CHAPTER XXIII

The gathering of the Santee tribes on the new reservations had of course required a readjustment of the missionary establishments. Dr. Williamson, who had been for several years with the Little Crow band at Kaposia, removed with them up the Minnesota and established himself at a station which he called Payjuhutaze, very near to the new Yellow Medicine, or Upper Agency, and shortly afterward Dr. Riggs, having given up the mission at Traverse des Sioux when the Indians went to the reservation and returned to the old mission at Lac qui Parle, suffered the loss of his home by fire. He therefore concluded that it would be wiser to re-establish in the vicinity of the agency, and so removed down to that point. The temptation is great to diverge from the main object of this paper and devote some space to the detailed story of the labors, sacrifices, defeats and undaunted courage in adversity and persistence and triumphs of these devoted missionary families; but it appears to be only admissible within the limited space of a single volume of our collections to follow the fortunes of the Dakotas and tell only so much of the missionary work as is essential to the development of the Indian history. A boarding school for the boys and girls was established. Most of the Christian Indians removed to the vicinity and engaged in farming. There was by this time a very respectable community who wore citizens' clothing, short hair, and lived in good houses.

Messrs. Riggs and Williamson endeavored to have these converts admitted to full citizenship and sent a large number to the court at Mankato to be naturalized, but the court deemed a knowledge of English essential and so excluded all but a very few. As the next practicable thing to do, the missionaries deemed it best to organize them into a local government of their own. This organization was called the Hazlewood Republic, and a constitution was adopted and executive and judicial officers elected. Little Paul, Mazakutamane, was chosen president and continued in the position until the outbreak. They were officially recognized by the agent as a separate band and took great interest and pride in the administration of their affairs. Unfortunately the records of this interesting experiment in popular government are very meager.

With the assistance of a gift of $200 from the American Board these Indians built for themselves a church in which they invested $500 of their own money and much labor. They also assisted very materially in the erection of a boarding school. This school could accommodate but twenty scholars, and was soon full to its utmost capacity. It was the first experiment in the way of a boarding school for Indians and was a pronounced success. Its usefulness was of course limited by the lack of funds, for a larger establishment required a large outlay. The school was at first in charge of Miss Ruth Pettyjohn and then that of Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Cunningham. Misses Annie Ackley, Eliza Huggins and Isabella Riggs were teachers.

One member of the missionary band is deserving of especial mention, Miss Jane Williamson, a sister of Dr. Williamson's, known to all of the English speaking community as Aunt Jane, and to the Dakotas as the Red Song Woman. She came to the work in 1843, when Dr. Riggs returned from the first Bible printing trip to the east, and surrendered her life to enthusiastic work for the education and uplifting of the savages. When, owing to the unpopularity of the missionaries due to the mistaken belief among the natives that they were being paid for their service from the annuity funds of the treaty of 1837, the children were kept away from the schools and the mission work was at a standstill, Aunt Jane filled her pockets with nuts and sweetmeats and went out among the children and tempted them into her classes with the goodies. Throughout her career no sacrifice was too great, "nor labor too trying if by it God's ignorant children of the prairies could be helped. The Indians came to have a tender and affectionate interest in her, and as Dr. Riggs said: "Many of them owe more to her than they can understand."

Rev. John P. Williamson, having completed his education and graduated from Lane Seminary in 1861, he established a mission at the Lower Agency, and a short time prior Bishop Whipple had set up an Episcopal school there. Such was the situation in the Dakota mission field when the great trial by fire came upon it. 

Inkpaduta still continued to range throughout eastern South Dakota and northwestern Iowa, and in the fall of 1856 went down into the lower valley of the Little Sioux River. Sparse settlement was beginning through all of that country. At this time Inkpaduta's band consisted of only eleven men and their families. They were Inkpaduta and his twin sons, Roaring Cloud and Fire Cloud, and two other sons, Mysterious Father and Old Man; his son-in-law, Rattling, and five others, Kechomon, Big Face, Tatelidashinkshamane, Great Gun and One Leg. Each of these warriors was accompanied by his family. The Indians were insolent and quarrelsome with the settlers. The first hostile demonstration occurred down near Smithland, where some settlers got upon the trail of an elk which the Indians were trailing, and they threatened vengeance, but did nothing at the time. One of the Indians was bitten by a dog belonging to a settler, and he killed the animal. The homesteader gave the buck a threshing. The squaws came about the farms, stealing grain and hay, and the farmers whipped them away. The Indians became so threatening that several of the settlers banded together and went to the camp and disarmed them. They intended to return the guns next day and escort the Indians out of the country, but the next morning no Indians were to be found in the locality. They had gone up the Little Sioux, committing all sorts of depredations, forcibly taking guns, ammunition and provisions; in fact, whatever they wanted. At Peterson, in Clay county, Iowa, they went to the house of A. S. Mead, and finding him away, they killed his cattle, knocked down Mrs. Mead and carried her daughter Hettie off to their camp. At the home of E. Taylor they knocked down and intimidated Mr. Taylor, kicked his young son into the fireplace and severely burned him, and took his wife off to their camp. After keeping these two young women in their camp and subjecting them to every indignity, they allowed them to return to their homes in the morning. On the evening of the 7th of March they reached Okoboji Lakes and encamped near by. On the  morning of March 8th they went to the house of Rowland Gardner, near Okoboji Lake, and asked for breakfast which was given them. After eating they asked for ammunition and the supply was divided with them, but they were surly and demanded all of it. Later they left the house, but their conduct was so manifestly hostile that Harvey Luce, a son-in-law, and another gentleman named Clark set out to warn the other settlers of the locality. Toward evening the Indians returned and massacred the entire household, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, their daughter, Mrs. Luce, and her two children, and their young son Rowland. One daughter, Abigail, a girl of 13, was made a captive. From there they went about the settlement, killing all of the people except Abbie Gardner and three young married women, Mesdames Noble, Marble and Thacher, who were taken prisoners, and Mr. Morris Markham, who being absent from home on that day, returned at nightfall to discover the massacre and escape to the nearest settlement at Springfield (Jackson), Minnesota, about thirty miles away. Thirty-two persons were murdered at the Spirit Lakes. After the massacre the Indians plundered the property of the settlement, carrying away what they could use and wantonly destroying the remainder. Inkpaduta and his band, with the white captives, then set out leisurely up the DesMoines, and on the 26th arrived in the vicinity of Springfield, where, it is charged, they were joined by a party of Sissetons under Sleepy eyes in an attack upon that place.  Warned by Mr. Markham, the settlers to the number of twenty-one had gathered for defense at the log house of Mr. Thomas, where they were attacked by the Indians in ambush. Two men and a lady were seriously wounded and a little son of Mr. Thomas killed. The settlers, however, made a vigorous defense and at night the Indians withdrew. In the meantime they had visited the home of Mr. Stewart and kilted him, his wife and two children, and at the trading store of Wood Brothers killed the Woods and one other man.

When Markham arrived at Springfield with news of the massacre at Spirit Lake two men named Tretts and Chiffen had been at once dispatched to Fort Ridgely on the Minnesota. It was the historic winter of the "deep snow" and the messengers made slow progress over the intervening sixty miles. It was the 18th of March before the soldiers were apprised of the great calamity. Colonel Alexander of the Tenth regiment U. S. Infantry at once dispatched Captain Barnard E. Bee and Lieutenant Murray to Spirit Lake with Company A, under the guidance of Joseph LaFrambois. They arrived at Springfield the second day after the attack on that place, and taking up the trail of the savages followed them some distance, but despairing of overtaking them, turned back. Inkpaduta was within a very short distance of them at that moment and his scouts from a tree were watching every movement of the soldiers and reporting the action of the whites to the camp below. A brave was detailed to kill the captives if the soldiers charged the camp. The soldiers returned to Fort Ridgely, having suffered extremely upon the trip through the deep snows.

As soon as the soldiers were gone Inkpaduta took up the march for the northwest, reaching the Pipestone quarry, where they camped under the protection of the ledge and remained some days, until the snows melted, and the march was again taken up. The captives were treated as slaves and subjected to every hardship. To Mrs. Thacher the experience was especially severe. Her infant child, but three weeks old, had been torn from her arms and killed before her eyes. Naturally her physical condition was such that the labor imposed upon her was almost beyond her power to perform, but such was her devotion to her husband, who was absent from home at the time of the massacre, that she was determined to live to return to him. With inflamed and broken breasts, with one limb swollen until it burst, she carried her heavy burden from day to day, wading through the ice cold streams waist deep, cutting firewood and camp poles and performing other camp duties until the Big Sioux River was reached at Flandreau, South Dakota when she actually appeared to be in a way to recovery. The river was to be crossed upon a tree which had fallen across the, stream, at the time swollen with the spring floods. As they were about to step upon the treacherous bridge a young Indian took the pack from Mrs. Thacher's shoulders and placed it upon his own. She realized at once that her time had come, and turning to Abbie Gardner, gave her a message of love to her husband. When she reached the middle of the stream an Indian pushed her into the icy flood. With supernatural strength she breasted the torrent and reached the shore, where she was clubbed back into the stream by the savages. She turned across the stream and reached the other shore, where the savages hurried to intercept her and again beat her back with clubs. She was then carried down the stream by the flood, the Indians running along the banks whooping and yelling and flinging clubs at her until she came to another tree fallen across the stream and would have doubtless escaped drowning, but at this point she was shot dead.

With the other three captives the Indians proceeded directly west until they reached Lake Herman, just west of the present city of Madison, where they went into camp on the east side of the lake, a short distance south of the outlet. While upon this trip they had met several bands of Indians, to whom Inkpaduta's people related all of the details of the massacre with the utmost unction, and the stories were received by the others without the least sign of disapprobation. After the camp at Lake Herman had been established about ten days it was visited by two Christian Indians from Lac qui Parle, Minnesota, sons of Spirit Walker, the chief of that village. They were named Scahota, meaning Greyfoot, and Makpeyahahoton, meaning Sounding Heavens. They were hunting on the Sioux near Flandreau and learning that Inkpaduta was camped at Lake Herman they resolved to attempt to rescue the captives. They doubtless had the hope of reward, but the chief motive which impelled them to the step was the hope of relieving the annuity Indians of the Minnesota of the odium and responsibility of Inkpaduta's horrible conduct. Inkpaduta was suspicious of them and believed they were guiding soldiers to him, and frequently while they were in the camp his people would raise the cry that the soldiers were coming. This was done to try the good faith of the Christians. Grayfoot told Inkpaduta without reserve that he had done a most outrageous thing, for which the whites would surely bring him to justice, but that while he must die for the wrong he had done he could save the other Indians from the imputation of sympathizing in his crime by giving up the captives. Inkpaduta, on the other hand, argued that if his had been only an ordinary crime he would be punished for it, but that his act had been so extraordinary and daring that he would escape; that the very audacity of his conduct would save him. The argument was kept up all night and until 3 o'clock the next afternoon, when Inkpaduta adroitly proposed that they take one of the captives, as an evidence of good faith. Finding that they could secure no more the Christians consented and were told to select the one they desired. The women were under a shelter tent nearby baking fish.  Seahota stopped [several lines illegible] motioned to Mrs. Marble who followed them good naturedly. They gave Inkpaduta some small presents in consideration of giving up the captive. Some of these presents were at their camp on the Sioux and two of Inkpaduta's Indians went along to secure them. At the Sioux they found quite an Indian camp and among them a Frenchman who spoke good English. Mrs. Marble was treated with every consideration and as rapidly as possible taken to Lac qui Parle, where she was turned by the boys over to their father, Spirit Walker.

Spirit Walker clothed her as well as he could and sent at once to Messrs. Riggs and Williamson, near the Upper agency, to come for her. They proceeded at once and found her well content to remain with her new friends, but they persuaded her to go with them and return to her white relatives. Judge Flandrau, then agent for the Dakotas, paid to Greyfoot and Sounding Heavens the sum of $500 in cash and gave a note signed by himself and Mr. Riggs for $500 more, payable in three months. For this and other expenses they were reimbursed by the state. Judge Flandrau took Mrs. Marble to St. Paul, whence she reached her friends.

Immediately upon the rescue of Mrs. Marble with intelligence of the whereabouts of the other captives, Judge Flandrau and the missionaries had set at work to get out a volunteer party of Indians to rescue the others. For this purpose they selected Paul Mazakutemane, known as Little Paul, and John Otherday and a third Indian known to the whites as Mr. Grass but by the Indians as Ironhawk. They were Christians, and living in a civilized way. John Otherday was married to a white woman. He possessed rare executive ability and the strongest courage. Little Paul was the president of the Hazelwood Republic, a magnetic orator and natural diplomat. Better men for the mission could not be secured. They were equipped with a quantity of goods deemed sufficient to purchase the captives and at once set off upon the hazardous trip. The moment of Mrs. Marble's rescue Inkpaduta understood that communication was in a way established between his camp and the whites, and upon the return of his emissaries from the Sioux, camp was broken and a new pilgrimage undertaken. They moved toward the northwest by slow marches and coming upon a party of Yanktons, one of them, a one-legged fellow named Wanduskaihanke, meaning End of the Snake, who had an eye to business, thought he saw an opportunity for speculation in the captives by taking them to the Missouri and selling them to the whites. He therefore struck a bargain for them and the two women became his property. Both parties moved along together after that, in the direction of the Earth lodges on the James River.

A few days later, just as the captives were settling down for a night's rest, Roaring Cloud came into the Yankton's tent and ordered Mrs. Noble to follow him out. She refused to go. From the first she had resisted them with all of her power, though compelled in the end to submit. He seized her by one arm and catching up a stick of firewood which she had herself cut but a few moments before, he dragged her from the tent. Outside he dealt her three heavy blows and left her. She died soon after. The Yankton vigorously protested against his conduct, in words, but took no stronger measures to protect his property. Mrs. Noble was about 20 years of age, tall, slender and of good form. She was a member of the Disciples church and constantly, during her captivity, she cheered her companions with prayer and the singing of hymns.

The next morning the Indians gathered around the mangled corpse and made it a target for their arrows. Afterwards she was scalped. This fiendish murder must have occurred in the eastern portion of Spink county. A day or two later they reached the James River at the mouth of Snake Creek, a short distance southeast of Ashton, where they encamped on the west side of the James, close to the south side of the Snake, where were in camp 190 lodges of Yanktons.

Two or three days after arriving at the James River the approach of the rescuing party was observed. They had proceeded from Lac qui Parle to Lake Herman and there striking Inkpaduta's trail had followed it without difficulty to the James. Apprehending that the party were soldiers the valiant Inkpaduta hustled off up Snake Creek and hid himself in a grove of plum brush. The adroit pursuers knew the Indian character too well to bring into the camp all of their possessions, so selecting what they thought would be a fair equivalent for the captives they cached the fest back upon the prairies, and came in, bringing only two horses and some goods. After a good deal of dickering they purchased the captive, Abbie Gardner, and speedily restored her to Judge Flandrau at Yellow Medicine, who conducted her to her friends.

With the captives restored the next thing was the chastisement of Inkpaduta. Several plans were canvassed but at this juncture most of the troops were ordered away from Fort Ridgely to participate in the Mormon campaign and only a very small garrison remained, leaving no soldiers whatever that could be spared from the garrison for a campaign in the field, so that for the present all offensive measures were given up.

A short time after the return of Abbie Gardner to the agency Judge Flandrau, who was at the Lower (Redwood) agency, received word from Major Joseph R. Brown that Inkpaduta and several members of his band were at the Yellow Medicine River. Major Brown informed him that at midnight of that night he would have an Indian who knew where the hostiles were meet him at the Butte, midway between the two agencies, to guide him to the point. Judge Flandrau secured fifteen men from Fort Ridgely under Lieutenant Murray, and about the Lower agency he picked up a volunteer force of twenty men. The soldiers were in wagons and the volunteers were mounted. They got off from the Lower agency about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The soldiers had army muskets and the volunteers each had a double barrelled shot gun and a revolver. At the Butte at midnight they found the dauntless John Otherday, composedly smoking his pipe. It was the time for the annuity payment and the Yanktonais were there, and many Missouri River Indians. John told them they would find the enemy in six tipis standing by themselves about four miles above the agency. It was daylight when they arrived near the camp, but John guided them skillfully, keeping rolls of the prairie between them and the camp. When they had crossed the Yellow Medicine the forces were divided into two squads, the soldiers double-quicked along under the edge of the bluff to prevent a retreat into the timber of the river bottom, while the mounted men took to the open prairie to cut off a retreat in the other direction. Judge Flandrau led the volunteers. '"Whoever runs from the camp you may be sure of," said Otherday, and both parties advanced. The night had been hot and sultry and the Indians had rolled up the skirts of the tipis to get the air, and as soon as the volunteers got out on the prairie their presence was discovered. When 200 yards from the camp a young Indian, accompanied by a squaw whom he held by the hand, sprang out and made for the river bluffs. The volunteers discharged their shotguns at him but without, effect and he reached the brush, from a clump of which he fired four shots at the men but none were injured, although one of his shots struck the cartridge box of one of the soldiers. Whenever he shot the men poured a volley into the spot indicated by his smoke and they succeeded in killing him. He was Roaring Cloud, the young fiend who had murdered Mrs. Noble, who had accompanied his Yanktonais sweetheart down to the payment and was the only one of the gang present. In the camp about the agency were fully 8,000 Indians, many of them savages from the Missouri. Capturing Roaring Cloud's sweetheart they loaded her into the wagon with the corpse of the dead Indian and set off for the agency through the heart of the great Indian camp. The scared squaw howled as only a scared squaw can and the Indians thronged about the troops by the thousand, threatening and flourishing their guns. They did not shoot, however, having too much fear for the vengeance of Uncle Sam if his blue coats were molested. However, when the soldiers arrived at the agency they fortified themselves in an old log building and sent to Fort Ridgely for re-enforcements. The old battery which had served at Buena Vista in the Mexican war was sent up and the trouble blew over. It was really a most reckless adventure and the wonder is that it had not resulted in a great massacre.

