History of Houston County, Including Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 34

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 547

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"In the month of June, 1862, being well aware of the influence exerted by Little Crow over the blanket Indians, and, by his plausibility, led to believe that he intended to act in good faith, I promised to build him a good brick house pro- vided that he would agree to aid me in bringing around the idle young men to habits of indusiry and civilization, and that he would abandon the leadership of the blanket Indians and become a 'white man.'

"This being well understood, as I thought, I directed Mr. Nairn, the carpenter of the Lower Sioux, to make out the plan and estimates for Crow's house, and to proceed at once to make the window and door frames, and to prepare the lum- ber necessary for the building, and ordered the teamsters to deliver the necessary amount of brick as soon as possible. Little Crow agreed to dig the cellar and haul the necessary lumber, both of which he had commenced. The carpenter had nearly completed his part of the work, and the brick was being promptly delivered at the time of the outbreak.

"On the 15th of August, only three days pre- vious to the outbreak, I had an interview with Little Crow, and he seemed to be well pleased and satisfied. Little indeed did I suspect, at that time, that he would be the leader in the terrible outbreak of the 18th."

There were planted, according to the statement of Agent Galbraith in his report, on the lower reservation, one thousand and twenty-five acres of corn, two hundred and sixty acres of potatoes, sixty acres of turnips and ruta-bagas, and twelve acres of wheat, besides a large quantity of field

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and garden vegetables. These crops, at a low estimate, would have harvested, in the fall, 74,865 bushels. There were, on the lower reservation, less than three thousand Indians, all told. This crop, therefore, would have yielded full twenty- five bushels to each man, woman and child, in- cluding the blanket as well as the farmer Indians

There were, also, of growing crops, in fine con- dition, on the upper reservation, one thousand one hundred and ten acres of corn, three hundred acres of potatoes, ninety acres of turnips and ruta-bagas, and twelve acres of wheat, and field and garden vegetables in due proportion. These, at a low estimate, would have harvested 85,740 bushels. There were, on the upper reservation, a little over four thousand annuity Sioux. This crop, therefore, would have harvested them about twenty-one bushels for each man, woman and child, including, also, the blanket Indians.

Thus, under the beneficent workings of the hu- mane policy of the Government inaugurated in 1858, they were fast becoming an independent people. Let it be borne in mind, however, that these results, so beneficial to the Indian, were ac- complished only through the sleepless vigilance and untiring energy of those who had the welfare of these rude, savage beings in their care.

Major Galbraith, after giving these statistics of the crops on the reservations, and the arrange- ments made for gathering hay, by the Indians, for their winter's use, says:

"I need hardly say that our hopes were high at the prospects before us, nor need I relate my chagrin and mortification when, in a moment, I found these high hopes blasted forever."

Such, then, was the condition, present and pros- pective, of the "Annuity Sioux Indians," in the summer of 1862. No equal number of pioneer settlers on the border could, at that time, make a better showing than was exhibited on these reser- vations. They had in fair prospect a surplus over and above the wants of the entire tribes for the coming year. This had never before occurred in their history.

The sagacity and wise forethought of their agent, and the unusually favorable season, had amply provided against the possibility of recurring want. The coming winter would have found their granaries full to overflowing. Add to this the fact that they had a large cash annuity coming to them from the Government, as well as large amounts of goods, consisting of blankets, cloths,

groceries, flour and meats, powder, shot, lead, etc., and we confidently submit to the enlightened reader the whole question of their alleged griev- ances, confident that there can be but one verdict at their hands, and that the paternal care of the Government over them was good and just; nay, generous, and that those having the immediate su- pervision of their interests were performing their whole duty, honestly and nobly.

The hopes of the philanthropist and Christian beat high. They believed the day was not far distant when it could be said that the Sioux Indi- ans, as a race, not only could be civilized, but that here were whole tribes who were civilized, and had abandoned the chase and the war-path for the cul- tivation of the soil and the arts of peace, and that the juggleries and sorcery of the medicine-men had been abandoned for the milder teachings of the missionaries of the Cross.

How these high hopes were dashed to the earth, extinguished in an ocean of blood, and their own bright prospects utterly destroyed, by their horri- ble and monstrous perfidy and unheard of atroci- ties, it will be our work, in these pages, to show.

