which I propose to continue during the coming season. With the force which I will be stationed at the two forts co-operating with the troops at the midway post and keeping up regular, strong patrol duty and the aid of the friendly Indians as scouts at the camp on the James River, there will be an additional guard to the Minnesota and Iowa northwestern border against the raids of the hostile Sioux, thus affording double protection. You are aware that there is still a large hostile party among the Sioux Indians north of the Missouri, which must be eliminated before we can have a permanent peace. The force directed by you to be dispatched to Devil's Lake can be made available for the destruction of this body, if they should encamp at the Dog's Lodge, as they did last summer. Their retreat to British territory may in such case be cut off. If a destructive can be dealt to this hostile camp composed of 600 or 700 various and their families, I have full faith that the other bands will be glad to return to their old relations with the Government. I have had the honor to represent to you frequently that no dependence can be placed upon the apparent friendship of the Chippewa bands, and I deem it necessary, therefore, to keep as strong a force at Fort Ripley and at one or two points on the Chippewa border east of the Mississippi River as can be spared from the move exposed frontier. I have good reason to apprehend that a withdrawal of our troops from their neighborhood would be followed in less than six months by serious trouble with the Chippewas, if not open warfare. Should the suggestions I have made meet with your approbation I will proceed to carry them out as early as the season will admit. The command for Devill's Lake will also be dispatched as soon as the grass will be sufficiently grown to subsist the animals.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. H. SIBLEY,

Brigadier-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF IOWA, Dubuque, February 7, 1865.

ASSISTANT ADJUTANT-GENERAL,

Department of the Northwest:

SIR: Your communication of February 3, inclosing a copy of a letter of instructions to General Sibley in regard to the establishing of a line of posts in his district, and directing me to establish a line from Spirit Lake or Shetek Lake to the Missouri, has been received. It was my intention to have made a suggestion very similar to this, as far as regards my district, before I received the general's communication. I propose to post one company at the Big Sioux Falls, which is on the Big Sioux River, due west from the southwest corner of Minnesota, and another post on the James River, south of the Fire Steel Creek. By patrolling from Crow Creek, where I have already a post, to the Big Sioux Falls, a distance of 130 miles, the settlements in the Territory of Dakota would be protected from any incursions of the Indians from the north. There are no settlements of whites in the Territory except close to the Missouri River, a few scattering settlers about thirty miles up the Big Sioux, and none up the Missouri much higher than Fort Randall. In fact, taking the forty-third parallel of latitude as a boundary, there are not over three or four white settlers north of it. Such also is about the case in Northwestern Iowa, with the exception of Spirit Lake and the head of the Little Sioux River, at both of which places I have troops