The killing of Roaring Cloud was good as far as it went but the government was not satisfied and demanded that the annuity Indians should bring Inkpaduta in and deliver him up.

On the 22d of July a company consisting of 106 warriors representing both the Upper and Lower Indians, but chiefly Sissetons and Wahpetons under the leadership of Little Crow, set out for the west to capture or punish Inkpaduta. They went directly to Lake Herman, which at that period seems to have been a general rendezvous for the Inkpadutans, and taking his trail followed him to Lake Thompson, at the center of Kingsbury county, where they overtook him and engaged him in battle. Three of his braves, Tatayahe, Mysterious Father and Big Face were killed, but Inkpaduta himself, with the remainder of his band, escaped them. They then returned to Yellow Medicine, feeling that they had done sufficiently to avenge the wrongs of the whites to entitle them to their annuities. Major Pritchette, however, who was sent out as a special agent of the interior department to adjust the matter, was of the opinion that the whole band should be crushed, or at least that Inkpaduta should be disposed of, and still withheld the annuities. The Sissetons and Wahpetons felt that this was a peculiar hardship upon them, who had no relationship or responsibility whatever for Inkpaduta. but had on the other hand brought in two of the captives and assisted in killing four of the outlaws, furnishing the majority of the warriors for the expedition to Lake Thompson. The matter became so acute that the upper bands organized a soldiers' lodge and placed the camp upon a military footing. On August 10th, five days after the return of the expedition from the west. Major Pritchette met them in a council called by the soldiers' lodge and Little Paul said :

"The soldiers lodge has appointed me to speak for them. The men who killed the white people did not belong to us and we did not expect to be called upon to account for the deeds of another band. We have tried to do as our great father tells us. One of our young men brought in a captive woman. I went out and brought in another. The soldiers came up here and our men assisted to kill one of Inkpaduta's sons at this place. The Lower Indians did not get up the war party for you. It was our Indians, the Wahpetons and the Sissetons. All of us want our money very much. A man of another band has done  wrong. We are to suffer for it. Our old women and children are hungry for this."

Upon receiving intelligence of the result of the expedition, Major Cullen, superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Paul, was of the opinion that the Santees had done all in their power to punish or surrender Inkpaduta and that their annuities might then with propriety be paid, but Major Pritchette declared that "Nothing less than the entire extirpation of Inkpaduta's murderous outlaws will satisfy justice and the dignity of the government and vindicate outraged humanity."

The annuities were paid and no further effort was made to punish the outlaws. The Santees construed this, either as an evidence of weakness, or else that the whites were afraid to pursue the matter further, and they became more insolent than ever. Never has the government made a worse mistake. With soldiers at Forts Randall and Ridgely, and with the assistance of a few friendly Indians, Inkpaduta could have been brought in or destroyed with comparative ease. From the date that the government dropped the prosecution of Inkpaduta, Little Crow began to agitate for his grand scheme for driving all of the whites from the Dakota country.

 

 

CHAPTER XXIV

In May, 1857, settlement was undertaken at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, by two independently acting parties, one from Dubuque, Iowa, and one from St. Paul, Minnesota. Townsites were also located at Medary and Flandreau. No difficulty was experienced with the Indians in the early season, but toward fall Inkpaduta got the remnant of his band back into the Lake Herman district and he attempted two raids upon the Sioux Falls settlement, in one of which he ran off the only yoke of oxen kept there. In July of that year all of the settlers withdrew from Sioux Falls owing to disquieting Indian rumors, but there really was no immediate cause of alarm. Colonel W. H. Nobles of St. Paul had taken a contract to construct a wagon road from Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, to the Missouri River in the vicinity of Fort Lookout  It was a portion of the plan to establish a great government highway from St. Paul to the Pacific. When he reached Lake Benton on the 18th of July he was met by a large party of Yankton Indians under the lead of old Smutty Bear, who informed him that he would not be permitted to proceed further than the Sioux River. That the lands west of the Sioux belonged to the Yanktons and that they must not be trespassed upon, and that any attempt to do so would be forcibly resisted. This, it will be understood, followed immediately upon the Inkpaduta troubles, the excitement due to the killing of Roaring Cloud and the refusal of the government to pay the annuities until Inkpaduta was brought in or punished. Indeed, it was but four clays later that Little Crow set out for his expedition against Inkpaduta, which resulted in the battle at Lake Thompson. All of these matters contributed to great uneasiness among the frontiersmen, and upon being thus enjoined by the Yanktons, Colonel Nobles hastened to Fort Ridgely to secure a military escort. This could not be provided, by reason of the lack of soldiers, even to control the threatening situation upon the Minnesota, but Major T. W. Sherman, in command at Ridgely, upon the advice of Superintendent Cullen of the Indian department, supplied Nobles with a quantity of firearms, and returning to his survey he entered upon the forbidden lands and completed his contract without obstruction. It was rumors of these troubles that reached Sioux Falls and frightened away the settlers for a short time.

About this time the government, yielding to the pressure for more land for immigrants set about through Captain John B. S. Todd, to negotiate with the Yanktons for the opening of the lands between the Sioux and the Missouri. He called a council at the village of Struck by the Ree, at Yankton, but they were not in a spirit to sell. Todd pressed the matter and the Indians sent to Fort Pierre for Charles F. Picotte, the half Yankton son of Honore Picotte. one of the best known traders of the old days. Charles F. Picotte possessed a fair education and great strength of character, and was a good friend and advisor to his Indian relatives. At the next council he appeared as the recognized counsel for the Yanktons, but Captain Todd told the Indians he must treat directly with them without the intervention of Picotte. The latter at once withdrew from the council and all of the Yanktons followed him. Picotte returned to Fort Pierre and Todd found himself unable to get within speaking distance of the Indians. Finally, in dispair, he again sent for Picotte, who, with the assistance of Zephyr Rencontre, induced the council to delegate a party of fifteen chiefs and headmen to go with them to Washington where upon the 19th of April, 1858, a treaty was negotiated which sold to the United States all of the lands owned by the Yanktons, except a reservation of 400,000 acres lying upon the Missouri River, above Chouteau Creek, in Charles Mix county. The sale involved all  of the lands between the Sioux and the Missouri as far north as a line running approximately from Pierre to Watertown.  Under the treaties of 1851 the Santees had sold all of the country between the Sioux and the Mississippi, including the Pipestone quarries, but the Yanktons also claimed superior-rights in the quarry, and the treaty contained a provision that they should be secured in the free and unrestricted use of the pipestone and the government agreed to keep the same open and free to the Indians to visit and procure pipestone so long as they should require.

The treaty was signed by Struck by the Ree and Smutty Hear, together with thirteen others, but upon the return of the delegation to the tribe it was found that the sale was highly unpopular and Smutty Bear at once became the leader in a faction opposed to the acceptance and ratification of the treaty. Feeling ran very high and at times it required all of the diplomacy of "Old Strike" to prevent open rebellion. .His life and that of his chief partisans were frequently threatened. Smutty Bear set out to eject the settlers from the disputed lands east of the Sioux, as well as to enjoin any entries upon the lands embraced in the new treaty. Luckily, notice of his intentions reached the missionaries at Yellow Medicine in the latter part of May through Indian friends, and Dr. Williamson promptly dispatched an Indian messenger "to the Americans who are making claims at Medary," with warning of the approaching danger, and they were therefore prepared for the reception of Smutty Bear. Nevertheless he was tenacious in his purpose and only spared the settlers at Medary upon condition of their leaving the country at once, and as he had with him a very large force of Indians, Major DeWitt and his party were compelled to give up their improvements and leave the country.

The settlement at Sioux Falls was stronger, and having more time, built a stockade and prepared to defend itself, but the Indians, learning of the strength of the establishment, did not attack it. The loss to the settlers at Medary by this enterprise of Smutty Bear's was by the government deducted from the annuities of the Yanktons and the settlers reimbursed.

The treaty provided that the government should pay the Yanktons the sum of $1,600,000 in annuities, running over the ensuing fifty years. The Indians were to remove to the reservation within one year from its ratification and thereafter reside there, and there was provision for the establishment among them of schools, mills, stores and the opening of farms for their use. Charles Picotte and Zephyr Rencontre were each permitted to select a section of the ceded land where they chose. Picotte taking the Yankton townsite and Rencontre the Bon Homme townsite. Paul Durion and Mesdames Reulo, Bedaud and Traversee were each granted a half section of their own selection .

Not only was the treaty unpopular with many of the Yanktons, but the Yanktonais and the Tetons, who claimed rights in the soil, were also firmly opposed to it. In the spring of 1850, Captain W. F. Reynolds, about to set out upon his expedition to the Yellowstone from Fort Pierre, was intrusted with the distribution to the Tetons of the goods due them under the Harney treaty of 1856. The Tetons were agitated about the Yankton treaty and strenuously denied the right of the Yanktons to sell without their consent. Bear's Rib was the principal speaker, and Captain Reynolds thus reports his remarks upon the topic:

My Brother: To whom does this land belong? I believe it belongs to me. Look at me and at the ground. Which do you think is the oldest? The ground; and on it I was born. I have no instruction. I give my own ideas. I do not know how many years. It is much older than I. Here we are, our nine nations. Here are our principal men gathered together. When you tell us anything, we wish to say "yes" to what we like, and you will do the same. There are none of the Yanktons here. Where are they? It is said that I have a father (agent), and when he tells me anything I say yes. And when I ask him anything, I want him to say yes. I call you my brother. What you told me yesterday, I believe is true. The Yanktons below us are a poor people. I don't know where their land is. I pity them. These lower Yanktons I know did own a piece of land, but they sold it long ago. I don't know where they got any more. Since I have been born I do not know who owns two, three, four, more pieces of land. When I got land it was all in one piece and we were born and still live on it. These Yanktons, we took pity on them. They had no land. We lent them what they have to grow corn on. We gave them a thousand horses to keep that land for us, but I never told them to steal it and go and sell it. I call you my brother and want you to take pity on me, and if any one steals anything from me I want the privilege of calling for it. If those men who did it secretly had asked me to make a treaty for its sale I should not have consented. We who are here all understand each other, but I do not agree that they shall steal the land and sell it. If the white people want my land and I should give it to them where should I stay. I have no place else to go. I hear that a reservation has been kept for the Yanktons below. I will speak again on this subject. I cannot spare it and I like it very much. All of this country on each side of the river belongs to me. I know that from the Mississippi to this river the country all belongs to us. and that we have traveled from the Yellowstone to the Platte. All of this country, as I have said, is ours. If you, my brother, was to ask me for it I would not give it to you, for I like it, and I hope you will listen to me.

The text of this speech is given because better than any other published speech of a Dakota it suggests the land claims and the history of the Dakota tribes. Interpreted by the known movements of the bands it becomes very clear. The Tetons traditionally owned a joint interest with the other tribes in all of the lands they had ever possessed and absolute title to all the lands they had conquered without the co-operation of the Santees and Yanktons. When the Yanktons lost their hold upon the lands of the Ottoes in southwestern Iowa, landless and homeless they came up the Missouri and were given a location upon the Sioux and the James, but recently conquered from the Omahas by the Tetons, who found for themselves superior accommodations in the buffalo ranges west of the Missouri, which they had conquered from the Rees and the Crows. Fearing that they would be unable to hold the eastern Dakota country from being repossessed by the Omahas or some other enemy, they welcomed the arrival of the Yanktons, and to place them on a footing which would enable them to hold the lands against any probable comers, they were given a large number of horses by the Tetons, who were opulent and had horses in abundance. Having placed their protest of record, the Tetons do not appear to have taken any other action toward enforcing their claims, and nine years later by the treaty of Laramie they relinquished any claim they may have had to lands east of the Missouri.

Among the Yanktons, however, the matter continued to be a subject of pressing interest. Struck by the Ree stood resolutely for abiding the terms of the agreement, and Smutty Bear opposed doing so with violence. It was the subject of many an angry council during the year, and when July, 1859, arrived and the year for removing to the reservation was passing, the tribe was assembled at Yankton, having heard that the new agent was coming to establish the agency on the reservation. The matter appeared to be as far from settlement as ever. On the morning of the 10th of July it was still unsettled and a final talk was made. A large body of Smutty Bear's young men mounted, made a demonstration, riding furiously about the council as if to put an end to further deliberations. Smutty Bear, well understanding the power of long association over the Indian mind, declaimed about the grounds of their fathers and the graves of their relatives, when the bellow of a steamboat put an end to all interest in the topic. It was the "Wayfarer," loaded to the guards with Indian goods and bearing Major Redfield, the agent, to the new home. He made an argument irresistible in its eloquence. He told them to go at once to the reservation and he would make for them a great feast. The day was lost to Smutty Bear. The steamer proceeded on its way and the Yanktons, racing along the bank, kept it in sight. They enjoyed the feast and settled down contentedly about the agency, where they remain to this day. Through the influance of "Old Strike" they were firm friends of the whites during all of the troublous years that followed.

 

 

CHAPTER XXV

 

Eighteen hundred and sixty-two was an epochal year in the history of the Dakota nation and before entering upon its story it may be well to briefly review the situation and condition of the various bands at this time. The M'dewakantons and Wakpekutes at the Lower agency had been located on that reservation nine years, and schools and churches were provided for their accommodation and advancement. They had about 200 acres of ploughed lands and annually grew a considerable quantity of corn, vegetables and other crops. There were all told 3,213 of them. They had never become deeply interested in missionary work and but few of them were professors of religion. As previously stated Bishop Whipple had an Episcopal mission there and John P. Williamson a plant for the American board.

The government had provided them a saw mill and a grist mill, blacksmith and carpenter shops, so that they were equipped with all of the ordinary conveniences of a civilized agricultural community. The government had already provided some of the more progressive Indians with homes and Agent Galbraith had completed arrangements to erect about ninety others at a cost of about $300 each, and before August many of these were completed and occupied. Little Crow, having great influence with the wild Indians, in June of 1862 agreed with the agent that in consideration of the building for himself of a good brick residence he would settle down to work and would use all of his influence to bring the idle young men of his bands to ways of industry. Little Crow was to dig the cellar and do the necessary hauling of lumber and material. He was engaged in this work and the carpenter had completed all of the preliminary work for Little Crow's house when interrupted by the outbreak.

At the Upper agency there were 175 families of farmer Indians, Christians, who wore citizens' clothing, living upon their lands, many of them in good houses and having about 1,300 acres of crops. These farmers were both Sissetons and Wahpetons. Fifteen miles above the agency was a settlement of Wahpetons under Red Iron and the government maintained a school there taught by Jonas Pettijohn, a member of the old missionary community.

At Lac qui Parle was Spirit Walker's village and the government school there was taught by Amos Huggins, also one of the missionary people, who was born and grew up among the Indians of that locality. He was assisted by Miss Julia LaFrambois, a half Dakota daughter of the old trader's. At Red Iron's and Lac qui Parle were large plantings, under the supervision of the government farmer, and the Indians were reasonably interested and industrious.

The main body of the Sissetons resided at Big Stone Lake and were under Scarlet Plume, Standing Buffalo and Wanatan, the hereditary chiefs. Sub-agent Givens remained with them throughout the planting season and the early hoeing that season, and they got in a good crop which was in excellent condition when they came down for the mid-summer payment.

