Judge Lorin Cray—1859.
While at St. Peter and in the early part of December, 1862 a few of us learned, by grapevine telegraph, late one afternoon, that an effort was to be made the following evening, by the citizens of Mankato, New Ulm and vicinity, to kill the Indian prisoners, three hundred and more then in camp at Mankato near the present site of Sibley Park. As no admission fee was to be charged the select few determined to be present at the entertainment. The headquarters of the blood-thirsty citizens was the old Mankato House located where the National Citizens Bank now stands, where liquid refreshments were being served liberally, without money and without price.
I have never seen a correct history of this fiasco in print. A very large crowd congregated there, and there seemed to be no great haste to march on the Indian camp. Several times starts were made by a squad of fifty or one hundred persons, who would proceed for a few hundred feet, and then halt and return for more refreshments.
Finally at nearly midnight the supply of refreshments must have been exhausted for the army moved. Several hundred citizens started south along Front Street for the Indian camp, straggling for a distance of several blocks. When the head of the column reached West Mankato it halted until the rear came up, and while a rambling discussion was going on as to what they should do and how they should do it, Capt. (since governor) Austin with his company of cavalry, surrounded the whole squad and ordered them to move on towards Colonel (since governor) Miller's headquarters, right at the Indian camp. They seemed reluctant to go, and refused to move. Capt. Austin ordered his men to close in, which they did—crowding the citizens and yet they refused to move. Finally Capt. Austin gave the command to "draw sabers" and when a hundred sabers came out in one movement, the army again moved on Colonel Miller's headquarters at the Indian camp.
The scene here was supremely ridiculous. Colonel Miller came out from his tent and spoke kindly to the citizens and asked why they were congregated in such large numbers. He finally ordered their release and suggested that they go home which they hastened to do.
The next morning these Indians were removed, under guard of all the troops in the city, to log barracks, which had been built for them on Front Street diagonally across the street from where the Saulpaugh now stands. The Indians remained in these barracks only about two weeks. They had been there but a short time when the officer of the day, making his morning inspection, which was very formal, thought that he saw a hatchet or knife under the blanket of one of the Indians. Without a change of countenance or a suspicious movement he proceeded with the inspection until it was completed, and retired from the barracks, and at once caused to be mustered around the barracks every soldier in the city with loaded guns and fixed bayonets. Then with a squad of soldiers he entered the barracks and searching every Indian, he secured a large number of hatchets, knives, clubs and other weapons. These weapons, it was learned had been gotten at the Winnebago agency about twelve miles away by several squaws, who prepared food for these Indians and who were allowed to go to the woods to gather wood for their fires. Immediately after this discovery the Indians who were under sentence of death were removed to a stone building near by where they were kept under heavy guard. A few days after this incident, Dec. 26, 1862, my company came from St. Peter to act as guard on one side of the scaffold at the execution of the thirty-eight Indians who were then hanged on what is now the southerly end of the grounds of the Chicago and Northwestern freight depot, in Mankato. A granite monument now marks the place.
Captain Clark Keysor.
I served as first Lieutenant, Co. E, 9th Minnesota of the frontier extending from Fort Ridgely through the settlement at Hutchinson, Long Lake and Pipe Lake. At the latter place we built a sod fort and I was in charge. Mounted couriers, usually three in number, traveling together, reported daily at these forts. I was stationed along the frontier for more than a year and we had many encounters with the Indians, and I soon learned that a white man with the best rifle to be bought in those days had a poor chance for his life when he had to contend with an Indian with a double barrel shot gun.
The Indian, with one lightning like movement throws a hand full of mixed powder and shot into his gun, loading both barrels at once and takes a shot at his enemy before the white man can turn around, and when the Indian is running to escape, he jumps first to this side and then to that, never in a straight line, and it is an expert marksman, indeed, who can hit him.
I worked on the Winnebago agency as carpenter and millwright and learned to know the habits of the Indians very well. I learned to follow a trail and later during the Indian trouble that knowledge came in very handy.