SEQUEL TO THE INDIAN WAR
A week after the Wood Lake affair the President appointed Colonel
Sibley a brigadier-general. His confirmation by the Senate was long
delayed, but he exercised the command of that rank from the date of
appointment. Up to the time of leaving Fort Ridgely for the upper
country Colonel Sibley had been carrying on a state war. On the 6th of
September Governor Ramsey sent this peremptory telegram to the
President: “These Indian outrages continue.... This is not our war. It
is a national war. Answer me at once. More than five hundred whites
have been murdered.” That very day the Secretary of War ordered
Major-General John Pope to take command of the Department of the
Northwest. That officer had seen service in the Indian country and was
at the time not otherwise employed. His first order to Colonel Sibley
was received September 19, the day of his departure from Fort Ridgely.
It made no change in the dispositions of the subordinate commander, but
urged him to push forward, and promised all the support he could
control. General Pope, persuaded that Sibley had some twenty-six
hundred Sioux warriors in his front, made requisitions for troops and
supplies on a scale which called out a rebuke from the secretary. His
demand for mounted troops rather than infantry was reasonable. His stay
in the department was brief, and at its close Brigadier-General Sibley
was put in command of a distinct district of Minnesota. That Sibley was
thus promoted and assigned was possibly due to a remonstrance addressed
by Pope to Halleck against the appointment of Senator Henry M. Rice as
major-general to be assigned to the department. It is remarkable that
Sibley, writing to his wife, expressed his preference for Rice, if any
stranger was to be placed over him. It was not till after the close of
the campaign that the Sixth and Seventh regiments were mustered into
the service of the United States.
The line of forts maintained by Colonel Flandrau from the big bend of
the Minnesota southward effectively protected Sibley’s left; and it
restrained the Winnebagoes from breaking out of their reserve, if they
had any such intention, which was very doubtful, although so believed
at the time. The right flank of the expedition was not for some time
protected. Here were two dangers. Fort Abercrombie had been occupied
since spring by Company D of the Fifth Minnesota, under command of
Captain John Van der Horck. A newspaper clipping received on August 20
gave him warning of the outbreak of the lower Sioux. He immediately
called in his outpost and the few settlers of the Red River valley,
proceeded to surround the separate buildings which formed the post with
breastworks, and placed three howitzers in the salients. On the last
day of the month but one a party of Indians stampeded a herd of stock
which had been sent out in anticipation of a treaty with the Red Lake
and Pembina Chippeways. On September 3 an Indian force, considerable in
number, appeared about the post and maintained a desultory fire for
some hours. On the 6th a still larger force made a determined but vain
attack, charging with boldness unusual for Indians, first one quarter
of the inclosure and then another. The command suffered a loss of two
killed and three wounded in the two days’ actions. The Indians were not
driven from the neighborhood till September 23, when Captain Emil
Burger arrived from below with a relieving force of five hundred men.
The mooted question whether these attacks at Abercrombie were made by
upper Sioux, lower Sioux, Yanktonnais, or by a mixture of all these,
has not been conclusively answered. The capture of this post would have
exposed a wide territory to Indian slaughter and depredation.
A disturbance of the habitual quiet of the Chippeways of northern
Minnesota gave countenance to a rumor which spread throughout the
state, that those Indians were about making common cause with their
ancient foes against the white man, equally hated. On the very day of
the Sioux outbreak the Pillagers seized seven whites, mostly traders,
at Leech Lake, and the Gull Lake Chippeways drove some horses and
cattle from the agency on the Crow Wing River. The acts and threats
made against his safety so alarmed the agent, Lucius C. Walker, that he
fled the Indian country for his home, and, probably in a state of
temporary insanity, took his life, by means of a loaded pistol, near
Monticello. Hole-in-the-day, the head chief of the Chippeways of the
Mississippi, called an assemblage of braves, and a few hundred
gathered. A trustworthy person, the missionary Emmegabowh, reported
that this chief had declared in council that a league had been made
with the Sioux. The Chippeway braves, however, had no desire to take
the warpath, and dispersed to their homes. These transactions, reported
in the St. Paul newspapers, naturally excited alarm. Three companies of
infantry were sent to Fort Ripley, martial law was declared at that
post, and the settlers were notified to come in for protection. When
the legislature assembled in extra session on September 9, Governor
Ramsey called their attention to the Chippeway ruction. Unconcerned
about constitutional restrictions, that body appointed a board of
commissioners to proceed to the Indian country to adjust the
difficulties. Although the Chippeways had dispersed and the excitement
had disappeared, the plenipotentiaries had the chiefs assembled in
council, and negotiated with them a treaty which was solemnly signed
and sealed. This agreement bound the high contracting powers to eternal
peace, to an arbitration of all existing differences, and exempted the
Chippeways from payment of damages for the expenses they had put the
government to by their late misbehavior. The legislature memorialized
the President to carry out these provisions. In evidence of full
restoration of peace fifty Chippeway chiefs and braves came down to St.
