USA > Minnesota > Renville County > The history of Renville County, Minnesota, Volume I > Part 19
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These several acts of the general government moderated to some extent the demand of the people 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
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benefit to the State of immense value, both in its domestic quiet and its rapid advancement in material wealth.
In pursuance of the aets of Congress, on April 22, 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 confined at Davenport, in the State of lowa, where they remained. with only sneh privileges as are allowed to conviets in the penitentiary. Many of them died as the result of the confinement.
On May 4, 1863, at six o'clock in the afternoon, certain others of the Sioux Indians, squaws and pappooses, in all about seven- teen hundred. left Fort Snelling, on board the steamboat Daven- port. 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.
CHAPTER XI.
REDWOOD FERRY AMBUSCADE.
Captain Marsh and His Company Start on Expedition-Fugitives Met-Ferry Reached-Parley with Indian-Concealed Indians Start Firing-Attempt to Swim River-Captain Marsh Drowned-Casualties-Disastrous Result.
The startling news of the tragic scenes at the Lower Agency reached Fort Ridgely at about 10 o'clock on that day (August 18, 1862), but the extent and formidable character of the great Indian uprising were not understood until several hours later. The messenger who bore the shocking tidings was J. C. Diekinson, the proprietor of a boarding house at the ageney, and who brought with him a wagon load of refugees, nearly all women and children. Captain Marsh was in command of the fort, with his company (B. Fifth Minnesota ). as a garrison. Lieutenant T. .J. Sheehan, with Company C of the same regiment, had been dis- patelied to Fort Ripley, on the Upper Mississippi, near St. Cloud. Sending a messenger with orders to Lieutenant Sheehan recall- ing him to Fort Ridgely and informing him that the Indians were "raising Hell at the Lower Ageney. " Captain Marsh at once pre- pared to go to the scene of what seemed to be the sole locality of the troubles. He was not informed and had no instinctive or derived idea of the magnitude of the outbreak. Leaving abont twenty men, under Lieutenant T. P. Gere, to hold the fort until Lieutenant Shechan's return, Captain Marsh, with about fifty men of his company and the old Indian interpreter, Peter Quinn,
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set out for the agency, distant about twelve or fourteen miles to the northwest. On leaving Fort Ridgely the captain and the interpreter were mounted on mules; the men were on foot, but the captain had directed that teams. with extra ammunition and empty wagons for their transportation, should follow. and Gen- eral Hubbard's aecount, in Volume I of "Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, " says that these wagons overtook the com- mand "about three miles out."
In due time the little command came to the Redwood Ferry. but there is confusion in the printed accounts as to the exact time. Sergeant Bishop says it was "about 12 o'clock noon." Heard says it was "at sundown. " or about 6 o'clock. Some of the Indians remember the time as in the evening, while others say it was in the afternoon. As the men were in wagons the greater part of the way. the distance, allowing for sundry halts. ought to have been compassed in four hours at the farthest. Half way across the bottom the captain ordered the men from the wagons and marehed them on foot perhaps a mile to the ferry house and landing.
Meantime on the way, the soldiers had met some fifty fugitives and seen the bodies of many victims of the massacre.
The motives of the heroic and martyred Captain Marsh have often been discussed by historians and others. He was an officer of sound sense and good judgment, and had already come in inti- mate contact with Indian life and action, and knew of their dis- content and their desperate mood.
While he did not realize the general character of the massacre he must have understood that a considerable number of Indians were engaged in it. The language of his dispatch to Lieutenant Sheehan, however, would indicate that he at that time believed the trouble to be strictly local and confined to the Redwood Ageney.
Some historians have thought that he had confidence that his force was strong enough to punish the guilty Indians and to bring the others to a sense of law and order. Other historians believe that he realized something of the danger before he left the fort. and that his realization of his danger increased as he continued on the journey, but that as a soldier and an officer he could do nothing else than to keep on until he met the murderons Indians and the God of Battles had determined the issue between them. Possibly he believed that the Indians upon seeing the uniformed soldiers would realize the enormity of their offense and the swift punishment which they were likely to meet at the hands of the organized and equipped military forces. Possibly he believed that the powerful chiefs would come to their senses at the sight of the soldiers and confer with him with a view to co-operating with the government in punishing the guilty.
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Peter Quinn, the old interpreter with his forty years' experi- ence among the Sionx in Minnesota, knew the danger to be serious. On leaving Ft. Ridgely with Captain Marsh and his men he said to Sutler B. II. Randall: "I am sure we are going into great danger: I do not expect to return alive." Then with tears in his eyes he continued : "Good-bye, give my love to all."
