BATTLE OF BIRCH COOLIE.
The battle of Birch Coolie was fought September 2 and 3, 1862. It has never taken its proper place in history, but with the exception of the massacre at the Little Big Horn, in 1876, it was the hottest and the most desperate battle fought during the war of the Rebellion or any of our Indian wars. In comparison to the number of men and horses engaged, I know of no conflict, the one above referred to excepted, where the casualties were as great as they were here.
The Indian custom is to make an attack about four o’clock in the morning, so this relief had been especially cautioned, and soon after the guard was placed one of them thought he saw something moving in the grass. It proved to be an Indian, and they were slowly moving in upon us, their intention being to shoot the pickets with arrows, and as noiselessly as possible rush in and destroy us in our confusion. The sentinel fired at the moving object, and instantly our camp was encircled by fire and smoke from the guns of five hundred Indians, who had hemmed us in. The guard who fired escaped the bullet intended for him. He said he thought the moving object in the grass might be a hog or it might be an Indian, and, hog or Indian, he intended to kill it if he could. The fire was returned by the pickets as they retreated to the camp, and although there necessarily was confusion, there was no panic. Quicker than I can write we were out, musket in hand, but the captain’s command to “fall down” was mistaken for “fall in,” which makes a vast difference under such circumstances. We soon broke for the wagons, however, which were formed in a circle about our tents, and this afforded us some little shelter.
As this was our baptismal fire, and a most important engagement, I devote more space to it than I otherwise would. What an experience it was to inexperienced, peaceable, unsuspecting men! Think of being awakened out of a blissful sleep by the fire from five hundred Indian rifles—it is a wonder that we were not all destroyed amid the confusion that naturally would follow; but we had cool heads among us, and none were cooler than Old Joe Brown and Captain H. P. Grant, of Company A, who was in immediate command. I will here refer to two others. First, Mr. William H. Grant, a lawyer of St. Paul, who still lives in Minnesota. He went out to see the fun. Well, he saw it, and the “trial” was a severe one. He “objected” and “took exceptions” to everything the Indians did.
He wore a black plug hat, and this was a good mark for the redskins; they shot it off his head twice, and it was finally lost altogether. “Bill” was cool; he did not lose his temper, but laid down very flat on the ground and gave directions to those about him how to shoot to kill. We afterward voted him in as a brevet private, and were always ready to divide grub and “shake.” Postmaster Ed. Patch, of St. Anthony, was another of our citizen escorts. He was a jolly good fellow and “cool as a cucumber,” with a bay window on him like an overgrown bass drum. He found this excess of stomach very much in the way, in his great desire to hug mother earth and get out of range of the Indian bullets, and looked as if he wished he had never been born, or that he had been a disciple of anti-fat.
One of our little thin fellows was lying down alongside of “Ed,” and I’ll never forget the expression of his face when he said: “God, bub, I wish I was as little as you be.”
The camp was miserably located, being commanded by the deep ravine on one side and by a mound on the other, so that the savages were well sheltered from our fire. Had the instructions given by Colonel Sibley been followed, which were always to encamp in open and level prairie, there would have been no such destruction of valuable lives, but the spot was chosen for our camp because it was near wood and water, and the Indians were supposed to be fifty miles away. It was a mistake, which we discovered after it was too late. A brisk fire was opened by the boys, and soon the cartridge boxes were being depleted. Ammunition was called for, and upon opening a box, to our dismay we found it to be of too large a calibre. Other boxes were opened with a like result. In loading up our ammunition a mistake had been made, and we found ourselves in this unfortunate dilemma; but no time was to be lost, as we had not more than an average of twenty rounds to the man, and a hoard of savages about us who seemed well supplied with powder and ball.
We went to work cutting the large bullets down with our knives, but this was a slow and unsatisfactory process. We used the powder from these large cartridges to load our guns with, putting in an extra amount, so that when we fired these blanks they made a great noise, and thus kept up a successful “bluff,” though doing no damage. A dead silence would ensue, and occasionally some of our best shots picked off a more daring redskin simply to remind them that we were awake. We had but one shovel and one pick; there were others in some of the wagons, or they had been thrown out in the grass and could not be found. The captain offered $5 apiece for them, but the bullets were too thick to admit of a search, so we used jack-knives, spoons and bayonets to dig our intrenchments with. In time we had very good pits dug, and with the assistance of the dead bodies of our horses had ourselves tolerably well protected.
With the wounded horses rearing and plunging, the men groaning and calling for help, the hurried commands, and the unearthly yells of the five hundred red devils about us, this baptismal fire was trying to the souls of raw recruits, as most of us were. We were encircled by fire and smoke, the bullets were doing their deadly work, and it really seemed as though no man could escape death. Our orders were: “Load and fire, but steady, boys, and give them hail Columbia!”