In the summer of 1863 a party of twenty-one men and three women went down the Missouri in a mackinaw boat from Fort Benton. They reached the vicinity of the mouth of Apple Creek, near where Bismarck, N. D., now stands, just as the Sioux Indians, whom General Sibley was driving out of Minnesota and across the country to the Missouri, arrived on the banks of that stream. They had just been defeated in three engagements with General Sibley and were in a very angry temper. They attacked the boat and fought the little party an entire day, and finally killed them all and sunk the boat. It was reported that the whites killed ninety-one Indians in the fight, and that the captain of the boat, whose name is supposed to have been Baker, “made such a brave defense that the Indians were struck with admiration for him and wanted to save him.” The boat had a large amount of golddust on board, and some of it was recovered by the Mandan and Aricara Indians. An air of mystery has always hung over this affair, and the details will probably never be known. For some unexplained reason, certain individuals who were believed to have had some knowledge of it refused to disclose anything. [Sidenote: THE STOLEN MACKINAW.] In 1864, while Captain La Barge was at Fort Benton, a number of miners applied to him to purchase a mackinaw boat. He refused to sell because he felt sure that it meant death to them to try to run the gantlet of the Indians in that way. They replied that they were afraid to go overland on account of road agents. The Captain told them they had less to fear from road agents than from Indians. The road agents might take their gold, but the Indians would spare neither treasure nor life. They were unconvinced, however, and as the Captain would not sell the boat, they stole it and set out. While passing a high cut bank, about thirty miles below Fort Berthold, where the channel ran close to the shore, they were attacked by a war party of Sioux and all killed. Pierre Garreau, the well-known interpreter, went down from Berthold and recovered a part of the golddust. La Barge saw some of it among the Indians the following year. In 1865 the steamer _St. Johns_, on her way down the river, was attacked by the Indians and the mate instantly killed. The boat was under full headway and out of reach before it was possible to return fire. [Sidenote: SOWING THE WIND.] In the same year the _General Grant_ lost three men. They had been sent ashore at a wooding place to make fast a line, when they were pounced upon by the Indians and killed.