ac upon the
request of Shawboshkung, the head chief.

Ma-dosa-go-onwind was head chief of the Red Lake Indians and
Hole-in-the-day head chief of the Mississippi bands at the time I was
agent.

Captain Isaac Moulton--1857, Minneapolis.

The middle of December 1857, it began to rain and rained for three days
as if the heavens had opened. The river was frozen and the sleighing had
been fine. After this rain there was a foot of water on the ice. I was
on my way to Fond du Lac, Wis. to get insurance on my store that had
burned. You can imagine what the roads leading from St. Paul to Hastings
were. It took us a whole day to make that twenty mile trip, four stage
loads of us.

I have often thought you dwellers in the Twin Cities nowadays give
little thought to the days when the stage coach was the essence of
elegance in travel. The four or six horses would start off with a
flourish. The music of the horn I have always thought most stirring. The
two rival companies vied with each other in stage effect. If one driver
had an especial flourish, the other tried to surpass him, and so it went
on. No automobile, no matter how high powered, can hold a candle to
those stage coaches in picturesque effect, for those horses were alive.

On this trip, I hired a man with two yearling steers to take my trunk
full of papers from the Zumbro River that we had crossed in a skiff, as
the bridge was out, to Minnieski where we could again take the stage.
Those steers ran and so did we eight men who were following them in
water up to our knees. We reached Minnieski about as fagged as any men
could be.

Mr. George A. Brackett--1857, Minneapolis.

Prior to the Indian outbreak, I had charge of the feeding of the troops,
comprising Stone's Division at Poolville, Md., with beef and other
supplies. In this Division were the First Minnesota, several New York
(including the celebrated Tammany Regulars) and Pennsylvania troops. I
continued in that service until the Sioux outbreak, when Franklin Steele
and myself were requested by General Sibley to go to Fort Ridgely and
aid in the commissary department, General Sibley being a brother-in-law
of Franklin Steele. I remained in this position until the close of the
Sibley campaign, other St. Paul and Minneapolis men being interested
with me in the furnishing of supplies.

Just after the battle of Birch Coolie, when General Sibley had assembled
at Fort Ridgely a large force to go up the Minnesota Riv