by Dee Brown
Although Little Crow was contemptuous of those who made war on defenseless settlers, he knew that his decision to begin the war had unleashed the raiders. But it was too late to turn back. The war against the soldiers would go on as long as he had warriors to fight them.
On September 1 he decided to make a scout downriver to test the strength of Long Trader Sibley’s army. The Santees divided into two forces, Little Crow leading 110 warriors along the north side of the Minnesota, while Big Eagle and Mankato scouted the south bank with a larger force.
Little Crow’s plan was to avoid a frontal meeting with the soldiers, and instead slip around to the rear of Sibley’s lines and try to capture the army’s supply train. To do this he made a wide swing to the north, bringing his warriors close to several settlements which had withstood attacks from marauders during the previous two weeks. The temptation to raid some of the smaller settlements brought on dissension among Little Crow’s followers. On the second day of the reconnaissance, one of the subchiefs called a war council and proposed that they attack the settlements for plunder. Little Crow was opposed. Their enemies were the soldiers, he insisted; they must fight the soldiers. At the end of the council, seventy-five warriors joined the subchief for plundering. Only thirty-five loyal followers remained with Little Crow.
On the following morning Little Crow’s small party unexpectedly met a company of seventy-five soldiers. During the running battle which followed, the sound of musketry brought the defecting Santees of the previous day rushing back to Little Crow’s rescue. In bloody close-in fighting, the soldiers used their bayonets, but the Santees killed six and wounded fifteen of their enemy before the latter escaped in a hasty retreat to Hutchinson.
For the next two days the Santees reconnoitered around Hutchinson and Forest City, but the soldiers remained within stockades. On September 5 runners brought news of a battle a few miles to the southwest. Big Eagle and Mankato had trapped the Long Trader’s soldiers at Birch Coulee.
During the night before the battle at Birch Coulee, Big Eagle and Mankato had quietly surrounded the soldiers’ camp so they could not escape. “Just at dawn the fight began,” Big Eagle said. “It continued all day and the following night until late the next morning. Both sides fought well. Owing to the white men’s way of fighting they lost many men. Owing to the Indians’ way of fighting they lost but few. … About the middle of the afternoon our men became much dissatisfied at the slowness of the fight, and the stubbornness of the whites, and the word was passed around the lines to get ready to charge the camp. The brave Mankato wanted to charge after the first hour. …
“Just as we were about to charge, word came that a large number of mounted soldiers were coming up from the east toward Fort Ridgely. This stopped the charge and created some excitement. Mankato at once took some men from the coulee and went out to meet them. … Mankato flourished his men around so, and all the Indians in the coulee kept up a noise, and at last the whites began to fall back, and they retreated about two miles and began to dig breastworks. Mankato followed them and left about thirty men to watch them, and returned to the fight at the coulee with the rest. The Indians were laughing when they came back at the way they had deceived the white men, and we were all glad that the whites had not pushed forward and driven us away. …
“The next morning General Sibley came with a very large force and drove us away from the field. We took our time getting away. Some of our men said they remained till Sibley got up and that they fired at some of his men as they were shaking hands with some of the men of the camp. Those of us who were on the prairie went back to the westward and on down the valley. … There was no pursuit. The whites fired their cannons at us as we were leaving the field, but they might as well have beaten a big drum for all the harm they did. They only made a noise. We went back across the river to our camps in the old village, and then on up the river to the Yellow Medicine and the mouth of the Chippewa, where Little Crow joined us. … At last the word came that Sibley with his army was again on the move against us. … He had left a letter for Little Crow in a split stick on the battlefield of Birch Coulee, and some of our men found it and brought it in. …” 12
The message left by the Long Trader was brief and noncommittal:
If Little Crow has any proposition to make, let him send a half-breed to me, and he shall be protected in and out of camp.
H. H. Sibley, Col. Com’d Mil. Ex’n.13
Little Crow of course did not trust this man who was sharp enough to get away with so much of the Santees’ treaty money. But he decided to send a reply. He thought that perhaps the Long Trader, who had been up at the White Rock (St. Paul), did not know why the Santees had gone to war. Little Crow also wanted Governor Ramsey to know the reasons for the war. Many of the neutrals among the Santees were frightened at what Ramsey had told the white Minnesotans: “The Sioux Indians must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” 14
Little Crow’s message of September 7 to General Sibley:
For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on account of Major Galbraith. We made a treaty with the government, and beg for what we do get, and can’t get that till our children are dying with hunger. It is the traders who commenced it. Mr. A. J. Myrick told the Indians that they would eat grass or dirt. Then Mr. Forbes told the Lower Sioux that they were not men. Then Roberts was working with his friends to defraud us out of our moneys.* If the young braves have pushed the white men, I have done this myself. So I want you to let Governor Ramsey know this. I have a great many prisoners, women and children. … I want you to give me an answer to the bearer.
