Seizing a team and wagon of a neighboring farmer, the scoundrels drove furiously to Shakopee’s village, some ten miles above the lower agency. Upon their arrival late at night a council of warriors was called. The high connections of the murderers did not relish the idea of turning them over to white man’s justice to suffer a death signally ignominious to Indians. There was but one alternative, to treat the killing of the afternoon as an act of war, and call the nation to arms. After an outburst of patriotic eloquence this course was resolved on, and as soon as the braves could arm and mount, they moved toward the agency under the lead of Shakopee, who was no lover of the whites. The party arrived at Little Crow’s village, two miles above the lower agency, at daybreak, and arousing that chief from sleep, explained the situation. Little Crow was the fifth Medawakanton chief who had borne that name, given in French (Le Petit Corbeau) to an ancestor who wore on his shoulders the skin and feathers of a crow. Although in temporary disgrace for connivance in the extortions of the traders under the treaties of 1858, he was still the most experienced, virile, and eloquent of the chiefs. White men who knew him still praise his good sense and kindness of heart in ordinary relations. It seems to be true that in the soldiers’ lodge he had counseled against anything like war on the white man, whose resources his journeys to Washington had revealed to him. But Little Crow was a heathen Indian. The dogs of war were loose, and the leadership was his if he would have it. He could recover his lost prestige, and show his people that he was as brave in war as he was eloquent in council. Vanity and ambition triumphed. “It must come,” he said. “Now is as good a time as any. I am with you. Let us kill the traders and divide their goods.” By seven o’clock Little Crow had possibly two hundred warriors, armed and painted, surrounding the agency, with small parties distributed about the warehouses and dwellings. Upon signal, fire was opened on all the whites in sight. Five fell dead and many others were wounded. Fortunately the eagerness of the savages to loot the stores distracted them from killing, and gave opportunity for the survivors to gain the cover of the thickets in the river-bottom. So soon as the plunder of the traders’ goods was done, small parties of warriors were detached to raid the neighboring farms and settlements. These, on that day and the next, spread themselves over the parts of Brown and Nicollet counties next to the river. The white men encountered were mostly killed, and the women taken captive with their children; but some of these were butchered when they delayed the march. The dwellings and grain stacks were fired, the farm wagons seized and loaded with plunder were driven into Little Crow’s village. By ten o’clock in the forenoon refugees from the lower agency had reached Fort Ridgely. That work was garrisoned by Company B