Minnesota

CHAPTER XI

THE OUTBREAK OF THE SIOUX

While the whole people of Minnesota were striving night and day to fill up the new regiments with volunteers to reinforce the national armies, there was trouble brewing within their own boundaries. The reader will have observed that small garrisons had been and were still maintained on the Indian frontiers. There was one at Fort Ripley, below Crow Wing, to protect the Chippeway agency; there were two on the borders of the Sioux reservations. Of these one occupied Fort Ridgely, situated on the north bank of the Minnesota River in the extreme northwest corner of Nicollet County. It was begun in 1853 when the lower Sioux were arriving on their reservation. The garrison had for its purpose the support of the authority of the government agents thereon. Another post had previously been established on the west bank of the Red River, some fifteen miles north of Breckenridge, chiefly for the purpose of protecting the Red River trade, carried in hundreds of single ox carts, from depredations of both Sioux and Chippeways, whose hunting parties waylaid not only one another, but the white man’s caravans. Fort Abercrombie, although at some distance from the upper reserve, was near enough to keep the upper Sioux aware of the Great Father’s power. Although called forts, no one of the three was in any sense a strong place. Each consisted of a group of detached buildings standing on the open prairie. The lapse of years in quiet seemed to justify the assumption that it would be a useless thing to form a proper inclosure and fortify it.

The Minnesota Sioux betook themselves to the reserves designated in the treaties of 1851 in no comfortable frame of mind. They believed that they had been obliged to abandon their ancient homes for an inadequate compensation, and that government agents had conspired with the traders and half-breeds to cheat them of money promised to be paid to their chiefs. Two years passed before they were assured by act of Congress that they would be allowed to remain in Minnesota and not sent to some far-off unknown country. The treaty commissioners of 1851 congratulated the government on the establishment of a policy of “concentration,” under which the Indian would be induced to abandon the chase and get his living from the soil. The Pond brothers, foreseeing that this policy was premature, decided not to follow the tribes among whom they had labored to the reservations. Concentration of wild Indians averse to cultivation only gave opportunity for unceasing grumbling in council over the general rascality of the white man, the tyranny of the agent, the immorality of his employees, the extortions of the traders, and the imbecility of the missionaries, who worked for nothing.

In the buffalo season these Sioux swarmed out into the Missouri valley to make boot upon the still countless herds. At times some wandered back to their old homes below. The reservations, while ample in area for eight thousand Indians, were in shape ridiculously ill-adapted for concentration. Originally they formed a “shoestring” one hundred and fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. That width had been reduced by the treaties of 1858 to ten miles. There was no privacy for the Indian. An easy morning walk took him to the boundary, where the accommodating white man met him with a keg of illicit whiskey. This opportunity for “business” doubtless had no little effect in attracting settlers to the lands fronting on the reservations. The citizens of Brown County in 1859 publicly denounced the criminal practice, and the county commissioners offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for evidence leading to conviction in any prosecution. While generally harmless, the Indians annoyed the settlers by untimely visits for food, and occasional thefts of horses and cattle.

The treaties of 1858, already mentioned, ceding those parts of the two reservations lying north of the Minnesota River, were negotiated with a few selected chiefs carried to Washington so that they might not be restrained by the discussions of the braves in council. This was a source of suspicion, which turned out to be well grounded. The consideration for the ceded lands was in part additions to annuities, in part moneys to be paid as the chiefs in open council should direct. There was long delay in securing the ratification of the treaties by the Senate, and necessary ancillary legislation from Congress. Three years passed before the final payments. The lower Sioux found but $880.68 coming to them from their “hand money,” instead of $40,000. The consent of the chiefs to this division of moneys to traders and others was obtained in a surreptitious, not to say dishonest, manner. The upper Sioux were sufficiently, but not so extensively, plundered. From the time of their removal to the reservations up to the opening of the Civil War, the annuity Sioux were nursing their wrath against the deceitful and greedy white man. At the same time they were becoming distrustful of the power of which he boasted. When the Great Father had no cavalry to chase Inkpaduta, but was obliged to hire Indians to make that fruitless pursuit, the Sioux inferred that while he had a great multitude of people he could not make soldiers of them. A veteran missionary recorded the opinion that the failure of the government to pursue and capture Inkpaduta was the “primary cause” of the uprising which came five years later.

The exchange of the garrisons of regular troops at the forts for raw volunteers was to the Sioux a sign that the Great Father was in trouble, and the dispatch of raw men to help defend his country confirmed this view. Through the traders and half-breeds the Indians were kept informed of the repulses suffered by his warriors at Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, and elsewhere. Nowhere could gossip spread more speedily than in an Indian village, where gossip was the business of the braves when in camp. It is in evidence that the strong “Copperhead” element among the traders and half-breeds did not conceal their satisfaction over the defeat of loyal troops and their belief that the Great Father was going to be “cleaned out.”