To summarize; the Lower Indians had that season 1,025 acres of corn, 260 of potatoes, 60 acres of turnips and rutabagas, and 12 acres of wheat, besides a great area of garden vegetables. The Upper Indians, of whom there were all told 4,524, had 1,110 acres of corn, 300 acres of potatoes, 90 acres of turnips, 12 acres of wheat, and vegetables in proportion. Everything indicated that they were fast becoming an independent and self supporting people.

At this time the Yanktons were quietly residing upon their reservation on the Missouri where the government had established mills, shops, schools and other conveniences, and had given them something of a start in farming.

The Yanktonais, as wild as ever, ranged between Big Stone Lake and the Missouri. Long and close association with the Sissetons, with whom they constantly intermarried, had brought these tribes in close relationship. Wanatan of the Sissetons was half Yanktonais and was the son of the famous Waneta.

The Tetons lived upon the Missouri and west of there in the same general distribution as at present. The Uncpapas and Blackfeet on the Grand River; the Sans Arcs and Minneconjous on the Moreau; the Oohenopas from the Cheyenne to the Teton; the Brules from the White to the Niobrara and the Oglalas further west toward Fort Laramie, from the White to the Platte.

When the harvest moon of 1862 was just past its splendor, the people of the United States, still smarting from the sting of the terrible defeat at Bull Run and despondent from the depressing influence of McClellan's "seven days' retreat," were appalled with the startling information that the Dakota Indians, a people whom they were taking pride in calling a "fast civilizing and Christianizing race" had taken the war path and with ruthless hand had swept the white population from the valley of the upper Minnesota, sparing neither man nor woman, nor tender child in the fury of the bloody massacre. Secondary reports only magnified the extent of the horror and before the awful calamity the people stood dazed. "Surely" they said, "the hand of Providence is laid heavily upon the American people." The first thought in the mind of every northern man was that it was the work of the rebels. "Secretly," it was believed, "and with insidious craft the enemies of the United States had crept to the frontier, and had incited the savages to this awful crime, in which the weakness of women and children were to be made the victims," and before this thought there welled up a flood of indignation such as previous conduct of the rebels had not stirred. Fortunately, and to the credit of humanity, the belief in rebel complicity in the massacre was unfounded.

To recite all of the causes which made this massacre possible involves a long story, for it cannot be attributed to any one circumstance, nor to the circumstances of any one period, though in a large measure it may be attributed to dissatisfaction growing out of the sale of the lands of the Santees under the treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux and the application of the moneys due the Indians under those treaties; but there were many other contributing causes.

Under the treaty of Traverse des Sioux the Sissetons and Wahpetons were to receive a down payment of $275,000 and under the treaty of Mendota the M'dewakantons and Wakpekutes were to receive in  cash the sum of $200,000. "Provided, that said sum shall be paid to the chiefs in such manner as they hereafter, in open council shall request, and as soon after the removal of the said Indians to the home set apart for them as the necessary appropriation therefor shall be made by congress." This was the express provision of both treaties. Congress appropriated the money by act of August 30, 1852, and the entire amount was paid over to Governor Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota territory, exofficio superintendent of Indian affairs for the Minnesota superintendency. Where so large a loaf was to be cut it may be depended upon that the traders were not idle. Members of these tribes owed the traders individual debts aggregating large amounts. Many of these debts were outlawed and many of the debtors were dead. But the traders held the tribe responsible for every cent of these debts. They had brought their accounts together and made up a schedule of them at Traverse des Sioux in 1851, and demanded that provision be made for the payment in the treaties, but the Indians would not consent to this, but instead demanded and secured the provision above set out which required the payment to them in open council.

At the same time that the Indians were signing the treaty of Traverse des Sioux, in the same apartment where the treaty was signed and upon a board placed across the head of a barrel, but a yard or so distant from the table by which the commissioners sat, Major Joseph R. Brown presided over another paper. The chiefs signed the treaty in duplicate and as fast as they appended their names to the treaty they were conducted to Brown and there they signed the other paper. Among others who obligingly appended their names to this second paper, as witnesses to the signatures of the Indians, were Dr. Thomas S. Williamson and Dr. Stephen R. Riggs. This second paper turned out to be what was afterward familiarly known as the "traders' paper" and was an acknowledgement on the part of the Indians of the justice of the claims of the traders, and that those claims of the traders should be paid out of the money due them under the treaty. The treaty and the paper were, signed on July 21, 1852.

Some weeks later the Indians learned that the traders had in their possession a paper ostensibly signed by the Sisseton and Wahpeton chiefs, of the character above set forth, and that to it was attached and an essential part of it, a schedule of the amounts due to each trader, which sums were acknowledged to be correct by the chiefs. Upon learning this the Sisseton and Wahpeton chiefs on December 10, 1851, made the following protest in writing to Governor Ramsey:

After signing said treaty we were asked by our traders and did sign a paper which we supposed at the time to be a copy of the treaty or some other paper necessary to the carrying out of the agreement between ourselves and our great father, the president of the United States, in the sale of our lands. We have since learned with surprise and astonishment that we were deceived, misled, imposed upon and wronged by our pretended friends and traders in relation to the purport and meaning of said paper. We most solemnly protest that we never intended by any act of ours to set aside any such sum of money for the payment of assumed debts against our people, nor do we believe it possible for our people to owe one-fourth part the amount thus assumed to be due to our creditors aforesaid.

At this time the Sissetons and Wahpetons gave a power of attorney to M. Sweetzer, a trader at Traverse des Sioux, authorizing him to take such action as he saw fit to protect their rights. This protest was transmitted to Governor Ramsey, by Nathaniel McLean, agent for the Sissetons and Wahpetons, on December 13, 1851, and on the 21st of January, 1852, Governor Ramsey transmitted the same to Luke Lea, commissioner of Indian affairs.

On December 8, 1851, previous to the filing of the formal protest mentioned, the head men of the Sissetons and Wahpetons, accompanied by Agent McLean, had called upon Governor Ramsey at his office in St. Paul, and Ramsey had read and explained the treaty to them and assured them that the money should be paid to them in the manner prescribed by the treaty, any paper or agreement to the contrary notwithstanding. By act of August 30, 1852, congress made the necessary appropriation of money to pay the Santees the sums due under the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota. A bitter contention had grown up during the summer between Sweetzer, the attorney for the Sissetons and Wahpetons, and the traders, and on September 8, 1852, the Indians gave to Governor Ramsey another power of attorney which they under stood revoked the traders' paper and the power given to Sweetzer, and which authorized him to collect the money from the government and disburse it as contemplated by the treaty.

On October 4, 1852, Luke Lea, commissioner of Indian affairs, transmitted to Governor Ramsey, the warrant of the United States for the sum of $593,050 to make the cash payments to the Santees under the terms of the two treaties. Lea gave Ramsey no specific instructions, but advised him to be "governed by a sound discretion in its disbursement." The law, however, was specific in its direction that money due under treaties should be paid in the precise manner indicated by the treaty regardless of any extrinsic agreements.

Ramsey resolved to disburse this money according to the schedule attached to the "traders' paper," but to settle his accounts with the department he must have a receipt from the Sissetons and Wahpetons for the full amount of money due them. To obtain this receipt he visited the Indians upon the Upper Minnesota and endeavored to exact it from them, but the Indians were obstinate and would not willingly sign. At the same time the Indians were to receive their annuity money and goods but this Ramsey retained in his possession and would not turn over to Agent McLean for disbursement. During this time Ramsey was in constant conferences with the interested traders and their attorney, Hugh Tyler.

Time passed and the situation among the Indians became desperate. While waiting for their annuities they were illy supplied with provisions and were soon at the point of starvation. Red Iron, a Wahpeton chief, in his desperation and conceiving that they were being imposed upon and cheated, organized a soldiers' lodge among his young men, but Governor Ramsey promptly "broke him of his chieftainship," appointed another chief in his stead and had the old man arrested and imprisoned. Red Iron then signed the receipt, and eleven others followed, only two of whom were the signers of the treaty, and the traders' paper. The annuities were then distributed. In reporting his action to Commissioner Lea, on January 15, 1853, Governor Ramsey says: "The payment of $250,000. part of the sum of $275,000 appropriated in the first clause of the fourth article, was made to the traders and halfbreed relatives of the Sissetons and Wahpetons, agreeably to the terms of a paper, marked Exhibit A (the trader's paper), executed by the chiefs of these bands immediately subsequent to the aforesaid treaty. The balance I retained for the subsistence and removal of these Indians.

"Much has been said of the character of that paper; but it has to my knowledge, only been assailed when the Indians, notoriously fickle, were under the control of persons having large pecuniary motives for invalidating it. From its face and from information gathered from responsible persons, I am satisfied that it was as equitable a distribution of this money as could have been effected, and that it was executed by the Indians with a full knowledge of what it contained."

Charges were made against Governor Ramsey for the maladministration of this money; these charges contained many definite specifications, but the essential feature was that he had conspired with the traders to defraud the Indians out of the moneys due them. At the request of the senate that the president investigate these charges, the president, on July 10, 1854. appointed Willis A. Gorman and Richard M. Young to take the testimony and report upon the same. They entered into an exhaustive investigation, taking voluminous testimony. This was in a considerable degree directed to ascertaining the validity of the traders' paper, for it was upon this that Governor Ramsey chiefly relied for his justification. Dr. Riggs was not a witness in this matter but Dr. Williamson, who if he had any interest at all was interested in the validity of the schedule, for there was an item in it of $800 to pay himself and Dr. Riggs for oxen killed by the Indians, testified that when he signed the paper as a witness to the signatures of the Indians, he supposed that it was a copy of the treaty and that there was no schedule of the sums claimed to be due attached to it at that time. That two hours later he was informed that it was not such copy but an acknowledgement of the Indians' debts. That he then went back and was permitted to examine the paper and he asked if its contents had been explained to the Indians when they signed it. General H. H. Sibley replied that it was not explained to them at that time, but that it had previously been explained to them. Dr. Williamson then asked to see the schedule of the debts, which was not vet attached to the paper, and was informed that the schedule had not yet been completed. Many Indian witnesses swore to the same state of facts and it was not disputed. There was no testimony to' indicate that Governor Ramsey received any pecuniary advantage from his conduct.

Governor Ramsey's defense was his reliance upon the validity of the traders' paper; the fact that the traders assisted very efficiently in securing the signing of the treaty by the Indians, and that without their assistance they perhaps could not have been induced to sign at all. That the money was intended from the beginning for the payment of the debts due the traders and for the halfbreeds. That had the money been paid to the Indians in open council, as stipulated in the treaty, it would have been improvidently frittered away and that the debts would not have been paid at all.

The same general state of facts was developed in relation to the payments to the M'dewakantons and the Wakpekutes as in the case of the Sissetons and Wahpetons.

The commissioners reported their proceedings, together with the documents and testimony in the case, and summarized their conclusions in ten findings, no one of which justified the action of Governor Ramsey. The material finding being that Governor Ramsey "was not warranted under the circumstances in paying over the money upon any authority derived from it, the traders' paper. "He was exonerated by a resolution of the senate. The bare recital of all of the facts, above set forth, which are the material matters in the case, show Governor Ramsey, notwithstanding the exoneration by the senate, morally reprehensible in his conduct. He was manifestly arbitrary, illegal and unjust in his action. Except to require the traders to make an exparte verification of their claims, he took no steps to have their accounts judicially examined and passed, though the Indians strenuously insisted that they were stuffed and exorbitant. The whole proceedings so far as Ramsey and Lea were concerned were loose and unbusinesslike. Instead of attempting to protect the interest of the Indians, which they were officially bound to do, their whole action looked to the protection of the traders at the Indians' expense. They must always bear a large share in the responsibility for the awful tragedy which followed.

A second cause of trouble was the result not of dishonesty but of bad judgment on the part of the new Republican administration, which came into power in the spring of 1861. The annuities due under the treaties had been paid promptly on the 1st of July each year from 1853, except the delayed payment of 1857, due to the Inkpaduta trouble. Early in the Lincoln administration Clark W. Thompson had been appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the Minnesota superintendency, and Thomas Galbraith, agent for the Santees. Major Galbraith made his home at the Upper agency, but administered the affairs of both agencies, having a sub-agent at Redwood. Colonel Thompson came out in July, 1861, to superintend the annuity payment, and he told them that while they had received their annuity for that year that the new administration proposed to treat them with great kindness and that they should have another bounty in the autumn. The Indians had many grievances to present and Kittle Paul, as the spokesman for the Upper bands made one of his most remarkable speeches in one of the councils held with Colonel Thompson in setting forth the wrongs they had suffered. Colonel Thompson, with the enthusiasm of inexperience, promised them that all of their wrongs should be promptly redressed. About the bounty they were to receive, he could not tell them where it was to come from, but it was very large and would  make them very glad.

The Sissetons and Wahpetons were by these promises encouraged to expect very great things and so in the autumn, when they should have been engaged in their fall hunt or in gathering their crops, they dropped everything and assembled at the agency to receive the promised goods. Low water in the Mississippi and Minnesota delayed the arrival and when the goods did come they amounted to only $2.50 per capita. The result was that many of the Indians were left destitute at the beginning of winter and the agent was compelled to feed more than 1,000 of them all winter, who but for the mistake of the Indian department would have been self supporting. The assistance which the agent could give was insufficient and there was great and needless suffering. This naturally was an added source of discontent.

The Lower Indians would not receive the pittance which Thompson brought up in the autumn of 1861 until informed where the money came from and Thompson was compelled to tell them that it was deducted from the annuity money due them the next summer. This confession was a rich morsel for the recently displaced Democratic Indian officials. Judge Flandrau had resigned to become a supreme judge and was followed as agent by Major Joseph R. Brown, in 1857, and all of the employes about the reservation as well as most of the traders were Democrats. They had been displaced by the spoils system when Lincoln came in and most of them remained in the vicinity of the reservation and they were not slow to fill the minds of the Indians with the theory that the Republicans proposed to take away from them the cash annuity to which the treaties entitled them, and substitute payment in goods. This theory of bad faith upon the part of the Republicans was pressed with all the ardor of which defeated politicians are capable and was the cause of great exasperation on the part of the Indians, who became very badly affected toward the government. The criticisms too, of these Democratic people, who so largely influenced the Indian mind upon the Republican policy in the conduct of the war in the south, led the Santees to believe the government was extremely weak and likely at any day to be overthrown. The disasters to the Union arms in the south was brought to their attention, and one defeat after another justified the belief among the savages that the south was likely to prevail at an early date. This view was magnified by the action of Major Galbraith, in raising a company of soldiers about the reservation, many of them halfbreeds, whom he proposed to tender to the service of the general government. The Indians pointed to this action as the last evidence of the breaking down of the government. "It certainly must be pressed to the limit if it was compelled to come out to the wilderness and recruit halfbreeds to fight its battles." So they reasoned and as the restrictions of the reservation galled upon men who hitherto had possessed the right of freemen to go where they would, the only restriction upon them being their power to fight their way, even from ocean to ocean, they rapidly reached the conclusion that happiness for them alone depended upon the recovery of their lands. That the propitious moment to strike had come was daily becoming the conviction of the sagacious leaders.

There was still another reason why the outbreak was precipitated at this time. The Mix treaty of 1858 had been negotiated under the advice of Little Crow and the senate had authorized the sale of the portion of the Lower reservation north of the river. Little Crow had managed this matter and sanctioned the sale still further limiting the land rights of the Lower bands and for this reason he had become exceedingly unpopular with a large faction of his people." So unpopular indeed that he had appealed to the country for support. A red hot political campaign had followed and the election occurred in a great council held on Sunday, August 3d. Little Crow, Traveling Hail and Big Eagle were candidates for the chieftainship and Little Crow was overwhelmingly defeated and Traveling Hail elevated to the chieftainship which had been occupied by the Little Crow dynasty for more than a century. Smarting under this humiliating defeat Little Crow determined to take such action as would restore him to the esteem and confidence of his people and retain for himself the hereditary chieftainship, the election to the contrary notwithstanding. In no other way could he accomplish this result so certainly and so satisfactorily as In leading them in a mighty contest against the whites and for the recovery of their lost estates. This was the situation when came the time for the payment in the summer of 1862. July 1st was the appointed time, but the money did not come. The fact was that the Indian department, realizing the great blunder it had made the previous fall in making the advance payment of goods from the annuity money for 1862, did not dare approach the Indians until congress had made an appropriation to reimburse the funds so that the entire amount could be brought out. The hands of congress, however, were more than full in maintaining its defeated armies and its attention could not be obtained at once to provide a paltry $20,000 for a frontier tribe of Indians when millions were involved for the preservation of the Union; so the Indians had to wait.

