Dear general, no doubt that there is many a true Union man in Minnesota that will not believe these reports, and all rebel sympathizers will do all they can to keep the people from putting any confidence in the report. At the outbreak of the rebellion south I often made the remark, both in public and private, in Saint Cloud, that if the rebellion was not crushed in two years we would have a regular Indian war. I was laughed at by many a Union man and hissed at by Copperheads, but how soon were my fears brought to be sad realities you yourself know. Again, in our troubles with the Chippewas, I always said not to place too much confidence in them. They are my own people and I know them well. My wife's kindred are the Leach Lakers. The way is open for me to go and settle among them as a missionary, but she decidedly refuses to go, and her excuse is this, that there cannot be any confidence placed in their pretensions of peace. If things go on as usual, sooner or later we will have trouble with them, and no dependence can or ought to be placed in the word of the traders that are amongst them when they say there is no danger. The Sioux war ought to teach us a lesson. One year ago last winter, when the two chiefs from Leach Lake and I took them to your officer at Saint Cloud, on our return back to my home they told me, in presence of my wife, that there had been for two years the tobacco of peace sent by Hole-in-the-Day and others of their chiefs to different parts of the Chippewa Nation, even to Lake Superior Indians, and also to the different Western tribes, to unite their forces together and fight the Americans, as they were all satisfied that the course of the American Government toward the Indians, by cheating them out of their payments for their lands and continually driving them from place to place, satisfied them all that the intention of the Government was to exterminate them, for no other reason but that we are Indians, and all that remained for them to do to rise up in a body and die fighting their bitterest enemy, as they call the American people. This same information was also given me by Mr. Desharlah's son, in the presence of his farther, at Fort Abercrombie, after our fight with the Sioux; that they had sat in their council themselves and smoked of the tobacco.

Dear general, and I myself, James Tanner, heard Mr. Hole-in-the-Day, the scoundrel pet of U. S. Indian agents, U. S. officers, and rascally Indian traders, say to me in his own house four years ago that he could clear out one-half of Minnesota, while the Sioux would the other half, and that I need not be surprised if I once heard of such a work. I have heard many of our leading Chippewas speak of rising up in arms against the long knives, as they call the American people. When I used to be amongst them they used to often ask me when the British would fight the Americans; that they would all go for the British. That same feeling is yet burning in the breast of most all of our American Indians. These remarks I make are facts that I have been posted on for years, and if these feelings have been harbored, cherished, and talked of around council fires and prevented from carrying out their desires and cravings of their hearts only for want of munitions of war, how much more will they carry them out now, meeting with assistance from the rebels and copperheads. Now you see from this that this combination of the Western tribes is no new thing; it is only the carrying out of the long-cherished and talked-of plans.

This past winter I have often spoken of this long-talked-of plot in my lectures throughout the United States, and have urged on the necessity of changing our Indian policy of cheating and driving the Indian. We cannot have perfect peace with the Indians until we make