Minnesota, the North Star State

by William Watts Folwell

There they passed an anxious night. After midnight a trader’s employee came in mortally wounded. At daylight a bookkeeper of another was killed and a clerk painfully wounded. The upper Indians were keener for plunder than for blood. Collecting wagons for the women and children and the wounded, the party left their shelter, forded the river, and under the faithful guidance of Other Day made their way across country to Hutchinson. Friendly warning given late on Monday to the missionaries, Williamson and Riggs, residing a few miles above the agency, enabled them to escape with their families and assistants, forty-five in number, to safe hiding in the river-bottom, from which they began the next day their journey to Henderson.

Sporadic killing, plunder, and devastation in the regions adjacent to the agencies mostly ceased by Tuesday night. Small parties of savages, however, escaping from the control of the chiefs, spread themselves to distant settlements to revel in carnage and fire. Within a week there were murder and pillage in Meeker County, forty miles to the northwest of the agencies, in Murray County, fifty miles to the southwest. Two persons were killed at Sioux Falls, one hundred miles away, and four near Breckenridge, one hundred and sixty miles as the crow flies. Fort Ridgely, Hutchinson, Forest City, Glencoe, and even St. Peter were threatened, but not attacked.

These forays had their natural and intended effect. As the tidings of Indian butchery spread, the settlers loaded what furniture and provisions they could in their wagons, and driving their stock before them, made their way to the “river towns.” An area two hundred miles long from north to south and fifty miles in breadth was depopulated, while the harvest awaited the reapers. Their flight was all the more precipitate because of rumors that the Winnebagoes had broken out along with the Sioux, and that the Chippeways were to close in from the north. No small number of persons went back to their former homes in other states. The occasional appearance of small parties of Indians out for cattle-stealing and other robberies for a month after the outbreak justified all the fears of the fugitives. On September 22 two children were killed within fifteen miles of St. Cloud, and the little village of Paynesville was fired. A small number of persons ignorant of the country, and not way-wise, wandered about for weeks before finding settlements. Hundreds of settlers in the Missouri valley went to Sioux City and other towns.

To what extent the upper Indians participated in these raids and in the several battles it is difficult to determine. They were quite as much exasperated and were more turbulent than the lower bands. That some of their leading chiefs and braves sympathized is known to be a fact, and it cannot be doubted that many individual members participated in the murders and the war which ensued.

CHAPTER XII
THE SIOUX WAR

It was not till Wednesday the 20th that Little Crow could muster and hold together a body of warriors sufficient to undertake regular warfare and carry out a well-laid plan to capture Fort Ridgely. He was aware, of course, that its little garrison had lost its commander and fully half of its men. He probably did not know of the arrival of two reinforcements: one, Sheehan’s detachment recalled by Captain Marsh before beginning his fatal march; the other, the party of recruits, enlisted at the agencies and taken by Agent Galbraith as far as St. Peter. They took and kept the name of “Renville Rangers.” The information brought to Agent Galbraith at St. Peter on the evening of the outbreak indicated Fort Ridgely as the point where his recruits would be most needed. He had therefore led them thither at daylight of Tuesday, armed with some Harper’s Ferry muskets belonging to a local militia company. He had to give bonds to the exacting custodian. What with these troops and with male refugees from the agencies and the surrounding farms, Lieutenant Sheehan, the ranking officer, had not more than one hundred and eighty combatants. Upon the withdrawal of the regular garrison the year before, six pieces of artillery of various patterns had been left behind with Ordnance-Sergeant John Jones in charge. Of this the Indians may not have been informed. The so-called fort consisted of buildings grouped on the sides of a square of three hundred feet, one of them of stone. Outside were small log houses for civilian employees, stables, and stacks of hay and grain. The site was on the bluff separated from the river (Minnesota) by a bottom a half mile in width. Ravines of erosion cut the hillside into excellent places of approach and cover.

Without warning, at one o’clock on Wednesday afternoon a volley was poured into the central inclosure. Two soldiers fell, one dead, the other badly wounded. One citizen was killed soon after. The fire was returned from such points of advantage as the structures afforded. Sergeant Jones had already made up three gun detachments, partly from citizens who had seen service and partly from soldiers whom he had instructed. It was not long before he had his guns in action, to the great surprise of Little Crow, who presently drew off his men. Thursday was a day of rain, and seems to have been spent by the Sioux chiefs in consultation and in preparing for a stronger assault. The time was well spent by the besieged in fitting ammunition, building barricades of cordwood, covering roofs with earth, and other practicable strengthening of defenses.

At one o’clock P. M. of Friday, Little Crow delivered his main attack, with a force largely increased, on the south and west of the post. From the cover of ravines he kept up a lively fire till late in the day. His last move, unusual in Indian warfare, was that of massing a body of warriors in a ravine running up toward the southwest angle of the inclosure, for a charge on the garrison. Sergeant Jones thereupon had his twenty-four pound cannon pointed down that “coolie,” and landed a single shell which sent Crow’s warriors flying off the field. In the two half days’ fighting there had been three persons killed and thirteen wounded within the post.

As refugees, many wounded, came pouring in to New Ulm on Monday, the need of outside help was felt and no second thought was necessary to suggest the one man to whom the townsmen should appeal. Charles Eugene Flandrau, for many years resident at old Traverse des Sioux, who had been Sioux agent, member of the constitutional convention, and a judge of the state supreme court, was the best known man all up and down the Minnesota valley. His name was a household word. At four o’clock on Tuesday morning a messenger brought him the summons of the people of New Ulm. Riding into St. Peter he found the citizens awake and alert, but without organization. In a public meeting in the courthouse he was elected captain of the relieving party to be formed. About noon a detachment of eighteen mounted men was put upon the road, which arrived in New Ulm in time to reassure the citizens after their repulse of the Indians. Early in the afternoon Flandrau’s company marched and was swelled to one hundred and twenty-five men by accessions along the route. It was late in the evening when he arrived. Early on Wednesday morning Captain Bierbauer arrived from Mankato with one hundred men, and other squads came in that day.

In a public meeting Captain Flandrau was promoted to colonel, and proceeded with dispatch and excellent judgment to form a staff, to organize the fighting force, and to fortify a central stronghold for non-combatants. Choosing three blocks of the main street, he threw up barricades across the ends and connected the rear walls of abutting buildings with bullet-proof constructions, and loopholed the walls of the brick buildings. On Thursday parties were sent out to the neighboring hamlets and farms to bury the dead and bring in the wounded.