[48] “He [Secretary of State in Iowa, Geo. W. McCleary] also writes me that these Indians are manifestly making preparations for war, and have been and are now making great efforts to induce all the Mississippi River Sioux to unite with them in hostilities upon the whites. I hear from various sources that several runners have been sent by the Sioux west of the Missouri river, to those in this State, and in Minnesota, with war belts, urging the latter to make common cause with them. The result of all this is a great state of alarm along the whole frontier.”--Letter of Governor Grimes to President Pierce, December 3, 1855, in the _Annals of Iowa_ (Third Series), Vol. III, p. 136. Charles Aldrich in an editorial in the _Annals of Iowa_ (Third Series), Vol. III, p. 566, remarked that “Had the earnest appeals of Gov. Grimes been heeded, the Spirit Lake Massacre would not have occurred.” [49] The notable depredations charged to Indian outlawry at this time were in Buena Vista County where whole settlements were routed; at Dakota City in Humboldt County; near Algona and Bancroft in Kossuth County. In fact both the spring and summer of 1855 and 1856 were never free from depredations somewhere. For further information consult _The Spirit Lake Massacre and Relief Expedition_ in the _Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers_, Vol. VI, pp. 889, 890; Ingham’s _Ink-pa-du-tah’s Revenge_ in the _Midland Monthly_, Vol. IV, p. 272. [50] Hughes’s _The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851_ in the _Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society_, Vol. X, Pt. I, p. 117. [51] Albright’s _The First Organized Government of Dakota_ in the _Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society_, Vol. VIII, p. 138. [52] “It is a matter of history that whiskey is, and has been since the advent of white men in this country, the ‘bane of the Indians,’ and that there is scarcely a tribe or an individual Indian but that would at times give all his possessions for whiskey. When under its influence he knows not what he does. All of the depredations committed by them upon the whites; all murders among themselves; or personal injuries inflicted by them upon each other, are perpetrated while under the influence of that destructive bane, or to revenge acts done while laboring under intoxication ... men will wonder why the agent will let whiskey go into the Indian country, as has been heretofore reported, ‘_without let or hindrance_.’ The same men, being in the Indian country ostensibly, solely for the good of the ‘poor Indian,’ will pass an Indian with a five or ten gallon keg on his back, and not attempt to destroy it; knowing at the same time that he has an equal authority for so doing as the agent, and just as much money furnished for expenses of prosecutions.”--_Report of D. B. Herriman, Chippewa Agent_, September 15, 1857, in _Senate Documents_, 1st Session, 35th Congress, Vol. II, Pt. I, pp. 341, 342.