A Thrilling Narrative of the Minnesota Massacre and the Sioux War of 1862-63 / Graphic Accounts of the Siege of Fort Ridgely, Battles of Birch Coolie, Wood Lake, Big Mound, Stony Lake, Dead Buffalo Lake and Missouri River

by A. P. Connolly

CUT-NOSE.
Who killed twenty-seven persons, and was hanged.

Another one, prematurely gray, thought this ought to be evidence in his favor, and others protested that they were too weak to face fire; others, that their lives were threatened and they were compelled to go on the war path; others, that they slept while their more wakeful companions fought; and one old man who said he was fifty years old a great many years ago, thought he might be excused, but a boy swore straight against him and said, “I saw that man kill my mother,” which solemn words settled the prisoner’s fate.

This Indian was “Round Wind,” but it was afterwards shown that he was not there and he was reprieved just before the day set for the execution.

Among the Indian prisoners were some who had been enlisted in the “Renville Rangers,” and had deserted to their friends—our enemies. These rangers were all Indians and half-breeds, and it was largely from this fact that the Indians conceived the idea that all the white men had left the state and that the time was propitious for the Indians to strike to regain their territory.

It was proven conclusively that these men had been in all the battles, and at Wood Lake one of them had taken the first scalp, and this from an old man and a former comrade in his company. For this he received one of the two belts of wampum which had been promised by Little Crow as a reward for killing the first white man. These men all offered excuses, but the evidence was so overwhelmingly against them that they also were condemned to death.

It was necessary to make an indiscriminate capture of the Indians and then investigate their several cases to find out the guilty ones, because, there were many among them who no doubt had been compelled to participate in the fights we had with them at Birch Coolie and Wood Lake, and only kept with the hostiles from policy and to save the lives of the white people. To these and a good old squaw, well known in St. Paul and other parts of the Union as “Old Betz,” over 400 persons owe their lives.

“Old Betz” has gone to her reward in the happy hunting grounds, having lived over seventy-five years. She was a good woman and a good friend to the early settlers of Minnesota. Others who were friendly to the whites and loyal to their great father at Washington were liberated, and the guilty placed under strong guard.