General Sibley’s reply:
LITTLE CROW—You have murdered many of our people without any sufficient cause. Return me the prisoners under a flag of truce, and I will talk with you then like a man.15
Little Crow had no intention of returning the prisoners before the Long Trader gave some indication of whether he meant to carry out Governor Ramsey’s dictum of extermination or exile for the Santees. He wanted to use the prisoners for bargaining. In the councils of the various bands, however, there was much disagreement over what course the Santees should take before Sibley’s army reached the Yellow Medicine. Paul Mazakootemane of the Upper Agency Sissetons condemned Little Crow for starting the war. “Give me all these white captives,” he demanded. “I will deliver them up to their friends. … Stop fighting. No one who fights with the white people ever becomes rich, or remains two days in one place, but is always fleeing and starving.” 16
Wabasha, who had been in the battles at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, was also in favor of opening a road to peace by freeing the prisoners, but his son-in-law Rda-in-yan-ka spoke for Little Crow and the majority of the warriors: “I am for continuing the war, and am opposed to the delivery of the prisoners. I have no confidence that the whites will stand by any agreement they make if we give them up. Ever since we treated with them, their agents and traders have robbed and cheated us. Some of our people have been shot, some hung; others placed upon floating ice and drowned; and many have been starved in their prisons. It was not the intention of the nation to kill any of the whites until after the four men returned from Acton and told what they had done. When they did this, all the young men became excited, and commenced the massacre. The older ones would have prevented it if they could, but since the treaties they have lost all their influence. We may regret what has happened, but the matter has gone too far to be remedied. We have got to die. Let us, then, kill as many of the whites as possible, and let the prisoners die with us.” 17
On September 12 Little Crow gave the Long Trader one last chance to end the war without further bloodshed. In his message he assured Sibley that the prisoners were being treated kindly. “I want to know from you as a friend,” he added, “what way that I can make peace for my people.”
Unknown to Little Crow, on that same day Wabasha sent Sibley a secret message, blaming Little Crow for starting the war and claim
ing that he (Wabasha) was a friend of the “good white people.” He did not mention that he had fought them a few weeks earlier at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm. “I have been kept back by threats that I should be killed if I did anything to help the whites,” he declared, “but if you will now appoint some place for me to meet you, myself and the few friends that I have will get all the prisoners we can, and with our family go to whatever place you will appoint for us to meet.”
Sibley answered both messages immediately. He scolded Little Crow for not giving up the prisoners, telling him that was not the way to make peace, but he did not answer the war leader’s plea for a way to end the fighting. Instead Sibley wrote a long letter to Little Crow’s betrayer, Wabasha, giving him explicit instructions for using a truce flag for delivery of the prisoners. “I shall be glad to receive all true friends of the whites,” Sibley promised, “with as many prisoners as they can bring, and I am powerful enough to crush all who attempt to oppose my march, and to punish those who have washed their hands in innocent blood.” 18
After Little Crow received the Long Trader’s cold reply to his entreaty, he knew there was no hope for peace except abject surrender. If the soldiers could not be beaten, then it was either death or exile for the Santee Sioux.
On September 22 scouts reported that Sibley’s soldiers had gone into camp at Wood Lake. Little Crow decided to give them battle before they reached the Yellow Medicine.
“All our fighting chiefs were present and all our best fighting-Indians,” Big Eagle said. “We felt that this would be the deciding fight of the war.” Again as they had done at Birch Coulee, the Santees silently prepared an ambush for the soldiers. “We could hear them laughing and singing. When all our preparations were made Little Crow and I and some other chiefs went to the mound or hill to the west so as to watch the fight better when it should commence …
“The morning came and an accident spoiled our plans. For some reason Sibley did not move early as we expected he would. Our men were lying hidden, waiting patiently. Some were very near the camp lines in the ravine, but the whites did not see a man of all our men. I do not think they would have discovered our ambuscade. It seemed a considerable time after sun-up when some four or five wagons with a number of soldiers started out from the camp in the direction of the old Yellow Medicine agency. We learned afterwards that they were going without orders to dig potatoes over at the agency, five miles away. They came on over the prairie, right where part of our line was. Some of the wagons were not in the road, and if they had kept straight on would have driven right over our men as they lay in the grass. At last they came so close that our men had to rise up and fire. This brought on the fight, of course, but not according to the way we had planned it. Little Crow saw it and felt very badly. …
“The Indians that were in the fight did well, but hundreds of our men did not get into it and did not fire a shot. They were out too far. The men in the ravine and the line connecting them with those on the road did most of the fighting. Those of us on the hill did our best, but we were soon driven off. Mankato was killed here, and we lost a very good and very brave war chief. He was killed by a cannon ball that was so nearly spent that he was not afraid of it, and it struck him in the back, as he lay on the ground, and killed him. The whites drove our men out of the ravine by a charge and that ended the battle. We retreated in some disorder, though the whites did not offer to pursue us. We crossed a wide prairie, but their horsemen did not follow us. We lost fourteen or fifteen men killed and quite a number wounded. Some of the wounded died afterwards, but I do not know how many. We carried off no dead bodies, but took away all our wounded. The whites scalped all our dead men—so I have heard.” (After the soldiers mutilated the dead Santees, Sibley issued an order forbidding such action: “The bodies of the dead, even of a savage enemy shall not be subjected to indignities by civilized and Christian men.”) 19
That evening in the Santees’ camp twelve miles above the Yellow Medicine, the chiefs held a last council. Most of them were now convinced that the Long Trader was too strong for them. The woodland Sioux must surrender or flee to join their cousins, the prairie Sioux of the Dakota country. Those who had taken no part in the fighting decided to stay and surrender, certain that the delivery of the white prisoners would win them the friendship of Long Trader Sibley forever. They were joined by Wabasha, who persuaded his son-in-law Rda-in-yan-ka to stay. At the last minute, Big Eagle also decided to stay. Some of the half-breeds assured him that if he surrendered he would only be held as a prisoner of war a short time. He would live to regret his decision.