We are now rapidly approaching the fatal and bloody denouement, the terrible 18th of August, the memory of which will linger in the minds of the survivors of its tragic scenes, and the succeed- ing days and weeks of horror and blood, till rea- son kindly ceases to perform its office, and blots out the fearful record in the oblivion of the grave.

Again we quote from the able report of Major Galbraith :

"About the 25th of June, 1862, a number of the chiefs and head men of the Sissetons and Wapa- tons visited the Agency and inquired about the payments; whether they were going to get any (as they had been told, as they alleged, that they would not be paid, ) and if so, how much, and when? I answered them that they would cer- tainly be paid; exactly how much I could not say, but that it would be nearly, if not quite, a full payment; that I did not know when the pay- ment would be made, but that I felt sure it could not be made before the 20th of July. I advised them to go home, and admonished them not to come back again until I sent for them. I issued pro- visions, powder and shot and tobacco to them, and they departed.

"In a few days after I went to the Lower Agency, and spoke to the lower Indians in regard to their payments. As they all lived within a few miles of

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the Agency, little was said, as, when the money came, they could be called together in a day. I remained about one week there, visiting the farms and plantings, and issued to the Indians a good supply of pork, flour, powder, shot, and tobacco, and urged upon them the necessity of cutting and securing hay for the winter, and of watching and keeping the birds from their corn.

" I left them apparently satisfied, and arrived at Yellow Medicine on the 14th of July, and found, to my surprise, that nearly all the Upper Indians had arrived, and were encamped about the Agency. I inquired of them why they had come, and they answered, that they were afraid something was wrong; they feared they would not get their money, because white men had been telling them so.

"Being in daily expectation of the arrival of the money, I determined to make the best of it, and notified the Superintendent of Indian Affairs accordingly.

"How were over 4,000 Annuity, and over 1,000 Yanktonais Sioux, with nothing to eat, and entirely dependent on me for supplies, to be provided for? I supplied them as best I could. Our stock was nearly used up, and still, on the 1st day of Au- gust, no money had come.

"The Indians complained of starvation. I held back, in order to save the provisions to the last moment. On the 4th of August, early in the morning, the young men and soldiers, to the num- ber of not less than four hundred mounted, and one hundred and fifty on foot, surprised and de- ceived the commander of the troops on guard, and surrounded the camp, and proceeded to the warehouse in a boisterous manner, and in sight of, and within one hundred and fifty yards of one hundred armed men, with two twelve-pound mountain howitzers, cut down the door of the warehouse, shot down the American flag, and entered the building, and before they could be stopped had carried over one hundred sacks of flour from the warehouse, and were evi- dently bent on a general 'clearing out.'

"The soldiers, now recovered from their panic, came gallantly to our aid, entered the warehouse and took possession. The Indians all stood around with their guns loaded, cocked and leveled. I spoke to them, and they consented to a talk. The result was, that they agreed, if I would give them plenty of pork and flour, and issue to them the annuity goods the next day, they would go away. I told them to go away with enough to eat for two

days, and to send the chiefs and head men for a council the next day, unarmed and peaceably and I would answer them. They assented and went to their camp. In the meantime I had sent for Captain Marsh, the commandant of Fort Ridgely, who promptly arrived early in the morning of the next day.

"I laid the whole case before him, and stated my plan. He agreed with me, and, in the after- noon, the Indians, unarmed, and apparently peaceably disposed, came in, and we had a 'talk,' and, in the presence of Captain Marsh, Rev. Mr. Riggs and others, I agreed to issue the annuity goods and a fixed amount of provisions, provided the Indians would go home and watch their corn, and wait for the payment until they were sent for. They assented. I made, on the 6th, 7th and 8th of August the issues as agreed upon, assisted by Captain Marsh, and, on the 9th of August the In- dians were all gone, and on the 12th I had defi- nite information that the Sissetons, who had started on the 7th, had all arrived at Big Stone Lake, and that the men were preparing to go on a buffalo hunt, and that the women and children were to stay and guard the crops. Thus this threatening and disagreeable event passed off, but, as usual, without the punishment of a single Indian who had been engaged in the attack on the warehouse. They should have been punished, but they were not, and simply because we had not the power to punish them. And hence we had to adopt the same 'sugar-plum' policy which had been so often adopted before with the Indians, and especially at the time of the Spirit Lake massacre, in 1857."