R. A. Randall. a son of B. H. Randall, declares that his father remonstrated with Captain Marsh, urging upon him the gravity of the situation and the necessity of staying at the fort to pro- teet the refugees who might seek safety there. Captain Marsh at first listened to the remonstrance and determined to stay at the fort. But later he changed his mind. He was a soldier. his duty was to punish the murderous assassins, and he could not sit idly in the fort while the guilty were allowed to go on their way to further crimes. "It is my duty, " he said to Sutler Randall as he started.
There is some evidence that as the ferry was reached the cap- tain realized the peril of the situation and the hopelessness of his task with so inadequate a force. and had given, or was about to give, his men order to retire just as they were fired upon.
Return I. Holeombe, the author of nearly all of this chapter, says: "The weight of evidence tends to prove either that Marsh did not realize the extent of the outbreak and the grave peril of his position, or else he was nobly oblivious to his own welfare and determined to do his duty as he saw it."
When Captain Marsh and the men under, him reached the erest of Faribault's Hill they saw to the southward, over two miles away, on the prairie about the ageney, a number of mounted Indians: of course the Indians could and did see Marsh and his party. Knowledge of the coming of the soldiers had already reached the Indians from marauders who had been down the valley engaged in their dreadful work, and preparations were made to receive them. Scores of warriors, with bows and guns, repaired to the ferry landing, where it was known the party must come. Numbers crossed on the ferry boat to the north side of the river and concealed themselves in the willow thiekets near by. The boat was finally moored to the bank on the east or north side, "in apparent readiness for the command to use for its crossing, though the dead body of the ferryman had been found on the road," says General Hubbard.
Of the brave and faithful ferryman, Rev. S. D. Hinman, who made his escape from the agency, has written:
"The ferryman, Mayley, who resolutely ferried across the river at the ageney all who desired to cross, was killed on the other side, just as he had passed the last man over. He was dis- emboweled ; his head. hands and feet eut off and thrust into the
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cavity. Obseure Frenchman though he was. the blood of no nobler hero dyed the battlefields of Marathon or Thermopylae."
When the command reached the ferry landing only one Indian could be seen. This was Shonka-ska, or White Dog. who was standing on the west bank of the river, in plain view. For some time he had been " Indian farmer" at the Lower Agency. engaged in teaching his red brethren how to plow and to cultivate the soil generally, receiving therefor a salary from the government. He had. however, been removed from his position. which had been given to Ta-o-pi (pronounced Tah-o-pee, and meaning wounded), another Christian Indian. White Dog bore a general good repu- tation in the country until the outbreak, and many vet assert that he has been misrepresented and ijustly accused.
A conversation in the Sioux language was held between White Dog and Interpreter Quinn, Captain Marsh suggesting most of the questions put to the Indian through the interpreter. There are two versions of this conversation. The surviving soldiers say that, as they understood it, and as it was interpreted by Mr. Quinn, White Dog assured Captain Marsh that there was no serious danger : that the Indians were willing. and were waiting, to hold a conneil at the agency to settle matters, and that the men could eross on the ferry boat in safety, ete. On the other hand certain Indian friends of White Dog, who were present, have always claimed that he did not use the treacherous language imputed to him, but plainly told the interpreter to say to the captain that he and his men must not attempt to cross, and that they should "go back quick." However, White Dog was sub- sequently tried by a military commission on a charge of dis- loyalty and treachery, found guilty, and hung at Mankato. Ile insisted on his innocence to the last.
While the conversation between White Dog and Interpreter Quinn was yet in progress the latter exelaimed, "Look out!" The next instant eame a volley of bullets and some arrows from the concealed for on the opposite bank of the river. This was accompanied and followed by yells and whoops and renewed firing, this time from the Indians on both sides of the river. They were armed chiefly with double-barreled shotguns loaded with "traders' balls." and their firing at the short distance was very destructive. Pierced with a dozen bullets. Interpreter Quinn was shot dead from his saddle at the first fire, and his body was after- ward well stuck with arrows. A dozen or more soldiers were killed outright and many wounded by the first volley.