Paul to offer their services in punishing the Sioux. It would have
given them great pleasure to take Sioux scalps in so lawful a manner.
* * * * *
Had it been possible to furnish General Sibley with a sufficient
cavalry force, it would have been feasible for him, after the battle of
Wood Lake, to overtake and impound the greater number of Indians
concerned in their disastrous campaign. Infantry expeditions sent out
to Lac qui Parle, to Goose Nest Lake, and elsewhere, brought in a few
hundred people. More came in response to a proclamation distributed by
runners. Bands which had squandered their plunder and wasted their food
had no other resource. In the course of a few days nearly two thousand
Indians were under guard, the greater part being women and children.
Some five thousand or more were at large. The disposition of those in
hand now occupied the attention of the authorities. Major-General Pope
in a dispatch of September 28 probably voiced the sentiment of the
great majority of the white people of the Northwest. “Make no treaty
with the Indians,” he wrote Sibley; “the horrible massacre and outrages
call for punishment beyond human power to inflict. It is my purpose to
exterminate the Sioux, if I have the power to do so.” General Sibley
was too humane and judicious to give serious regard to so insane a
proposal. He had already appointed a committee of inquiry to ascertain
what Indians under his guard had probably been guilty of murder and
outrage. The Rev. Dr. Riggs, who held the place of chaplain on the
staff of Sibley, gave such valuable assistance that Heard, the
contemporary historian, declares him to have been a virtual grand jury.
Sixteen Indians were at once picked out by the sifting committee and
duly arraigned before a military commission of five officers.
Additional arrests were made from day to day, and by October 7 General
Sibley was able to report that he had twenty under sentence of death,
and that he should probably approve the sentences and hang the
villains, despite some doubt as to the extent of his powers and the
formal correctness of the trials. This moderate number of convictions
evidently did not satisfy the superior authority, which called for
arrests and trials on a greater scale. On the night of October 11
Sibley placed 81 warriors in irons at Camp Release and ordered a
similar “purging” at Yellow Medicine, where he had sent 1250 of his
prisoners to subsist on the corn and potatoes of the Indian gardens. By
a “piece of justifiable strategy” 236 men were “fixed” in the same way.
The military commission now had abundance of material and applied
themselves diligently to duty. They completed it on November 5, having
tried 392 prisoners, of whom they found 323 guilty and sentenced 307 of
them to death. The proceedings of the military commission, approved by
General Sibley, were forwarded to the department commander. That
officer informed Governor Ramsey with unconcealed satisfaction that the
sentences would all be executed unless forbidden by the President. The
trials completed, General Sibley sent the principal body of his Indian
prisoners, 1648 in number, under guard to Fort Snelling. The
interpreter accompanying the column relates that as it passed through
Henderson the prisoners were assaulted with arms and missiles. One
infant died from its injuries and was “buried” Indian fashion in the
crotch of a roadside tree. On November 9 the troops with the convicted
prisoners were marched to South Bend, a western suburb of Mankato. As
the column was passing through New Ulm a crowd of exasperated citizens
of both sexes showered brickbats and other missiles on the prisoners in
such profusion that a bayonet charge was necessary to restrain them.
Fifteen or twenty men were arrested, but after a march of twelve miles
were reprimanded and allowed to take a walk to their homes. General
Sibley turned over the command to Colonel Miller of the Seventh
Infantry and proceeded to St. Paul, to take up his duty as district
commander.
