on load, and take it up to the agencies, while
the goods would be delivered by the contractors in steamboats, a census
of the Indians would be taken, and the money and goods equally divided
among them.

After this duty was withdrawn from the agents and imposed upon the
superintendents, of course all responsibility for the money and goods
was shifted from the former and laid upon the latter, which was to me a
great relief, as I had transported many wagon loads of specie from St.
Paul to the agencies without guard, and at great personal and financial
risk. A payment was due early in July, 1857, and the superintendent had
brought the money as far as Fort Ridgely. Arriving at that point, news
came of much excitement among the Indians at the agencies, which was not
at all unusual, as thousands of savage fellows used to come in from the
Missouri river country, and make trouble for our tribes about payment
time, and the superintendent decided it was prudent to leave the money
at Fort Ridgely until matters quieted down. There was no vault or other
safe place in which to deposit the money at the fort, so it was placed
in a room occupied by the quartermaster's clerk, a Frenchman, an
enlisted man, and he, with another soldier, a German, who was the post
baker, were put in charge of it. This Frenchman had been selected from
the ranks of Captain Sully's company and made quartermaster's clerk on
account of his superior education, his excellent penmanship and his good
character. I always have thought he was some unfortunate young
gentleman, serving under an assumed name. The money was all in stout
wooden mint boxes, holding each $1,000 in silver, and in gold about
$25,000 or more, there being usually one or two boxes of gold. The boxes
were spread on the floor of the room, and the men slept on them.

The constitutional convention to frame the organic law for the proposed
State of Minnesota had been called to convene in St. Paul, on the
thirteenth day of July, 1857, and the people of the Minnesota valley had
done me the honor to elect me a member of it. I had delayed starting for
St. Paul until a day or two before the meeting of the convention, and
having heard rumors that there would be trouble in organizing it, I felt
very anxious to be there on the opening day. The only mode of
transportation, except the river, in those days, was the little
canvas-covered stages of Messrs. M. O. Walker & Co., which would hold
four inside comfortabl