On the 12th day of August, thirty men enlisted at Yellow Medicine; and, on the 13th, accompa- nied by the agent, proceeded to the Lower Agency, where, on the 14th, they were joined by twenty more, making about fifty in all. On the afternoon of the 15th they proceeded to Fort Ridgely, where they remained until the morning of the 17th, when, having been furnished by Captain Marsh with transportation, accompanied by Lieutenant N. K. Culver, Sergeant McGrew, and four men of Company B, Fifth Minnesota Volunteers, they started for Fort Snelling by the way of New Ulm and St. Peter, little dreaming of the terrible mes- sage, the news of which would reach them at the latter place next day, and turn them back to the defense of that post and the border.

On Monday morning, the 18th, at about 8 o'clock, they left New Ulm, and reached St. Peter

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at about 4 o'clock P. M. About 6 o'clock, Mr. J. C. Dickinson arrived from the Lower Agency, bringing the startling news that the Indians had broken out, and, before he left, had commenced murdering the whites.

They at once set about making preparations to return. There were in St. Peter some fifty old Harper's Ferry muskets; these they obtained, and, procuring ammunition, set about preparing cart- ridges, at which many of them worked all night, and, at sunrise on Tuesday morning were on their way back, with heavy hearts and dark forebodings, toward the scene of trouble.

In the night Sergeant Sturgis, of Captain Marsh's company, had arrived, on his way to St. Paul, with dispatches to Governor Ramsey, from Lieutenant Thomas Gere, then in command of Fort Ridgely, bringing the sad news of the des- truction of Captain Marsh and the most of his command at the ferry, at the Lower Agency, on Monday afternoon. They had but a slender chance of reaching the fort in safety, and still less of saving it from destruction, for they knew that there were not over twenty-five men left in it, Lieutenant Sheehan, with his company, having left for Fort Ripley on the 17th, at the same time that the "Renville Rangers" (the company from the Agencies) left for Fort Snelling. Their friends, too, were in the very heart of the Indian country. Some of them had left their wives and little ones at Yellow Medicine, midway between the Lower Agency and the wild bands of the Sissetons and Yanktonais, who made the attack upon the ware- house at that Agency only two weeks before. Their hearts almost died within them as they thought of the dreadful fate awaiting them at the hands of those savage and blood-thirsty monsters. But they turned their faces toward the West, de- termined, if Fort Ridgely was yet untaken, to enter it, or die in the attempt, and at about sundown entered the fort, and found all within it as yet safe.

A messenger had been sent to Lieutenant Shee- han, who immediately turned back and had enter- ed the fort a few hours before them. There were in the fort, on their arrival, over two hundred and fifty refugees, principally women and children, and they continued to come in, until there were nearly three hundred.

Here they remained on duty, night and day, until the morning of the 28th, when reinforce-

ments, under Colonel McPhaill and Captain Anson Northrup and R. H. Chittenden arrived.

The annuity money by Superintendent Thomp- son had been dispatched to the Agency in charge of his clerk, accompanied by E. A. C. Hatch, J. C. Ramsey, M. A. Daily, and two or three others.

On their arrival at the fort, on Tuesday night, Major Galbraith found these gentlemen there, they having arrived at the post Monday noon, the very day of the outbreak. Had they been one day sooner they would have been at the Lower Agency, and their names would have been added, in all probability, to the long roll of the victims, at that devoted point, of Indian barbarity, and about $10,000 in gold would have fallen into the hands of the savages.

These gentlemen were in the fort during the siege which followed, and were among the bravest of its brave defenders. Major Hatch, afterwards of "Hatch's Battalion" (cavalry), was particu- lary conspicuous for his cool courage and undaunt- ed bravery.

Thus it will be seen how utterly false was the information which the Indians said they had re- ceived that they were to get no money.

