The Minnesota Sioux betook themselves to the reserves designated in the treaties of 1851 in no comfortable frame of mind. They believed that they had been obliged to abandon their ancient homes for an inadequate compensation, and that government agents had conspired with the traders and half-breeds to cheat them of money promised to be paid to their chiefs. Two years passed before they were assured by act of Congress that they would be allowed to remain in Minnesota and not sent to some far-off unknown country. The treaty commissioners of 1851 congratulated the government on the establishment of a policy of “concentration,” under which the Indian would be induced to abandon the chase and get his living from the soil. The Pond brothers, foreseeing that this policy was premature, decided not to follow the tribes among whom they had labored to the reservations. Concentration of wild Indians averse to cultivation only gave opportunity for unceasing grumbling in council over the general rascality of the white man, the tyranny of the agent, the immorality of his employees, the extortions of the traders, and the imbecility of the missionaries, who worked for nothing. In the buffalo season these Sioux swarmed out into the Missouri valley to make boot upon the still countless herds. At times some wandered back to their old homes below. The reservations, while ample in area for eight thousand Indians, were in shape ridiculously ill-adapted for concentration. Originally they formed a “shoestring” one hundred and fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. That width had been reduced by the treaties of 1858 to ten miles. There was no privacy for the Indian. An easy morning walk took him to the boundary, where the accommodating white man met him with a keg of illicit whiskey. This opportunity for “business” doubtless had no little effect in attracting settlers to the lands fronting on the reservations. The citizens of Brown County in 1859 publicly denounced the criminal practice, and the county commissioners offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for evidence leading to conviction in any prosecution. While generally harmless, the Indians annoyed the settlers by untimely visits for food, and occasional thefts of horses and cattle.