As early as June, 1862, the Lower bands had organized a soldiers' lodge, the ostensible object being to keep the traders from appropriating the annuities in payment of their debts. Whether or not this organization from the beginning; had a deeper significance cannot be definitely determined, but in any event its existence was the center of the hostile movement during the waiting days and the aggressive mover in the outbreak when it came. It may be said that martial law prevailed in the camps of the Lower bands from June.

At this time Fort Ridgely, situated upon the east side of the Minnesota River, thirteen miles below the Lower, or Redwood agency, which was on the west side of the river, was under the command of Captain John F. Marsh of Company B, Fifth Minnesota volunteer infantry. He had eighty-five men in the garrison. Lieutenant T. J. Sheean of Company C of the same regiment was also tributary to that garrison with fifty men. It appears that for a period in the spring of 1862 there were no soldiers at the fort at all, but this may be a mistake; at any rate on the 2d of June Dr. Williamson, the missionary, had received information from Cloudman and Scarlet Feather, that five parties of Yanktonais, back on Wakpa Peh (Elm River, Brown county, South Dakota), one of which bands was under the lead of a son of Inkpaduta's, had started to steal horses. That they expected large accessions to their numbers from the Tetons and that they proposed to come down to attend the payment and compel the Sissetons and Wahpetons to pay for the lands claimed by them, which had been sold to the government under the treaty of 1851, and that they threatened that if payment was not made to them that they would kill all of the Indians who dress like white men and burn their houses. Dr. Williamson was not alarmed but thought it would be wise to have a sufficient number of soldiers present to preserve order. Major Galbraith was absent in St. Paul at the time but promptly upon his return on the 14th of June he took the matter up and applied to Colonel Thompson for at least 150 soldiers to be present at the payment. Dr. Williamson had also suggested that the Christian Indians be armed for their own defence, but it does not appear that any action was taken to do this. Colonel Thompson on the same day applied to Governor Ramsey for 150 troops to attend the payment and it appears that the company of Captain Marsh and the detachment of Company C were sent out to Ridgely upon the order of the governor. The record, however, upon this point is not conclusive, but the fact remains that they were there when the trouble came on. The Yanktonais did come down to the payment, but as the money did not reach there it does not appear that they were especially offensive. Lieutenant Sheean, about the 1st of July went to Yellow Medicine.

On July 27th Major Galbraith, having secured information that Inkpaduta and his followers were encamped back on the Yellow Medicine River, ordered Lieutenant Sheean to take a squad of ten or twelve men, mounted, and with at least nine days' rations, to proceed before daylight, without the knowledge of the Indians, and to "take said Inkpaduta and all of the Indian soldiers with him, prisoners, alive if possible and deliver them at the agency. If they resist I advise that they be shot. While I recommend prompt and vigorous action to bring these thieves, murderers and villians to justice, dead or alive, yet I  advise prudence and extreme caution."

Lieutenant Sheean moved with the utmost secrecy but he could not escape the vigilance of the friends and relatives of Inkpaduta, who moving with greater directness and celerity, being perfectly familiar with the situation while Lieutenant Sheean was a stranger to it, the spies reached the camp first and sent Inkpaduta flying toward the western wilds. Sheean followed him to Lake Benton when he gave up the chase and returned to the agency where he arrived on the evening of the 2d of August

About the agency and clamorous for their money and for supplies were 4,000 Sissetons and Wahpetons and 1,000 Yanktonais, who had been there since early in July. They were utterly destitute of anything to eat, and were dependent upon the agent to feed them. Now Agent Galbraith had barely provisions enough to feed them during the regular payment, having exhausted his stores in keeping them from starving the previous winter. While the Indians complained bitterly of their starving condition the agent held back the provisions until the last moment, and advised them to go back to their homes and hunt until he sent for them"' but it was a hundred miles to their homes and further still to the buffalo ranges and they had nothing to eat enroute; besides they could sec no good reason why they should tramp 200 miles in the heat of summer for nothing. There was $10,000 worth of annuity goods, due them under the treaty, lying in the warehouse, and if they could not have their money they could see no reason why they should not have the goods. They held a council upon the subject and concluded that as the goods were theirs there could be no great harm if they took them. Consequently early on the morning of August 4th they sent down 400 armed and mounted men who surrounded the troops, while 150 others, armed with axes, hewed down the door of the warehouse and helped themselves to 100 sacks of flour. Lieutenant Sheean at this time had 100 men and two mountain howitzers and was encamped in full view of the warehouse and but 500 feet distant. At first thrown into a panic by the unexpected conduct of the Indians,  the troops rallied and came to the assistance of the agent and took possession of the warehouse. The Indians stood about with their guns cocked and leveled but not a shot was fired. Agent Galbraith signified that he would like to have a council with them and they assented. They said if he would issue plenty of pork and flour and issue the annuity goods the next day they would go away. He told them he would give them enough to eat for two days and to send down the chiefs and headmen and he would hold a council with them. To this they assented and at once went to breakfast. Captain Marsh was sent for and arrived from Fort Ridgely that night. It was agreed that he was to issue the annuity goods and sufficient provisions to enable the Indians to go home and watch their fields at Big Stone and to remain here until they were sent for. To this they agreed and by the 12th were all at home and the men prepared to start off on a buffalo hunt. But none of the insubordinate Indians who had attacked the warehouse had been punished for their conduct and the knowledge of this fact passed through all of the bands and increased the contempt of all of the Indians for the authority of the United States, and they in consequence became insufferably insolent."

These were the circumstances preceeding the 18th of August, 1862, when the outbreak began. It will be seen that the situation was tense. The annuity money had not arrived and the Indians believed it never would come. The authority of the government was despised. Inkpaduta five years before had defied authority, committed the most horrible crimes, and the government had made only the most weak and ineffectual effort to punish him. The Sissetons had defied the troops and broken into the warehouse and had been rewarded and not punished for what they had done. The government had a terrible war on its hands and its armies were being defeated in every engagement. It was so hard up for troops that it accepted the services of the halfbreeds. If ever they were to recover their lands and their old time freedom of action now was the time. Only the lighting of the first spark was required to set off the conflagration. Little Crow, at the Lower agency, was at the head of the malcontents, but it was not his intention to take any action as long as there was hope of the annuity money's coming. He proposed to fasten upon that first and then fire and blood, the tomahawk and the scalping knife were to have their sway. An incident unforeseen precipitated the conflict before the money came.

 

 

CHAPTER XXVI

On Sunday, the 17th of August, 1862, four young M'dewakantons named Sungigina (Yellow Tail Feather), Kaomdeniyeyena (He who makes the Scattering), Nagiwicakte (A Killer of Souls), were hunting in the neighborhood of Acton, in Beeker county, about forty miles northeast of the Lower agency. These young men belonged to the band of Little Six. Shortly after noon of that day they appeared at the house of a farmer named Robinson Jones and demanded food. Jones refused to feed them as his wife was away from home, at the residence of her son-in-law, Howard Bakers, less than a mile away. They became angry and boisterous and fearing violence from them Jones took his children, a little boy and girl, and also went to Baker's, but leaving at his own home a girl of 16 and a boy of 12, who were living there but were not related to him. The Indians followed him over to Baker's. There were assembled at Baker's besides Baker and his wife and infant child, Jones, wife and two children and Mr. Webster and his wife. After some time the Indians proposed that they engage in target shooting. The three white men consented and all of them discharged their guns. One of them proposed a trade with Baker and they traded guns, the Indian paying Baker $3 as the difference in the value of the guns. All of them began to reload their guns but the Indians finished first and immediately one of them shot Jones. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Baker were standing in the door and they leveled their guns at the women, but Mr. Baker seeing the movement, sprang in front of the gun and fell dead from the bullet intended for his wife. Mrs. Baker had her infant in her arms and thus seeing her father and husband murdered fainted and fortunately fell through a trap door into the cellar and so escaped. Mrs. Jones and Mr. Webster, however, were killed. Mrs. Webster was lying in their covered wagon while this tragedy was progressing and was not discovered nor disturbed, nor did they harm the two small children of Jones, though they were aware of their presence. They then returned to Jones' house and killed and scalped the girl, but did not touch the little boy, who was lying upon the bed, a silent witness to the fate of his sister. Nothing in the way of property was disturbed, but hastening to the home of another settler nearby they took a span of horses which stood harnessed in the stable, and attaching them to a wagon, drove with great speed in the direction of the Lower agency. Mrs. Baker, with her child and her little brother and sister reached a neighboring settlement and gave the alarm and next day a party from Forest City, twelve miles north, came down and buried the dead. Thus began the great massacre. The murderers reached Little Six's village eight miles above the Lower Agency that night and told what they had done.

The story which they brought threw the Indians into the greatest excitement. Little Six, who had only come into his inheritance by the death of his father, Shakopee the second, a few weeks before, was the most incendiary of the tribe. He hastened the boys to the camp of Little Crow, two miles above the agency. The old chief sat up in bed to hear their story. He grasped the situation in a twinkling. "The time has come," he said. "War is declared. Blood has been shed; the payment will be stopped. The whites will take a terrible vengeance because the women were killed." A council was assembled at once. Wapasha, Wacouta and Big Eagle stood for peace, but they went down before the storm of the hostiles. "Kill the whites; kill the cut hairs, who will not join us," was the slogan. Little Crow gave orders to attack the agency at sunrise and to kill the traders. When the Indians asked him for advice he would answer sneeringly: "Go to your new chief, Traveling Hail," but nevertheless his hand was in everything. Parties formed and dashed away in the darkness to rally the braves. The women began to run bullets and the men to clean their guns. War was on.

Of all the lifelong friends of Little Crow's among the white settlers and employes at the agency, Little Crow had the decency to give warning to but two of them before the blow fell and to these only at the last moment and the general massacre had commenced before they got away. These favored two were Philander Prescott, the government interpreter, and the Rev. S. D. Hinman, the Episcopal missionary. The whites had not the slightest suspicion of the coming storm. Everything appeared to be serene. It was near midnight on the evening of the 17th that the decision was reached to begin the general massacre the next morning and the runners were started to the outlying camps. Some of these were forty miles away, but by sunrise they had assembled 250 or more warriors. Little Crow came to Messrs. Prescott and Hinman and told them that safety lay only in instant flight.

There were three trading stores near the agency, owned by Nathan Myrick, Louis Robert and William H. Forbes. James W. Lynde was Nathan Myrick's manager. He was married to a Dakota wife and was a careful student of their history, habits and customs. He had been one of the leaders of the opposition to the government's Indian policy and of its war policy and had constantly declaimed upon the weakness of the government, and it is highly probable that to him more than to any other was due the belief of the Indians that the government was tottering to ruin and in consequence the propitious time had come to drive out the whites. There is no question that Lynde was a loyal citizen, but he had allowed political prejudice to destroy his good judgment and it appears to have been a marked example of the irony of fate that he should have fallen the first victim of the savage fury which he had so industriously but unconsciously kindled. He fell from the first shot fired, at the door of Myrick's store. While Mr. Hinman was hitching his horse the massacre began. Fortunately his wife was visiting in Faribault. John Lamb, a teamster, was shot down near him. The Indians entered the government stables and began to take out the horses. A. H. Wagner, the faithful government farmer, entered the stable to expostulate with them when Mr. Hinman heard Little Crow order the Indians to shoot. Mr. Hinman waited for no further evidence but was soon across the Minnesota River. Philander Prescott, nearly 70 years of age, having lived forty-five years with these Indians and married to one of them, left his Indian family, knowing they would be safe, and started for the fort. He had proceeded several miles when he was overtaken. He stopped to reason with his murderers, telling of his long association with the tribe and the kindnesses he had shown them, but they said they could do nothing for him, as all white men must perish. J. C. Dickinson, the keeper of the government boarding house, and about forty others from the immediate vicinity of the agency, escaped to the fort. Dr. Philander P. Humphrey, with his sick wife and three children, started to walk the thirteen miles to the fort but after crossing the river and reaching the Magner house, four miles from the ferry, Mrs. Humphrey was unable to go further and they stopped to rest. The little boy, 12 years of age, was sent to the spring for water, and while he was absent the savages attacked the house, killed all of the inmates and set fire to the building. The boy escaped to the fort.

It is not the part of this paper to relate all of the horrors pertaining to this massacre. Nothing that savage ingenuity could devise in the way of fiendish destruction of life was omitted to be done. Aside from Mr. Hinman, who was warned in time to get beyond the reach of the murderers, only one white man was allowed to escape who came within the power of the monsters. This man was George Spencer, manager for William Forbes. When the Indians attacked Forbes' store at sunrise on that dreadful day, Spencer sought safety by attempting to reach the upper story of the building, but on the stairway he was shot and severely wounded. The Indians stopped to plunder the store. Spencer lying upon his bed heard the boasts and threats of the Indians and among other things their intention of burning the building when the goods had been removed. Out of the confusion he heard a familiar voice calling his name. It was Wakinyatawa (His Thunder), chief soldier of Little Crow's band, and the close friend of Spencer. Spencer heard his friend informed that he was up stairs and then he heard them mounting the stairs. "Kill him," shouted the crowd, and His Thunder answered, "I will protect him or die with him." The savages said no more and His Thunder came into the chamber and conducted the wounded friend down through the mob in the store, and taking him outside, placed him in a wagon and told two squaws to take him to his lodge, about four miles away, and take care of him. Enroute the squaws were several times stopped by war parties who asked what they were doing with Spencer. "He is His Thunder's friend," was the invariable response and it proved a passport to him and saved his life.

One of the most heroic circumstances among the many acts of heroism among the whites that day was the conduct of Martelle, the ferryman across the Minnesota upon the road from the agency to the fort. He refused to leave his post as long as there were any whites upon the west side of the river seeking safety.

News of the outbreak reached Fort Ridgely at 8 o'clock in the morning of August 18th and. Captain Marsh at once selected forty-five of his men to accompany him to the agency, leaving the balance, forty men, under Lieutenant T. F. Gere to defend the fort. By 9 o'clock Captain Marsh set out with his intrepid little band. On the march they passed the bodies of ten victims of the massacre. On reaching the ferry not an Indian was in sight except one upon the west bank who tried to induce the soldiers to cross over. The bottom was covered with brush and tall grass and Captain Marsh was suspicious of the presence of Indians by the disturbed condition of the water of the river and floating grass upon it, as well as by the presence of a considerable number of ponies without riders. While he waited, Indians in great numbers sprang from the grass about them and opened a deadly fire. Half of the squad fell dead instantly. The remainder finding themselves surrounded made a desperate fight, many of them in hand to hand encounters, but they were overcome by superior numbers and but fifteen lived to return to the fort. Captain Marsh was among those who fell. Lieutenant Sheean of Company C, with his force of fifty men, had on the 17th started for Fort Ripley, but upon learning of the outbreak Captain Marsh had dispatched a courier to order him back and he was overtaken near Glencoe and that night reached Fort Ridgely to find his superior officer dead and himself in command of the garrison. On Sunday, the 17th, Major Galbraith had started to St. Paul with his company of Renville Rangers, recruited about the reservations and chiefly halfbreeds, and on the evening of the 18th just as he was arriving at St. Peter with his men, he was overtaken by a courier who informed him of the outbreak. He immediately turned about and hastened to Fort Ridgely where he arrived on the 19th. A few of the halfbreeds of the rangers deserted to the Indians, but most of them remained loyal and rendered good service. Fort Ridgely on the 19th, therefore, had fifty-five members of Company B. fifty of Company C, and forty-five of the Renville Rangers, making a total effective force of 150 men, besides a considerable number of refugees, including three men who arrived on the 18th' with the long delayed annuity money. Sergeant Jones of the regular artillery was also at the post, which was equipped with several small guns.

