To the north and east of Fort Snelling was the home of the Chippewa or Ojibway Indians--extending from the Mississippi to the Great Lakes. To the west, on the great prairies, the Dakota, or Sioux Indians lived and hunted. The veteran missionary, S. W. Pond, estimated that the five bands of Sioux, which most often came into direct touch with the government at Fort Snelling, numbered in 1834, seven thousand, and wandered over southern Minnesota and South Dakota, near the lakes of Big Stone and Traverse.[277] Major Taliaferro reported in 1834 that the number of Indians in his agency was 6721, and that they extended as far as the Sheyenne fork of the Red River.[278] To one man, the agent, was given the task of civilizing these thousands of Sioux. While it was for this tribe that the agency at Fort Snelling was established, yet the Chippewas often frequented its headquarters. One hundred and seventy warriors of these northern Indians arrived at the agent's house on the evening of August 4, 1830.[279] The presence of these red men more than doubled the work of the agent, because there was now the difficulty of keeping peace between two warring tribes. Indian life was not so worthless as sometimes pictured. It is true that one could see laziness and poverty during the months of January and February, if he came upon an Indian village pitched near a wooded slope and above a frozen stream. There could be seen the smoke curling from the dingy tepee, the women dragging home wood for the ever-diminishing pile outside the door, and a few of the hardier men fishing through holes in the ice. About the tepee the snow was banked, and within the air was warm and heavy from the open fire and the long pipes of the reclining braves, who gambled with their neighbors at the game of "the shot and the mitten".