ile
movement had been agreed on. They knew that a great war was in progress
between the whites; that armies were being raised, and the country was
being drained of men. All this was known and discussed among them. There
are also grave suspicions, and not without considerable show of
evidence, that rebel emissaries, Indians or half breeds from the
Missouri border, had been among them fomenting the discord and urging
war.

When these four young men returned on the 18th to their band, which was
then with others at the Sioux Agency at Redwood, the recital of their
murders created the most intense excitement among the Indians. They
became infuriated at the idea of bloodshed. Before the whites were aware
that trouble was brewing, Little Six's, Little Crow's, Grey Iron's, and
Good Road's bands of M'dewakantons, and a part of the Lake Calhoun band,
gathered around the buildings, and, with a general rush and yell,
massacred the whites, some twenty-five in number, robbed and plundered
the stores, and laid the whole place in ashes.

The party who were conveying the annuity money to the Agency, reached
Fort Ridgely on the afternoon of the same day, and there learned that
the outbreak had taken place. A garrison of about seventy-five men was
in the fort at the time the news of the massacre reached it, and Captain
Marsh, taking fifty of them, proceeded toward the Agency, fifteen miles
up the river. In the evening twenty-one of the men returned, to tell
that the detachment had fallen into an ambush, and that all the others,
including the captain, were either killed or drowned.

The Indians seem to have at once despatched messengers with the news of
these hostilities to the bands at the Upper Sioux Agency, at Yellow
Medicine. The chiefs there immediately called their followers into
council. About one hundred Sissetons, Wahpetons, and thirty young
Yanktons, were present. The council was stormy, and divided in
sentiment; the Sissetons urging the killing and robbing of the whites,
saying the M'dewakantons had already gone so far that they could not
make matters worse, and that, as the whites would inflict punishment
upon all alike, the best thing to be done was to kill them and take
their goods. The Wahpeton chiefs, though willing to rob the whites,
insisted on sparing their lives, and sending them off with their horses
and wagons across the prairies.

About one fourth of the Sioux, previous to these events, had, through
the efforts