The action of the military commission met with general approval throughout the state. Citizens of St. Paul in public meeting demanded that the government authorities, as the chosen instruments of divine vengeance, should so execute their duty that the friends and relatives of the victims should not be compelled to take vengeance into their own hands. General Pope advised President Lincoln that unless all the executions were made, an indiscriminate massacre of all the Indian prisoners, innocent and guilty, would take place. Governor Ramsey also expressed the same opinion to the President. The Minnesota delegation in Congress, Senator Rice not signing, protested against the convicts being considered prisoners of war, and declared that the outraged citizens of Minnesota would dispose of the wretches without law, if they should not be executed according to law. On the other hand, there went to the President appeals and protests against a horrible wholesale execution, from members of the Friends Society and various humanitarian organizations. So far as known there was but one public man in Minnesota whose judgment was not subjugated by the passion of the hour. He was Henry Benjamin Whipple, bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who three years before the Sioux outbreak had come to the state. Immediately after his arrival his attention was called to the red men of his diocese, and it was not long before he had fathomed the iniquities of the traditional Indian system. In March, 1862, he addressed an open letter to President Lincoln, summarizing those iniquities, and insisting on giving the Indian a government of law, administered by agents chosen for fitness and not for political service. A calm and clear statement of the policy and the train of events which had led to the outbreak of the Sioux, published in the St. Paul newspapers, brought about the bishop a whirlwind of denunciation which would have taken an ordinary man off his feet. Bishop Whipple never budged an inch. His personal representations to the President no doubt had their effect in the action which followed. On the day when General Pope was hopefully awaiting the President’s permission to execute the whole batch of the condemned, he received a telegraphic order from Lincoln to send him the record of the trials. This the President put into the hands of two men on whom he relied. They reported that forty of the convicts only had committed murders of unarmed citizens. Of this number, two only were guilty of outrages on women. On December 6, 1862, President Lincoln wrote out and signed with his own hand his order for the execution of thirty-eight, directing the remainder to be safely held, subject to further orders. One of the forty had been allowed a commutation to ten years’ imprisonment, another a reprieve. The condemned were separated from their comrades and closely confined in irons in a log building on the main street of Mankato. All but two were baptized, thirty-two by the Catholic father Ravoux. On December 26, 1862, the execution took place in presence of a great crowd. Some years after, the Rev. Mr. Riggs publicly stated that mistakes were made in the separation of the condemned from the body of convicts, ‘but not intentionally.’ The bodies were buried, but not to stay underground. Many, if not all, were distributed among members of the medical profession, to be used in the cause of science. The excitement of the people soon abated, and the opinion at length prevailed that the crimes of the Indians had been sufficiently atoned. Some of the survivors might have preferred the fate of those who suffered at Mankato.
The announcement that the War Department would withdraw some of the Minnesota regiments after the close of Sibley’s campaign met with such loud and repeated protests that the order, if issued, was revoked. The three companies of the Fifth, however, joined their regiment in the South at the close of the year, and the Third followed in January, 1863. The remaining infantry regiments, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and the regiment of twelve companies of Mounted Rangers raised in the fall of 1862, were so disposed as to form a sure cordon of defense against possible raids by hostile Indians on the settlements.
When Congress assembled in December, 1862, there was little opposition to drastic propositions regarding the Sioux Indians. Acts were passed for abrogating all treaties, forfeiting all lands, annulling all annuities; for the immediate relief of citizens of Minnesota from Indian ravages to be paid out of moneys of the Sioux; for reimbursing Minnesota for the costs of the campaign against the Sioux up to the time (September 5) when the War Department assumed charge; for the removal from Minnesota of all the Winnebagoes and Sioux; and for the survey and sale of their reservations. All these provisions were rigorously executed. The state’s Indian war expenses were ascertained to be $250,507.06, and that sum was allowed in a settlement of accounts. The commissioners appointed to award relief and damages reported that out of $200,000 allowed for immediate relief they had paid $184,392 to 1380 claimants. As damages they awarded $1,170,374 to 2635 claimants. Their awards were liberal, and attorneys for beneficiaries were well compensated.
