depredations upon white settlers are also deducted out of their moneys before they leave Washington, on insufficient testimony; and these are always, when based on fact, double the actual loss, for the Indian Department is notoriously corrupt, and the hand ma¬ nipulating the machinery must be crossed with gold. The “ expenses ” of obtaining a claim enter into the amount demanded and allowed. The demand is not only generally unjust, but, instead of its being deduct¬ ed from the moneys of the wrong-doer, it is taken from the annuities of all. This course punishes the inno¬ cent and rewards the guilty, because the property taken by the depredator is of more value than the slight percentage he loses.

Many of the stipulations as to establishing schools and furnishing them with farming utensils, are never carried out. Building and supply contracts are en¬ tered into at outrageous prices, and goods belonging to the Indians are put into the traders’ stores and sold to their owners, and the moneys realized shared by the trader and the agent. About four hundred thou¬ sand dollars of the cash payment due the Sioux under the treaties of 1851 and 1852 were paid to the traders on old indebtedness. So intense was the indignation . of the Indians that there was serious apprehension that they would attack the government officials and traders. The opposition of Red Iron, the principal chief of the Sissetons-, became so .boisterous that he was broken of his chieftainship by Governor Ramsey, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and one of the commissioners who made the treaties.

An eye-witness has sketched the appearance of the chief on that occasion, and the interview between him and the governor, and what afterward transpired. It took place in December, 1852. The council was crowded with Indians and white men when Red Iron was brought in guarded by soldiers. He was about forty years old, tall and athletic; about six feet high in his moccasins, with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose, thin, compressed lips, and physiognomy beaming with intelligence and resolution. He was clad in the half military, half Indian costume of the Dakota chiefs. He was seated’in the council-room without greeting or salutation from any one. In a few minutes, the governor, turning to the chief in the midst of a breathless silence, by the aid of an inter¬ preter opened the council.

Governor Ramsey asked, “ What excuse have you for not coming to the council when I sent for you ?”

The Dakota chief rose to his feet with native grace and dignity, his blanket falling from his shoulders, and purposely dropping the pipe of peace, he stood erect before the governor with his arms folded and right hand pressed upon the sheath of his scalping-knife. With the utmost coolness and prepossession, and a defiant smile playing upon his thin lips, and his eyes sternly fixed upon his excellency, with firm voice he replied,

“I started to come, but your braves drove me back.”

Governor, “ What excuse have you for not com¬ ing the second time I sent for you ?”

Red Iron. “No other excuse than I have given you.”

Governor. “At the treaty I thought you a good man; but since, you have acted badly, and I am dis¬ posed to break you—I do break you.”