USA > Minnesota > Freeborn County > History of Freeborn County, including explorers and pioneers of Minnesota, and outline history of the state of Minnesota > Part 45
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INDIAN SYMPATHIZERS.
into our hands The infantry and wagons were met by the returning party about ten miles west of the Big Sioux.
The men of this detachment, officers and pri- vates, evinced to a large degree the bravery and endurance that characterizes the true soldier. They willingly and cheerfully pressed on after the savages, a part of them without food, fire or shel- ter, and all of them knowing that they were thereby prolonging the period of their absence beyond the estimated time, and subjecting them- selves to the certain necessity of being at least one or two days without rations of any kind before the return to Camp Release could be effected.
On the 7th of November, Lieutenant-Colonel Marshall, with a guard of some fifteen hundred men, started for Fort Snelling in charge of other captured Indians, comprising the women and children, and such of the men as were not found guilty of any heinous crime by the Military Com- mission, and arrived safely at their destination on the 13th.
From the commencement of. hostilities until the 16th day of September the war was carried on almost entirely from the resources of the State alone, and some little assistance from our sister States in the way of arms and ammunition. On this latter date Major-General John Pope, who had been appointed by the President of the United States to take command of the Department of the North-west, arrived and established his headquar- ters in the city of St. Paul, in this state. The principal part of the active service of the season's campaign had previously been gone through with; but the forces previously under the command of of the State authorities were immediately turned over to his command, and the after-movements were entirely under his control and direction.
He brought to the aid of the troops raised in the State the 25th Wisconsin and the 27th Iowa Regiments, both infantry. These forces were speedily distributed at different points along the frontier, and assisted in guarding the settlements during the autumn, but they were recalled and sent out of the State before the closing in of the winter.
It was contemplated to send the 6th and 7th Regiments Minnesota Volunteers to take part in the war against the rebels in the Southern States, and orders to this effect had already been issued, but on the 6th of November, in obedience to the expressed wish of a large portion of the inhab-
itants of the State, these orders were counter- manded. They were directed to remain in the state, and the 3d Regiment was ordered off instead.
All the forces then remaining in the state were assigned to winter quarters at such points as it was thought expedient to keep guarded during the winter, and on the 25th of November Major-Gen- eral Pope removed his headquarters to Madison, in tlre State of Wisconsin. Brigadier-General Sib- ley then remained in the immediate command of the troops retained in service against the Indians, and established his headquarters in the city of St. Paul.
On the 9th of October the "Mankato Record" thus speaks of this expedition :
"Considering the many serious disadvantages uuder which General Sibley has labored-a defi- ciency of arms and ammunition, scarcity of pro- visions, and the total absence of cavalry at a time when he could have successfully pursued and cap- tured Little Crow and his followers-the expedi- tion has been successful beyond the most sanguine anticipations. Of the three hundred white cap- tives in the hands of the Indians at the commence- ment of the war, all, or nearly all, have been retaken and returned to their friends. Much pri- vate property has been secured, and some fifteen hundred Indians, engaged directly or indirectly in the massacres, have been captured; and those who have actually stained their hands in the blood of our frontier settlers are condemned to suffer death. Their sentence will be carried into execution, un- less countermanded by authorities at Washington."
CHAPTER XLIII.
INDIAN SYMPATHIZERS -MEMORIAL TO THE PRESI- DENT-THE HANGING OF THIRTY-EIGHT-ANNUL- LING THE TREATIES WITH CERTAIN SIOUX-RE- MOVAL OF WINNEBAGOES AND SIOUX TO THE UPPER MISSOURI.
After the campaign of 1862, and the guilty par- ties were confined at Camp Lincoln, near Mendota, the idea of executing capitally, three hundred In- dians, aroused the sympathy of those far removed from the scenes of their inhuman butcheries. President Lincoln was importuned, principally by parties in the East, for the release of these sav- ages. The voice of the blood of innocence crying from the ground, the wailings of mothers bereft of their children was hushed in the tender cry of
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HISTORY OF THE -SIOUX MASSACRE.
sympathy for the condemned. Even the Christian ministers, stern in the belief that, "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood bie shed," seemed now the most zealous for the par- don of these merciless outlaws, who, without cause had shed the blood of innocent women and chil- dren in a time of peace.
