On our return march we passed nearly over the same ground as we did going out. We passed the battlefield of the Big Mound, and went into camp by the lake where Lieutenant Freeman was killed; this was on the 4th of August. The next day our scouts reported "Indians ahead,"--a false alarm,--the Indians espied were half-breeds bringing us mail from Camp Atchison, and also the news that George A. Brackett, who was with Lieutenant Freeman when he was killed, had made his way, after weary days and nights of wandering, and in a half-starved condition, to Camp Atchison, where he fell among friends. When we arrived at Camp Atchison it took but a day to arrange for our final departure. Lieutenant Freeman's body had been recovered and buried, and the place so marked that it was easily found afterwards, when the body was removed and taken to his home for final interment. We drew five days' rations of hard tack and bacon, and the side dishes that go with it; just what they were I cannot now remember. I guess the dear old army bean was one and desiccated vegetable another; anyway, we were not troubled with the gout from too much eating of rich food. The surgeons made proper provision for the transportation of the sick by placing them in ambulances, and at an early hour the headquarters' bugler sounded "strike tents," and the canvas city was razed to the ground;--Camp Atchison was a back number. The command took up the line of march for Fort Snelling, where we expected to receive orders to proceed at once to join the Union Army in the South. We were a jolly crowd, and the march seemed but a pleasant pastime; we had driven the enemy out of the country, and, save the first two or three days of our return march, he was giving us no trouble. We made good time, and the nearer we got home the shorter the miles became. When we got down to civilization we were accorded an ovation; especially was this the case at Minneapolis, where the whole city turned out to bid us welcome. We arrived at Fort Snelling on the morning of September 12th, after having made a march of more than twelve hundred miles;--and thus ended the campaign of 1863. CHAPTER XLII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1864. My active work in the Sioux Indian war ended in the autumn of 1863, and the regiment went South, but history has made me familiar with the campaign of 1864, and I thus devote space to it, so as to follow the troops and Indians to the culmination and final successful closing of the greatest Indian war of modern times. The return of General Sibley from the Missouri campaign of 1863 did not end the Sioux war, because, while the Indians had been defeated in five pitched battles in 1862 and '63, yet they were known to be in large numbers, ready to take the field again in 1864, as soon as the weather would permit. Such being the case, it became necessary to organize against them.