The winter of 1861-62 was unusually severe. When spring opened food was scarce in all the villages. The Sissetons had eaten all their horses and dogs. The farmer Indians had in the previous summer been so badgered by the unregenerate of their own bands, and by the visiting Yanktonnais of the plains, that their industry had relaxed, and they had but little food to spare. The “payment” was accordingly looked to with unusual eagerness. According to custom it should come as soon as the grass of the prairies should be fit for pasture. Spring ripened into summer, but the agents’ runners did not bring the welcome summons to the villages. The upper Sioux, tired of waiting, came in to the agency at Yellow Medicine in the middle of July to the number of four thousand, and with them came one thousand Yanktonnais, literally on the edge of starvation. The agent supplied some flour, pork, lard, and sugar and told them to go home. He would call them when he was ready. But the savages did not depart. In a fortnight they had consumed the rations and were again hungry. The agent declining to furnish more, an armed mob of several hundred warriors surrounded the government storehouse, surprised the little guard of infantry, broke the locks and bolts, and carried off one hundred sacks of flour. Making a virtue of necessity, the agent, after a talk in council, agreed to issue all the provisions and annuity goods, on condition that the Indians would depart and stay away till called. Trouble with the upper Sioux was thus tided over, but their respect for the Great Father’s power was not increased by the forced compliance of his agent.

There was less want of food in the villages of the lower Sioux, but there was enough to cause distress and desire for an early payment. The agent had no advices. He could give no reasons for the delay of the money. The traders assumed to know more than he, and with a fatal blindness teased the Indians with suggestions that the Great Father had spent all his money and had none left for his red children. As the Indians were heavily in debt to them, they began refusing further credits. Among the rumored reasons for the delay of the money, the one most accepted was that the government officials were allowing friends to use it in speculations on supply contracts. The fact was that the Indian appropriation of 1862 was not passed in Congress till July 5. The gold was drawn from the treasury on August 11, and was at once dispatched to the west. It was brought to Fort Ridgely at noon on August 18.

The lower Sioux did not assemble and raid the warehouses, but resorted to a less riotous procedure. On the warpath or the hunt it was Indian law that a kind of provost guard composed of active warriors should maintain order on the march and in bivouac. It was called the Ti-yó-ti-pi, or “Soldiers’ lodge,” had a large discretion, and exacted instant obedience. A modified soldiers’ lodge was now set up (June, 1862) on the lower agency, attended by one hundred and fifty warriors. In its frequent councils all the grievances of the past and present were rehearsed, and schemes for redress broached and discussed. Evidence is wanting to support the assertions of contemporaries that in this soldiers’ lodge there was concocted a definite scheme of murder and pillage to be carried out later. Possibly some braves, more patriotic than judicious, pictured the consequences to the cowardly white man if the great Sioux nation should launch its hosts against his undefended farms and villages. But the oratory of the lodge fed fat the ancient grudge of the red men and added to their chronic exasperation. The dog days drew on, but there was no outward sign of insurrection. Although he felt that the Indians were in an evil and turbulent state, Agent Galbraith did not think it injudicious for him to leave his people in charge of his assistants and go off to New Ulm with a batch of forty-nine volunteers for the army on the afternoon of August 15. The same day he had passed through some of the villages and had conferred with Little Crow about the brick house he was to build for that chief. Two days after that, Crow attended morning services in the Episcopal mission chapel, and gave no sign of excitement or enmity.

But for an unforeseen incident the peace might have lasted another day, and lasting that other day, on which the annuity gold arrived, might not have been broken by one of the bloodiest Indian wars of the continent. On Sunday, August 17, 1862, a party of Sioux from Rice Creek were hunting in Meeker County for deer, and, if chance should offer, for Chippeway scalps. Early in the afternoon, in Acton Township, Meeker County, a detachment of these hunters, four or more in number, coming to a settler’s cabin, where three families were assembled, wantonly murdered five out of eleven persons. The motive for this crime is not easy to conjecture. The houses were not plundered nor fired. The evidence that the savages were drunk has not been found. There may be some value in the story that the first shot was fired by a young man who, having been twitted by his companions with cowardice, wished to show them that he dared shoot a white man.