The removal of the Indians from Minnesota began in April, 1863, with the transportation of the convicts to Fort McClellan in East Davenport, Iowa. They had been kept under guard at South Bend during the winter, where a remarkable work of grace took place among them under the ministration of the veteran missionary Williamson and his devoted sister “Aunt Jane.” On February 1, 1863, three hundred were baptized by that evangelist aided by the Rev. Gideon H. Pond. The conduct of these convicts in prison at Davenport was in all respects praiseworthy. They were orderly, and for Indians industrious, and took much comfort in their religious meetings. Dr. Williamson remained with them two years. In 1864 President Lincoln pardoned seventy-five and sent them west to their people. Two years later the two hundred and forty-seven survivors were liberated. One third of the whole number committed died in prison.
The uncondemned Sioux prisoners marched to Fort Snelling in November, 1862, were kept in a guarded camp till May, when they were transported to a chosen reservation on Crow Creek on the Missouri, some sixty miles below Pierre. The land was so barren and the seasons so unfavorable that the government was obliged to feed them for three years, when they were moved to the Niobrara reservation in Nebraska, where they have remained. A small remnant of some twenty-five families of friendlies, many of them Christians, were suffered to remain in Minnesota, because they could not safely live among the heathen people. A small donation of $7500 was made to them by Congress in 1865, the distribution being intrusted to General Sibley and Bishop Whipple. A handful still survive. The Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux, who had removed themselves from Minnesota after the battle of Wood Lake, had no fixed home till 1867, when Congress settled them on two reservations in Dakota Territory: one west of and adjoining Lake Traverse, the other around Devil’s Lake.
As for the Sioux who had escaped from Sibley after Wood Lake, and others living on the Missouri regarded as dangerous, there was no other thought than that they must be followed, and, if not exterminated, so punished and scattered that they could never again lift a finger against their beneficent guardian, the white man. General Pope at Milwaukee still commanding the department of the Northwest, early in the winter of 1863 devised a plan for a campaign which was to have such results. Two columns were to penetrate the Indian country between the Minnesota line and the Missouri: one, of cavalry, to move from Fort Randall directly up the Missouri; the other, from the upper Minnesota, under the command of Brigadier-General Sibley; both to move so soon as the buffalo grass should be high enough for pasture. Sibley’s expedition rendezvoused at Camp Pope in the angle of the Minnesota and Redwood rivers. He had 3200 infantry, including the Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Minnesota, the Minnesota Mounted Rangers 500 strong, 120 artillerymen, 170 scouts headed by Major Joseph R. Brown; in all some 4200 men. Leaving Camp Pope June 16, the expedition marched up the Minnesota to and past Big Stone Lake, and then struck across to the valley of the Cheyenne, which it followed to within two or three days’ march of Devil’s Lake. Here Sibley got word of a body of Indians off to his left. Leaving one third of his force in a fortified camp, he turned to the southwest, crossed the James River, and in Burleigh County, North Dakota, on July 24, came upon a body of Indians, perhaps two thousand in number.
A colloquy between outposts was taking place, to which Dr. Josiah S. Weiser, surgeon of the First Mounted Rangers, rode up. A young savage, after a show of friendship, treacherously shot him dead. This was the signal for attack. The Sioux, not being on the warpath, were not prepared for battle. Their warriors made the best rear-guard defense they could, to gain time for their women and children to escape. The pursuit by the cavalry lasted till nearly dark. A great quantity of buffalo skins, dried meat and tallow, and camp furniture was gathered and burned. In this “Battle of Big Mound” three of Sibley’s men were wounded. Of the eighty Sioux killed and wounded, twenty-one were scalped. Two days later a similar engagement, called the “Battle of Dead Buffalo Lake,” took place, with a similar result. The nine Indians killed were scalped, to the disgust of the commander. On July 28 still another affair of the same character occurred, in which the Indians made a more spirited but unsuccessful resistance to gain time for their people to set themselves across the Missouri, near the banks of which the fight was going on. They lost ten killed, the whites none.
The escape of the Sioux beyond the Missouri was due to the failure of the column sent up that river to coöperate in their capture. General Alfred Sully’s cavalry did not arrive, and having no tidings of it, Sibley began his homeward march on August 3. The expedition returned to Fort Snelling on September 13, having marched 1039½ miles. On the outward journey the commander suffered a severe injury from the fall of his horse, and, far worse, received news of the death of two young children. His diary reflects his deep and natural sorrow.