HISTORY OF GREEN COUNTY. 
 
ford, and the commandant set to work repairing 
the old fort, and making additional defenses. 
During this time the positive order arrived, and 
the precipitancy with which the fort was aban- 
doned during the alarm was communicated to 
the Indians through the half-breeds1residing at 
or visiting the place, which naturatly caused 
the Winnebagoes to believe that the troops had 
fled through fear of them. The commandant 
took with him to.Fort Snelling the two Winne- 
bagoes confined in Fort Crawford, leaving be- 
hind some provisions, and all the damaged 
arms, with a brass swivel and a few wall pieces, 
in charge of John Marsh, the then sub-agent at 
this place. 
The Winnebagoes, in the fall of 1826, ob- 
tained from the traders their usual credit for 
goods, and went to their hunting grounds; but 
early in the winter a report became current 
among the traders that the Winnebagoes had 
heard a rumor that the Americans and English 
were going to war in the spring; and hence 
they were holding councils to decide upon the 
course they should  adopt, hunting  barely 
enough to obtain what they wanted to subsist 
upon in the meantime. 
Mr. Brisbois said to me several times during 
the winter, that he feared some outrages from 
the Winnebagoes in the spl'ing, as from all he 
could gather they were bent on war, which I 
ought to have believed, as Mr. Brisbois had 
been among them engaged in trade over forty 
years. But I thought it impossible that the 
Winnebagoes, surrounded, as they were by 
Americans, and troops in the country, should 
for a moment seriously entertain such an idea. 
I supposed it a false alarm, and gave myself 
very little uneasiness about it; but in the 
spring, when they returned from their hunts, I 
found that they paid much worse than usual, 
although they were not celebrated for much 
punctuality or honesty in paying their debts. 
It was a general custom with the traders, when 
an Indian paid his debts in the spring pretty 
well, on his leaving, to let him have a little 
 
ammunition, either as a present or on credit. 
A Winnebago by the name of Wah-wah-peck- 
ah, had taken a credit from me, and paid me 
but a small part of it in the spring; and when 
I reproached him, he was disposed to be impu- 
dent about it; and when his party were about 
going, he applied to me as usual for ammuni- 
tion for the summer, and insisted upon having 
some, but I told him if le had behaved well, 
and paid me his credit better, that I would have 
given him some, but that he had behaved so 
bad that I would not give him any, and lie went 
away in a surly mood. 
A man by the name of Methode, I think, a 
half-breed of some of the tribes of the north, 
had arrived here,  ometime in the summer of 
1826, with his wife, and, I think, five children; 
and, sometime in March of 1827, he went with 
his family, up the Yellow or Painted Rock creek, 
about twelve miles above the Prairie, on the 
Iowa side of the Mississippi river, to make 
sugar. The sugar season being over, and lie 
not returning, and hearing nothing from him, 
a party of his friends went to look for him, and 
found his camp consumed, and himself, wife 
and children burned nearly to cinders, and she 
at the time enciente. They were so crisped and 
cindered that it was impossible to determine 
whether they had been murdered and then 
burned, or whether their camp had accidently 
caught on fire and consumed them. It was 
generally believed that the Winnebagoes had 
murdered and burnt them, and Red Bird was 
suspected to have been concerned in it; but I 
am more inclined to think, that if murdered by 
Indians, it was done by some Fox war party 
searching for Sioux. 
In the spring of this year, 1827, while a Chip- 
pewa chief called Hole-in-the-day, with a part 
of his band, visited Fort Snelling on business 
with the government, and while under the guns 
of the fort, a Sioux warrior shot one of the 
Chippewas. The Sioux was arrested by the 
troops, and confined in the guard-house. The 
Chippewas requested Col. Snelling to deliver 
 
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