lodge
or shelter built by Lieutenant Platt Rogers Green.[222] Here on
Lake Calhoun was located the missionary establishment which was so
closely connected with the life of the fort.[223]

There were other Indian villages near the fort. Nine miles below, on the
bank of the Mississippi was the Sioux village of Kaposia. Here
Wakinyantanka, or Big Thunder, reigned over his band which numbered one
hundred and eighty-three in 1834. Two or three miles upstream from its
mouth on the banks of the Minnesota was the group of wigwams called
Black Dog's village, although the chief was Wamditanka or Big Eagle.
About nine miles from Fort Snelling was Pinisha, reported as having one
hundred and forty-eight inhabitants ruled over by Good Road. The largest
group, three hundred and sixty-eight souls, was that of the Tintatonwan
band, located twenty-four miles from Fort Snelling and near the present
town of Shakopee. Shapaydan or Shakpay was the chief, the father of the
warrior of the same name who was executed at Fort Snelling for
participating in the Sioux massacre of 1862.[224]

These villages were very much the same in appearance, large bark lodges
being occupied by the Indians in the summer. The villages swarmed with
children, squaws, painted warriors, and yelping dogs. About the lodges
were the corn fields, the scaffolds where the corn was dried, and the
more mournful scaffolds where, wrapped in buffalo skins, reposed the
bones of the hunters who had followed the milky way to the "Land of the
Ghosts".[225]

VI

GLIMPSES OF GARRISON LIFE

What sort of a life did the soldier live in the barracks and on the
parade ground, and in the world of prairies, rivers, and woods that lay
about him? No person who was ever quartered within the walls of Old Fort
Snelling seems to have left an account of what was included in the tasks
and recreations of a day. Doubtless the routine duties repeated day
after day were thought too ordinary to be worth recording. The pleasures
were so simple and came so much as a matter of course that they also
receive scant mention in the annals of the fort. It is from the _General
Regulations for the Army_ that one gets the daily program of a military
post; and the few fragmentary pages of Taliaferro's diary and letters,
together with the stray remarks of travellers and pioneers, indicate the
joys and sorrows of a very human garrison.[226]

No sooner was dawn visible over the Mississippi bluffs than the