In the summer of 1848, with the help of traders and the military, the Winnebagoes, by this time sick of their bargain, were put on the road for their new home. Some did not start, others fell out by the way, but a majority of the twenty-five hundred souls were landed at Long Prairie. They liked the new home even less than they expected, and soon began to desert and scatter; some to encamp along the upper Mississippi, some to the neutral ground, others to their ancient country in Wisconsin; and a few are said to have wandered off to the Missouri. Wherever they went they were unwelcome, and the Indian office was flooded with complaints of their depredations and trespasses. Mr. Rice had traded with the Winnebagoes and had so attached them to himself that they had made him their sole commissioner to choose their new Minnesota home. His aid had been called in to persuade them to move. To him now the Whig commissioner of Indian affairs resorted to round up the vagrant Indians and corral them on their proper reservation. He agreed to pay Mr. Rice seventy dollars per head for the service. Meantime Governor Ramsey and Agent Fletcher were occupied with collecting the Indians below, and preparing to transport or march them northward without material expense to the government. Delegate Sibley was supposed to be the proper territorial organ at the seat of government. The feelings of these gentlemen may be imagined when they learned that the “infamous Rice contract,” of which they had not had the least knowledge or suspicion, had been concluded, and Mr. Rice’s agents were on the road. In vain did Governor Ramsey inform the commissioner that he had several hundred ready to march; in vain was Delegate Sibley’s “official protest” against a secret, unconscionable, insulting proceeding. A House committee of investigation exonerated the commissioner, but he took early occasion to resign his office. The point of interest to the Minnesota citizen was not the alleged excessive cost to the government, or the comfort of the Winnebagoes. He was concerned to know who had the greatest pull at Washington, and it appeared to him at the close that a certain private citizen of St. Paul, a Democrat, and not the Whig governor nor the Democratic delegate, was the man to “swing things” there.