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Show es'itg jttjeCrow Has Taketrthe Warpath !" By ELMO SCOTT WATSON JrWlVE years ago this summer was a time for the people of the United States of gloomy v1 They were stiii smarting under the 'defeat of Pope's army at the second bat-sW bat-sW Run and still despondent from the de-ie de-ie Tinfluence of McClellan's "seven days' fs ,hpn even worse news came out of the jjtreat WI1C estV c taken the warpath! " was the word which Minnesota frontier and this was followed by i ch bloody massacre of men, women and 5t " unn had not known since the days of Pon-YrZ Pon-YrZ Weatherford, the Creek. once. Some of them tried in vain to prevent further bloodshed. But they were outvoted by the hostile element. "Kill the whites! Kill the cut hairs (Christian Indians) w.h0TwlU not lin usl" they shouted. shout-ed. Little Crow gave orders to at-fi8ency at-fi8ency at sunrise and to kill the traders first. During the night warriors mounted on swift horses were speeding in every direction to rally ral-ly the hostiles for the attack. More than 200 whites were slaughtered in and around the agency. Meanwhile small parties of warriors were sweeping through the surrounding settlements, settle-ments, attacking the farms as they came to them, killing the men and children and carrying the women off as captives. The exact number of whites w'10 were massacred during the Minnesota outbreak will never be known but it is certain that more than 1,000 citizens and soldiers perished. J had been an artillery post. Just as Little Crow's maddened warriors were about to break the line of the soldiers, which had formed on the parade ground, Jones and his men opened fire with the cannon. The Indian advance halted, dismayed dis-mayed by the hail of iron that swept across the parade ground. A second blast from these "wagon guns" sent them scurrying for cover and a third caused them to flee in a panic. Jones and his "artilterymen" had not only saved Fort Ridgely but he had also dealt a severe blow to Little Crow's hopes. But Little Crow was not through yet. There were still settlements set-tlements in other parts of the state which could be raided. So he withdrew his forces izto the wilderness, taking with them the prisoners and the plunder which they had token during the first week of the outbreak. Meanwhile Ottawa, - .ade the tragedy f more unbeliey-'Je unbeliey-'Je fa that this ,on was the ,ien pride in call r-st civilizing and race." After freports of their lack by he ; it seemed im-that im-that these verts to the white 4 had reverted to and had given up and the hymnal for jawk and scalping a, hand of Providence Upon the American troublous times : . exciting political campaign which culminated in an election held at a council on August 3, 1862. Little Lit-tle Crow, Traveling Hail and Big Eagle were candidates for the chieftainship. Little Crow was overwhelmingly defeated and Traveling Hail was elevated to the chieftainship which had been held by Little Crow's forefathers for more than a century. Enraged En-raged by this defeat, Little Crow resolved to take action which would restore him to the esteem of his people and regain his hereditary he-reditary chieftainship, regardless of the result of the election. The best way to do this, he decided, was to make war on the whites and regain for his people the land they had lost. Events played into his hands, for the annuity payments, which were due the Sioux on July 1, i 1 r 1 1 t Wr- - Sioux Indian Camp Captured by General Sibley. Wounded. But there h dio assigned the out- Sioux to a more rBson. "Secretly and a craft, the enemies d States have crept stier and incited the were delayed indefinitely and their agents turned deaf ears to the appeals of the destitute Indians In-dians for food. The Outbreak Begins. On Sunday, August 17, occurred the incident which marked the opening of the outbreak. Four young M'dewakantons of Chief Little Six's band appeared at the home of a settler named Baker where were present a Mr. Webster and his wife, besides be-sides Baker, his wife and a baby, a Mr. Jones and his wife and their two children. The warriors proposed pro-posed that they engage in target practice, which the three white men foolishly consented to do. As soon as their guns were empty the young braves opened fire and killed Jones, Baker, Webster and Mrs. Jones. Then they hurried to the Jones home, where they killed and scalped a girl who had been left there. That night the four warriors reached Little Six's village and told him what they had done. He immediately hurried them to the camp of Little Crow, two miles above the agency. The chief sat up in his bed to hear their story. Immediately he saw his opportunity. oppor-tunity. "The time has come for war" he declared. "Blood has been shed. The payment will be stopped. The whites will take a terrible vengeance because the women were killed." The chiefs and head warriors were assembled in a council at As soon as news of the outbreak out-break was carried by terror-stricken terror-stricken refugees to Fort Ridgely, Ridge-ly, 15 miles from the Lower Agency, its commander, Capt. John S. Marsh of the Fifth Minnesota Min-nesota regiment acted promptly. He had only 46 men but he marched at once for the agency. Untrained