This rapid disintegration of the band could be accounted for by the character of its leader. His arrogance was rapidly rendering followers impossible. Inkpaduta, in 1856, was evidently between fifty and sixty years of age. He was born, probably in 1800, on the Watonwan River in Minnesota. For a Wahpekuta Sioux he was large, being probably more than six feet tall and very strongly built. He was not a person of pleasing appearance; for, coupled with the immoral character of his life, smallpox had badly marked him. Indeed, he presented an unusually repulsive appearance. His features were coarse; his countenance was of brutal cast; and he was very near-sighted. His near-sightedness became total blindness in old age, so that at the time of the battle of the Little Big Horn he was carefully piloted about by his small grandsons who, managing to save him from the general slaughter, succeeded in having him safely carried into Canada in the party of Sitting Bull.[128] Although his band as a whole was of bad repute, Inkpaduta stood out above his followers on account of his hatred for the whites, his revengeful disposition, and his nearly matchless success in war.[129] Mrs. Sharp speaks of him as “a savage monster in human shape, fitted only for the darkest corner in Hades.”[130] “Of all the base characters among his fellow outlaws, his nature seems to have been the vilest, and his heart the blackest.”[131] “It was only as a war chief that he won a place in the admiration of the Indians. In civil life they would have none of him. Except where bloodshedding was the business in hand, they knew by sore experience he was not to be trusted.... It is scarcely probable from all of his conduct that he was other than he seemed, a terrible monster.”[132] His unusual disposition was coupled with an ambition to see his people and tribe restored once again to their wide and extensive hunting ranges. As he witnessed the frontier expanding westward he saw his great ambition vanish, and he was irritated beyond control. Unspeakably immoral himself, he nevertheless hated the vices of the whites that were slowly taking hold upon the members of his band and race.