However ready the Indians may have seemed to make peace, the settlers feared for the future; and so along the line of settlements they spread the alarm that the Indians were on the warpath. Many appeals were made to Governor Hempstead for aid. But when he sent Major William Williams from Fort Dodge to investigate the charges, the Major reported that no danger from further attacks seemed to exist. Unable to secure State protection, the settlers armed themselves. Doubtless the “grindstone incident” soon ceased to impress the settlers with any permanent sense of impending danger, for it was not long before they began to return to their deserted claims. But not far from the scene of this near tragedy there occurred another incident which displays the temper not alone of the Indian but also of the white borderer of the more troublesome type. It appears that this tragic event grew to undue proportions mainly through the vengeful hate of a frontiersman by the name of Lott. The incident, somewhat trivial in itself, has been given so much prominence as a reputed chief cause of the massacre at Okoboji that it is deemed worthy of somewhat extended notice in this place.[58] Its connection with later events may well be a matter of conjecture, owing to the character of the Indians concerned. * * * * * For nearly a decade after the whites had begun to settle in northwestern Iowa the inhabitants of that region had been obliged to endure constant molestation from a roving band of Sisseton Sioux Indians.[59] Though at first composed of only about five lodges--mainly, it is said, of desperadoes and murderers--the band had grown by the gathering of like characters, fleeing from their avenging fellow-tribesmen, until it numbered at times nearly five hundred.[60] The band as a whole only assembled from time to time for the purpose of united warfare against others--particularly against isolated bands of the Sac and Fox Indians.[61] It was known and feared from the Des Moines westward to the Vermillion and northward to the Minnesota River on account of its peculiarly ferocious and quarrelsome character. It was, in short, a band of Indian outlaws. As such, it was hated and feared by red men and white men alike. In its forays it spared neither friend nor foe, but preyed upon both without discrimination. It claimed no home, but roamed at will wherever its fancy might lead.