We had heard that the Sioux would give a return feast on the next day and when we got tired of watching the speakers, we went down to the Sioux wigwams to see what was going on there and found an old Indian squatting before the fire. Dog meat seemed to be the main article of food. Evidently it was to be a ceremonial feast for he had a large supply of dog beside him on the ground and was holding one over the fire to singe the hair off. When we came near, he deftly cut off an ear and offered it to me with a very fierce look. When I refused it, he laughed very heartily at his little joke. The Winnebagoes were sent to the agency four miles from town soon after. The agency buildings were where St. Clair is now located. One day at noon the school children heard that the Indians were having a squaw dance across the river. It was in the spring, just as the snow was beginning to melt. We found about twenty-five squaws dancing around in a circle and making a fearful noise in their high squealing voices. They danced in the same way that the Indians did, and I had never seen any other form of dancing among them. They were wearing moccasins and were tramping around in the water. The Indians were sitting on logs watching them. One was pounding on a tom-tom. One day when we were eating dinner, about twenty-five Indians came to the house and looked in the window. They always did that and then would walk in without knocking. They squatted down on the floor until dinner was over and then motioned for the table to be pushed back to the wall. Then they began to dance the begging dance. In their dances they pushed their feet, held close together over the floor and came down very heavily on their heels. There were so many of them that the house fairly rocked. Each Indian keeps up a hideous noise and that with the beating of the tom-tom makes a din hard to describe. The tom-tom is a dried skin drawn tightly over a hoop and they beat on this with a stick. After they were through dancing they asked for a pail of sweetened water and some bread which they passed around and ate. This bread and sweetened water was all they asked for. It is a part of the ceremony, although they would take anything they could get. The Sioux were the hereditary foes of the Chippewas who lived near the head waters of the Mississippi and during this summer about three hundred Sioux on their way to Fort Ridgely where they were to receive their annuity, pitched their wigwams near our house. They had been on the war path and had taken a lot of Chippewa scalps and around these bloody trophies they held a savage scalp dance. We children were not allowed to go near as the howling, hooting and yelling frightened everybody. It continued for three nights and the whole settlement was relieved when they went away. Mrs. A. M. Pfeffer--1858.