region" and that he had felt free of oversight:"As I was the only magistrate in this region and the county seat was some three hundred miles distant, I had matters pretty much under my own control, there being little chance of an appeal from my decisions. In fact some of the simple-minded people around me, firmly believed that I had the power of life and death."As justice of the peace, Sibley heard a wide range of cases. In 1838, he was called to investigate the death of John Hays, a former sergeant at Fort Snelling, which has been billed as the "oldest murder mystery in Minnesota." The investigation resulted in the arrest of Edward Phalen, Hays's business partner, a few weeks later. For jurisdictional reasons, however, Sibley passed on the case to Joseph R. Brown, who was appointed as justice of the peace for Crawford County in 1839, and Phalen was found not guilty of murder despite his self-incriminatory testimony. In 1840, Sibley was called upon to hear a criminal case involving the brutal rape of a ten-year-old girl which took place in Wisconsin Territory, because justice of the peace Joseph Brown was away at the legislature in Madison. Lobbying in Washington Lobbyist for the Doty Treaty Following the defeat of Jacksonian Democrat Martin Van Buren in the 1840 United States presidential election, the new Secretary of War John Bell moved quickly to try to purchase land from the Dakota. Bell had long been a proponent of a plan commissioned by John C. Calhoun and written by Reverend Jedidiah Morse which had called for the creation of an "all-Indian territory" that would eventually become a state. Bell's stated intention was to remove all Indians from the northeastern United States to the Minnesota valley. Much to the surprise of Henry Sibley and the partners of the American Fur Company's Western Outfit, John Bell appointed Governor James Duane Doty of Wisconsin Territory to negotiate a treaty with the Dakota to acquire 30 million acres of land on behalf of the U.S. and require their settlement in farming communities as part of a plan to grant citizenship. On July 31, 1841, Governor Doty concluded a treaty with the Sisseton, Wahpeton and Wahpekute in Traverse des Sioux, with assistance from Alexis Bailly as secretary, although several major chiefs including Sleepy Eyes and Burning Earth did not participate. Doty testified that Sibley and several of