All day of the 18th the massacre kept up on the lower reservation. Every where the braves galloped up and down the land, murdering, scalping, burning, making captives, outraging women, braining children, plundering stores, destroying crops. No house in the valley was left unvisited, no household visited was spared. Finally, when death and distruction was strewn broadcast throughout all of that section Little Crow bethought him of the Upper and Western tribes and fleet runners were despatched to call to the work all of the Dakotas. In an incredibly short time Pahatka had reached the Upper agency. Then came the manifestation of the value of the work accomplished by the missionaries during the long years of darkness and discouragement. Then it was that the seed of their planting blossomed into the wholesome fruit. Instantly the "Cuthairs," the Christian Indians, were alert. Simon, Little Paul, John Otherday, Lorenzo Lawrence- and all of that noble band; Solomon Twostars, Gabriel Renville, men who in that awful hour won undying fame for themselves and blazoned forth the glory of the religion of Jesus Christ. In perfect security and absolute confidence the missionaries and the agency employes were about their accustomed tasks when the Christians came to them and warned them of the awful peril in which their lives were placed. The Lower reservation was ablaze with rapine and murder. The wild young men of the Upper bands had been called into the bloody work. The word had gone up to the wild tribes of the west that no white man was to be spared. Away from their farms and snug homes sped the Christian Indians and in an hour a camp was formed and armed guards patroled about the homes of the missionaries; guards of Dakota blood whose swarthy faces were set with the determination to protect their good white neighbors from the savage vengeance of their own people even at the cost of their property and their lives. Like magic the wild and discordant elements came stealthily in; before midnight the stores under the bluff on the Yellow Medicine were sacked and the keepers massacred, strong liquor was found in the stocks and the revelry of Bacchus followed. In and out among the savage revelers moved the Christian Dakotas and soon conviction came upon them that the only safety for their white friends lay in flight. To John Otherday, the intrepid rescuer of Abbie Gardner, was entrusted the agency people and the refugees who had gathered there, sixty-two souls in all, and as the first rays of dawn lighted up that August morning, while the roar of the revelry still came up from the stores on the bottom and from the fast augmenting camp of hostile and excited Dakotas on the hill, he moved off to the east with his white friends, crossed the Minnesota and skillfully covering the trail bore them away to safety in the lands of the east, and when after a weary journey he landed them safely upon the lower Minnesota, without rest or delay he hurried back to the scene of the massacre to save more lives and assist in bringing the miscreants to justice.

When John went to the agency, Simon, Paul, Solomon, Lorenzo, the Renvilles and others turned their attention to the safety of the missionaries, who it will be recalled lived some distance apart and must be removed in two parties. The Riggs were taken to an island in the Minnesota and secreted there until a more favorable opportunity for escape presented itself. In the haste a bag of provisions prepared by Mrs. Riggs was forgotten and when morning came they found themselves hidden in the brush of the island and without a morsel to cat, but they were not forgotten. Zoe, a Christian woman, had called at Hazelwood in the morning and finding the sack of provisions, divined the necessity for it, and brought it to the refugees upon the island. At noon they effected communication with the Williamsons, who were also refugees. With the morning the fanatic and drink crazed savages, many of them from the lower reservation and some of them Yanktonais from the west, left the stores to attack the agency. Soon the provisions were thrown out; goods destroyed, scattered to the winds, thrown into the cistern, then up through the settlement of Christian farmers, and to the missions burning, plundering, filled with the very zeal of the evil one. On flew the messengers to the west. At Lac qui Parle, Amos Huggins, the son of the missionary, himself the government teacher, fell the first victim: on to the Sissetons at Lake Big Stone where Mr. Loth of St. Paul and four men fell before their relentless fury. On to the Yanktonais, who came over to take council with the Sissetons and on to the Tetons of the Missouri, who wisely decided that it was not their affair.

Everywhere went marauding parties, and no settlement, however remote, from Glencoe to Spirit Lake and on to Sioux Falls escaped. By the afternoon of the 20th of August the devastation of the frontier was complete and with the exception of a few marauding parties who were still upon their missions to outlying settlements the great body of the Lower bands, augmented by the uncontrollable young men from the Upper agency and by Inkpaduta's disreputables, were assembled at Little Crow's. "Now to take Fort Ridgely, and on through the settlements to the Mississippi," was the command from Little Crow, and the young warriors took up the cry and rushed pell mell for the fort. At 3 o'clock that afternoon the first attack was made. It came as a surprise to the garrison, the first intimation of it being from a volley of musketry poured into the buildings. Sergeant Jones brought his guns into position and to his horror found that they bad been spiked by the deserters from the Rangers, but he soon had the vents open and the pieces in action. The Indians lay in the ravines surrounding the fort, hid in the outbuildings and from the clumps of bushes and for three hours kept up the siege. Three soldiers in the fort had been killed and eight others wounded. The Dakotas suffered no casualties. The next morning the attack was renewed for about one hour without loss on either side and again that afternoon for another hour the Dakotas poured their fire into the fort without effect. Little Crow then withdrew all of his force and they retired to his camp above the agency where new and elaborate plans were laid for their future course. The importance of taking the fort was fully realized and that it must he done at once before recruits arrived. It was decided to concentrate all of the forces upon it the next day at noon and keep up the siege until the post surrendered. Good Thunder, Big Eagle and Mankato were the chief leaders in battle, Little Crow staying back where he could direct the general movement. They of course were perfectly familiar with the arrangements about the fort, which was merely a collection of buildings, meant as a camp and a depot for supplies but not for defense, and they too knew a good deal of the white man's way of fighting, learned in the war of 1812. All of this knowledge they brought into play, coupled with Indian cunning, and the fight was kept up from noon until 7 o'clock in the evening, when Little Crow becoming convinced that the white force was much larger than he had believed, and too, disconcerted by the bellow and the execution of the cannon, they withdrew and gave up the hope of reducing the place. The white loss was one man killed and seven wounded. The Indian loss was slight. There were 800 Dakotas engaged in this last attack upon Fort Ridgely. It was now determined to make an attack by all of the forces upon New Ulm and early in the morning the braves were dispatched in that direction and by 9:30 were concentrated before that town. The place was defended by about 250 men under Judge Flandrau. They were volunteer citizens gathered up at LeSueur, St. Peter, South Bend and Mankato and there were from i,2co to 1,500 noncombatants in the town. On the evening of the 20th a marauding party of about 100 Indians had attacked the town, and killed several citizens and burned a number of buildings, but they had been repulsed, and since that time a barricade had been erected in the center of the town and everything was in much better shape for resistance. The Indians brought down to this second attack upon New Ulm about 650 fighting men. Their approach from the vicinity of Fort Ridgely sixteen miles up the Minnesota was watched by the citizens and the little volunteer garrison at New Ulm, being marked by column after column of smoke, as they burned farm houses and stacks along the way. At 9:30 they appeared in force upon both sides of the river. Judge Flandrau determined to meet them upon the open prairie just west of the town. His. volunteers were armed, generally, with shot guns, but among the men were thirty or forty squirrel rifles. The Indians were generally armed with good rifles. Judge Flandrau marched out his men by companies in a long line of battle with wide intervals between them covering the whole west front of the town. "Down came the Indians, in the bright sunlight, galloping, running, yelling and gesticulating in the most fiendish manner." The shortrange shot guns could not check them until their rifle fire began to tell upon the lines. They deployed to the right and left until they covered the entire front and then charged. Flandrau fell back before them into the town, instead or taking possession of the outlying buildings, in which the Indians at once secured shelter. The volunteers soon got into the barricaded portion and the Indians instead of charging into the town, by which manner Judge Flandrau says they probably would have captured it at once, surrounded the village and getting around to the side from which a strong wind was blowing began to fire it there. The flames swept into the town but did not reach the barricade and the volunteers soon rallied and kept the enemy in the outskirts. There were a number of brick buildings outside of the barricade which the whites kept possession of and loopholing them, were enabled to keep the Indians at bay. Near the village was an old windmill which was taken possession of and held by a company of thirty men calling themselves the LeSueur Tigers, who made a gallant fight. In the first ninety minutes Flandrau lost sixty men, only ten of whom were killed, however. By 2 o'clock in the afternoon the enemy had a great conflagration going which seemed certain to sweep the barricade and the situation was desperate indeed. At this time, Judge Flandrau with fifty volunteers made a sally which was sublimely heroic and which succeeded in driving the Indians from the lower town and gave the whites command of the burning district. Flandrau at once burned all of the remaining buildings outside of the barricade on that side and without the shelter of these buildings the Indians deemed the siege hopeless. The fight was kept up until dark and under the cover of night the whites dug a system of rifle pits outside of the barricade which increased their advantage, but in the morning the Indians were gone. The whites lost fourteen killed and sixty wounded. The loss of the Indians was about equal to theirs. One hundred ninety buildings were burned in the village, many of them substantial and valuable. The defeated Indians at once returned to Little Crow's where another council was held.

 

CHAPTER XXVII

 

The missionaries we left in hiding on the Minnesota near the Upper agency at noon on the 19th. That night they all came together on the north side of the Minnesota and started upon a perilous journey in the direction of Fort Ridgely under the guidance of Andrew Hunter, a son-in-law of Dr. Williamson's. They reached a point near the fort after nightfall on the 22d when Lieutenant Sheean was sending up rockets as a sign of distress to any recruits which might have been sent into that vicinity. Andrew crept into the fort, but Lieutenant Sheean was unable to send out soldiers to escort the party in and advised them to go across the country toward the lower Minnesota. They adopted that advice and were providentially conducted in safety to Henderson.

At daybreak on the morning of August 19th, just twenty-four hours from the time of the first attack at the agency, the news of the outbreak was delivered to Governor Ramsey at St. Paul. Considering there was no telegraphic communication, this transmission of the news was exceedingly quick. Without a moment's delay Governor Ramsey started for the home of Henry H. Sibley at the mouth of the Minnesota River and requested him to accept the command of such forces as could be rallied to check the advance and punish the Indians. He accepted the position with the rank of colonel in the state militia. On the 20th Colonel Sibley started for the front with four companies of the Sixth Minnesota volunteer infantry which was being recruited at Fort Snelling for the civil war. On the 24th at St. Peter his force was augmented by 200 volunteers under William J. Cullen, who had been superintendent of Indian affairs for the Minnesota superintendency, during the Buchanan administration. This force was known as the Cullen guard. On the same day Colonel Sam McPhail joined him with 100 mounted men and six companies of infantry. These additions brought the command up to 1,400 men. They were inexperienced, badly armed and such as were mounted at all, upon raw undisciplined horses. The force moved out from St. Peter on the 26th, the cavalry pushing ahead, and reaching Fort Ridgely on the morning of the 27th. The infantry arrived there on the 28th. In the next three days Captain Sterritt arrived with forty-seven men and Colonel William R. Marshall with several companies of the Seventh Minnesota.

On August 31st Major Joseph R. Brown was sent out by Colonel Sibley with one company of the Sixth under Captain Grant and seventy men of the Cullen Guard under Captain Anderson, with instructions to go to the Lower agency and to visit the country as far north as Beaver Creek to bury the dead and discover the position of the enemy. That day they found and buried sixteen corpses and camped on the Minnesota bottom opposite the agency. In the morning Major Brown left the main command on the east side of the river, while he went across to the agency with a detachment and looked over the ground about there and Little Crow's village and came to the conclusion that no Indians had been about there for four days, and that with heavy trains of goods they had gone to Yellow Medicine. Having satisfied himself on these points, Major Brown recrossed the Minnesota and at sunset rejoined Captain Grant who had gone into camp near the upper timber of the Birch Coule, three miles from the agency. The two detachments had buried that day fifty-four massacred persons. The camp that night was made on the smooth prairie about 600 feet back from the timber with the wagons parked around the camp and the horses tied to the wagons. It was about twelve miles from Fort Ridgely.

After the battle at New Ulm on the 23rd the Indians as indicated, went back on Sunday the 24th to Little Crow's, where after a council it was decided to move up toward the Yellow Medicine, which was accordingly done. This move accomplished with all of their property, Little Crow set off with a strong party to harrass the settlements northeast of the agency about Forest City and Hutchinson, and Big Eagle and Mankato determined to go back and make another attack upon New Ulm upon their own responsibility. On the afternoon of the 1st of September, within half an hour after Brown retired from his reconnoisance at Little Crow's and in that vicinity, the advance of Big Eagle's force was at Little Crow's camp, from whence, looking across the river, they could see Grant's force to the north come out of the Beaver Creek timber going eastward, and at the same time they, discovered "sign" that white men had been at Little Crow's but a short time before, and concluded that the men across the river were the same who had been at the agency. As a matter of fact Major Brown and his detachment was at that moment at the crossing of the Minnesota, not more than a mile away. Finding the recent presence of the soldiers the Indians waited until all of their force came up. Learning of the presence of so small a body of soldiers the expedition to New Ulm was immediately given up and it was determined to remain in the vicinity and attack the soldiers' camp, which they felt confident they could take. Five of the best scouts were sent across the river to follow the movements of the soldiers. They returned shortly after sun down and reported that they had gone into camp at the head of Birch Coulee. The presence of Brown's detachment escaped the notice of the scouts who thought that there were only about seventy-five men in the camp. There were 200 warriors so the Indians felt perfectly sure of making a capture. There were four chiefs with their bands in the party; Big Eagle's, Red Legs', Grey Bird's and Mankato's. They were armed with double barrelled shotguns loaded with buckshot and trader's balls. In addition to the warriors of the Lower bands present there were many young Indians from the Upper tribes, some who had conic to take a hand in whatever mischief was going and some simply to avoid trouble and keep on good terms with the hostiles, to enable them to assist the white captives. Among the latter were Joseph LaFrambois, Charles Crawford, Thomas A. Robertson, and many other well known men.

Under the cover of nightfall the Indians went over and  surrounded the camp, proposing to attack it at daybreak. When the camp was thoroughly surrounded the women came over and set up a camp near by and cooked for the warriors and kept them supplied with food and drink.

At the first sign of dawn the attack began. The camp was wholly unprepared for it. Every one sprang to their feet and consequently many fell instantly. The horses were shot down at the first fire and made some protection and the men fought from behind them. After the soldiers got settled to business the fire from their rifles soon drove the Indians to the shelter of the woods. As soon as they withdrew the soldiers began to excavate rifle pits and after that but one man was killed and two wounded. The fire was kept up on both sides until 2 o'clock that afternoon when the report of a cannon brought joy to the hearts of the beleagured soldiers. From remarks made by the Indians within their hearing the soldiers learned that the reinforcements were but a small force, that they had halted and that the Indians believed that they could cut them off. The weather was exceedingly hot and the soldiers in the camp were almost perishing from thirst. Hour after hour passed but no relief came. The day passed into night and all night they lay in suspense. On the morning of the 3d they learned from the Indians that new recruits had arrived, and that the game was up. The fact was that on the 2d, learning that there was righting in the vicinity of Birch Coule, Sibley had ordered McPhail with fifty cavalry and three companies of infantry, a six-pounder and a field piece to reinforce Brown. He had proceeded until within a couple of miles of the beleagured camp at Birch Coule when he discharged the cannon to apprise them of his approach. The Indians at that moment were prepared to charge the camp and it is likely if they had done so they would have carried it. This was Mankato's plan from the beginning but Big Eagle did not wish to expose his men to unnecessary danger. The discharge of the cannon averted their attention and Mankato with his band were detached and went to meet McPhail. McPhail had about 300 men and artillery, but he dared not advance but sent to the fort for reinforcements. Sibley himself came out with a large body of men reaching McPhail's camp at midnight. The Indians then withdrew and went back to Yellow Medicine where Little Crow, having returned from his raid to the northeast where he massacred several citizens, joined with those who had been at Birch Coule. At the battle of Birch Coule there were fourteen killed and twenty-six wounded. The Indians lost but two killed and five or six wounded. 

It was the 28th of August when the Lower Indians first reached Yellow Medicine and went into camp, on the east side of the creek near the site of Hazelwood mission. They had in their possession 270 captives 104 of whom were white women and children.  During the ten days which had elapsed the Upper Indians had been variously occupied. Most of the Christians, as a matter of safety, had put on Indian dress and had in every way exerted themselves to save the whites. As late as September nth Simon arrived at Fort Ridgely with a German woman and her child whom he had protected and conducted to safety. The young men had in a large measure thrown in their lot with the hostiles. Luckily for the Sissetons, after the attack on the warehouse on August 4th they had returned to Big Stone and went out onto the Sheyenne for a buffalo hunt, and so during the period of the greatest excitement were beyond the zone of its influence. When the runners from Little Crow reached them, Standing Buffalo and Wanatan, the head chiefs, came down to see what was going on, but left their people out on the prairie. When the Lower bands arrived at Yellow Medicine on the 28th immediately after pitching their lodges they made a demonstration against the Upper Indians, several hundred of the mounted warriors howling and yelling about, brandishing arms and declaring that unless they joined the camp of the Lower Dakotas that their tipis would be cut up and their property destroyed and that they would he otherwise punished. The Upper men quickly assembled, armed with guns, knives, pitchforks and everything they could lay their hands upon in the form of defensive weapons, and instantly pitched a camp and organized a soldiers' lodge and placed themselves upon a military footing. Strong speeches were made and it was determined to take offensive measures to let Little Crow understand that he could not run roughshod over the Upper bands. The next morning the hostiles came again in force to put their threats into execution but observing the soldiers' lodge they withdrew. The friendlies then armed, went to the hostiles' camp and demanded the property of the halfbreeds and compelled them to give it up and restore it to the owners. Little Paul at this time made his remarkable speech in which he first demanded that the captives be turned over to him that he might restore them to their friends.