And notwithstanding all that has been said as to the cause of the outbreak, it may be remarked that the removal of the agent from Yellow Medi- cine, with the troops raised by him for the South- ern Rebellion, at the critical period when the In- dians were exasperated and excited, and ready at any moment to arm for warfare upon the whites, was one of the causes acting directly upon the In- dians to precipitate the blow that afterwards fell upon the border settlements of Minnesota on the 18th of August, 1862. Had he remained with his family at Yellow Medicine, as did the Winnebago agent, with his family, at the agency, the strong probability is that the attack at Yellow Medicine might have been delayed, if not entirely pre- vented.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MURDER AT ACTON-MASSACRE AT THE LOWER AGENCY-CAPTURE OF MATTIE WILLIAMS, MARY ANDERSON AND MARY SCHWANDT-MURDER OF GEORGE GLEASON-CAPTURE OF MRS. WAKEFIELD AND CHILDREN.

We come now to the massacre itself, the terrible blow which fell, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, with such appalling force and suddenness,

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MURDERS AT ACTON.

upon the unarmed and defenceless border, crim- soning its fair fields with the blood of its murdered people, and lighting up the midnight sky with the lurid blaze of burning dwellings, by the light of which the affrighted survivors fled from the nameless terrors that beset their path, before the advancing gleam of the uplifted tomahawk, many of them only to fall victims to the Indian bullet, while vainly seeking a place of security.

The first blow fell upon the town of Acton, thirty-five miles north-east of the Lower Sioux agency, in the county of Meeker. On Sunday, August 17, 1862, at 1 o'clock P. M., six Sioux In- dians, said to be of Shakopee's band of Lower An. nuity Sioux, came to the house of Jones and de- manded food. It was refused them, as Mrs. Jones was away from home, at the house of Mr. Howard Baker, a son-in-law, three fourths of a mile dis- tant. They became angry and boisterous, and fearing violence at their hands, Mr. Jones took his children, a boy and a girl, and went himself to Baker's, leaving at the house a girl from fourteen to sixteen years of age, and a boy of twelve- brother and sister-who lived with him. The In- dians soon followed on to Baker's. At Howard Baker's were a Mr. Webster and his wife, Baker and wife and infant child, and Jones and his wife and two children.

Soon after reaching the house, the Indians pro- posed to the three men to join them in target- shooting. They consented, and all discharged their guns at the target. Mr. Baker then traded guns with an Indian, the savage giving him $3 as the difference in the value of the guns. Then all commenced loading again. The Indians got the charges into their guns first, and immediately turned and shot Jonas. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Baker were standing in the door. When one of the savages leveled his gun at Mrs. Baker, her husband saw the movement, and sprang between them, receiving the bullet intended for his wife in his own body. At the same time they shot Webster and Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Baker, who had her infant in her arms, seeing her husband fall, fainted, and fell backward into the cellar (a trap- door being open), and thus escaped. Mrs. Web- ster was lying in their wagon, -from which the goods were not yet unloaded, and escaped unhurt. The children of Mr. Jones were in the house, and were not molested. They then returned to the house of Mr. Jones, and killed and scalped the girl. The boy was lying on the bed and was undisco"-

ered, but was a silent witness of the tragic fate of his sister.

After killing the girl the savages left without disturbing anything, and going directly to the house of a settler, took from his stable a span of horses already in the harness, and while the fam- ily was at dinner, hitched them to a wagon stand- ing near, and without molesting any one, drove off in the direction of Beaver Creek settlement and the Lower Agency, leaving Acton at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. This span of horses, har- ness and wagon were the only property taken from the neighborhood by them.

The boy at Jones's who escaped massacre at their hands, and who was at the house during the entire time that they were there, avers that they obtained no liquor there that day, but even that when they came back and murdered his sister, the bottles upon the shelf were untouched by them. They had obtained none on their first visit before going over to Baker's. It would seem, therefore, that the very general belief that these first mur- ders at Acton, on the 17th, were the result of drunkenness, is a mistake.

Mrs. Baker, who was unhurt by the fall, re- mained in the cellar until after the Indians were gone, when, taking the children, she started for a neighboring settlement, to give the alarm. Before she left, an Irishman, calling himself Cox, came to the house, whom she asked to go with her, and carry her child. Cox laughed, saying, "the men were not dead, but drunk, and that, falling down, they had hurt their noses and made them bleed," and refusing to go with Mrs. Baker, went off in the direction taken by the Indians. This man Cox had frequently been seen at the Lower Agen- cy, and was generally supposed to be an insane man, wandering friendless over the country. It has been supposed by many that he was in league with the Indians. We have only to say, if he was, he counterfeited insanity remarkably well.

