Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 111 
money for expenses, but there is no record in their pro- 
ceedings that they acceded to the demand of a message 
from so potential an individual even as Charles B. 
Thompson. 
Thompson had started another newspaper in Ona- 
wa, which town had become the county seat. This he 
called the “Onawa Advocate,” and in 1858 Thompson 
moved to Onawa, and his head man, Guy C. Barnum, 
was with him there more or less. 
Thompson corresponded with his missionaries, but 
somehow or other the people had become suspicious. He 
had deeded some property in the summer to his wife and 
Barnum. These leaders sent out to preach, seemed by 
contact again with the world to have recovered their 
mental balance, and took a different view of matters than 
they had when under the immediate influence of Thomp- 
son, and some of them came back sooner in 1858 than was 
anticipated, and disconcerted Thompson’s plans for get- 
ting his property disposed of, if he had formed any. It 
was afterwards asserted that Thompson had said that by 
his numerous bills of sale, bonds, receipts, corporations 
and other papers, he had got them all so tied up they 
could do nothing in law, and that he would sell the per- 
sonal property and deed the land to some one else and 
go away. That Guy C. Barnum advised the better course 
would be to settle with the dissatisfied ones on some 
cheap basis, give the others, faithful ones, some land, and 
keep the rest for Thompson and Barnum. Thompson, 
however, stood upon his rights, and when a few leaders 
made trouble, he refused to settle, and turned them out 
of his Presbytery, especially Rowland Cobb, Charles C. 
Perrin and George Rarisk. 
But this only started the trouble as it provoked dis- 
cussion among the rest; and others, who had left before, 
came back to Preparation, and most of the people met 
and canvassed the situation, and expecting Thompson to 
come from Onawa on a certain day in October, 1858, 
were there intending to demand of him to settle with the 
people. The crowd had assembled in anticipation of his 
coming, and had posted sentinels on the bluffs who saw 
him coming with Guy C. Barnum in the distance over the 
Missouri bottom lands, but one, Melinda Butts, a daugh- 
