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For several weeks previous to the outbreak the Indians came to the agencies to get their money. Day after day and week after week passed and there was no sign of paymasters. The year 1862 was the the second year of the great Rebellion, and as the government officers had been taxed to their utmost to provide funds for the prosecution of the war, it looked as though they had neglected their wards in Minnesota. Many of the Indians who had gathered about the agencies were out of money and their families were suffering. The Indians were told that on account of the great war in which the government was engaged the payment would never be made. Their annuities were payable in gold and they were told that the great father had no gold to pay them with. Maj. Galbraith, the agent of the Sioux, had organized a company to go South, composed mostly of half-breeds, and this led the Indians to believe that now would be the time to go to war with the whites and get their land back. It was believed that the men who had enlisted last had all left the state and that before, help could be sent they could clear the country of the whites, and that the Winnebagos and Chippewas would come to their assistance. It is known that the Sioux had been in communication with Hole-in-the-Day, the Chippewa chief, but the outbreak was probably precipitated before they came to an understanding. It was even said at the time that the Confederate government had emissaries among them, but the Indians deny this report and no evidence has ever been collected proving its truthfulness.
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Under the call of the president for 600,000 men Minnesota was called upon to furnish five regiments—the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth—and the requisition had been partially filled and the men mustered in when the news reached St. Paul that open hostilities had commenced at the upper agency, and an indiscriminate massacre of the whites was taking place.
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The people of Minnesota had been congratulating themselves that they were far removed from the horrors of the Civil war, and their indignation knew no bounds when compelled to realize that these treacherous redskins, who had been nursed and petted by officers of the government, and by missionaries and traders for years, had, without a moment's warning, commenced an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. It was a singular fact that farmer Indians, whom the government officers and missionaries had tried so hard to civilize, were guilty of the most terrible butcheries after hostilities had actually commenced.
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A few days previous to the attack upon the whites at the upper agency a portion of the band of Little Six appeared at Action, Meeker county. There they murdered several people and then fled to Redwood. It was the first step in the great massacre that soon followed. On the morning of the 18th of August, without a word of warning, an indiscriminate massacre was inaugurated. A detachment of Company B of the Fifth regiment, under command of Capt. Marsh, went to the scene of the revolt, but they were ambushed and about twenty-five of their number, including the captain, killed. The horrible work of murder, pillage and destruction was spread throughout the entire Sioux reservation, and whole families, especially those in isolated portions of the country, were an easy prey to these fiendish warriors.
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The Wyoming massacre during the Revolution and the Black Hawk and Seminole wars at a later period, pale into insignificance when compared to the great outrages committed by these demons during this terrible outbreak. In less than one week 1,000 people had been killed, several million dollars' worth of property destroyed and 30,000 people rendered homeless. The entire country from Fort Ripley to the southern boundary of the state, reaching almost to the mouth of the Minnesota river, had been in a twinkling depopulated. How to repel these invaders and drive them back to their reservations and out of the state as they had forfeited all rights to the land they had occupied, was the problem that suddenly confronted both the state and national authorities.