Senator M. S. Wilkinson and Congressmen C. Al- drieh and William Windom, made an urgent ap- peal to the President for the proper execution of the sentence in the ease of these Indians. From this appeal the following extraet will be sufficient to indicate its character :
"The people of Minnesota, Mr. President, have stood firmly by you and your Administration. They have given both you and it their cordial support. They have not violated any law. They have borne these sufferings with patience, such as few people have ever exhibited under extreme trials. These Indians now are at their merey; but our people have not risen to slaughter, because they believed their President would deal with them justly.
"We are told, Mr. President, that the committee from Pennsylvania, whose families are living hap- pily in their pleasant homes in that state, have called upon you to pardon these Indians. We protest against the pardon of these Indians; be- cause if it is done, the Indians will become more insolent and eruel than they ever were before, be- lieving, as they certainly will, that their Great Father at Washington either justifies their acts or is afraid to punish them for their erimes.
"We protest against it, because, if the President does not permit the execution to take place under the forms of law, the outraged people of Minne- sota will dispose of these wretches without law. These two people cannot live together. We do not wish to see mob law inaugurated in Minne- sota, as it certainly will be, if you force the peo- ple to it. We tremble at the approach of such a condition of things in our state.
"You can give us peace, or you can give us law- less violence. We pray you, as in view of all we have suffered, and of the danger which still awaits us, let the law be executed. Let justice be done to our people."
The press of Minnesota, without a single excep- tion, insisted that the condemned Indians should expiate their dreadful crime upon the gallows, while the Eastern press, with some few exceptions, gave vent to the deep sympathy of the sentimen- tal philosophers and the fanciful strains of the im-
aginative poets. It seemed to our Eastern neigh- bors that Minnesotians, in their contact with sav- age life, had ceased to appreciate the
* * * "Poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, and hears HIM in the wind;"
that they had looked upon the modern race of sav- ages in their criminal degradation until they had well-nigh forgotten the renoun of Massasoit, and his noble sons Alexander and Philip.
But two hundred years never fails to change somewhat the character and sentiments of a great people, and blot from its memory something of its accredited history. This may have happened in the case of our fellow-kinsmen in the Eastern and Middle States. They may not now fully enter into the views and sentiments of those who witness- ed the outrages of Philip and his cruel warriors in their conspiracies against the infant colonies; . in their attacks upon Springfield, Hatfield, Lan- caster, Medfield, Seekong, Groton, Warwiek, Marl- borough, Plymouth, Taunton, Scituate, Bridge- water, and Northfield. They seem not fully now to appreciate the atrocities of the savages of these olden times. The historian of the times of Philip was not so sentimental as some of later days.
"The town of Springfield received great injury from their attacks, more than thirty houses being burned; among the rest one containing a 'brave library,' the finest in that part of the country, which belonged to the Rev. Pelatiah Glover."
" This," says Hubbard, "did, more than any other, discover the said actors to be the children of the devil, full of all subtilty and malice." And we of the present can not perceive why the massacre of innocent women and children should not as readily discover these Minnesota savages, under ' Little Crow, to be children of the devil as the burning of a minister's library two hundred years ago. Minnesotians lost by these Indians SPLEN- DID, not to say brave libraries; but of this minor evil they did not complain, in their demand for the execution of the condemned murderers.
Indians are the same in all times. Two hun- dred years have wrought no change upon Indian character. Had King Philip been powerful enough, he would have killed all the white men inhabiting the New England Colonies. "Once an Indian, always an Indian," is fully borne out by their history during two hundred years' contact with the white race.
