A few days previous to the attack upon the whites at the upper agency a portion of the band of Little Six appeared at Action, Meeker county. There they murdered several people and then fled to Redwood. It was the first step in the great massacre that soon followed. On the morning of the 18th of August, without a word of warning, an indiscriminate massacre was inaugurated. A detachment of Company B of the Fifth regiment, under command of Capt. Marsh, went to the scene of the revolt, but they were ambushed and about twenty-five of their number, including the captain, killed. The horrible work of murder, pillage and destruction was spread throughout the entire Sioux reservation, and whole families, especially those in isolated portions of the country, were an easy prey to these fiendish warriors. * * * * * The Wyoming massacre during the Revolution and the Black Hawk and Seminole wars at a later period, pale into insignificance when compared to the great outrages committed by these demons during this terrible outbreak. In less than one week 1,000 people had been killed, several million dollars' worth of property destroyed and 30,000 people rendered homeless. The entire country from Fort Ripley to the southern boundary of the state, reaching almost to the mouth of the Minnesota river, had been in a twinkling depopulated. How to repel these invaders and drive them back to their reservations and out of the state as they had forfeited all rights to the land they had occupied, was the problem that suddenly confronted both the state and national authorities. * * * * * Shortly after the news of the outbreak at Redwood had been received, word was sent from Fort Ripley to the effect that the Chippewas were assuming a warlike attitude, and it was feared that the Sioux and Chippewas--hereditary enemies--had buried the hatchet, or had been influenced by other causes, and were ready to co-operate in an indiscriminate massacre of the whites. Indian Agent Walker undertook to arrest the famous chief Hole-in-the-day, but that wily warrior had scented danger and suddenly disappeared, with his entire band, which caused grave apprehension among the settlers in that locality, and they were in daily dread of an attack from these hitherto peaceable tribes. * * * * *