* * * * *
The action of the military commission met with general approval
throughout the state. Citizens of St. Paul in public meeting demanded
that the government authorities, as the chosen instruments of divine
vengeance, should so execute their duty that the friends and relatives
of the victims should not be compelled to take vengeance into their own
hands. General Pope advised President Lincoln that unless all the
executions were made, an indiscriminate massacre of all the Indian
prisoners, innocent and guilty, would take place. Governor Ramsey also
expressed the same opinion to the President. The Minnesota delegation
in Congress, Senator Rice not signing, protested against the convicts
being considered prisoners of war, and declared that the outraged
citizens of Minnesota would dispose of the wretches without law, if
they should not be executed according to law. On the other hand, there
went to the President appeals and protests against a horrible wholesale
execution, from members of the Friends Society and various humanitarian
organizations. So far as known there was but one public man in
Minnesota whose judgment was not subjugated by the passion of the hour.
He was Henry Benjamin Whipple, bishop of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, who three years before the Sioux outbreak had come to the
state. Immediately after his arrival his attention was called to the
red men of his diocese, and it was not long before he had fathomed the
iniquities of the traditional Indian system. In March, 1862, he
addressed an open letter to President Lincoln, summarizing those
iniquities, and insisting on giving the Indian a government of law,
administered by agents chosen for fitness and not for political
service. A calm and clear statement of the policy and the train of
events which had led to the outbreak of the Sioux, published in the St.
Paul newspapers, brought about the bishop a whirlwind of denunciation
which would have taken an ordinary man off his feet. Bishop Whipple
never budged an inch. His personal representations to the President no
doubt had their effect in the action which followed. On the day when
General Pope was hopefully awaiting the President’s permission to
execute the whole batch of the condemned, he received a telegraphic
order from Lincoln to send him the record of the trials. This the
President put into the hands of two men on whom he relied. They
reported that forty of the convicts only had committed murders of
unarmed citizens. Of this number, two only were guilty of outrages on
women. On December 6, 1862, President Lincoln wrote out and signed with
his own hand his order for the execution of thirty-eight, directing the
remainder to be safely held, subject to further orders. One of the
forty had been allowed a commutation to ten years’ imprisonment,
another a reprieve. The condemned were separated from their comrades
and closely confined in irons in a log building on the main street of
Mankato. All but two were baptized, thirty-two by the Catholic father
Ravoux. On December 26, 1862, the execution took place in presence of a
great crowd. Some years after, the Rev. Mr. Riggs publicly stated that
mistakes were made in the separation of the condemned from the body of
convicts, ‘but not intentionally.’ The bodies were buried, but not to
stay underground. Many, if not all, were distributed among members of
the medical profession, to be used in the cause of science. The
excitement of the people soon abated, and the opinion at length
prevailed that the crimes of the Indians had been sufficiently atoned.
Some of the survivors might have preferred the fate of those who
suffered at Mankato.
The announcement that the War Department would withdraw some of the
Minnesota regiments after the close of Sibley’s campaign met with such
loud and repeated protests that the order, if issued, was revoked. The
three companies of the Fifth, however, joined their regiment in the
South at the close of the year, and the Third followed in January,
1863. The remaining infantry regiments, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth,
and the regiment of twelve companies of Mounted Rangers raised in the
fall of 1862, were so disposed as to form a sure cordon of defense
against possible raids by hostile Indians on the settlements.
When Congress assembled in December, 1862, there was little opposition
to drastic propositions regarding the Sioux Indians. Acts were passed
for abrogating all treaties, forfeiting all lands, annulling all
annuities; for the immediate relief of citizens of Minnesota from
Indian ravages to be paid out of moneys of the Sioux; for reimbursing
Minnesota for the costs of the campaign against the Sioux up to the
time (September 5) when the War Department assumed charge; for the
removal from Minnesota of all the Winnebagoes and Sioux; and for the
survey and sale of their reservations. All these provisions were
rigorously executed. The state’s Indian war expenses were ascertained
to be $250,507.06, and that sum was allowed in a settlement of
accounts. The commissioners appointed to award relief and damages
reported that out of $200,000 allowed for immediate relief they had
paid $184,392 to 1380 claimants. As damages they awarded $1,170,374 to
2635 claimants. Their awards were liberal, and attorneys for
beneficiaries were well compensated.
