Nobody on the frontier, the following winter, seemed to pay the slightest attention to the terms of the treaty. The Sioux, who lived west of the Mississippi, the Winnebagoes in southern and western Wisconsin, and the Chippewas in the north, quarreled with one another and scalped one another as freely as ever; while French traders, in British employ, stirred up the red men, and told them that Great Britain would soon have the whole country back again. The Winnebagoes, in particular, were irritated because two of their braves had been imprisoned for thieving, at Fort Crawford, in Prairie du Chien. They held numerous councils in the woods, and resolved to stand by the British when the war should break out. In the midst of this uneasiness, the troops at Fort Crawford were suddenly withdrawn to Fort Snelling, on the Upper Mississippi River, near where St. Paul now is. This was supposed by the Indians to mean that the American soldiers were afraid of them. The spring of 1827 arrived. A half-breed named Methode was making maple sugar upon the Yellow River, in Iowa, a dozen miles north of Prairie du Chien. With him were his wife and five children; all were set upon by some Winnebagoes and killed, scalped, and burned. Naturally there was an uproar all along the Upper Mississippi. Excitement was at its height, when word was brought in by Sioux visitors to the village of Red Bird, a petty Winnebago chief, that the two men of his tribe who had been imprisoned in Fort Crawford had been hung when the troops reached Fort Snelling. The wily Sioux suggested vengeance. The Winnebago code was two lives for one. Inflamed with rage, Red Bird set out at once upon the warpath to take four white scalps. Meanwhile the clouds were gathering for a general storm. The American Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, with singular indiscretion, was not treating his Winnebago visitors with kindness. English and French fur traders were, on behalf of Great Britain, making liberal promises for the future. Winnebagoes were being brutally driven from the lead mines by the white miners, who were now swarming into southwest Wisconsin. The Sioux along the west bank of the Mississippi, in Minnesota, were encouraging the Winnebagoes to revolt; and were displaying a bad temper toward Americans, whom they thought cowardly because apparently unwilling to use military force to keep the Indians in order.