It can readily be seen that the government was illy prepared to cope with an outbreak of such magnitude as this soon proved to be. By the terms of the treaty of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 the Sioux sold all their lands in Minnesota, except a strip ten miles wide on each side of the Minnesota river from near Fort Ridgely to Big Stone lake. In 1858 ten miles of the strip lying north of the river was sold, mainly through the influence of Little Crow. The selling of this strip caused great dissatisfaction among the Indians and Little Crow was severely denounced for the part he took in the transaction. The sale rendered it necessary for all the Indians to locate on the south side of the Minnesota, where game was scarce and trapping poor. There was nothing for them to live upon unless they adopted the habits of civilization and worked like white men. This was very distasteful to many of them, as they wanted to live the same as they did before the treaty--go where they pleased, when they pleased, and hunt game and sell fur to traders. The government built houses for those who desired to occupy them, furnished tools, seed, etc., and taught them how to farm. At two of the agencies during the summer of the outbreak they had several hundred acres of land under cultivation. The disinclination of many of the Indians to work gradually produced dissension among themselves and they formed into two parties--the white man's party, those that believed in cultivating the soil; and the Indian party, a sort of young-man-afraid-of-work association, who believed it beneath the dignity of the noble Dakotan to perform manual labor. The white man's, or farmer's party, was favored by the government, some of them having fine houses built for them. The other Indians did not like this, and became envious of them because they discontinued the customs of the tribe. There was even said to have been a secret organization among the tepee Indians whose object it was to declare war upon the whites. The Indians also claimed that they were not fairly dealt with by the traders; that they had to rely entirely upon their word for their indebtedness to them; that they were ignorant of any method of keeping accounts, and that when the paymaster came the traders generally took all that was coming, and often leaving many of them in debt. They protested against permitting the traders to sit at the pay table of the government paymaster and deduct from their small annuities the amount due them. They had at least one white man's idea--they wanted to pay their debts when they got ready. * * * * *