ed bitterly. * * * The beef furnished was from the cattle that hauled the supplies from Minnesota. These cattle had travelled over three hundred miles, hauling the train, with nothing to eat but the dry prairie grass, there being no settlements on the route they came. The cattle were very poor. Some died or gave out on the trip, and such were slaughtered, and the meat brought in on the train for food for the Indians. About the 1st of January, 1864, near four hundred of the cattle were slaughtered. Except the dry prairie grass, which the frost had killed, these cattle had no food from the time they came to Crow Creek until they were slaughtered. A part of the beef thus made was piled up in the warehouse in snow, and the remainder in like manner packed in snow outside. This beef was to keep the Indians until the coming June. The beef was black, and very poor—the greater part only skin and bone. Shortly after the arrival of the train from Minnesota the contractors for supplying the Indians with flour took about one hundred head of the oxen, selecting the best of them, yoked them up, and sent them with wagons to Sioux City, some two handred and forty miles, to haul up flour. This train returned in February, and these oxen were then slaughtered, and fed to the Indians.
“In January the issue of soup to the Indians commenced. It was made in a large cotton-wood vat, being cooked by steam carried from the boiler of the saw-mill in a pipe to the vat. The vat was partly filled with water, then several quarters of beef chopped up were thrown into it, and a few sacks of flour added. The hearts, lights, and entrails were added to the compound, and in the beginning a few beans were put into the vat; but this luxury did not continue long. This soup was issued every other day—to the Santee Sioux one day, the alternate day to the Winnebagoes. It was very unpalatable. On the day the Indians received the soup they had no other food issued to them. They were very much dissatisfied, and said they could not live on the soup, when those in charge told them if they could live elsewhere they had better go, but that they must not go to the white settlements. Many of them did leave the agency, some going to Fort Sully, others to Fort Randall, in search of food. From a description of this nauseous mess called soup, given by Samuel C. Haynes, then at Fort Randall, and assistant-surgeon in the military service, it is seen that the Indians had good cause to leave Crow Creek. He states that there were thrown into the vat “beef, beef-heads, entrails of the beeves, some beans, flour,and pork. I think there were put
