th and without stopping to
reason about the matter, they attacked a party of whites whom they met
on Otter Tail Lake.[103]

To hunt the buffalo freely, even on foreign soil, seemed to the _bois
brules_ to be their natural right. On the pemmican which they made from
these buffaloes they depended for their winter's food. Five
hundred and forty carts trailed out of Pembina on the summer hunt of
1820, and from year to year the number increased until in 1840 there
were 1210 carts, accompanied by 1630 people. Nowhere else in the new
world at least, was there such a hunting party. Thirteen hundred and
seventy-five buffalo tongues were counted as the result of one day's
hunt in 1840.[104] It was estimated that every year these Red River
hunters killed twenty thousand buffaloes on American soil.[105]

In this there was a real grievance. Though small in itself the incident
could easily develop into a war when there were other factors urging in
the same direction.[106] The exact condition of affairs on the border
was so confused that the United States made occasional military displays
in order to impress the invaders and also to satisfy its own curiosity.
The first of these expeditions occurred in 1845. Captain Edwin V.
Sumner, then in command at Fort Atkinson, in the Iowa country, visited
the Red River of the North during the summer of that year with Companies
B and I of the First Regiment of Dragoons. But the difficulty was that
while the invaders would promise to remain off American soil and would
retire as soon as a military force appeared, yet no sooner would the
troops depart than they would be back again on the hunting grounds.[107]

When complaints continued to come in the Adjutant General proposed to
establish a post on the Red River. As a preliminary movement Brevet
Major Samuel Woods, Captain of the Sixth Infantry located at Fort
Snelling, was ordered to proceed with Company D of the dragoons to the
border and make recommendations to the War Department in regard to a
suitable site. On June 6, 1849, the start was made from Fort Snelling,
and the weary march directed to the northwest over the swollen rivers
and the marshy swamps with the mosquitoes a constant torment, until on
August 1st the soldiers reached the collection of Indian lodges and the
trading establishment that was known as Pembina. During the twenty-five
days spent at this point observations were made of the topographical
features of the land, the characte