The removal of the Indians from Minnesota began in April, 1863, with
the transportation of the convicts to Fort McClellan in East Davenport,
Iowa. They had been kept under guard at South Bend during the winter,
where a remarkable work of grace took place among them under the
ministration of the veteran missionary Williamson and his devoted
sister “Aunt Jane.” On February 1, 1863, three hundred were baptized by
that evangelist aided by the Rev. Gideon H. Pond. The conduct of these
convicts in prison at Davenport was in all respects praiseworthy. They
were orderly, and for Indians industrious, and took much comfort in
their religious meetings. Dr. Williamson remained with them two years.
In 1864 President Lincoln pardoned seventy-five and sent them west to
their people. Two years later the two hundred and forty-seven survivors
were liberated. One third of the whole number committed died in prison.
The uncondemned Sioux prisoners marched to Fort Snelling in November,
1862, were kept in a guarded camp till May, when they were transported
to a chosen reservation on Crow Creek on the Missouri, some sixty miles
below Pierre. The land was so barren and the seasons so unfavorable
that the government was obliged to feed them for three years, when they
were moved to the Niobrara reservation in Nebraska, where they have
remained. A small remnant of some twenty-five families of friendlies,
many of them Christians, were suffered to remain in Minnesota, because
they could not safely live among the heathen people. A small donation
of $7500 was made to them by Congress in 1865, the distribution being
intrusted to General Sibley and Bishop Whipple. A handful still
survive. The Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux, who had removed themselves
from Minnesota after the battle of Wood Lake, had no fixed home till
1867, when Congress settled them on two reservations in Dakota
Territory: one west of and adjoining Lake Traverse, the other around
Devil’s Lake.
* * * * *
As for the Sioux who had escaped from Sibley after Wood Lake, and
others living on the Missouri regarded as dangerous, there was no other
thought than that they must be followed, and, if not exterminated, so
punished and scattered that they could never again lift a finger
against their beneficent guardian, the white man. General Pope at
Milwaukee still commanding the department of the Northwest, early in
the winter of 1863 devised a plan for a campaign which was to have such
results. Two columns were to penetrate the Indian country between the
Minnesota line and the Missouri: one, of cavalry, to move from Fort
Randall directly up the Missouri; the other, from the upper Minnesota,
under the command of Brigadier-General Sibley; both to move so soon as
the buffalo grass should be high enough for pasture. Sibley’s
expedition rendezvoused at Camp Pope in the angle of the Minnesota and
Redwood rivers. He had 3200 infantry, including the Sixth, Seventh, and
Tenth Minnesota, the Minnesota Mounted Rangers 500 strong, 120
artillerymen, 170 scouts headed by Major Joseph R. Brown; in all some
4200 men. Leaving Camp Pope June 16, the expedition marched up the
Minnesota to and past Big Stone Lake, and then struck across to the
valley of the Cheyenne, which it followed to within two or three days’
march of Devil’s Lake. Here Sibley got word of a body of Indians off to
his left. Leaving one third of his force in a fortified camp, he turned
to the southwest, crossed the James River, and in Burleigh County,
North Dakota, on July 24, came upon a body of Indians, perhaps two
thousand in number.
A colloquy between outposts was taking place, to which Dr. Josiah S.
Weiser, surgeon of the First Mounted Rangers, rode up. A young savage,
after a show of friendship, treacherously shot him dead. This was the
signal for attack. The Sioux, not being on the warpath, were not
prepared for battle. Their warriors made the best rear-guard defense
they could, to gain time for their women and children to escape. The
pursuit by the cavalry lasted till nearly dark. A great quantity of
buffalo skins, dried meat and tallow, and camp furniture was gathered
and burned. In this “Battle of Big Mound” three of Sibley’s men were
wounded. Of the eighty Sioux killed and wounded, twenty-one were
scalped. Two days later a similar engagement, called the “Battle of
Dead Buffalo Lake,” took place, with a similar result. The nine Indians
killed were scalped, to the disgust of the commander. On July 28 still
another affair of the same character occurred, in which the Indians
made a more spirited but unsuccessful resistance to gain time for their
people to set themselves across the Missouri, near the banks of which
the fight was going on. They lost ten killed, the whites none.
