Kitabı oku: «Minnesota», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XIII
SEQUEL TO THE INDIAN WAR

A week after the Wood Lake affair the President appointed Colonel Sibley a brigadier-general. His confirmation by the Senate was long delayed, but he exercised the command of that rank from the date of appointment. Up to the time of leaving Fort Ridgely for the upper country Colonel Sibley had been carrying on a state war. On the 6th of September Governor Ramsey sent this peremptory telegram to the President: “These Indian outrages continue… This is not our war. It is a national war. Answer me at once. More than five hundred whites have been murdered.” That very day the Secretary of War ordered Major-General John Pope to take command of the Department of the Northwest. That officer had seen service in the Indian country and was at the time not otherwise employed. His first order to Colonel Sibley was received September 19, the day of his departure from Fort Ridgely. It made no change in the dispositions of the subordinate commander, but urged him to push forward, and promised all the support he could control. General Pope, persuaded that Sibley had some twenty-six hundred Sioux warriors in his front, made requisitions for troops and supplies on a scale which called out a rebuke from the secretary. His demand for mounted troops rather than infantry was reasonable. His stay in the department was brief, and at its close Brigadier-General Sibley was put in command of a distinct district of Minnesota. That Sibley was thus promoted and assigned was possibly due to a remonstrance addressed by Pope to Halleck against the appointment of Senator Henry M. Rice as major-general to be assigned to the department. It is remarkable that Sibley, writing to his wife, expressed his preference for Rice, if any stranger was to be placed over him. It was not till after the close of the campaign that the Sixth and Seventh regiments were mustered into the service of the United States.

The line of forts maintained by Colonel Flandrau from the big bend of the Minnesota southward effectively protected Sibley’s left; and it restrained the Winnebagoes from breaking out of their reserve, if they had any such intention, which was very doubtful, although so believed at the time. The right flank of the expedition was not for some time protected. Here were two dangers. Fort Abercrombie had been occupied since spring by Company D of the Fifth Minnesota, under command of Captain John Van der Horck. A newspaper clipping received on August 20 gave him warning of the outbreak of the lower Sioux. He immediately called in his outpost and the few settlers of the Red River valley, proceeded to surround the separate buildings which formed the post with breastworks, and placed three howitzers in the salients. On the last day of the month but one a party of Indians stampeded a herd of stock which had been sent out in anticipation of a treaty with the Red Lake and Pembina Chippeways. On September 3 an Indian force, considerable in number, appeared about the post and maintained a desultory fire for some hours. On the 6th a still larger force made a determined but vain attack, charging with boldness unusual for Indians, first one quarter of the inclosure and then another. The command suffered a loss of two killed and three wounded in the two days’ actions. The Indians were not driven from the neighborhood till September 23, when Captain Emil Burger arrived from below with a relieving force of five hundred men. The mooted question whether these attacks at Abercrombie were made by upper Sioux, lower Sioux, Yanktonnais, or by a mixture of all these, has not been conclusively answered. The capture of this post would have exposed a wide territory to Indian slaughter and depredation.

A disturbance of the habitual quiet of the Chippeways of northern Minnesota gave countenance to a rumor which spread throughout the state, that those Indians were about making common cause with their ancient foes against the white man, equally hated. On the very day of the Sioux outbreak the Pillagers seized seven whites, mostly traders, at Leech Lake, and the Gull Lake Chippeways drove some horses and cattle from the agency on the Crow Wing River. The acts and threats made against his safety so alarmed the agent, Lucius C. Walker, that he fled the Indian country for his home, and, probably in a state of temporary insanity, took his life, by means of a loaded pistol, near Monticello. Hole-in-the-day, the head chief of the Chippeways of the Mississippi, called an assemblage of braves, and a few hundred gathered. A trustworthy person, the missionary Emmegabowh, reported that this chief had declared in council that a league had been made with the Sioux. The Chippeway braves, however, had no desire to take the warpath, and dispersed to their homes. These transactions, reported in the St. Paul newspapers, naturally excited alarm. Three companies of infantry were sent to Fort Ripley, martial law was declared at that post, and the settlers were notified to come in for protection. When the legislature assembled in extra session on September 9, Governor Ramsey called their attention to the Chippeway ruction. Unconcerned about constitutional restrictions, that body appointed a board of commissioners to proceed to the Indian country to adjust the difficulties. Although the Chippeways had dispersed and the excitement had disappeared, the plenipotentiaries had the chiefs assembled in council, and negotiated with them a treaty which was solemnly signed and sealed. This agreement bound the high contracting powers to eternal peace, to an arbitration of all existing differences, and exempted the Chippeways from payment of damages for the expenses they had put the government to by their late misbehavior. The legislature memorialized the President to carry out these provisions. In evidence of full restoration of peace fifty Chippeway chiefs and braves came down to St. Paul to offer their services in punishing the Sioux. It would have given them great pleasure to take Sioux scalps in so lawful a manner.

