Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux

by Stephen Return Riggs

1862.—General Sibley’s Expedition.—I Go as Chaplain.—At Fort Ridgely.—The Burial Party.—Birch Coolie Defeat.—Simon and Lorenzo Bring in Captives.—March to Yellow Medicine.—Battle of Wood Lake.—Indians Flee.—Camp Release.—A Hundred Captives Rescued.—Amos W. Huggins Killed.—We Send for His Wife and Children.—Spirit Walker Has Protected Them.—Martha’s Letter.

When Mary and the children had safely reached friends and civilization at Mr. Pond’s, I was pressed in spirit with the thought that I might have some duty to perform in the Indian country. At Lac-qui-parle, twenty-five miles beyond our station at Hazelwood, were Amos W. Huggins, with wife and children, and Miss Julia La Framboise. They had been in the employ of the government as teachers at Wakanmane’s village. What had befallen them, we knew not; but we knew that white men had been killed between our place and Lac-qui-parle. Then, our native church members—they might need help. And so I took a boat at Shakopee, and went down to St. Paul, and offered my services to Governor Ramsay, in whatever capacity he chose to put me. He immediately commissioned me as chaplain to General Sibley’s expedition. The last day of August I was at St. Peter, where I learned from Mr. Huggins’ friends the story that he had been killed, and that his wife and children were captives. In regard to them I received a special charge from Mrs. Holtsclaw, and I conceived a plan of immediately sending for Mrs. Huggins. But circumstances made it impossible to carry out that plan for several weeks.

The next day, Sabbath though it was, I rode up with Colonel Marshall and others to Fort Ridgely, where General Sibley’s command was encamped. He was waiting for reinforcements and ammunition supplies. At the first news of the massacres, a large number of citizens had impressed their neighbors’ horses, and had started for the Indian country. Many of them were poor riders, and they were all poorly armed. They were without military organization and drill, and were felt to be an element of weakness rather than strength. A night or two before I reached the camp, a couple of shots had been fired, supposed to have been by Indians. The drum beat the “long roll,” and the men that formed this “string-bean cavalry,” as they were called, crawled under the wagons. The next morning many of them had had a clairvoyant communication with their families at home, and learned that their wives were sick. They were permitted to depart.

Three days before, a detachment of cavalry and infantry had been sent up as far as the Lower Sioux Agency, to find and bury the dead. They had done their work, as they supposed, and crossed back to the north side of the Minnesota, without seeing any Indians. As the sun was setting on that Sabbath evening, they ascended the hill and made their camp on the top of the Birch Coolie bluff. But the Sioux had discovered them, and that night they were surrounded by twice their own number of the enemy. In the early morning the attack was made and kept up all day. The report of the musketry was heard at General Sibley’s camp, eighteen miles away, but the reverberation made by the Minnesota hills placed the conflict apparently within six or eight miles. A detachment sent to their relief soon returned, because, after they had gone a short distance, they could hear nothing. But the firing still continued, and another detachment, with a howitzer, was sent, with orders to go on until the absent ones were found.

The sun was low when a messenger came from the troops last sent. The Indians were in such large force that they did not dare risk a conflict, and so had retired to the prairie. General Sibley’s whole force was then put in readiness, and we had a night march up to Birch Coolie. The relief detachment was reached, and an hour or two of rest obtained before the morning light.

When our camp was in motion, the Indians came against us and surrounded us; but, soon perceiving that the force was not what they had seen the night before, they commenced making their escape, and we marched on to the original camp. It was a sad sight—dead men and dead horses lying in the hastily dug breastworks. Twelve men were found dead, whom we buried in one grave. Thirty or forty were wounded, and nearly the whole of the ninety horses were lying dead. The camp had suffered greatly for want of water, as the Indians had cut them off entirely from the stream.

This defeat showed more clearly than before the necessity of being well prepared before an advance was made upon the hostile Sioux. It also served to rouse Minnesota thoroughly—a number of the killed and wounded in this battle were St. Paul men. But the middle of September had come and gone before General Sibley felt ready to move up the river. In the meantime, while we were still at Ridgely, Simon Anawangmane came down by land, and brought Mrs. Newman and her children to our camp. And Lorenzo Lawrence brought in canoes Mrs. De Camp and children and others.

Mrs. Newman had been taken captive by the Lower Sioux, and when they reached the Yellow Medicine, she was apparently allowed by those who had her to go where she pleased. One day she came to Simon’s tent, and, hearing them sing and pray, she felt like trusting herself and children rather to Simon than to the others. When the camp started to go farther north, Simon stayed behind, and then, placing Mrs. N. and her children in his one-horse wagon, and hitching to his horse, he and his son brought them down. Mrs. De Camp’s husband had been severely wounded in the battle of Birch Coolie, and had died only a couple of days before she and the children were brought in. Lorenzo also brought with him a large English church Bible, and my own personal copy of Dakota grammar and dictionary, which I prized very highly.

The 21st of September, or five weeks after the outbreak commenced, we were marching by the Lower Sioux Agency and Red Wood, and getting an impression of what the émeute had been, in occasionally finding a dead body, and seeing the ruins of the buildings. The Sioux were now watching our movements closely. Indeed, they had kept themselves informed of our motions all along. It was this day, at the Red Wood, John Otherday went into a plum-orchard and left his horse a little way out. One of the hostiles who had been hidden there jumped on it and rode off. This made Otherday greatly ashamed. The night of the 22d we camped on the margin of Wood Lake, within three miles of the Yellow Medicine. Here we were to rest the next day and wait for a train that was behind.