The banking act passed by the legislature of 1858, on July 26, provided for the issue of circulating notes secured by deposits of public stocks of the United States, or of any state, up to ninety per cent. of the average value of such stock for six months in the New York market. On one of the last days of the session an amending act was passed injecting into the proper section of the bank act the words “or the State of Minnesota at their current value.” The intended operation of the clause was that bank-notes might be issued on the security of the special railroad bonds. To obtain a favorable rating by the state auditor a clique of operators traded among themselves in the bonds, in New York city, until they felt warranted in submitting affidavits that their value as ascertained in that market was ninety-five cents on the dollar. The auditor of the state thereupon issued some $600,000 in notes to fifteen banks depositing the special railroad bonds. On January 1, 1861, he was obliged to report that seven of them had failed, and that he had sold their bonds. In one case he got seventy cents; in six others, prices ranging from thirty-five cents down to sixteen and a quarter cents. * * * * * The Sioux chiefs were so much excited with the money elements of their treaties of 1851 that they probably did not know what they were about when, in the summer of 1852, they assented to that amendment proposed by the Senate canceling the reservation of homes for the tribes on the upper Minnesota and authorizing the President to remove them from the ceded territory. It was, however, deemed best to move the people on to the designated areas, and they were so moved in the season of 1853. It soon came to their knowledge that they were only temporarily encamped there, and must presently move on to some unknown country. Their sorrow and exasperation were intense, and did not abate until they were assured in the following summer that the Great Father, as authorized by Congress, would permit them to remain where they were. They did remain in the sense of maintaining their principal villages on the reserve, but they constantly wandered in bands either toward their old homes or out on the prairies to the west, where buffalo still fed in countless herds. Their agents were much occupied in recalling these vagrants and in chasing the white whiskey sellers who infested the boundaries of the reserve. In 1857 Joseph R. Brown, that notable character whose career intersects the line of our narrative at many points, was appointed Sioux agent. As he was the father of many children born of his Sisseton wife, and had lived and traded among the Sioux for many years, he possessed an influence and a knowledge of Indian character equaled by few. He had no belief that the Indian could be transformed by religion or education in the twinkling of an eye into a fully civilized man, but he knew that he could be induced to take on the beginnings of