In the buffalo season these Sioux swarmed out into the Missouri valley to make boot upon the still countless herds. At times some wandered back to their old homes below. The reservations, while ample in area for eight thousand Indians, were in shape ridiculously ill-adapted for concentration. Originally they formed a “shoestring” one hundred and fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. That width had been reduced by the treaties of 1858 to ten miles. There was no privacy for the Indian. An easy morning walk took him to the boundary, where the accommodating white man met him with a keg of illicit whiskey. This opportunity for “business” doubtless had no little effect in attracting settlers to the lands fronting on the reservations. The citizens of Brown County in 1859 publicly denounced the criminal practice, and the county commissioners offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for evidence leading to conviction in any prosecution. While generally harmless, the Indians annoyed the settlers by untimely visits for food, and occasional thefts of horses and cattle.
The treaties of 1858, already mentioned, ceding those parts of the two reservations lying north of the Minnesota River, were negotiated with a few selected chiefs carried to Washington so that they might not be restrained by the discussions of the braves in council. This was a source of suspicion, which turned out to be well grounded. The consideration for the ceded lands was in part additions to annuities, in part moneys to be paid as the chiefs in open council should direct. There was long delay in securing the ratification of the treaties by the Senate, and necessary ancillary legislation from Congress. Three years passed before the final payments. The lower Sioux found but $880.68 coming to them from their “hand money,” instead of $40,000. The consent of the chiefs to this division of moneys to traders and others was obtained in a surreptitious, not to say dishonest, manner. The upper Sioux were sufficiently, but not so extensively, plundered. From the time of their removal to the reservations up to the opening of the Civil War, the annuity Sioux were nursing their wrath against the deceitful and greedy white man. At the same time they were becoming distrustful of the power of which he boasted. When the Great Father had no cavalry to chase Inkpaduta, but was obliged to hire Indians to make that fruitless pursuit, the Sioux inferred that while he had a great multitude of people he could not make soldiers of them. A veteran missionary recorded the opinion that the failure of the government to pursue and capture Inkpaduta was the “primary cause” of the uprising which came five years later.