But he had now grown too old to be aggressive, and so his leadership was more nominal than real. According to Holcombe “Inkpadoota’s last appearance in an historical scene was at the Custer massacre, in the Little Big Horn, in Eastern Montana, in June, 1876. On the morning of the day that General Custer made his ill-fated ride upon the Indian camp, Inkpadoota, then seventy-five years old, and stone blind, was sitting on the banks of the Little Big Horn ... with two of his grandsons, and the three were fishing in the stream. The little boys were the first to see Major Reno’s command as it came riding up the valley to hold the Indians on the south, while Custer should come upon them from the north. They ran as fast as they could encumbered with their blind and decrepit grandsire, and gave the alarm in time for Gall and Grass to come down and drive back Reno, and then hasten back and exterminate Custer and his force. At this time, and for ten years before, Inkpadoota had been blind, and no longer regarded as a leader of any body, for he could not walk without a guide. He and his two surviving sons fled with Sitting Bull to Canada, finally locating at the Canadian Red Pipestone Quarry, in Southwestern Manitoba. Here, in 1894, Dr. Charles Eastman, the well-known Indian authority, found the descendants of Inkpadoota.... However, the bloody-minded old savage himself had died miserably some years before”.[336] Thus ended the life of an implacable foe of the white race, who for nearly forty years had terrorized the northwestern frontier from the Mississippi River in Iowa to the far away Rockies of Canada. Of the original band but little more remains to be said. While the excitement was at its highest in the closing days of June, 1857, incident to the non-payment of the annuities, Agent Flandrau, then at the Lower Agency, received a note from Sam Brown, a trader on the Yellow Medicine. The note brought the information that Inkpaduta and several of his band were then at the Upper Agency. The agent immediately sent a messenger to Fort Ridgely requesting help. He was given a detachment of fifteen men under Lieutenant Murry. While these troops were on the way from Fort Ridgely to the Redwood Agency, Agent Flandrau recruited a volunteer force of perhaps twenty-five men to assist in the operations against Inkpaduta. Among these volunteers was the well-known scout and interpreter, Joseph Campbell, who was almost an indispensable adjunct of any such expedition. When these preparations had been completed, the Indian messenger was sent back to the Upper Agency with the request that a guide be sent out to meet and lead them to the outlaw’s camp.