After the return of the two war parties, which occurred on the night of the 3d of September, councils were frequent in the camps and the band of the friendlies was constantly augmented in number and the hostiles lost in a corresponding degree. On the 8th both camps moved up the river several miles. At this time a correspondence was entered into between General Sibley and Little Crow, the general's first interest of course being to rescue the prisoners alive. He left a message upon the battle field of Birch Coule telling Little Crow if he had any proposition to make to send a message by a halfbreed and he would be protected in and out of camp. Consequently on the 7th Little Crow sent an answer by Thomas A. Robertson, in which he justified himself in his course by reason of the failure of the government to keep its treaty obligation and because of the conduct of the traders. To this General Sibley replied:

Little Crow: Yon have murdered many of our people without any sufficient cause. Return the prisoners to me under a flag of truce and I will talk to you like a man.

To this Little Crow replied on September 12th stating that he had 155 prisoners, exclusive of any held by the Sissetons and Wahpetons. Sibley replied that no peace would be made upon any terms that did not safely surrender the captives. He told them he was strong enough to crush them and that he would march against them in three days. On the receipt of this letter a great joint council of the friendlies and hostiles was held and the whole proposition gone over. About all of the annuity Indians were present except the Sissetons. Many speeches were made, some in favor of surrendering the captives and making peace and others for fighting it out. Mazawamnua a hostile said:

You men who talk of leaving us and delivering up the captives, talk like children. You think if you do so the whites will think you have acted as their friends and will spare your lives. They will not and you ought to know it. You say the whites are too strong for us and that we will all have to perish. Well, by sticking together and fighting the whites we will at all events live for a few days, when by the course you propose we would die at once. Let us keep the prisoners with us and let them share our fate. This is all the advice I have to give.

To this Little Paul replied with great spirit: I am going to tell you what I think and what I am going to do now and hereafter. You M'dewagantons and Wakpekute Indians have been with the white men a great deal longer than us Upper  Indians. Yet I. who am an Upper Indian have put on white men's clothes and consider myself a white man. I was very much surprised to learn that you had been killing the settlers for you have had the advice of the preachers for so many years. Why did you not tell us you were going to kill them? I ask you the question again: Why did you not tell us? You make no answer. The reason was if you had done so and we had councilled together you would not have been able to involve our young men with you. When we older men heard of it we were so surprised that we knew not what to do. By your involving our young men without counseling us you have done us a great injustice. 1 am now going to tell you something you don't like. You have gotten our people into this difficulty through your incitements to our rash young soldiers without a council being called and our consent being obtained, and I shall use all the means I can to get them out of it without reference to you. I am opposed to them continuing this war. or of committing farther outrages and I warn you not to do it. I have heard a great many of you say that you are brave men and can whip the whites. This is a lie. Persons who will cut women's and children's throats are squaws and cowards. You say the whites are not brave. You will see. They will not, it is true, kill women and children as you have done but they will fight you who have arms in your hands. I am ashamed of you, the way you have acted towards the captives. Fight the whites if you desire to,, but do it like brave men. Give me the captives and I will carry them to Fort Ridgely. I hear one of you say that if I take them the soldiers will shoot me. I will take the risk. 1 am not afraid of death, but I am opposed to the way you act toward the prisoners. If any of you have the feelings of men you will give them up. You may look at me as fierce as you please but I shall ask you once, twice and ten times to deliver these women and children to their friends. That is all I have to say.

These speeches give the tenor of the debates. The hostiles determined to hang on and take their chances.""

On the 13th when Simon returned from Fort Ridgely after safely delivering the German woman, be bore a note from Colonel Sibley to the halfbreeds and friendlies telling them that he had no desire to injure any innocent person but to punish the wicked and he advised them when they saw his troops coming to withdraw into a camp by themselves and float a flag of truce which he would respect.

After the battle of Birch Coule, Colonel Sibley returned to Fort Ridgely and remained quietly there, disciplining and arming; his men and hoping to get Little Crow to peaceably surrender the captives, until the 18th of September, a little over two weeks, when he moved out with the Sixth regiment under Colonel Crooks, 300 men of the Third under Major Welch, a battalion of the Seventh under Colonel William R. Marshall, a troop of cavalry under Colonel Sam McPhail and a battery under Captain Mark Hendricks. He crossed the river at the ferry and moved up the wagon road to .Yellow Medicine. Every mile of the way his progress was watched by Little Crow's scouts who by some means kept the camp on the Minnesota, which by this time had moved up as far as Red Iron's village at the mouth of the Chippewa, perfectly informed as to his progress. On the evening of the 23d Sibley had reached Lone Tree Lake, since called Battle Lake, two miles south of the Yellow Medicine agency and three miles east from Wood Lake, where he encamped.'" Little Crow had determined to meet him at Wood Lake and make a bold resistance there. Just before going down to meet Sibley a great council was held between the hostiles and friendlies at the hostiles camp at Red Iron's village. It will be remembered that immediately after the outbreak Standing Buffalo, and Wanatan had come down from the buffalo ranges to see what the state of affairs was. After taking a survey of affairs these  Sissetons had returned to their own people resolved to keep out of the trouble. Now with Sibley advancing upon them Little Crow was anxious to unite all of the Upper Indians and the Yanktonais in a body for the defense of the camp and to drive Sibley back; hence he had again sent for the upper chiefs and Standing Buffalo, Scarlet Plume and Wanatan came down. This last great council was intended for the express purpose of drawing the Sissetons into the war. Little Crow argued speciously to draw them into this course and boasted the power of the Lower Indians, alone, to drive the whites east of the Mississippi and therefore he wanted all of his red brothers to share in the glory of so splendid a cause. Wanatan was the first to reply: "I live by the white men and the buffalo," he said, and it is not advisable for mc to be an enemy of the whites. I think we should write a letter to General Sibley, who raised me. I do not wish that these people who have done evil shall go across my country. Standing Buffalo was also opposed to the war, and he said: "I am but a boy; my father being an old man has turned his position over to me. He has always had kindly feelings toward the white people. I cannot be an enemy to the whites nor an enemy to the buffalo. All of you hear me. I came here to write a letter to General Sibley." Little Crow was unable to gain any sympathy or assistance from any of the Upper chiefs. Even if he might have been able to do so in the earlier days of the outbreak, the war by this time had become exceedingly unpopular. The hostiles themselves were only continuing it as the least of two evils: believing that by keeping up a bold front and holding on to the captives they could obtain better terms than if they laid down their arms and meekly surrendered. Much of the hostile argument in the council was along this line. Unfortunately the speeches of the hostile orators have not been preserved."

That evening, by the light of the candle Mrs. John B. Renville, a white captive, and Miss Julia LaFrambois, a half Indian girl, each at the dictation of Wanatan and Standing Buffalo wrote letters to General Sibley which were faithfully delivered to him at the earliest opportunity after the then impending battle. After writing these letters the three Sisseton chiefs returned to the buffalo hunt on the Sheyenne. This left about 250 friendly warriors and 800 hostiles in the joint camp at Red Iron's where the captives also were when the battle of Wood Lake came on. Little Crow branded every one who talked of peace as an enemy and the friendlies were compelled to act in secret. They were all ordered to get ready for the battle. Everyone put on the breech clout and painted their faces. The highest honors were promised to the  warrior who would bring in the scalp of Sibley. Brown, Forbes, Robert or Myrick. Before leaving, the friendlies told the captives to prepare to defend themselves upon the return of the hostiles from Wood Lake, for they had learned that in the event of the defeat of the Indians there that they proposed to massacre the captives. Therefore immediately upon the leaving of the warriors for the expected battle the captives set at work. In the center of the lodges they dug deep holes for the women and children to get into and trenches around the outside for the men. They had some arms and expected to have assistance from the friendlies when the worst came.

The forces of General Sibley, on the night of September 22d camped on the open prairie just northeast of Battle Lake and about a mile south of the edge of the bluff which forms the south bank of the Yellow Medicine. This bluff is about 300 feet high and is covered with small timber. The adjoining prairie where the military was encamped is rolling and a shallow draw makes down through it from Battle Lake to the river. The Indians had gathered in the timber on the side of the bluff.

General Sibley had with him 1450 troops, but he started out from Fort Ridgely with only ten days' provisions, all that was available and he had but twenty-seven horses, all of the others having been killed at Birch Coule. His troops were badly clothed and had no blankets.

After nightfall Little Crow called the Indians in council to talk over the plan of action. When assembled he outlined his plan which was to attack the soldiers at once. Crawl towards them through the tall grass under cover of the darkness until the outer guards fired, then raise up in a body with yells and whoops and rush upon the sleeping soldiers and massacre them. "We are many and strong" he said, "this plan will not only secure for us an easy victory but lots of plunder, especially provisions. Remember the starving ones at home." The idea was a plausible one to the Indian mind and was received by the hostiles with great satisfaction. The astute leader sought to arouse the passions of his men and to encourage and unite them and made use of his wonderful eloquence and all of the ingenuity at his command to impress the warriors with the belief that an easy victory was in sight for them. "I have just been," said he, "to the edge of the bluff and looked over and saw to my astonishment but a few tipis there; only five officers' tents." The hostiles were worked up to a high pitch of excitement, and were impatient for the slaughter. Had they proceeded at that time and upon the lines proposed by Little Crow the result can only be surmised, but with the darkness and the undisciplined troops it is highly probable that it would have proven calamitous to the troops. Gabriel Renville, present in the council, dressed as an Indian and his face blackened with charcoal was fully impressed with the peril in which the troops were placed, but he was a mixed blood and if he spoke it would be certain to drive the full bloods to believe he was acting in the interest of the whites and intensify the enthusiasm for Little Crow's plan. Gabriel whispered a hint to the ever faithful Solomon Twostars, who instantly was upon his feet. Few, even of the full bloods would have cared to oppose Little Crow at that time, notwithstanding the hereditary democracy of freedom of speech in council. Solomon is an orator of great reputation among the Dakotas even to this day. Ridicule is his favorite weapon, and he still uses it with telling effect. He ridiculed the plan of Little Crow's with withering sarcasm and denounced it as most preposterous and cowardly, "so cowardly as to be unworthy of a Dakota brave and of the great chief who proposed it." It was weak too, and ingeniously and diplomatically he showed how it would fail. He was earnest, persuasive and so forceful that the hostile warriors were before its conclusion filled with distrust of their leader and with want of confidence in each other. Little Crow was fairly defeated in the house of his friends and as a result his plan was abandoned and in its stead, it was agreed to attack the camp at daylight in the morning. At the close of the council Gabriel Renville passed the word about for the friendlies to assemble in a ravine farther west and so industrious were they that by morning out of the more than 1,000 warriors in the vicinity only 300 actually took part in the battle.  At break of day on the morning of September 23d a party of the soldiers with a four horse wagon, started to the Indian farms near the Upper agency, a couple of miles away, to gather potatoes for the camp. They had just started when they ran upon some Indians hiding in the grass near the camp. The battle was at once precipitated. The Indians came howling in their usual style and firing with great rapidity. The Renville guards under Lieutenant Gorman was sent to check them and Major Welch with his detachment of the Third regiment was instantly in line and his skirmishers in advance met the enemy most gallantly. Another body of the Indians under Big Eagle passed down the draw to flank Welch but Colonel Marshall advanced at a double quick under a heavy fire and soon cleared the ravine. Major McClaren took a position on the extreme west and fought off a considerable body of the enemy who were endeavoring to get at the rear of the camp. Little Crow, realizing that every thing depended upon the result of this encounter, fought his men desperately and with admirable valor throughout the engagement, which lasted two hours, when the Indians were compelled to withdraw. Four white soldiers were killed and forty wounded. The Indians lost thirty killed and a large number wounded, among the killed was the chief Mankato.

During the engagement the friendlies gathered on the prairie west of the battlefield and out of gunshot and took no part in the fight. The friendlies at once entered into correspondence with Colonel Sibley through Simon and John Otherday, who were with the army. He notified them that he expected  them to bring in the captives and that he would remain at the battlefield two days waiting for them to bring them. The Indians retired to the camp at Red Iron's, and General Sibley remained at Wood Lake until the 25th, when he too came up. Little Crow did not wait for his arrival. His force was constantly diminished by desertions to the friendlies. He was desperate and would no doubt have destroyed the captives had not the friendlies, now strong enough to do so, afforded them protection. The friendlies, however, were exceedingly suspicious of the military. They believed that the whites were so exasperated over the murders and abuse of the women and children that they would use no discretion, nor make any distinctions, but would destroy every Indian upon whom they could lay their hands. This sentiment had been impressed upon them in all of the councils by Little Crow during the times that means of making peace were under discussion, so that while the friendlies had protected the captives they had not had the courage to deliver them. By strong representations of friendliness however Colonel Sibley had sufficiently secured their confidence so that generally they remained to meet him when he came up on the 25th. He found the captives as well and in as good condition as could be expected and they received him with indiscribable joy.

Little Crow on the 24th with a portion of his hostile army left for the northwest. At Lac qui Parle he gave to the Indians there so alarming a narrative of the fury of the whites, whom, he represented, were coming in overwhelming numbers to annihilate the Dakotas that good old Spirit Walker, the friend of the missionaries and the father of Sounding Heavens and Grayfoot, the rescuers of Mrs. Marble from the terrible Inkpaduta, gathered up his people and abandoning their homes and property set out for the west, intending to spend the winter with the Yanktonais on the James River. Little Crow left Camp Release on Wednesday morning, the 24th. At 7 o'clock on the morning of Friday, the 26th, he was at Fort Abercrombie where he made an attack upon the garrison but was repulsed. He escaped into the timber along the river below the fort and Captain Burger sent out two companies of infantry to surround the woods and capture the Indians but they got away, leaving their camp equipage, blankets, etc.. which the soldiers burned. Thus at the beginning of winter the proud chief who six weeks before set out, with high boast of power, to drive the whites from the state of Minnesota passed out into the wilderness empty- handed, naked, held in horrible hatred by all of the white friends with whom he had associated from his birth and detested by the Indians of his own tribe. Even worse fate awaited him.

Without horses and without provisions it was impossible for Colonel Sibley to have pursued him at that time. Otherwise it is probable that the entire difficulty might have been settled up almost instantly. Having accomplished the relief of the captives Colonel Sibley at once asked to be relieved and that further operations be placed in the hands of experienced military men, but the government promptly made him a brigadier general in recognition of his services and insisted that he should continue in command. He consented.

Colonel Sibley did all that he could to convince the Indians of his friendly disposition to all that were not guilty of outrages and the suspicious ones began to return to the camp. Effort was at once undertaken to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent in a general way and to accomplish this a strategem was resorted to. The Indians had not yet been paid their cash annuity and young Sam Brown was instructed to inform them that they must come in and be counted so that the annuity rolls could be made up. The Indians appeared and were duly enrolled, the men being asked to step into a warehouse for the purpose. They passed in without suspicion, where they were quietly disarmed and 234 of Little Crow's fiercest warriors were thus placed under arrest without creating any disturbance.

On the 13th of October Colonel Marshall was directed to go with a small force to the coteau directly west of Lac qui Parle and scout that region for straggling bands of Indians. He went as far as Lake Nicholson in Codington county, South Dakota, where he found ten lodges of Spirit Walker's refugees and ten miles further on toward the west he overtook fifteen more lodges, 39 men and more than 100 women and children. He scouted the country from Big Stone to Lake Poinsett but found alt of the villages deserted.

Colonel Sibley appointed a military court of five members to try the braves accused of having participated in the murders of the settlers. General Sibley as stated, by reason of lack of provisions and cavalry was unable to proceed at once to bring in the hostiles, but the delay proved providential. Little Crow's Indians, stripped of their camps, at the point of starvation, learning that the soldiers had not fallen upon those who remained behind and destroyed them, began to wander back and by the middle of October all but five lodges had deserted the old chief and surrendered themselves to General Sibley. In addition to these five lodges the bands of White Lodge and Sleepyeyes had not been accounted for.

