Had it been possible to furnish General Sibley with a sufficient cavalry force, it would have been feasible for him, after the battle of Wood Lake, to overtake and impound the greater number of Indians concerned in their disastrous campaign. Infantry expeditions sent out to Lac qui Parle, to Goose Nest Lake, and elsewhere, brought in a few hundred people. More came in response to a proclamation distributed by runners. Bands which had squandered their plunder and wasted their food had no other resource. In the course of a few days nearly two thousand Indians were under guard, the greater part being women and children. Some five thousand or more were at large. The disposition of those in hand now occupied the attention of the authorities. Major-General Pope in a dispatch of September 28 probably voiced the sentiment of the great majority of the white people of the Northwest. “Make no treaty with the Indians,” he wrote Sibley; “the horrible massacre and outrages call for punishment beyond human power to inflict. It is my purpose to exterminate the Sioux, if I have the power to do so.” General Sibley was too humane and judicious to give serious regard to so insane a proposal. He had already appointed a committee of inquiry to ascertain what Indians under his guard had probably been guilty of murder and outrage. The Rev. Dr. Riggs, who held the place of chaplain on the staff of Sibley, gave such valuable assistance that Heard, the contemporary historian, declares him to have been a virtual grand jury. Sixteen Indians were at once picked out by the sifting committee and duly arraigned before a military commission of five officers. Additional arrests were made from day to day, and by October 7 General Sibley was able to report that he had twenty under sentence of death, and that he should probably approve the sentences and hang the villains, despite some doubt as to the extent of his powers and the formal correctness of the trials. This moderate number of convictions evidently did not satisfy the superior authority, which called for arrests and trials on a greater scale. On the night of October 11 Sibley placed 81 warriors in irons at Camp Release and ordered a similar “purging” at Yellow Medicine, where he had sent 1250 of his prisoners to subsist on the corn and potatoes of the Indian gardens. By a “piece of justifiable strategy” 236 men were “fixed” in the same way. The military commission now had abundance of material and applied themselves diligently to duty. They completed it on November 5, having tried 392 prisoners, of whom they found 323 guilty and sentenced 307 of them to death. The proceedings of the military commission, approved by General Sibley, were forwarded to the department commander. That officer informed Governor Ramsey with unconcealed satisfaction that the sentences would all be executed unless forbidden by the President. The trials completed, General Sibley sent the principal body of his Indian