Eastern writers of the early history of the coun-
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MEMORIALS TO THIE PRESIDENT.
try spoke and felt in regard to Indians very much as Minnesotians now speak and feel. When Weet- amore, queen of Pocasset, and widow of Alexan- der, Philip's eldest brother, in attempting to es- cape from the pursuit of Captain Church, had lost her life, her head was cut off by those who discov- ered her, and fixed upon a pole at Taunton! Here, being discovered by some of her loving subjects, then in captivity, their unrestrained grief at the shocking sight is characterized by Mather as "a most horrid and diabolical lamentation!" Have Minnesotians exhibited a more unfeeling senti- ment than this, even against condemned murder- ers? Mather lived, it is true, amid scenes of In- dian barbarity. Had he lived in the present day and witnessed these revolting crueltics, he would have said with Colonel H. H. Sibley, "My heart is steeled against them." But those who witness- ed the late massacre could truly say, in the lan- guage of an Eastern poet,
" All died-the wailing babe-the shrieking maid- And in the flood of fire that scathed the glade, The roofs went down!"
Early in December, 1862, while the final decis- ion of the President was delayed, the valley towns of Minnesota, led off by the city of St. Paul, held primary meetings, addressed by the most intelli- gent speakers of the different localities. An ex- tract from a memorial of one of the assemblages of the people is given as a sample of others of similar import. The extr.ict quoted is from the St. Paul meeting, drawn up by George A. Nourse, United States District Attorney for the District of Minnesota:
"To the President of the United States: We, the citizens of St. Paul, in the State of Minnesota, respectfully represent that we have heard, with regret and alarm, through the public press, reports of an intention on the part of the United States Government to dismiss without punishment the Sioux warriors captured by our soldiers; and tur- ther, to allow the several tribes of Indians lately located upon reservations within this State to re- main upon the reservations.
"Against any such policy we respectfully but firmly protest. The history of this continent pre- sents no event that can compare with the late Sioux outbreak in wanton, unprovoked, and fiendish cruelty. All that we have heard of Indian warfare in the early history of this country is tame in contrast with the atrocities of this late massacre. Without warning, in cold blood, beginning withı
the murder of their best friends, the whole body of the Annuity Sioux commenced a deliberate scheme to exterminate every white person upon the land once occupied by them, and by them long since sold to the United States. In carrying out this bloody scheme they have spared neither age nor sex, only reserving, for the gratification of their brutal Just, the few white women whom the rifle, the tomahawk and the scalping-knife spared. Nor did their fiendish barbarities cease with death, as the mutilated corpses of their victims, disemboweled, cut limb from limb, or chopped into fragments, will testify. These cruelties, too, were in many cases preceded by a pretense of friendship; and in many instances the victims of these more than murderers were shot down in cold blood as soon as their backs were turned, after a cordial shaking of the hand and loud professions of friendship on the part of the murderers.
"We ask that the same judgment should be passed and executed upon these deliberate mnr- derers, these ravishers, these mutilators of their murdered victims, that would be passed upon white men guilty of the same offense. The blood of hundreds of our murdered and mangled fellow- citizens cries from the ground for vengeance. 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord;' and the anthorities of the United States are, we believe, the chosen instruments to execute that vengeance. Let them not neglect their plain dnty. "Nor do we ask alone for vengeance. We de- mand security for the future. There can be no safety for us or for our families unless an example shall be made of those who have committed the horrible murders and barbarities we have recited. Let it be once understood that these Indians can commit such crimes, and be pardoned upon sur- rendering themselves, and there is henceforth a torch for every white man's dwelling, a knife for every white man's heart upon our frontier.
"Nor will even the most rigorous punishment give perfect security against these Indians so long as any of them are left among, or in the vicinity of onr border settlements. The Indian's nature can no more be trusted than the wolf's. Tame him, cultivate him, strive to Christianize him as you will, and the sight of blood will in an instant call out the savage, wolfish, devilish instincts of the race. It is notorious that among the earliest and most murderous of the Sioux, in perpetrating their late massacre, were many of the 'civilized Indians,' so called, with their hair cut short, wear-
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HISTORY OF THE SIOUX MASSACRE.
ing white men's clothes, and dwelling in brick houses built for them by the Government.
"We respectfully ask, we demand that the cap- tive Indians now in the hands of our military forces, proved before a military commission to be guilty of murder, and even worse crimes, shall re- ceive the punishment due those crimes. This, too, not merely as a matter of vengeance, but much more as a matter of future security for our border settlers.
"We ask, further, that these savages, proved to be treacherous, unreliable, and dangerous beyond example, may be removed from close proximity to our settlements, to such distance and sueb isola- tion as shall make the people of this State safe from their future attacks."
DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE PEOPLE IN MINNESOTA.
The final decision of the President, on the 17th of December, 1862. ordering the execution of thir- ty-nine of the three hundred condemned murderers, disappointed the people of Minnesota. These thirty-nine were to be hung on Friday, the 26th of December.
It was not strange that the people of Minnesota were disappointed. How had New England looked upon her Indian captives in her carly history ? Her history says:
"King Philip was hunted like a wild beast, his body quartered and set on poles, his head exposed as a trophy for twon'y years on a gibbet, in Plymouth, and one of his hands sent to Boston: then the ministers returned thanks, and one said that they had prayed a bullet into Philip's heart. In 1677, on a Sunday, in Marblehead, the women, as they came out of the meeting-house, fell upon two Indians that had been brought in as captives. and, in a very tumultuous way, murdered them, in revenge for the death of some fishermen."
These Puritan ideas have greatly relaxed in the descendants of the primitive stock. But, as the sepulchers of the fathers are garnished by their children as an indorsement of their deeds, shall we not hope that those who ha e in this way given evidence of their paternity will find some pallia- tion for a people who have sinned in the similitude of their fathers?
On the 24th of December, at the request of the citizens of Mankato of a previous date, Colonel Miller, (Ex. Governor Stephen Miller, whose death at Worthington, Minn., took place in August, 1881), in order to secure the public peace, declared
martial law over all the territory within a circle of ten miles of the place of the intended execution.
On Monday, the 21st, the thirty-nine had been removed to apartments separate and distinct from the other Indians, and the death-warrant was made known to them through an interpreter-the Rev. Mr. Riggs, one of the Sioux missionaries. Through the interpreter, Colonel Miller addressed the pris- oners in substance, as follows:
" The commanding officer at this place has called to speak to you upon a very serious subjeet this afternoon. Your Great Father at Washington, after carefully reading what the witnesses have testified in your several trials, has come to the con- clusion that you have each been guilty of wantonly and wickedly murdering his white children; and, for this reason. he has directed that you each be hanged by the neck until you are dead, on next Friday, and that order will be carried into effect on that day at ten o'clock in the forenoon.
"Good ministers, both Catholic and Protestant, are here, from among whom each of you can se- leet your spiritual adviser, who will be permitted to commune with you constantly during the few days that you are yet to live."
Adjutant Arnold was then instructed to read to them in English the letter of President Lincoln, which, in substance, stated the number and names of those condemned for execution, which letter was also read by Rev. S. R. Riggs, in Dakota.
The Colonel further instructed Mr. Riggs to tell them that they had so sinned against their fellow- men that there is no hope of clemency except in the merey of God through the merits of the Blessed Redeemer, and that he earnestly exhorted them to apply to Him as their only remaining source of consolation.
The number condemned was forty, but one dicd before the day fixed for the execution, and one, Henry Milord, a half breed, had his sentence com- muted to imprisonment for life in the penitentiary ; so that thirty-eight only were hung.
On the 16th of February, 1863, the treaties be- fore that time existing between the United States and these annuity Indians were abrogated and an- nulled, and all lands and rights of occupancy within the state of Minnesota, and all annuities and claims then existing in favor of said Indians were declared forfeited to the United States.
These Indians, in the language of the act, had, in the year 1862, "made unprovoked aggression and most savage war upon the United States, and
·
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REMOVAL OF INDIANS.
massacred a large number of men, women and children within the state of Minnesota;" and as in this war and massacre they had "destroyed and damaged a large amount of property, and thereby forfeited all just claims" to their "monies and an- nuities to the United States," the act provides that "two-thirds of the balance remaining unexpended" of their annuities for the fiscal year, not exceeding one hundred thonsand dollars, and the further sum of one hundred thousand dollars, being two-thirds of the annuities becoming due, and payable during the next fiscal year, should be appropriated and paid over to three commissioners appointed by the President, to be by them apportioned among the heads of families, or their survivors, who suffered damage by the depredations of said Indians, or the troops of the United States in the war against them, not exceeding the sum of two hundred dol- lars to any one family, nor more than actual dam- age sustained. All claims for damages were re- quired, by the act, to be presented at certain times, and according to the rules prescribed by the commissioners, who should hold their first ses- sion at St. Peter, in the-state of Minnesota, on or before the first Monday of April, and make and return their finding, and all the papers re- lating thereto, on or before the first Monday in December, 1863.
