Valley.  He detailed a series of petty intrigues by the St. Peter’s agent, who had flattered two of the Pillager chiefs, and loaded them with new clothes and presents.  One of these, Hole-in-the-Day, came down twenty days before the time.  The Pillagers, in fact, made the treaty.  The bands of the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers, who really lived on the land and owned it, had, in effect, no voice.  So with respect to the La Pointe Indians.  He stated that Gen. Dodge really knew nothing of the fertility and value of the country purchased, having never set foot on it.  Governor Dodge thought the tract chiefly valuable for its pine, and natural mill-power; and there was no one to undeceive him.  He had been authorized to offer $1,300; but the Chippewas managed badly—­they knew nothing of thousands, or how the annuity would divide among so many, and were, in fact, cowed down by the braggadocia of the flattered Pillager war chief, Hole-in-the-Day.

Mr. Warren stated that the Lac Courtorielle band had not united in the sale, and would not attend the payment of the annuities; nor would the St. Croix and Lac du Flambeau Indians.  He said the present of $19,000 would not exceed a breech-cloth and a pair of leggins apiece.  I have not the means of testing these facts, but have the highest confidence in the character, sense of justice, and good natural judgment of Gov.  Dodge.  He may have been ill advised of some facts.  The Pillagers certainly do not, I think, as a band, own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the Mississippi below Sandy Lake, but their warlike character has a sensible influence on those tribes, quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers.  The sources of these rivers are valuable only for their pineries, and their valleys only become fertile below their falls and principal rapids.

From Mr. Warren’s statements, the sub-agencies of Crow-wing River and La Pointe have been improperly divided by a longitudinal instead of a latitudinal line, by which it happens that the St. Croix and Chippewa River Indians are required to travel from 200 to 350 miles up the Mississippi, by all its falls and rapids, to Crow-wing River, to get their pay.  The chief, Hole-in-the-Day, referred to, was one of the most hardened, blood-thirsty wretches of whom I have ever heard.  Mr. Aitkin, the elder, told me that having once surprised and killed a Sioux family, the fellow picked up a little girl, who had fled from the lodge, and pitched her into the Mississippi.  The current bore her against a point of land.  Seeing it, the hardened wretch ran down and again pushed her in.