Following quickly upon the order received by Colonel Alexander was one sent by the Secretary of the Interior to Agent Flandrau “to investigate and report the facts in the case, and the measures”[324] which in his judgment would be most effective in ferreting out and punishing the marauders. This order somewhat irritated the agent as he had already reported fully upon the facts and had suggested the best measures to be taken in dealing with the outlaws. In commenting upon this incident the agent wrote some years later that he “had become so thoroughly convinced of the imbecility of a military administration, which clothed and equipped its troops exactly in the same manner for duty in the tropical climate of Florida, and the frigid region of Minnesota, that I took advantage of the invitation, to lay before the authorities some of my notions as to what was the proper thing to do”.[325] Agent Flandrau does not appear to have considered the request for a report as being urgent, since he sent no reply until August twenty-seventh, nearly two months later. In the report he took occasion to suggest a remedy for the causes of the failure of Captain Bee’s detail to capture Inkpaduta’s band before it made the attack on Springfield. As has already been stated the slow progress of the detail was not alone due to the depth of the snow, but also to the unwieldly character of the men’s equipment. Concerning this situation the agent observed that “the ordinary means of transportation in the army is, as you well know, by heavy wagons drawn by mules. In the winter these wagons are placed upon sleds, and where there are roads for them to go upon, they can do well enough. But, as I have before said, it will be very seldom if ever, that troops will be called upon to act in a country where there are roads of any kind made in the snow, consequently these sleds and mules are useless.” In lieu of this sort of equipment, he recommended that troops, to be effective in winter, should be equipped with snowshoes. In concluding he asked that men be placed on the frontier “who will at all times and under all circumstances, be _superior_ to the enemy they have to contend with, and I would have no fear of a recurrence of the difficulties of last spring”.[326]