September 21, 1862

Dear Mother

I wrote you yesterday we had orders to report to St. Paul to fight the Sioux Indians, in Minnesota. Sure enough we are packing things and will leave here in the morning on the big sidewheel steamer St. Paul for up river. Some of the boys are mad and some are glad. Some say they did not enlist to fight Indians but to fight rebels, but military orders must be obeyed. If I thought the young Sioux chief who has been to our place so many times with his hunting party who was so good to us, letting us have elk meat and venison for a little of nothing, I should not like to think of shooting at them. I remember father said, if a few Indian contractors were scalped, there would be no trouble. I read last night in the paper a letter from Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, who said the government had not kept its promise with the Indians, that they had no blankets and no rations of beef, and that was the reason they went on the war path. The bow and arrows the chief's son gave me, I wish you would see that they are not lost. I don't believe Indian John stole Mr. Cripps's gun. He is a good Indian and if he is not killed in the war he will bring it back.

I will finish this in the morning.

Sept. 21st. I am sitting on the hurricane deck of the St. Paul Steamer where our Company has been assigned for the trip to Fort Snelling. We were an hour filing on board the boat this morning. Everybody is feeling good. Some of them are happier than they ought to be. Bill Anderson and some of the Mondovi boys are pretty well loaded. Chet Ide doesn't drink, but he is laughing louder at the fellows who do drink. Gile Bump of Mondovi, and I crawled under the ledge over the cabin to get in the shade. The boat has an awful load.

A thousand men with all the fixtures and equipment. There is not room to lie down! The band is kept pretty busy. Whenever we pass a boat or reach a town the band pounds and blows for all it's worth. The women and girls wave their handkerchiefs, and every fellow thinks it's meant for him. I'll bet there never was so jolly a crew on this boat before. When the boat stopped at Winona, some of the boys took a high dive from the top of the wheel house into the river. I never thought they would come up again but they did, and swam back to the yawl and climbed into that and were pulled up by ropes onto the boiler deck. We have just passed Fountain City and I must close this letter so as to mail it at Alma. The boat stops at every town, but no soldier is allowed to step off the boat. We have just passed a raft and the way the logs teeter in the waves is a wonder. The fellows shake their fists
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and yell dirty, hoodlum stuff, but the boys in blue give it back to them in plenty.

Tell Elder Morse's folks that Henry is well and spoiling for a fight.

CHAUNCEY.