The President appointed for this duty, and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the Hons. Albert S. White, of the state of Indiana, Eli R. Chase, of Wisconsin, and Cyrus Aldrich, of Minnesota.
The duties of this board were so vigorously prosecuted, that, by the 1st of November following their appointment, some twenty thousand sheets of legal cap paper had been consumed in reducing to writing the testimony under the law requiring the commissioners to report the testimony in writing, and proper decisions made requisite to the payment of the two hundred dollars to that class of sufferers designated by the act of Congress. Such dispatch in Government agents gives abund- ant evidence of national vigor and integrity.
It was, no doubt, the object of this act of Con- gress to make such an appropriation as would re- lieve the sufferings of those who had lost all pres- ent means of support, and for the further purpose of ascertaining the whole amonut of claims for damages as a necessary pre-requisite to future leg- islation. Regarded in this light, the act is one of wisdom and economy.
On the 21st of February following the annulling of the treaty with the Sioux above named, Con- gress passed "An act for the removal of the Win- nebago Indians, and the sale of their reservation in Minnesota for their benefit." The money aris- ing from the sale of their lands, after paying their indebtedness, is to be paid into the treasury of the United States, and expended, as the same is received, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, in necessary improvements upon their new reservation. The lands in the new reservation are to be allotted in severalty, not exceeding eighty acres to each head of a family, except to the chiefs, to whom larger allottments may be made, to be vested by patent in the Indian and his heirs, with- out the right of alienation.
These several acts of the General Government moderated to some extent the demand of the peo- ple for the execution of the condemned Sioux yet in the military prison at Mankato awaiting the final decision of the President. The removal of the Indians from the borders of Minnesota, and the opening up for settlement of over a million of acres of superior land, was a prospective ben- efit to the State of immense value, both in its do- mestic quiet and its rapid advancement in material wealth.
In pursuance of the acts of Congress, on the 22d of April, and for the purpose of carrying them into execution, the condemned Indians were first taken from the State, on board the steamboat Favorite, carried down the Mississippi, and con- fined at Davenport, in the state of Iowa, where they remained, with only such privileges as are allowed to convicts in the penitentiary.
On the 4th of May, A. D. 1863, at six o'clock in the afternoon, certain others of the Sioux Indians, squaws and pappooses, in all about seventeen hun- dred, left Fort Snelling, on board the steamboat Davenport, for their new reservation on the Upper Missouri, above Fort Randall, accompanied by a strong guard of soldiers, and attended by certain of the missionaries and employes, the whole being under the general direction of Superintendent Clark W. Thompson. By these two shipments, some two thousand Sioux had been taken from the State and removed far from the borders of Minne- sota. The expedition of 1863, fitted out against the scattered bands of the Sioux yet remaining on the borders of the State, or still further removed into the Dakota Territory, gave to the border set- tlements some assurance of protection and security
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HISTORY OF THE SIOUX MASSACRE.
against any further disturbance from these partic- ular bands of Indians.
DEATH OF LITTLE CROW.
On Friday evening, July 3, 1863, Mr. Lampson and his son Chauncey, while traveling along the road, about six miles north of Hutchinson, discov- ered two Indians in a little prairie opening in the woods, interspersed with clumps of bushes and vines and a few scattering poplars, picking berries. These two Indians were Little Crow and his son Wowinapa.
STATEMENT BY HIS SON.
"I am the son of Little Crow; my name is Wo- winapa; I am sixteen years old: my father had two wives before he took my mother; the first one had one son, the second one a son and daughter; the third wife was my mother. After taking my mother he put away the first two; he had seven children by my mother-six are dead; I am the only one living now; the fourth wife had four children born; do not know whether any died or not; two were boys and three were girls; the fifth wife had five children-three of them are dead, two are living; the sixth wife had three children; all of them are dead; the oldest was a boy, the o.her two were girls; the last four wives were sisters.
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