Mrs. Baker reached the settlement in safety, and on the next day (Monday) a company of citizens of Forest City, the county seat of Meeker county, went out to Acton to bury the dead. Forest City is twelve miles north of that place. The party who went out on Monday saw Indians on horse- back, and chased them, but failed to get near enough to get a shot, and they escaped.

As related in a preceding chapter, a council was held at Rice Creek on Sunday, at which it was de- cided that the fearful tragedy should commence

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on the next morning. It is doubtful whether the Acton murders were then known to these con- spirators, as this council assembled in the after- noon, and the savages who committed those mur- ders had some forty miles to travel, after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, to reach the place of this coun- cil. It would seem, therefore, that those murders could have had no influence in precipitating this council, as they could not, at that time, have been known to Little Crow and his conspirators.

The final decision of these fiends must have been made as early as sundown; for by early dawn al- most the entire force of warriors, of the Lower tribes, were ready for the work of slaughter. They were already armed and painted, and dispersed through the scattered settlements, over a region at least forty miles in extent, and were rapidly gath- ering in the vicinity of the Lower Agency, until some 250 were collected at that point, and sur- rounded the houses and stores of the traders, while yet the inmates were at their morning meal, or asleep in their beds in fancied security, all un- conscious of the dreadful fate that awaited them. The action was concerted, and the time fixed. The blow was unexpected, and unparalleled! In the language af Adjutent-General Malmros:

"Since the formation of our general Govern- ment, no State or Territory of the Republic has received so severe a blow at the hands of the sav- ages, or witnessed within its borders a parallel scene of murder, butchery, and rapine."

Philander Prescott, the aged Government In- terpreter at that Agency, who had resided among the Sioux for forty-five years, having a wife and children allied to them by ties of blood, and who knew their language and spoke it better than any man of their own race, and who seemed to under- stand every Indian impulse, had not the slightest intimation or conception of such a catastrophe as was about to fall upon the country. The Rev. S. R. Riggs, in a letter to a St. Paul paper, under date of August 13, writes that "all is quiet and orderly at the place of the forthcoming payment." This gentleman had been a missionary among these people for over a quarter of a century. His intimate acquaintance with their character and language were of such a nature as to enable him to know and detect the first symptoms of any in- tention of committing any depredations upon the whites, and had not the greatest secrecy been ob- served by them, the knowledge of their designs would undoubtedly have been communicated to

either Mr. Prescott, Mr. Riggs, or Dr. Williamson, who had also been among them almost thirty years. Such was the position of these gentlemen that, had they discovered or suspected any lurking signs of a conspiracy, such as after developments satisfy us actually existed, and had failed to com- municate it to the authorities and the people, they would have laid themselves open to the horrible charge of complicity with the murderers. But whatever may be the public judgement npon the course afterward pursued by the two last-named gentlemen, in their efforts to shield the guilty wretches from that punishment their awful crimes so justly merited, no one who knows them would for a moment harbor a belief that they had any suspicion of the coming storm until it burst upon them.

A still stronger proof of the feeling of security of these upon the reservation, and the belief that the recent demonstrations were only such as were of yearly occurrence, and that all danger was passed, is to be found in the fact that, as late as the 15th of August, the substance of a dispatch was published in the daily papers of St. Paul, from Major Galbraith, agreeing fully with the views of Mr. Riggs, as to the quiet and orderly conduct of the Indians. This opinion is accom- panied by the very highest evidence of human sincerity. Under the belief of their peaceable disposition, he had, on the 16th day of August, sent his wife and children from Fort Ridgely to Yellow Medicine, where they arrived on Sunday, the 17th, the very day of the murders at Acton, and on the very day, also, that the council at Rice Creek had decided that the white race in Minne- sota must either perish or be driven back east of the Mississippi. But early on this fatal Monday morning Mr. Prescott and Rev. J. D. Hinman learned from Little Crow that the storm of savage wrath was gathering, and about to break upon their devoted heads, and that their only safety was in instant flight.

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History of Houston County, Including Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 34

Author: Edward D. Neill Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Number of Pages: 547

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 547