Next morning, bitter with defeat and feeling the weight of his sixty years, Little Crow made a last speech to his followers. “I am ashamed to call myself a Sioux,” he said. “Seven hundred of our best warriors were whipped yesterday by the whites. Now we had better all run away and scatter out over the plains like buffalo and wolves. To be sure, the whites had wagon-guns and better arms than we, and there were many more of them. But that is no reason why we should not have whipped them, for we are brave Sioux and whites are cowardly women. I cannot account for the disgraceful defeat. It must be the work of traitors in our midst.” 20 He and Shakopee and Medicine Bottle then ordered their people to dismantle their tepees. In a few wagons taken from the agency, they loaded their goods and provisions, their women and children, and started westward. The Moon of the Wild Rice (September) was coming to an end, and the cold moons were near at hand.
On September 26, with the assistance of Wabasha and Paul Mazakootemane, who displayed truce flags, Sibley marched into the Santee camp and demanded immediate delivery of the captives; 107 whites and 162 half-breeds were released to the soldiers. In a council which followed, Sibley announced that the Santees should consider themselves prisoners of war until he could discover and hang the guilty ones among them. The peace leaders protested with obsequious avowals of friendship, such as Paul Mazakootemane’s: “I have grown up like a child of yours. With what is yours, you have caused me to grow, and now I take your hand as a child takes the hand of his father. … I have regarded all white people as my friends, and from them I understand this blessing has come.” 21
Sibley replied by putting a cordon of artillery around the camp. He then sent out half-breed messengers to warn all Santees in the Minnesota Valley to come in to Camp Release (as he had named the place). Those who refused to come in voluntarily would be hunted down and captured or killed. While the Santees were being rounded up and disarmed, the soldiers cut down trees and constructed a huge log building. Its purpose was soon made clear, when most of the male Santees—about 600 of the camp’s 2,000 Indians—were chained together in pairs and imprisoned there.
Meanwhile Sibley had chosen five of his officers to form a military court to try all Santees suspected of engaging in the uprising. As the Indians had no legal rights, he saw no reason to appoint a defense counsel for them.
The first suspect brought before the court was a mulatto named Godfrey who was married to a woman of Wabasha’s band and had been living at the Lower Agency for four years. Witnesses were three white women who had been among the captives. None accused him of rape, none had seen him commit a murder, but they said they had heard Godfrey boast of killing seven white people at New Ulm. On this evidence the military court found Godfrey guilty of murder and sentenced him to be hanged.
When Godfrey learned later that the court would be willing to commute his death sentence if he would identify Santees guilty of participating in the attacks, he became a willing informant, and the trials proceeded smoothly, as many as forty Indians a day being sentenced to imprisonment or death. On November 5 the trials ended; 303 Santees had been sentenced to death, sixteen to long prison terms.
The responsibility for extinguishing so many human lives, even if they were “devils in human shape,” was more than Long Trader Sibley wanted to bear alone. He shifted the burden to the commander of the Military Department of the Northwest, General John Pope. General Pope in turn passed
the final decision to the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. “The Sioux prisoners will be executed unless the President forbids it,” General Pope informed Governor Ramsey, “which I am sure he will not do.”
Being a man of conscience, however, Abraham Lincoln asked for “the full and complete record of the convictions; if the record does not fully indicate the more guilty and influential of the culprits, please have a careful statement made on these points and forward to me.” On receipt of the trial records, the President assigned two lawyers to examine them so as to differentiate between murderers and those who had engaged only in battle.
Lincoln’s refusal to authorize immediate hanging of the 303 condemned Santees angered General Pope and Governor Ramsey. Pope protested that “the criminals condemned ought in every view to be at once executed without exception. … Humanity requires an immediate disposition of the case.” Ramsey demanded authority from the President to order speedy executions of the 303 condemned men, and warned that the people of Minnesota would take “private revenge” on the prisoners if Lincoln did not act quickly. 22
While President Lincoln was reviewing the trial records, Sibley moved the condemned Indians to a prison camp at South Bend on the Minnesota River. While they were being escorted past New Ulm, a mob of citizens that included many women attempted “private revenge” on the prisoners with pitchforks, scalding water, and hurled stones. Fifteen prisoners were injured, one with a broken jaw, before the soldiers could march them beyond the town. Again on the night of December 4 a mob of citizens stormed the prison camp intent upon lynching the Indians. The soldiers kept the mob at bay, and next day transferred the Indians to a stronger stockade near the town of Mankato.