After liberating the captives it became necessary to at once proceed against the Indians, and to this end the General appointed a commission consisting of Colonel William Crooks, president; Lieutenant-Colonel William R. Marshall, Captains H. P. Grant, H. S. Bailey and Rollin C. Olin and Lieutenant I. V. D. Heard as recorder. The Indians were properly represented, and through an interpreter understood the nature of the charges brought against them. The rescued white captives, as soon as possible, were sent under suitable escort to Fort Ridgely and then forwarded to their friends. As before narrated, some of them had formed quite strong attachments for their dusky protectors. And it is not to be wondered at. Because a man's skin is red or black it does not follow that his heart is black. The blackest hearts the world's history ever recorded beat beneath the whitest breasts. These friendly Indians were in a very small minority, succeeded in saving the lives of the captives. It was a watch by day and by night, and through a bold determination, that the few friendly ones succeeded in saving, as they did, these captives, and they would be less than human if they did not form strong attachments for their dusky friends. [Illustration: THE COURT-HOUSE OF THE MILITARY COMMISSION.] After the departure of the white captives, the Indian trial proceeded, but for good reasons the General concluded to move the camp down to the Lower Agency on the Red Wood River. The Indian camp, mostly made up of women and children, had been moved from Yellow Medicine to this place, where the trial still progressed. It was really amusing to sit by and listen to the testimony given in by the Indians through their interpreter. They were nearly all like the white criminals of to-day--innocent. I will only record a few. Cut-Nose, for instance, will be a fair example of others, who were as guilty wretches as ever escaped the immediate vengeance of an outraged people. The bloody old chief tried to play the innocent by saying he was not in the battles to hurt anyone. He was most always there, but he was engaged in some innocent pastime, such as feasting on roast beef and green corn, while his comrades of the paint and feathers were killing people by the score. If he fired at all it was at random and nobody was hurt. He would steal, but that was for the benefit of his wife; she insisted upon his doing something towards the support of herself and their Indian kids; but as for killing anyone, oh! no, he could not think of that for a minute. We have his picture here, and his looks are a "dead giveaway;" and, besides, twenty-seven murders were traced directly to him, and his protestation of "me good Injun" all went for nought. He was a notoriously bad Indian; he was so adjudged by the commission, who condemned him to death, and he finally dangled at one end of a hempen cord. [Illustration: CUT-NOSE. Who killed twenty-seven persons, and was hanged.]