A detachment of the Fourteenth Minnesota saw some service, happily bloodless, in its own state. The Pillager band of Chippeway Indians on Leech Lake had long been complaining of injustice done them in the matter of the pine on their reservation, which they had been persuaded to sell. The prices paid them were ridiculously low, and the charges for appraisal and inspection as ridiculously high. Parties holding permits to cut “dead and down timber,” cut live trees standing convenient. Repeated protests to the government had brought no redress. The deputy United States marshal, Sheehan (he of Fort Ridgely), undertook to arrest a chief who had given show of misbehavior. He resisted arrest, and a number of his braves rallied and stood off the marshal’s posse. A company of sixty United States infantry was sent from Fort Snelling, which was later reinforced by two hundred men commanded by Major M. C. Wilkinson and supervised by General Bacon. On October 5 the troops were landed on the peninsula known as Sugar Point, and a sharp little conflict followed which cost the lives of Major Wilkinson, Sergeant William Butler, and two privates. Two companies of the Fourteenth were recalled from furlough and distributed to stations of the railroad running north of Leech Lake. After repeated councils, at which the United States commissioner of Indian affairs was present, eight chiefs surrendered to the marshal, and the war ended. Governor Clough, in his message to the legislature of 1899, charged the United States government with a “series of acts and neglects most wrongful to the Indians” and with a “blunder more criminal in its results than those neglects and acts,” the performance being the “climax of a long course of folly and wrong.” * * * * * All branches of the public school system have been enlarged and improved. The common school endowment from the lands granted by Congress has increased to more than $11,000,000. Sales of pine timber ($3,500,000) and other items have swelled the fund to more than $20,000,000. The state still holds millions of acres unsold. The excellent work of the normal schools, supplemented by that of the high schools, has greatly added to the number of qualified teachers. Opposition to the normal schools, now five in number, has long since ceased.