Seizing a team and wagon of a neighboring farmer, the scoundrels drove furiously to Shakopee’s village, some ten miles above the lower agency. Upon their arrival late at night a council of warriors was called. The high connections of the murderers did not relish the idea of turning them over to white man’s justice to suffer a death signally ignominious to Indians. There was but one alternative, to treat the killing of the afternoon as an act of war, and call the nation to arms. After an outburst of patriotic eloquence this course was resolved on, and as soon as the braves could arm and mount, they moved toward the agency under the lead of Shakopee, who was no lover of the whites. The party arrived at Little Crow’s village, two miles above the lower agency, at daybreak, and arousing that chief from sleep, explained the situation.

Little Crow was the fifth Medawakanton chief who had borne that name, given in French (Le Petit Corbeau) to an ancestor who wore on his shoulders the skin and feathers of a crow. Although in temporary disgrace for connivance in the extortions of the traders under the treaties of 1858, he was still the most experienced, virile, and eloquent of the chiefs. White men who knew him still praise his good sense and kindness of heart in ordinary relations. It seems to be true that in the soldiers’ lodge he had counseled against anything like war on the white man, whose resources his journeys to Washington had revealed to him. But Little Crow was a heathen Indian. The dogs of war were loose, and the leadership was his if he would have it. He could recover his lost prestige, and show his people that he was as brave in war as he was eloquent in council. Vanity and ambition triumphed. “It must come,” he said. “Now is as good a time as any. I am with you. Let us kill the traders and divide their goods.” By seven o’clock Little Crow had possibly two hundred warriors, armed and painted, surrounding the agency, with small parties distributed about the warehouses and dwellings. Upon signal, fire was opened on all the whites in sight. Five fell dead and many others were wounded. Fortunately the eagerness of the savages to loot the stores distracted them from killing, and gave opportunity for the survivors to gain the cover of the thickets in the river-bottom. So soon as the plunder of the traders’ goods was done, small parties of warriors were detached to raid the neighboring farms and settlements. These, on that day and the next, spread themselves over the parts of Brown and Nicollet counties next to the river. The white men encountered were mostly killed, and the women taken captive with their children; but some of these were butchered when they delayed the march. The dwellings and grain stacks were fired, the farm wagons seized and loaded with plunder were driven into Little Crow’s village. By ten o’clock in the forenoon refugees from the lower agency had reached Fort Ridgely. That work was garrisoned by Company B of the Fifth Minnesota Infantry, commanded by Captain John S. Marsh, who had been promoted out of a Wisconsin regiment which he had joined because too late to be enlisted in the First Minnesota. His first act was to send a mounted man to overtake and recall Lieutenant Timothy I. Sheehan, who had at an earlier hour marched for Fort Ripley with a detachment of C Company of the same regiment. Putting forty-six of his men in wagons, mounting himself and his interpreter, Peter Quinn, he took the road to the agency. Six miles out from the fort he came to burning houses and mutilated corpses by the roadside. Refugees warned him that there was trouble ahead. Pushing on, he reached the ferry abreast of the agency, and formed his men in line in readiness to cross. A signal shot rang out and a volley of bullets laid several of the soldiers low. A moment later another volley came from Indians concealed on the right of the road by which the detachment had arrived. After a brief contest, in which half of his men had fallen, Marsh led the remnant to the cover of the thicket on his left. Observing a body of Indians moving to intercept his party, he decided to cross the river, supposing it to be fordable at that point. Wading into deep water he was drowned, in spite of the efforts of three brave men to rescue him. This was the “Battle of Redwood Ferry.” Twenty-three soldiers were killed and five wounded. Captain Marsh had been drowned, and Interpreter Quinn’s body had been riddled with bullets at the first fire. The survivors straggled into Fort Ridgely in the course of the following night.

Tuesday the 19th was occupied by the savages in other and more distant raids for robbery and slaughter. In the afternoon a demonstration by a body of one hundred and fifty Indians, more or less, was made on New Ulm. This was successfully resisted by the organized townsmen commanded by Captain Jacob Nix. One young woman was killed by a random shot, and a few other persons, including Captain Nix, were wounded. A few buildings were fired. Later in the afternoon, in the evening, and in the night, help came from St. Peter, Mankato, and other towns.

The “outbreak” was begun and mainly carried on by the lower tribes, the Medawakantons and Wah-pé-ku-tes, in spite of the fact that the Acton murders were done by members of an upper band. It was late in the afternoon of Monday the 18th when the upper Indians, the Sissetons and Wahpetons, hearing of the news, went into council on a hill near the Yellow Medicine agency, twenty-five miles distant northwest of the scene of the morning carnage. John Other Day, a Christian Indian, and Joseph La Framboise, a half-breed, informed the white people resident at and about the agency, already wondering over the mysterious council, of the outbreak below and collected them, to the number of sixty-two, in the government stone warehouse.

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.