 

 

CHAPTER XXVIII

The court for the trial of the hostile Indians captured was set up at Camp Release and proceeded in its work with what seems to many with undue rapidity, but military courts do not as a rule stand upon technicalities in testimony, nor is there the difficulty in obtaining testimony to convict Indians of murders that there would be to convict white men. They are given to boasting of their crimes, and very few of them were inclined to deny their guilt when charged. A negro halfbreed named Godfrey, who was compelled to accompany the hostiles and intimidated into the commission of many crimes himself, turned states evidence and upon his testimony, in corroboration of the confessions of the accused and other testimony 300 of the hostiles were convicted and condemned. It was the purpose of General Sibley to execute them upon the spot but before the court completed the trial of the cases he was ordered to remove all of the Indians to Fort Snelling, which was done and a camp established at Mendota. called Camp Lincoln, where the trials were completed. It was deemed incumbent to secure the president's warrant for the execution of the Indians, and on November 10th the trials being completed, and the lists of the condemned made up, General Pope, in command of the department of the northwest, wired the list of their names to President Lincoln and requested that he should authorize the execution by wire. To the surprise and disgust of the people of Minnesota, Lincoln wired back to have the "full and complete record of the convictions" sent him by mail. Pope immediately sent a most vigorous protest, declaring that every man convicted was guilty of murder or the violation of young girls. That most of the people of the state had had relatives murdered by them and that they were exasperated to the last degree and if the guilty were not executed it would be. impossible to prevent the indiscriminate massacre of all of the Indians, men, women and children. That the soldiers guarding the Indians were in full sympathy with the people and would assist in the annihilation of the Dakotas. Governor Ramsey added his protest. He wired: "I hope the execution of every Sioux Indian condemned by the military court will be at once ordered. It would be wrong upon principle and policy to refuse this. Private revenge would on all this border take place of official judgment on these Indians." But they had gotten the matter into the hands of the president and he would not be coerced. He secured the vast volume of testimony involved in the trial and conviction of 300 men and laboriously waded through it, carefully weighing the evidence in each case. By November 24th, no action having been taken, the people became wild and Pope telegraphed the president that the people were organizing to seize and destroy the Indians indiscriminately.

On December 6th 200 men attacked the Indian camp but were driven back by Colonel Miller; still the conscientious president toiled over the record. The delegations in congress headed by William Windom called upon Lincoln and implored him to hang the whole lot. Finally on December 6th he had sifted the matter out and gave his warrant for the execution of forty of the leaders in the mischief and that the other 260 be held in confinement. Of the forty condemned by the president one had died before his warrant reached Minnesota and one other, Henry Milford, a halfbreed, he subsequently commuted to imprisonment for life, so that but thirty-eight were finally hanged. The warrant was given for their execution on December 19th but for some reason General Sibley desired this time extended until the 26th which was granted. During all of the time from the battle of Wood Lake, Dr. Riggs labored with the accused Indians and with the condemned. After the arrival at Camp Lincoln Father Ravoux also gave them constant attention, and Rev. S. D. Hinman was much with them to the end. They were taken to Mankato for execution and all hanged from the same gallows. One of the executed was Tatagaga, the grandson of old Spirit Walker, charged and convicted of being implicated in the murder of Amos Huggins. but from evidence subsequently procured it is reasonably well established that he was not guilty. He was a boy and present when Amos was killed but the act was undoubtedly performed by a Lower Indian whom Little Crow had sent with the message of the outbreak to the Upper bands.

The close of 1862 found the Dakotas entirely driven from their hereditary estates in Minnesota. Except the captive band of about 1,500 at Fort Snelling, there was not a Dakota Indian in the state. On 21st of the succeeding February congress by solemn act abrogated all existing treaties with them. When the massacre came on in August, 1862, the white settlement in South Dakota consisted of a few settlers at Sioux Falls and a little fringe along the Missouri River from the Yankton reservation to the Sioux, and up the Sioux as far as Brule Creek. At Fort Randall there was a small garrison consisting of several companies of the 14th Iowa. One company of the Dakota cavalry under Captain Nelson Miner was divided into three squads and were at Yankton, Vermillion and Sioux Falls respectively. When on August 18th Little Crow after the first furor of the attack had somewhat spent itself, bethought himself of the outlying settlements, no point was forgotten. White Lodge with about forty warriors resided at Lake Shaokatan, (The lake where they spiked the Cheyenne) on the line dividing Minnesota and South Dakota about midway between Lake Benton and Gary. Lean Grizzly Bear lived at Two Woods Lake near Altamont. To these bands were assigned the duty of picking off the settlement at Lake Shetak and on the Sioux River.

Early on the morning of the 20th of August the braves of these bands were at Lake Shetak to carry out their commissions. At Lake Shetak there was a settlement consisting of about a dozen families, fifty souls in all. They massacred the settlers indiscriminately. A few escaped and reached the settlements on the Minnesota, but two women, Mrs. John Wright and two children, Mrs. William J. Duly and three children, two little daughters of Thomas Ireland's, and Lillie Everitt, were taken captive. Lean Hear was shot dead by one of the settlers. White Lodge himself, with a few of his men went over toward the  Yellow Medicine while the main body went out to the Sioux River and a party was sent down to break up the settlement at Sioux Falls. They found Judge Joseph B. Amidon and his son making hay north of the village near the present site of the penitentiary and they killed them, but an examination of the village convinced them that it was too strong for them and they withdrew. They returned up the Sioux to Two Woods where they were joined by White Lodge and his party and set out for the Missouri going first to the Yanktonais on the Elm, who not liking to harbor the captives sent them along. At the James River they got information of the defeat of Little Crow at Wood Lake and they knew it- was time to seek far countries. They went on toward the northwest and stopped at the mouth of Beaver Creek in North Dakota, where Waneta's camp formerly stood. While enroute they had made some meat but had had poor success and went into the winter very poorly provided. In the camp were eighty lodges, belonging to the bands of White Lodge. Lean Bear and Sleepyeyes. They stayed for some weeks at the mouth of Beaver Creek until November when Major Charles E. Galpin, coming down the river with a party of miners from Idaho, discovered them there. Major Galpin was also accompanied by his Dakota wife, a very intelligent woman. The Indians hailed the boat, which carried a fair quantity of provisions, and invited the party to land. Mrs. Galpin, although they hart been at the headwaters of the Missouri through all of the troubles and had no knowledge of the outbreak, discovered that things were not right at the village and advised her husband to beware of the strange Indians. He, however, drew up to the bank and was engaging in conversation with the Indians, having jumped from the boat and made it fast by a rope to a small tree. While he was talking Mrs. Galpin discovered armed Indians skulking in ambush about them and she called to her husband, who leaped into the boat and Mrs. Galpin cut the rope with a hatchet which she happened to have in her hand, and all hands threw themselves flat in the bottom of the boat which drifted out into the stream. At the moment the Indians discharged their guns at them hut did no damage. While they were still within hearing a white woman ran down to the shore and shouted that a party of white women and children were held captive in the camp.

Major Galpin's party proceeded down the river and just above old Fort Pierre stopped at Primeau's trading house and told there of finding the white captives in the camp of the hostile Indians. This was on or about the 15th day of November. When Little Crow's emissaries visited the Two Kettles, residing near Fort Pierre in August to invite them to join in the uprising there was a considerable faction among them who desired to avail themselves of the occasion to punish the Santees for trespassing upon their buffalo preserves. There were others who were shocked by the stories of the awful massacre of white women and children, while others were ready to help out the Santees. The result of the council upon the proposition was that it was determined to hold aloof and take no part in it one way or another. Many motives actuated them to this wise course but the chief one was the fact of their dependence upon white traders for most of the comforts of life and the belief that if they went to war with the whites the traders would leave them and they would consequently suffer for the indispensable goods. Among them was a party of young men who had always manifested notions along ethical lines which rendered them subjects of ridicule. The leader of this party was a boy 19 years of age, known by the familiar name of Waneta, the Charger. By well authenticated tradition he was the grandson of Captain Merriweather Lewis. After the council was held in which the neutrality of the Two Kettles was determined, he went out to the bank of the river accompanied by a chum of his own way of thinking known familiarly as "Kills and Comes," literally "he who kills game and brings it home." They talked over the horrible atrocities committed by their relatives on the Minnesota and were horrified by them and they resolved then and there that if an opportunity was afforded them that they would do all in their power to help the poor white women and children and save them from such a fate. They set about to organize a company of young men who would go with them to the Minnesota and assist in rescuing the white captives whom they had been informed by Little Crow's emissary were held there. When they made their mission known their notions of benevolence were so heretical, as measured by any known Dakota standards that they were derisively called "Fool Soldiers" by the tribe and they were able to win but nine others to their way of thinking. The opposition and ridicule of their people made them only the more steadfast in their purpose, but of course they could not set out to recover the captives from the Santees of the Minnesota with so small a band. They, however, prefected their organization and boasted vauntingly of what they proposed to accomplish, to the vast amusement and delight of their fellows.

When Major Galpin brought information of the white captives which he had discovered up the Missouri the "Fool Soldiers" were jeeringly told that their opportunity had come and they took the jest seriously. That very day they set about the business and securing from Primeau a quantity of provisions, they crossed the river with their ponies that afternoon and started for the Santee camp. The second day out they came to the camp of Bone Necklace, a Lower Yanktonais, who  was living on Swan Lake Creek about where LeBeau postoffice is located. From Bone Necklace's people they learned that the Santees with the captives were moving down the river, and that they had visited with them. They were informed that it was the band of White Lodge, and that he had intended only to capture Galpin's boat for whatever provisions it might contain, as the camp was fast approaching destitution, and that he was now moving down the river in order to find Indians or others who had a supply of provisions. With this information the boys pushed on and fifteen miles further, in the timber opposite the mouth of Grand River they found the hostiles encamped. Whether or not they were actually accompanied that evening by any of Bone Necklace's Indians is a matter of dispute, but it may be said with confidence that if any of them did go up it was out of curiosity, to visit, or in the hopes of participating in the feast which they knew the Fool Soldiers were to give. It was near evening when they reached the hostile camp and pitched their one small tipi. They were cordially greeted by the hostiles, and after some preliminary talk the boys told them  their mission but received no encouragement. They then made a feast of coffee, sugar and hard bread to which the hostiles were invited; and at the conclusion a formal council was held. Charger was the first speaker: After the usual talk about their hearts being good he said: "You see us here. We are only young boys. Our people call us crazy, but we want to do something good. If a man owns anything he likes it and he will not part with it for nothing. We have come here to buy the white captives and give them back to their friends. We will give our own horses for them, all of the horses we have. That proves that we want the captives very much for our hearts are good and we want to do a good thing." The other boys gave assent and White Lodge responded: "We come from the east where the sky is made red by the fires which burns the homes of the whites and the ground is red with the blood of whites that the Santees are killing. These white captives we have taken after killing many of the people. We will not again be friends to the whites. We have done a bad thing and now we will keep on doing bad things. We will not give up the captives. We will fight until we drop dead."

There was more discussion and a third time the boys proposed to trade for the captives, to be met by a more determined refusal than before. They had another card in reserve and the time had come to play it. It was as usual Charger that spoke: "White Lodge." he said, "you talk brave, you kill white men who have no guns, and you steal women and children and run away where there are no soldiers. If you are brave why did you not stay and fight soldiers who had guns? Three times we have offered our horses for the captives. Now we shall take the captives and place them on the horses and take them home. If you make us trouble the soldiers with guns will come against you from the east and the Tetons will come against you from the west and we shall see if you are brave." At this a brave from outside who did not sit in council cried out to Black Hawk, the eldest son of White Lodge: "Black Hawk, why do you not speak? Why sit so still?" Black Hawk then spoke: "You young people have done right. Your food tastes good. You are straight young men, respected among your own people. I know some of you, but my father White Lodge does not know you. We are starving. I have one white child which I will give up. Let the others do as I have done and give up the captives."

After much parleying it was finally agreed that the captives should be exchanged for the horses and the Santees returned to their camp to prepare the captives for the exchange. At length the boys were invited to bring their horses and come into the village. A large lodge had been erected in the center of the camp to which they were directed. They fastened their horses near by and entered. They found Mrs. Duly and six children sitting in a row on one side of the lodge. They were almost naked and in a condition so pitiable that even the young Indians were moved by their grief. An unexpected obstacle was here encountered. Each captive was claimed as the property of some individual and no proposition looking to a wholesale exchange of horses for captives would be entertained. Each proprietor was bent upon driving the best possible bargain for his chattel. The youngest child was first offered, and after a protracted parley its purchase was effected and it was removed to the other side of the lodge. It had cost a horse and some other property. Another child was put up and another bargain struck, and so each in turn was purchased, after all of the jockeying and bluffing of which the Dakota is master. When at length Mrs. Duly was secured, all of their property was exhausted except one horse and four guns. Mrs. Wright, whom White Lodge claimed, had not yet been seen. White Lodge had given grudging consent to the proceedings thus far. but now he refused to proceed further. He would not sell Mrs. Wright. He was an old man and she took good care of him and he could not spare her. The boys begged, cajoled, threatened. Another period of great excitement ensued. White Lodge in a great fury sprang to massacre all of the captives but was restrained by his own people. He threatened to kill the boys, but they were not alarmed at this but did fear he might do injury to the captives. Charger again suggested that he was in communication with the soldiers and that the Tetons would support his demand for the captives, and the hostiles came to their senses, though White Lodge himself obstinately refused to part with Mrs. Wright. His sons Black Hawk and Chased by the Ree seem to have been young men of sense and decent impulses. They were at the head of a peace party among the hostiles, which by this time was stronger than the hostile element headed by their father. They proposed, in consideration of the last remaining horse to take the woman forcibly away from the old man and turn her over with the other captives. The proposition was agreed to and Red Dog and Strikes Fire were entrusted with the execution of the bargain so far as the boys were concerned. By this time the boys had been twenty-four hours at the hostile camp. Mrs. Wright was soon in the possession of the rescuers, though White Lodge threatened to take all of the captives away from them. They struck camp at once and moved down the river a short distance and went into camp for the night. They had one small tipi, and four guns. A part of their blankets they had been compelled to trade out for the captives. They had not a single mouthful to eat. The captives were naked and had to be covered with what blankets remained. A November blizzard was upon them. Momentarily they expected an attack from White Lodge. They were 100 miles from home or hope of assistance. A condition more desperate would be hard to imagine. From the testimony of Don't Know How and Fast. Walker, Yanktonais, they were with the boys that night, but Charger and Swift Bird and others of the Fool Soldier band informed the writer that they came up the next morning. It is probable that D. K. How and Fast Walker were present in the hostile camp and witnessed the purchase of the captives. In any event they were at the camp of the rescuers early in the morning of the day following the rescue and the horse of Walking Crane was secured from D. K. How, a travoix rigged up and some of the children placed upon it. Charger told the writer that they were compelled to give D. K. How a gun for the horse but How thinks he gave them the horse. Almost immediately White Lodge appeared to rescue the prisoners. The boys were strongest in number but poorly armed. In the entire party there were but six guns. They immediately prepared to defend the captives. Mrs. Duly, who was lame, was placed upon the horse, and Fast Walker assigned to lead it. Mrs. Wright was well but barefooted; Charger gave her his moccasins, wrapping his own feet in some old clothes in which the children had been clothed. They proposed not to stop to parley but to keep moving. The arms were prepared and Swift Bird given command of the rear guard. His order was to kill White Lodge at the first hostile demonstration and the order would promptly have been obeyed had White Lodge given them occasion. The old chief was rheumatic and he limped along after them, threateningly for a long distance, but finally gave up the chase and returned to his camp. The rescuers proceeded to Bone Necklace's camp where they remained until the next day and were fed and given a supply of food to last them until they reached their homes. From Bone Necklace they procured an old cart. Charger says they gave two more guns for the accommodations and assistance they received there, but the Yanktonais are of opinion that they rendered those things in charity. Whatever the Yanktonais had done prior to this time to assist in the rescue, they gave up when they reached their own camp at Swan Lake Creek and next day the Fool Soldiers went on alone. Mrs. Duly and the children were placed in the cart but Mrs. Wright continued to walk. The load was too heavy for the pony to handle unassisted and the boys and Mrs. Wright divided into three parties, helped to push the cart, relieving each other in turn. They reached Forest City that night, camping on the present mill site there. Next morning they left the Missouri, climbing up to the prairies and cut across the oxbow and that night did not camp but kept up the tramp all night long, at daybreak finding themselves on Peoria bottom, opposite their homes. The first ice of winter was forming upon the Missouri, making it most difficult to cross, but the Indians were assisted by Primeau, LaPlant and Dupree in effecting a crossing and the captives were taken to Primeau's and clothed as well as could be and then to Dupree's house, where they rested for a day or two, and were taken to Fort Randall by LaPlant and Dupree, where they arrived on November 30th or December 1st and thence were restored to their relatives. The heroism of these young Tetons escaped attention for many years, though it was a matter of constant repute and conversation among the Indians themselves. In 1898 it was called to the attention of the secretary of this society by Rev. Philip Deloria, a half Dakota minister of the Episcopal church, and a careful investigation of all of the facts made, revealing the circumstances above narrated. No official recognition of the effort of these men has been made by the government nor have they been compensated for the horses and other property which they exchanged for the prisoners.