in Indian fighting, Marsh was ambushed by a force of 200 of Little Crow's warriors and more than half of his soldiers sol-diers killed. Marsh himself es-1 caped the hail of Indian bullets only to be drowned in the swift current of the river. The next morning brought more refugees to Fort Ridgely, but it also brought reinforcements from Fort Snelling until there were about 200 soldiers in the fort, although they were mostly raw recruits. Saved by a Miracle. On the morning of August 20 the dreaded attack by Little Crow was launched. The defenders were greatly outnumbered and for a time it looked as though the savages would sweep over the walls and kill every man, woman and child in the post. But among the few veterans in the fort was an old artillery sergeant named Jones who had varied the monotony of garrison life by drilling drill-ing some of the infantrymen in the use of several old cannon left from the time Fort Ridgely the white man was gathering his strength to strike back at his red foe. Sibley Takes Command. Col. Henry H. Sibley was placed in command of the 1,400 volunteers raised to crush the Sioux. With his raw undisciplined troops, he reached Fort Ridgely on August 28, where he was hailed as a savior by the people who had taken refuge there. The next day he moved to the Lower Agency and from there sent Maj. J. R. Brown with a force of 200 men farther up the river to hunt for the hostiles and to bury the dead. Brown camped at Birch Coulie on the night of September 1 and early the next morning he was attacked by a large force of Sioux led by Little Crow. The battle which followed was one of the hottest of the whole war and only the prompt arrival of Colonel Col-onel Sibley with the main body of the army saved Brown's force from suffering the fate that had been Marsh's. Sibley then retreated to Fort Ridgely and opened negotiations with Little Crow for the release of the hundreds of prisoners, mostly women and children, held in the Indian camp, which came to naught. Then he marched against the Sioux and on September 23 inflicted in-flicted a crushing defeat upon lief Little Crow. lo this awful crime, in (weakness of women :cn are to be made the iiey said, and, because stories" about the confederate con-federate soldiers were beginning to be S about, many a man 3k believed that "rebel was responsible for the i massacres. Not an them at the Battle of Wood Lake. After this battle Little Crow tried to have the captives killed. But his influence was waning rapidly and other chiefs, who saw that defeat was inevitable and wished to soften the punishment that would be meted out to them, prevented him from carrying out his bloody intentions. Release of the Captives. Through some of the Christian Indians Sibley got in touch with these chiefs and offered them favorable terms of surrender if they would return their prisoners to him unharmed. As a result the afternoon of September 26 saw the delivery to him of 269 miserable miser-able white men, women and children chil-dren who had endured all the horrors of Indian captivity. Soon afterwards he rounded up 1,500 of the Sioux and placed them in prison at Fort Snelling and Mankato. Next a military commission set about the task of singling out those who should be punished for the outbreak and 392 of them were placed on trial for murder mur-der Of these 307 were sentenced to death and 16 sentenced to prison pris-on but President Lincoln commuted com-muted the death sentences of all but 39 who had been guilty of such cruelties that there was no possible excuse 'or showing them any mercy. On December 23 these 39 paid the penalty on a Sal gallows built for the Sesale execution. With , the.r deaths the great Sioux outbreak ipr") iua over. "Bct to support that tver been uncovered as but in 1862 it was lor Northerners to a! tale. . ' 'W taken the trouble the origins of the out-re out-re closely they might them closer at home. might have made m discovery that the "me of their politicians i red with the blood wta settlers quite as , the hands of Little warriors. "s of the War. : the basic causes of Wa outbreak were the ;f ones which have been J most of our In-agreed In-agreed of the white mpt for the red 'w determination to plans' land by fair ?l Along with these J! ? contributing fac- Ptitude of a new J "Washington in 'Vfe Indian problem 8 Problems of gov- 2 ?arrving out J relating to the annuities to the Sioux. Si f satisfaction ysofMendota and ,J made some 'JSnth the Eastern JSSissetons, - the Wakpekutes the year C. 8 ripe for , epilation of the , that year. The Mu providedfor i,LThoftheMinne-. i,LThoftheMinne-. 5 "engineered Ho'J.4Cnetan Wakan ; nLlng")' he-w? he-w? Kaposia di- ?anl0-When theMVered that WithCrow became ''taltA t, 'J-" Thar , 5 lSSUe I ihe result was an xtculivt. Mansion, &f.f&' fruU&, yJc & kit? (From . old w..a ci-i execution of A part - hSXTtS- There remained, however one final act in the drama of that ou SSk. Little Crow's followers had deserted him and he became a Sive, flitting from place to E in constant fear of betrayal El some of his people. On July ? 1863 he and his son were pick- 'I hprries in a thicket not far 6 VvTtom of Hutchinson. SwredSveredbyasettler son, Chauncey, n chief,s S"dcaflpred buflittle Crow fell dead'e Western Newspaper Union. |