Had it been possible to furnish General Sibley with a sufficient cavalry force, it would have been feasible for him, after the battle of Wood Lake, to overtake and impound the greater number of Indians concerned in their disastrous campaign. Infantry expeditions sent out to Lac qui Parle, to Goose Nest Lake, and elsewhere, brought in a few hundred people. More came in response to a proclamation distributed by runners. Bands which had squandered their plunder and wasted their food had no other resource. In the course of a few days nearly two thousand Indians were under guard, the greater part being women and children. Some five thousand or more were at large. The disposition of those in hand now occupied the attention of the authorities. Major-General Pope in a dispatch of September 28 probably voiced the sentiment of the great majority of the white people of the Northwest. “Make no treaty with the Indians,” he wrote Sibley; “the horrible massacre and outrages call for punishment beyond human power to inflict. It is my purpose to exterminate the Sioux, if I have the power to do so.” General Sibley was too humane and judicious to give serious regard to so insane a proposal. He had already appointed a committee of inquiry to ascertain what Indians under his guard had probably been guilty of murder and outrage. The Rev. Dr. Riggs, who held the place of chaplain on the staff of Sibley, gave such valuable assistance that Heard, the contemporary historian, declares him to have been a virtual grand jury. Sixteen Indians were at once picked out by the sifting committee and duly arraigned before a military commission of five officers. Additional arrests were made from day to day, and by October 7 General Sibley was able to report that he had twenty under sentence of death, and that he should probably approve the sentences and hang the villains, despite some doubt as to the extent of his powers and the formal correctness of the trials. This moderate number of convictions evidently did not satisfy the superior authority, which called for arrests and trials on a greater scale. On the night of October 11 Sibley placed 81 warriors in irons at Camp Release and ordered a similar “purging” at Yellow Medicine, where he had sent 1250 of his prisoners to subsist on the corn and potatoes of the Indian gardens. By a “piece of justifiable strategy” 236 men were “fixed” in the same way. The military commission now had abundance of material and applied themselves diligently to duty. They completed it on November 5, having tried 392 prisoners, of whom they found 323 guilty and sentenced 307 of them to death. The proceedings of the military commission, approved by General Sibley, were forwarded to the department commander. That officer informed Governor Ramsey with unconcealed satisfaction that the sentences would all be executed unless forbidden by the President. The trials completed, General Sibley sent the principal body of his Indian prisoners, 1648 in number, under guard to Fort Snelling. The interpreter accompanying the column relates that as it passed through Henderson the prisoners were assaulted with arms and missiles. One infant died from its injuries and was “buried” Indian fashion in the crotch of a roadside tree. On November 9 the troops with the convicted prisoners were marched to South Bend, a western suburb of Mankato. As the column was passing through New Ulm a crowd of exasperated citizens of both sexes showered brickbats and other missiles on the prisoners in such profusion that a bayonet charge was necessary to restrain them. Fifteen or twenty men were arrested, but after a march of twelve miles were reprimanded and allowed to take a walk to their homes. General Sibley turned over the command to Colonel Miller of the Seventh Infantry and proceeded to St. Paul, to take up his duty as district commander.

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.

The movement of General Sully resulted in overtaking the Sioux who had recrossed the Missouri and were hunting in Dickey County, North Dakota. His attack upon them at White Stone Hill, resulting in considerable slaughter and destruction of immense booty, cannot be here related. The results of the operation of 1863 against the Sioux were negative. Nor were those of the following year much more effective. In this campaign General Sully led an expedition from Fort Rice on the Missouri to Fort Union on the Yellowstone, the whole march covering 1625 miles. His column included a Minnesota brigade made up of six companies of the Eighth mounted on Indian ponies, the Second Minnesota cavalry, a new regiment recruited to take the place of the First Mounted Rangers, two sections of the Third Minnesota Battery of Light Artillery, and a company of scouts. Brackett’s battalion of three companies of Minnesota cavalry was attached to another brigade. On July 28 the considerable battle of Killdeer Mountain on the Little Missouri River took place. Countless herds of buffalo were met with on this march. As long as these survived, and the Indians could supply themselves with horses and ammunition, no white man’s army could surround and destroy them.

To disabuse the reader of the possible impression that the people of Minnesota were more frightened than they had reason to be, he is asked to recur to the season of 1863. To guard the frontier from attacks of marauding parties of Indians, General Sibley left in the state the Eighth Infantry, which had already been distributed in a line of posts to cover the settlements. Despite its vigilant patrols, parties of savages broke through at various points. In April there were three murders in Watonwan County, household goods and provisions were seized, and cattle and horses run off. In June a squad of Company A of the Eighth chased a horse-stealing gang out of Meeker County, one of whom shot Captain John S. Cody, causing instant death. In the course of the summer the Eighth Minnesota lost more men killed and wounded than Sibley’s troops in all his battles. On the 29th of June the most atrocious murder of the season was committed within thirty miles of Minneapolis, near Watertown, Carver County. Amos Dustin, traveling by wagon with his family, was waylaid, and he and his aged mother instantly shot to death by arrows. His wife and one child were fearfully wounded. A girl of six, hiding under a seat, was not discovered. Her clothing was soaked with her father’s blood. To aid the troops in protecting life and property, Governor Swift organized a company of volunteer scouts and put them under the command of Captain James Sturgis of Wright County. In addition to their promised pay, the sum of one hundred dollars was offered to any scout bringing in a Sioux scalp. This command scouted the big woods from Sauk Center to the Minnesota River so effectively that people who had abandoned their homes and farms took heart and ventured back.

On the 3d of July, 1863, a citizen of Hutchinson, Nathan Sampson, was hunting some five miles to the north of that village, accompanied by his son Chauncey. Espying an Indian picking berries, he fired. Though wounded, the Indian returned the fire, and hit Mr. Sampson in the left shoulder. A shot from the young man’s rifle proved fatal to the savage. That Indian was believed to be Little Crow, and a certain deformity of the wrists from a gunshot in early life was probably sufficient evidence of his identity. A half-starved Indian boy was picked up by a detachment of Sibley’s army in North Dakota on July 28, who gave his name as Wo-i-non-pa; he said that he was a son of Little Crow, and that he was with his father when he was killed. The errand of the chief, according to the boy, was to capture horses enough to mount the small remnant of his warriors and ride away to Canada.

The Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth regiments were dispatched to the South in the fall of 1863; the Sixth and Eighth being held till the following season to keep watch and ward against possible and much-feared savage forays.