The news of the massacre at the Minnesota River naturally produced profound excitement among the scattered settlers of Dakota and when the killing of Judge Amidon and his son by White Lodge's young men at Sioux Falls was told to the settlers on the Missouri a panic ensued and many left the country for safety. The settlement at Sioux Falls was broken up and the town wholly abandoned for several years. At Yankton and Vermillion, Elk Point, Jefferson and Brule Creek the settlers were gathered in stockades. On the 13th of August Governor Jayne called out every able bodied man in the territory for the public defense. A deputation was sent to the Yanktons and Strike the Ree assured them of his friendship and intention to, as far as possible hold his people upon the reservation and keep them out of the trouble though he expressed doubts of his ability to keep all of the reckless young men at home, who, fired by the tales that had come to them of the outbreak, were wild to join in it. The action of the Yanktons in a measure restored confidence and as Strike the Ree was true to his professions his band stood through the troubles as a barrier between the settlers and the wilder tribes from above. A prowling party of savages whom I have been unable to identify, visited the James River bottoms east of Yankton and fired upon the ferrymen. They were followed by Sergeant English of the Dakota cavalry with a squad of men and one of them killed at Gayville.  Late in the autumn some of the settlers went back to Sioux Falls to recover their goods which they had cached there at the time of the flight in August. They were escorted by a squad under Captain Miner of the Dakota cavalry. They found all of the buildings burned and the town in the possession of Inkpaduta and about forty braves, stragglers who had gathered about his forlorn standard. In the skirmish which followed one Indian was killed.

 

CHAPTER XXIX

 

When General Sibley had secured the release of the captives at Camp Release on September 25, 1862, he rested rather easy in the belief that when Little Crow reached the country of the Sissetons he would be turned back by them or else held, and that his apprehension therefore would be easy. He felt justified in this belief by the reported action of Standing Buffalo and Wanatan in the council just before the battle of Wood Lake, when those chiefs had notified Little Crow that they would not permit him to retreat through their country. By October 1st, however, Sibley had learned through his scouts that Little Crow had passed unmolested through the Sisseton country. He therefore on that day addressed a letter to Wanatan. Standing Buffalo and Wamdeonpeduta, reproaching them for letting Little Crow pass through their lands and informing them that they would not be injured. At the same time he told them that there were very many white men who were very angry because so many of their white relatives had been killed and that they might not be able to distinguish them from the guilty bands and fire upon them. He told them therefore, to remain at their own villages and keep their bands separate from the hostiles. He added that there were many more troops was delivered to the Sissetons, not at their villages on Big Stone Lake where Sibley supposed it would reach them, but at the Buffalo camp far up on the Sheyenne River. Rumors had already come to them of the terrible anger of the white men and they did not find much assurance for the safety of any Indians in the letter of General Sibley, and if the country was to be overrun by troops it was deemed wise to remain as far away as possible. They therefore concluded to get together as much food as possible and spend the winter at Devils Lake, where in case of trouble they could fly to the safety of the British possessions. Little Crow himself spent the winter near the British boundary in North Dakota, having with him his numerous family and about twenty men all told, chiefly renegades flying from the soldiers. In truth the Sissetons were in no wise responsible for the escape of Little Crow. They did not see him and had no knowledge of his action, or passage through their lands. It will be recalled that Little Crow went directly from Camp Release to Fort Abercrombie and that after the bootless attack upon that post he escaped with the loss of his camp equipage down the valley of the Red River to the British line, not going near the Sissetons, who at this period were far away on the Sheyenne, hunting the buffalo for their winter meat.

During the winter General Pope, acting upon the belief that Little Crow had assembled a large army of hostiles in the neighborhood of Devils Lake, fixed upon a plan of campaign by which he hoped to crush at one blow the hostility of the Dakotas. At that time there were but two disturbing elements among the Indians, and they were seeking an opportunity to make peace and there can scarcely be a doubt that had the true situation been understood those two elements of hostility, Little Crow and Inkpaduta, would have been apprehended and brought in by the Dakotas themselves. General Pope's plan, however, contemplated sending two columns of troops into the Indian country, one under Sibley to cross Dakota territory by way of Devils Lake, and the other to go up the Missouri under Sully, and the two columns to catch and crush the hostiles between them, as they came to a junction upon the upper Missouri.

Pursuant to this plan General Sibley on June 16, 1863, with 1400 infantry and 500 cavalry, started from the upper Minnesota where he had rendezvoused his troops, and proceeded leisurely by way of Brown's valley, where he remained several days, to the upper James River south from Devils Lake and at a point forty miles from the latter lake established a permanent, entrenched camp which was called Atchison. Prom there he sent out scouting parties, one of whom picked up in an exhausted condition, Wowinapa, a young son of Little Crow's, from whom it was learned that in June, Little Crow, accompanied by this son, 16 years of age, and sixteen other Indians, had started from St. Joseph's, a halfbreed town on the British line, to go into the Minnesota settlements and steal horses, the band being unmounted. That it was the intention of Little Crow to mount his men and then return to St. Joseph's and go off into the British possessions and take up a home where the soldiers could not reach him. By Friday, July 3d, the party had reached the Big Woods and scattered out for the purpose of stealing horses, Little Crow and his son being in the woods about six miles north of Hutchinson, in McLeod county, Minnesota, .where they were picking berries to relieve their hunger when they were discovered by a farmer and his son named Lampson, who fired upon them without notice. The boy escaped unhurt, but two shots hit the old chief and his death soon ensued. The white men fled without awaiting the results of their shots. The boy took up both guns and started for the northwest and alone, exhausted, starving, he was found and picked up by Captain Burt upon a scout to the Devils Lake. Investigation established the truth of all the boy had reported.

The scout from Camp Atchison developed that the great body of the Indians had passed down from Devils Lake in the direction of the Missouri, and leaving all of the defectives and much of the camp baggage there, Sibley made a rapid march southwesterly from the camp to the top of the Missouri coteau. Here his scouts came upon a large number of Indians hunting buffalo. Marvelous as it seems, and   unusual in all Indian history, the Dakotas were taken wholly by surprise and were entirely unprepared to meet a hostile army. They had no information whatever that Sibley was in their country. The Sissetons and Wahpetons under Standing Buffalo, Wanatan, and Scarlet Plume, after spending the winter upon an island in Devils Lake, had spent the spring idling about the country in the neighborhood of the lake, hoping that they might learn that the government had found them innocent of any part in the outbreak and that they would be called down to their reservation to receive their annuities. They waited in this expectation until about the 1st of July and then started off toward the Missouri River upon a buffalo hunt. In passing down toward the south they had on the 23d of July come to the vicinity of the Big Mound in what is now Burleigh county, North Dakota, where they had come upon Inkpaduta, also following the buffalo. Prom him they learned that a large party of Tetons were crossing the Missouri to hunt on this side, but they had not yet arrived. By this time Inkpaduta had come into a good deal of influence and had acquired a large following, chiefly Yanktonais, but a large number of the Sissetons were with him, especially the band of Lean Bear and some of White Lodge's people. They quietly hunted until afternoon the next day, July 24th, when one of their outriders reaching the top of a coteau, looked out to the east and beheld a large army almost upon them. In alarm he turned back to the Indians and reported that "all the Americans in the land are right here."

Almost immediately Joe LaFrambois, Sibley's scout, came up and told them General Sibley wanted to see Standing Buffalo and have a council with him. That he had not come to fight the friendly Indians but to reward them, but to fight the bad Indians. There were a large number of Upper Indians and halfbreeds accompanying Sibley and immediately there was a general greeting and handshaking among them. Little Paul was along with Sibley, and one of his sons was in Standing Buffalo's camp and they had not seen each other for almost a year; their meeting was affectionate and the young man was at once made a scout for Sibley. Scarlet Plume told the scouts that there was a conspiracy to get Genera! Sibley into a council and kill him. Dr. Joseph S. Weiser, of the First Minnesota Mounted Rangers, was curious to know what was going on and went out onto a knoll in advance of the troops where the scouts and Indians were visiting. The Sissetons were going as rapidly as possible to visit General Sibley in response to the friendly message to them brought by LaFrambois. The friendly Sissetons were overjoyed at the situation when, without warning, a desperate young fellow of Inkpaduta's band shot Dr. Weiser dead. Instantly the battle was on, the Indians flying and the soldiers in hot pursuit. The first to become the victims of the treachery of the renegade were the older men of the Sissetons, who, quite unprepared for anything of the kind, were proceeding to Sibley's camp for the council. They turned to flee with the others but being in the rear were the first to be reached by the avenging soldiers and many of them fell. The greatest mortality of the succeeding fight was among them. All of the tactics of the Indians were executed to protect the rear of the fleeing column and give the women and children an opportunity to get away. This they managed with consummate skill, and the fatalities were very few indeed. The chase was kept up until nightfall, when the soldiers retired, and having proceeded more than twelve miles after an already long day's march, made their way back to the camp at the point where the battle began. It was morning before the last of them were in. The pursuit was made with two or more companies of cavalry under Colonel Sam McPhail, a portion of the Seventh regiment under Colonel W. R. Marshall and Major George Bradley and one company of the Tenth regiment under Captain Alonzo J. Edgerton. At the outset Whipple with a six-pounder opened upon the enemy from the hill but they were soon out of his reach. Hon. Abraham VanOsdel, a member of this society, was a member of Colonel McPhail's command, and he has published a graphic account of this chase, from which I take the liberty of quoting; taking up his story after the first forward movement of his company following the shooting of Dr. Weiser.

In passing over the summit of the hill I looked back and saw our whole cavalry force coming thundering along, company colors flying, with the armor of our men flashing and glistening in the sun, while far back in the rear three or four mounted howitzers and a regiment of infantry were coming up on the double-quick.

We soon distanced the infantry in our headlong march, passed over the brow of another hill and came in sight of the deserted Indian village. It was situated on a level plateau at the foot of a hill which ranged along the western verge of the grand coteau. Old tepees, fresh buffalo hides and meat, camp kettles and other domestic articles appertaining to an Indian camp lay scattered around, denoting that the village had been hastily abandoned, while away to the southwest, as far as the eye could see, the prairie was dotted with flying fugitives. We soon overtook them, when a general running fight commenced. Occasionally a light wagon or cart would be seen in the train of flying Indians propelled by a pair of ponies that were urged along by an old squaw, who sat with whip in hand on top of the mass of camp equipage; but generally the effects were transported upon travoix. The horses while dragging burdens of three or four hundred pounds were also frequently ridden by the squaws with a child behind and another sitting on top of the pack behind, holding a couple of favorite pups. In this way the caravan, composed of 3,000 or 4,000 souls, with twice that many horses and dogs, dashed along in three parallel lines, while their chiefs and braves rode behind and on either flank, ever ready to defend them from our attack.

If one of the ponies was unable to keep up and drag its load the fastenings were cut and the owner would mount the pony and dash away. Thus they were continually dropping their burdens from their overloaded animals until the prairie was dotted over with bundles and packs, which contained a mixed and multiform assortment of the habiliments and trappings and toggery of an Indian's outfit. The fighting force of the Indians exceeded that of our cavalry, and as we rode up to open fire upon them they spread out in a semi-circle in the rear of their moving train to prevent us from flanking them, causing our line of battle at times to become extended for about a half mile in length. The warriors fought like tigers and in their repeated attempts to check us performed many acts of brave and dauntless intrepidity and rash defiance. Their mode of tactics was to concentrate their forces and come galloping forward in a body, whooping and yelling as if about to make a furious charge, but as we were constantly on the alert and rushed up to prevent them from penetrating our line of battle, they would wheel round, discharge their guns and retreat. While some of them were armed in primitive style and fought with bows and arrows, the majority carried an inferior lot of shotguns, with an ocasional rifle, and judging from the way they held their fire—seldom shooting except when at close range or hard pressed—we concluded that they did not have much ammunition. The battle lasted from 5 o'clock until dark. Just before sundown they made their last attempt to check us. A band of warriors had gained a low piece of land bordering on a slough and made a stand, which brought on a brisk fire from our men, lasting fifteen or twenty minutes, and thirteen warriors were killed before they were routed and driven back. After that they did not make any further resistance, but seemed panic stricken, and acted as though they thought it was useless to fight us.

As before stated, the soldiers withdrew at nightfall and made their weary way back to camp. The Sissetons and the few Wahpetons, who were with them under the cover of darkness turned to the north and passed between the military and the river and escaped from the vicinity. During the night Inkpaduta made a junction with a large body of Tetons who had crossed the river that day to join in the buffalo hunt and they believed themselves strong enough to attack and destroy the soldiers. The Tetons were chiefly Uncpapas and Blackfoot, and among them were Gall, Blackmoon, and Sitting Bull. Gall and Sitting Bull were young men, the latter but 24 years old, and he had not yet established any reputation.

Sibley remained in camp the next day to allow his exhausted men and horses to recuperate and the succeeding day, the 26th, advanced as far as Buffalo Lake. Here at 2 o'clock in the afternoon the scouts brought intelligence that a large body of Indians were in front and near at hand and a camp was immediately made and everything placed in security. By this time a large body of Indians had appeared upon the nearby hills, mounted and ready for action. A moment later they came dashing down toward the soldiers, howling like demons, but several shells from the howitzers checked their flight and they withdrew beyond reach of the guns. There they made an occasional sally toward the camp but wheeling before coming within reach of the guns. There they would by signs defy the soldiers and do all in their power to draw them out of the camp. Presently Sibley set about forty sharpshooters to crawl up a ravine in the direction of the Indians, and then sent a company of the mounted rangers in pursuit of the Indians. The hostiles fell back, but when the rangers reached the top of the hill they found the Indians charging towards them, and Captain Oscar Taylor, in command, deeming discretion the better part of valor, heat a hasty retreat. In doing so he passed very near to the ravine where Captain Chase lay with his sharpshooters, and the pursuing Indians dashed down within reach of their guns. Three Indians were killed and several wounded. After dashing about the camp, just out of gun fire for a while, the Indians withdrew and the battle of Buffalo Lake was ended. No attempt was made by the military to pursue and punish them. General Sibley considering his horses too worn to effect much against the fresher ones of the enemy. That evening the Indians made another attack, this time upon a detached party under the escort of a company of cavalry who were out some distance from the camp making hay for the cavalry horses. A sharp skirmish repulsed the Indians, a band of about seventy-five, under Grey Eagle, who with four braves was killed. John Piatt of the Minnesota rangers was killed.

The next day the military moved twenty-one miles over to Stony Lake, where the night was spent without incident. After the affairs at Buffalo Lake the Indians had retired toward the Missouri and the march of the 27th was along their trail. On the morning of the 28th camp was broken and the lines for the day's march were forming just west of the lake when the scouts came tearing back, shouting "Indians." Immediate preparation was made for the reception of the enemy, when a force of about 1,600 Indians came down upon them, spread out into a line from five to six miles long, and as they came down to gun range they parted at the center and attempted to flank the column both right and left, and get at the baggage train in the rear, but being met by a heavy fire at every point, soon withdrew and retired to the Missouri. This affair is called the battle of Stony Lake. It was claimed that ten or fifteen Indians were killed, but the Indians claim to have lost but one man. Two soldiers were slightly wounded. The soldiers followed along the Indian trail and some time after noon reached the Missouri about two miles above the mouth of Apple Creek. The Indians had crossed the river before their arrival and seemed to literally cover the hills on the opposite shore, from which point of vantage they flashed defiance to the soldiers with their small mirrors. They had left some of their wagons .and camp plunder on the east shore, which was destroyed. As the men went down to the water the Indians fired upon them from the other shore but were unable to reach them. A few of them had remained on the east side as scouts and succeeded in picking off two or three soldiers who carelessly had gone away from the protection of the camp.

Sibley remained in camp two days waiting for Sully to come up from below, and at night fired rockets and cannon to attract his attention if he was anywhere in the vicinity, but receiving no response withdrew, and returned across Dakota to Minnesota. The Uncpapas returned to their own camps and made their fall hunt in the vicinity of the Black Hills, but Inkpaduta, the moment he was satisfied that Sibley had gone east for good, returned to the east side of the river and again starting in pursuit of the buffalo which had been driven away by the coming of the soldiers, and located them to the southeast, down in the James valley. He had the remnant of the hostiles from Minnesota and the Yanktonais with him, about 950 warriors in all. In the three fights just described Inkpaduta had been the leader. There were about 650 of the Uncpapas and Blackfeet in the two affairs at Buffalo Lake and Stony Lake respectively. The Indians claim their total loss in the three skirmishes were twenty-four braves. The Sissetons joined in  the defense of their families in the retreat from Big Mound and, as stated, that night went north out of reach of the soldiers and spent the fall and succeeding winter in the rough country north of Devils Lake, near the Canadian line.