reenforcements. The
commanding-officer sent us the old Sherman Buena Vista Battery, which
assisted us in letting go and getting out.

The Indian we killed turned out to be the eldest son of Ink-pa-du-ta,
who was one of the head devils in the Spirit lake massacre. He had
ventured in to see his sweetheart, and was the only one of the gang that
was present when we made our attack.

The question has often been asked, why the government allowed the
massacre to go unpunished. Colonel Alexander of the Tenth and I had a
plan by which we would have destroyed Ink-pa-du-ta and his band without
a doubt, but just at the moment of putting it into execution an order
came for all the companies of the Tenth at Ridgely to leave at once for
Fort Bridger, in Utah, to join the expedition under General Albert
Sydney Johnson, against the Mormons, and that was the end of it.

Our raid was about as foolhardy and reckless a one as ever was
undertaken, and our escape can only be credited to providence or good
luck.

MUSCULAR LEGISLATION.

My attention was once arrested by a short editorial, under the caption
of "Gold Lace Lawmaking," which recalled an amusing incident in my
experience that occurred in 1856. The editorial said: "When the
lawmakers of the province of Manitoba met at Winnipeg, the occasion was
something to impress the voter. The Royal Canadian Dragoons paraded, and
the Thirteenth field battery roared a salute. Mark the contrast. On one
side of the line, ceremony, gold lace and honor. On the other, nothing
but a few clean collars and a camp-fire of the bobby."

It is not my intention to discuss the question of which is the better
method, but to relate an incident which will cast some light on the
views people of the two sections take of legislative etiquette and
ceremony, and the slight effect such ideas have on the practical subject
of legislation and the conduct of the legislators.

In the year 1856 I was elected by the people of the Minnesota valley to
the territorial council, which corresponds to the state senate under our
present political organization. At the same election a neighbor of mine,
George McLeod, was elected to the house of representatives from the same
district. George was a Scotch Canadian, who had passed his life in that
part of Canada where French is the dominant language, and it had become
his most familiar tongue. He was a giant in build, being much over six
feet in height, and correspondingly