nd." They had planted near Spirit lake,
which lies partly in Dickinson county, Iowa, and partly in Jackson
county, Minnesota, prior to 1857, and ranged the country from there to
the Missouri, and were considered a bad lot of vagabonds.

Between 1855 and 1857 a small settlement had sprung up about forty miles
south of Spirit lake, on the In-yan-yan-ke or Rock river.

In the spring of 1856 Hon. William Freeborn of Red Wing (after whom the
county of Freeborn in this state is called) had projected a settlement
at Spirit lake, which, by the next spring, contained six or seven
houses, with as many families.

About the same time another settlement was started some ten or fifteen
miles north of Spirit lake, on the head waters of the Des Moines, and a
town laid out which was called Springfield. In the spring of 1857 there
were two stores and several families at this place.

These settlements were on the extreme frontier, and very much isolated.
There was nothing to the west of them until you reached the Rocky
Mountains, and the nearest settlements on the north and northeast were
on the Minnesota and Watonwan rivers, while to the south lay the small
settlement on the Rock river, about forty miles distant. All these
settlements, although on ceded lands, were actually in the heart of the
Indian country, and absolutely unprotected and defenseless.

In 1857 I was United States Indian agent for the Sioux of the
Mississippi, but had lived on the frontier long enough before to have
acquired a general knowledge of Ink-pa-du-ta's reputation and his
whereabouts. I was stationed on the Redwood and Yellow Medicine rivers,
near where they empty into the Minnesota, and about eighty miles from
Spirit lake.

Early in March, 1857, Ink-pa-du-ta's band was hunting in the
neighborhood of the settlement on the Rock river, and one of them was
bitten by a dog belonging to a white man. The Indian killed the dog. The
owner of the dog assaulted the Indian, and beat him severely. The white
men then went in a body to the camp of the Indians and disarmed them.
The arms were either returned to them or they obtained others, I
have never ascertained which. They were probably given back to them on
condition that they should leave, as they at once came north to Spirit
lake, where they must have arrived about the 6th or 7th of March. They
proceeded at once to massacre the settlers, and killed all the men they
found there, together with some women, and carrie