His first appearance in Iowa, so far as known, was at Red Rock, Marion County, in 1845, where he essayed the role of Indian trader while dealing out bad whiskey to the Indians and surreptitiously stealing their ponies. It is said that his Red Rock neighbors in 1846 requested him to leave the neighborhood--which he did by moving on to Pea’s Point. Here his stay seems to have been brief, for during the same year he is found located on the Des Moines River near the mouth of the Boone, where he erected a cabin and resumed his whiskey-selling and horse-stealing.[68] Lott’s horse-stealing activities caused the Indians to grow suspicious; and finally they traced the loss of five ponies directly to him and his fellow marauders. This led to an Indian council which decided that Lott should be driven out of the country. Accordingly he was waited upon by Sidominadota and warned “that he was an intruder; that he had settled on the Sioux hunting grounds”; and that he was expected to get off at once. Lott contended that he was not an intruder and refused to go. The Indians then began the destruction of his property: his horses and cattle were shot, his bee-hives rifled, and his family threatened. Lott seems to have been something of a coward, for when the Indians began taking summary action he fled. While the Indians were destroying or stealing his property and abusing the helpless members of his family he, according to his own story, crossed the river and secreted himself in the brush. Later he and his stepson, leaving his wife and young children to the mercy of the Indians, fled down the Des Moines River to Pea’s Point, a short distance south of the present site of Boone. Here Lott related his story to John Pea and others of the settlement. Aroused by his tale, the settlers organized a relief party to return to his cabin and if possible to punish the Indians. An appeal for more help was sent to Elk Rapids, sixteen miles away. At this point lived Chemeuse or “Johnny Green”, a half-breed Pottawattamie and Musquakie chief, with many of his people who traditionally hated the Sioux. The chief with twenty-six of his men and seven settlers from Pea’s Point went to Lott’s assistance. It was past the middle of December, and the weather was intensely cold. After Lott’s flight from his cabin, his twelve-year-old son, Milton, had started in search of his father, but when about twenty miles from his home and three miles from Boonesboro had frozen to death.[69] The relief party, on December 18,1846, found the dead body of the boy a short distance below the village of Centerville. After burying the body on the spot where it was found, the party continued on its way to Lott’s cabin. When they arrived they found that the Indians had gone. The family was safe, though suffering and destitute as they had been robbed of everything. The wife, however, had been so mistreated and had suffered so extremely from exposure that she died a short time thereafter.[70]