Page:A Brief History of South Dakota.djvu/137

 CHAPTER XXII A DAKOTA PAUL REVERE

were four bands of the Santee Sioux, two of whom, known as the Medewakantans and the Wakpekutas, were the leaders in the outbreak. The other two bands, the Wahpetons and the Sissetons, were opposed to the outbreak and as a rule did all that they could to protect and assist the whites. When the government sent the troops against the Santees, most of the able-bodied Sissetons enlisted in the government service as scouts. The hostiles who fled into Dakota were constantly organizing raiding parties and sending them down to the Minnesota settlements to secure provisions, steal horses, and occasionally kill settlers. To prevent this the Sisseton scouts were divided up into small parties and located in camps, at frequent intervals, from the neighborhood of Devils Lake in North Dakota down to the central portion of South Dakota.

Among these friendlies was a mixed-blood Sisseton named Samuel J. Brown, who was then a boy about nineteen years of age, educated, intelligent, and influential. In the last years of the war he was made chief of scouts, with headquarters at Fort Sisseton, whence he looked after the Indian scouting camps above mentioned. In the month of April, 1866, at sundown one bright 131