In 1846 Mr. Lott left Red Rock at the request of his neighbors, and after a short sojourn at Pea's Point, he located upon the Des Moines at the mouth of Boone river. Here he came into contact with Sintomniduta and his wild followers, and in December, 1848, they became involved in a serious quarrel, which finally led to dire consequences to the red and white inhabitants of both northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.

As to the particulars of this quarrel, the accounts do not agree. Some say that the Indians traced five ponies, which they had missed, to Lott's stable, that the chief gave him five days to quit his dominions, and that, on his failing to comply with this order, Sintomniduta and his band decked their war paint and forcibly drove Lott and a grown-up stepson from their home. As the two in their flight glanced back from the bluffs of the Boone, they imagined that they saw the cabin in flames and heard the dying shrieks of Mrs. Lott and the younger children, who had been left in it. Lott and his stepson fled down the Des Moines about one hundred miles to the nearest white settlement, at Pea's Point.

Here John Pea undertook to raise a company to go back with Lott to look for his family and punish the Indians. At Elk Rapids, chief Chemeuse (called "Johnny Green") of the Pottawattamie and Musquakie tribes volunteered to join the expedition with twenty-six braves, glad of an opportunity to go on the warpath once more against their old enemy, the Sioux.

With this force of Indians and six white recruits under John Pea, Lott hurried back, but on arriving at his cabin found it standing and his wife and children safe, except his son, Milton, a lad of twelve years, who, his mother said, had left the cabin for fear of the Indians shortly after his father, and had not been seen since.

A search disclosed the fact that Milton had followed the tracks of his father and brother down the Des Moines, probably only a few hours behind them, though they knew it not, until, exhausted by cold and hunger, he fell in the snow and perished within three miles of where stands the present town of Boonesboro. A few