On the Birch Coulie battlefield Colonel Sibley left in a split stick this writing for Little Crow: “If Little Crow has any proposition to make, let him send a half-breed to me, and he shall be protected in and out of camp.” To this the chief replied in a diplomatic note in which he complained of the agent and the traders, and asked to have Governor Ramsey informed of their ill-doings. He closed it with an adroit reference to the great many prisoners, women and children, in his hands, as if to suggest that Colonel Sibley might desire to make him a proposition. Sibley sent back the curt message: “Return me the prisoners, and I will talk with you like a man.” On September 12 Little Crow sent in another letter, in which he harped upon his prisoners, covertly intimating that he would surrender them on guaranty of immunity for himself and associates. He appealed to Colonel Sibley as an old friend to suggest a way to make peace. The messenger who brought this letter brought also, unknown to Crow, another from Wabashaw, head chief of the lower Sioux, to say that, if Colonel Sibley would appoint a safe and proper place, he and his friends opposed to Little Crow and the war would come in and bring as many of the prisoners as they could assemble. With this leaven working in the Indian camp, Colonel Sibley could well afford to wait for reinforcements, subsistence, and ammunition, his troops in the mean time being drilled by their officers. Despite the insufficiency of all these, he issued his order for an advance into the Indian country on September 14. A violent rainstorm set in that day, and it was not till the 19th that he was able to ferry his little army across the Minnesota. It had been reinforced by two hundred and seventy enlisted men of the Third Minnesota, paroled after the surrender of Murfreesboro’ and sent home to assist in the Indian war. The cavalry force consisted of twenty-five troopers. Three days of easy marching brought the command to a point on the government road between the agencies about three miles south of the Yellow Medicine, where it went into camp behind a small lake and a stream issuing from it, which curving southward emptied into the Minnesota. Little Crow’s camp had been opposite the mouth of the Chippewa River since the 10th of September. In the councils there held the leader made the best use of his oratorical gift. He flattered, he implored, he bullied; at length he got the chiefs to consent to a stand against the white man’s army. How many of the upper chiefs and their men he prevailed upon to join him is a matter of dispute, but it is certain that some of both did.