The escape of the Sioux beyond the Missouri was due to the failure of
the column sent up that river to coöperate in their capture. General
Alfred Sully’s cavalry did not arrive, and having no tidings of it,
Sibley began his homeward march on August 3. The expedition returned to
Fort Snelling on September 13, having marched 1039-1/2 miles. On the
outward journey the commander suffered a severe injury from the fall of
his horse, and, far worse, received news of the death of two young
children. His diary reflects his deep and natural sorrow.
The movement of General Sully resulted in overtaking the Sioux who had
recrossed the Missouri and were hunting in Dickey County, North Dakota.
His attack upon them at White Stone Hill, resulting in considerable
slaughter and destruction of immense booty, cannot be here related. The
results of the operation of 1863 against the Sioux were negative. Nor
were those of the following year much more effective. In this campaign
General Sully led an expedition from Fort Rice on the Missouri to Fort
Union on the Yellowstone, the whole march covering 1625 miles. His
column included a Minnesota brigade made up of six companies of the
Eighth mounted on Indian ponies, the Second Minnesota cavalry, a new
regiment recruited to take the place of the First Mounted Rangers, two
sections of the Third Minnesota Battery of Light Artillery, and a
company of scouts. Brackett’s battalion of three companies of Minnesota
cavalry was attached to another brigade. On July 28 the considerable
battle of Killdeer Mountain on the Little Missouri River took place.
Countless herds of buffalo were met with on this march. As long as
these survived, and the Indians could supply themselves with horses and
ammunition, no white man’s army could surround and destroy them.
To disabuse the reader of the possible impression that the people of
Minnesota were more frightened than they had reason to be, he is asked
to recur to the season of 1863. To guard the frontier from attacks of
marauding parties of Indians, General Sibley left in the state the
Eighth Infantry, which had already been distributed in a line of posts
to cover the settlements. Despite its vigilant patrols, parties of
savages broke through at various points. In April there were three
murders in Watonwan County, household goods and provisions were seized,
and cattle and horses run off. In June a squad of Company A of the
Eighth chased a horse-stealing gang out of Meeker County, one of whom
shot Captain John S. Cody, causing instant death. In the course of the
summer the Eighth Minnesota lost more men killed and wounded than
Sibley’s troops in all his battles. On the 29th of June the most
atrocious murder of the season was committed within thirty miles of
Minneapolis, near Watertown, Carver County. Amos Dustin, traveling by
wagon with his family, was waylaid, and he and his aged mother
instantly shot to death by arrows. His wife and one child were
fearfully wounded. A girl of six, hiding under a seat, was not
discovered. Her clothing was soaked with her father’s blood. To aid the
troops in protecting life and property, Governor Swift organized a
company of volunteer scouts and put them under the command of Captain
James Sturgis of Wright County. In addition to their promised pay, the
sum of one hundred dollars was offered to any scout bringing in a Sioux
scalp. This command scouted the big woods from Sauk Center to the
Minnesota River so effectively that people who had abandoned their
homes and farms took heart and ventured back.
On the 3d of July, 1863, a citizen of Hutchinson, Nathan Sampson, was
hunting some five miles to the north of that village, accompanied by
his son Chauncey. Espying an Indian picking berries, he fired. Though
wounded, the Indian returned the fire, and hit Mr. Sampson in the left
shoulder. A shot from the young man’s rifle proved fatal to the savage.
That Indian was believed to be Little Crow, and a certain deformity of
the wrists from a gunshot in early life was probably sufficient
evidence of his identity. A half-starved Indian boy was picked up by a
detachment of Sibley’s army in North Dakota on July 28, who gave his
name as Wo-i-non-pa; he said that he was a son of Little Crow, and that
he was with his father when he was killed. The errand of the chief,
according to the boy, was to capture horses enough to mount the small
remnant of his warriors and ride away to Canada.
The Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth regiments were dispatched to the South in
the fall of 1863; the Sixth and Eighth being held till the following
season to keep watch and ward against possible and much-feared savage
forays.