NO SCALPS - Chief Little Crow will represent the Rath Packing Company, Waterloo, at the Piggly Wiggly Stores Friday and Saturday seeking sales, not scalps.  He is the great grandson of Chief Little Crow who went down in history as the leader of the Sioux uprising in western Minnesota more than 90 years ago.  The cause of the uprising was the refusal of the white storekeepers to give credit to the Indians for the purchase of food.  Chief Young Bear will visit Mason City with him on this goodwill mission.

INDIAN CHIEF LITTLE CROW AT BOB'S MKT. FRIDAY AND SATURDAY - A distinguished visitor to be in Milford Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week will be a real Indian Chief.  His name is Chief Little Crow, and his visit is made possible through the courtesy of the Rath Packing company of Waterloo.

The Chief will don his full Indian dress and be at Bob's Super Market all three days from 12 noon until 9:00 p.m. to visit with both young and old folks.  He told The Mail in an interview Wednesday that he had a special Indian bonnet for every child who visited Bob's store during his three day appearance.

Chief Little Crow is the great, great grandson of a once famous Indian Chief of the same name who led an Indian uprising in the territory west of St. Paul, Minn.  His given name is John A. Wakeman, and he is accompanied on his trip by his wife.  They have four children.

The Chief visited the lakes all day Wednesday and thought they were beautiful.  His day was climaxed by a trip around Okoboji on The Queen.  His appearance here is tied in with a big Rath Black Hawk sale which is being held at bob's this week end, to promote the use of Rath products in this territory.

PALE FACE HUNG INDIANS - There is a filling station at Front Street and West Main and beside it is a headstone, almost hidden in a parking lot.  The words on the gray granite are old:

It does not tell the story.  On this corner, the greatest mass execution in American history occurred.  Today, one hundred and two years later, lawyers debate the case.  In July 1851, two tribes of the Upper Minnesota Sioux sold to the United States a huge section of southern and western Minnesota.

The price was $1,665,000 in cash and annotates.  A month later, tribes of the Lower Minnesota, under Chief Little Crow, signed their lands away for $1,410,000.  What the Indians gave was 24,000,000 acres of rich black bottom land, timber tracts, rivers, lakes, quarries and mines.  The price was less than 13 cents an acre.

The Indian chiefs made it plain that their people needed the money.  They shook hands with the White Men, and the White Men were happy.  They had promised the Indians a pittance, and had promised to help feed the Red Brethren who were being forced off their land.  The Whites moved in at once.  The Indians waited for their money.  Congress was busy, and had little time for Indian treaties.  The Indian agent refused to feed the Indians until they threatened to kill him.  Then he passed out wormy flour and dried corn.  The Indians were ordered to move to reservations which were far from water and hunting land.

In 1857, Chief Inkpaduta killed 30 Whites at Lake Okoboji in Iowa.  The U.S. Government said that it would make no further payments to the Sioux, and dole out no more food, until the Indians themselves found Inkpaduta and punished him.  Chief Little Crow led an expedition, but could not find the killer, and felt like a squaw doing the bidding of the White Man.

In 1862, Little Crow noticed that many White Men in Minnesota had gone off to fight a war with their brothers in the South. He reminded the Indian agent that the Whites had promised money and food each year when the “prairie grass was high.” In Washington, Congress debated the matter. The U.S. Treasury debated whether the Sioux should be paid in paper money or gold coin.

On August 17, 1862, four braves – Brown Wing, Breaking Up, Killing Ghost, and Runs Against Something When Crawling – killed five Whites in Action Township. This started the Sioux Uprising of 1862. Little Crow led it and fought it. He was cruel and cunning. His tribes attacked towns where there was food and women. The Sioux wanted both.

He ambushed U.S. Army companies who searched for him. Citizens who fled their homes in wagons were slaughtered at leisure. The U.S. Government acted slowly, and required most of the autumn to get a few battalions of soldiers together under Colonel Sibley and General Pope. The general had been defeated at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

In a skirmish near echo, soldiers scalped 14 Indians. Chief Little Crow was beaten, and quit fighting. He was afraid of the brass field pieces which fired iron balls which exploded into fragments. Still, he held 269 prisoners – White women, children, and half breeds. The U.S. Army wanted to bargain for those lives without risking battle.

Friendly Indians released the prisoners in late September. The Sioux were starving. Nearly 2,000 of them surrendered under flags of truce. The government, under Sibley, set up a military court and used White women to identify rapists and murderers. In 10 days 307 Sioux had been sentenced to death. Both Pope and Sibley doubted that they had the legal power to do this to enemy warriors, so they passed the buck to Washington. Bishop Henry B. Whipple, an Episcopal divine from Faribault, Minn., was the only man to raise his voice against the death sentences. He went to Washington to protest.

Abraham Lincoln studied the list of names and crimes, and cut it to 39. The citizens of Mankato tried to lynch all the prisoners, and failed. One of the 39 – Round Wind – was reprieved on Christmas Day. The next morning, the condemned began the Sioux death chant – “Hi-yi-yi!”

At 10 a.m., 1,400 soldiers ringed the square where I now stand, and 38 Indians walked up a ladder and stood on a long trap door. They protested the use of white caps rolled down over their faces. Three thousand citizens watched from rooftops and buggies. The soldiers began a slow drum roll. When the third one ended, a rope was cut, the trap door dropped, and 38 men swung silently in a cold breeze off the river.

There was a small cheer. Dr. William May, whose sons founded the Mayo Clinic, stepped forward and claimed the body of Cut Nose. He needed it for anatomical studies.