There was less want of food in the villages of the lower Sioux, but there was enough to cause distress and desire for an early payment. The agent had no advices. He could give no reasons for the delay of the money. The traders assumed to know more than he, and with a fatal blindness teased the Indians with suggestions that the Great Father had spent all his money and had none left for his red children. As the Indians were heavily in debt to them, they began refusing further credits. Among the rumored reasons for the delay of the money, the one most accepted was that the government officials were allowing friends to use it in speculations on supply contracts. The fact was that the Indian appropriation of 1862 was not passed in Congress till July 5. The gold was drawn from the treasury on August 11, and was at once dispatched to the west. It was brought to Fort Ridgely at noon on August 18.
The lower Sioux did not assemble and raid the warehouses, but resorted to a less riotous procedure. On the warpath or the hunt it was Indian law that a kind of provost guard composed of active warriors should maintain order on the march and in bivouac. It was called the Ti-yó-ti-pi, or “Soldiers’ lodge,” had a large discretion, and exacted instant obedience. A modified soldiers’ lodge was now set up (June, 1862) on the lower agency, attended by one hundred and fifty warriors. In its frequent councils all the grievances of the past and present were rehearsed, and schemes for redress broached and discussed. Evidence is wanting to support the assertions of contemporaries that in this soldiers’ lodge there was concocted a definite scheme of murder and pillage to be carried out later. Possibly some braves, more patriotic than judicious, pictured the consequences to the cowardly white man if the great Sioux nation should launch its hosts against his undefended farms and villages. But the oratory of the lodge fed fat the ancient grudge of the red men and added to their chronic exasperation. The dog days drew on, but there was no outward sign of insurrection. Although he felt that the Indians were in an evil and turbulent state, Agent Galbraith did not think it injudicious for him to leave his people in charge of his assistants and go off to New Ulm with a batch of forty-nine volunteers for the army on the afternoon of August 15. The same day he had passed through some of the villages and had conferred with Little Crow about the brick house he was to build for that chief. Two days after that, Crow attended morning services in the Episcopal mission chapel, and gave no sign of excitement or enmity.