Although the sudden and fierce attack by overwhelming mun- bers was most demoralizing. Captain Marsh retained his presence of mind sufficiently to steady his men, to form them in line for defense, and to have them fire at least one volley. But now the Indians were in great numbers on the same side of the river, only
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a few yards away. They had secured possession of the log ferry house, from which they could fire as from a block honse, and they were in the thickets all about. Many of them were naked except as to breech clouts. Across the river near the bank were numbers behind the logs belonging to the agency steam saw mill, and a circle of enemies was rapidly being completed about the little band.
Below the ferry a few rods was a dense willow thicket, from two to ten rods in width and running down the north or east bank of the river for a mile or more. Virtually cutting or forc- ing their way through the Indians, Captain Marsh and fourteen of his men succeeded in reaching this thicket, from which they kept up a fight for about two hours. The Indians poured volleys at random from all sides into the thick covert, but the soldiers Jay close to the ground and but few of them were struck. Two men, named Sutherland and Blodgett, were shot through the body and remained where they fell until after dark, when they crawled out, and finding an old canoe floated down the river and reached Fort Ridgely the next day. Of a party of five that had taken refuge in another thieket three were killed before dark. One of the survivors, Thomas Parsley, remained in the thieket with his dead comrades until late at night, when he, too, escaped and made his way to the fort.
Gradually the imperiled soldiers worked their way through the thick grass and brush of the jungle in which they were con- cealed until they had gone some distance east of the ferry. Mean- time they had kept up a fight, using their ammunition carefully, hut under the circumstances almost ineffectnally. The Indians did not attempt to charge them or "rush" their position, for this was not the Indian style of warfare. Of the second great casualty of the day Sergeant John F. Bishop says :
"Abont 4 o'clock p. m., when our ammunition was reduced to not more than four rounds to a man. Captain Marsh ordered his men to swim the river and try and work our way down on the west side. He entered the river first and swam to about the center and there went down with a cramp."
Some of the men went to the captain's assistance. but were unable to save him. He was unwounded and died from the effects of the paralyzing cramps which seized him. Some days afterwards his body was found in a drift, miles below where it sank.
The ground where Captain Marsh and his company were ambuscaded was, as has been stated, at and about the ferry land- ing on the north side of the Minnesota river, opposite the Lower agency. From the landing on the south side two roads had been graded up the steep high bhiff to the agency buildings, and from the north landing the road stretched diagonally across the wide river bottom to the huge corrugated bluff's, two miles or more
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away, at Faribault's Ilill. The hill was so named for David Fari- bault, a mixed blood Sioux, and a son of old John Baptiste Fari- bault, and who lived at the base of the hill. He and his family were made prisoners by the Indians and held during the outbreak. At Faribault's Ilill the road divided, one fork leading up the hill and over the prairie to the eastward and northwest, running along the wrest of the bluff to Fort Ridgely. The other followed the base of the bluff down the river. There were two or three houses between the terry landing and the bluff, and at the landing itself was a house. All about the landing on the north side the ground of the main ambush was open : it is now covered with willows and other small growths of the nature of underbrush.
After the drowning of Captain Marsh. the command, consist- ing of fifteen men, devolved upon Sergeant John F. Bishop. The men then resumed their slow and toilsome progress toward the fort. Five of them, including the sergeant, were wounded, one of them, Private Ole Svendson, so badly that he had to be carried. The Indians, for some reason, did not press the attack further, after the drowning of Captain Marsh. and all of them, except Ezekiel Rose, who was wounded and lost his way, reached Fort Ridgely (Bishop says at 10 o'clock) that night. Rose wandered off into the country and was finally picked up near Henderson. Five miles from the fort Bishop sent forward Privates James Dunn and W. B. Hutchinson, with information of the disaster. to Lieutenant Gere.
The loss of the whites was one officer (Captain Marsh) drowned : twenty-four men, including twenty-three soldiers. and Interpreter Quinn, killed, and five men wounded. The Indians had one man killed, a young warrior of the Wahpakoota band, named To-wa-to, or All Blue. When the band lived at or near Faribault this To-wa-to was known for his fondness for fine dress and for his gallantries. He was a dandy and a Lothario, but he was no coward.
The affair at Redwood Ferry was most influential upon the character of the Indian outbreak. It was a complete Indian vic- tory. A majority of the soldiers had been killed; their guns. ammunition and equipments had fallen into the hands of the victors : the first attempt to interfere with the savage programme had been signally repulsed, all with the loss of but one man. Those of the savages who had favored the war from the first were jubilant over what had been accomplished and confident of the final and general result. There had been but the feeblest resist- ance on the part of the settlers who had been murdered that day, and the defense made by the soldiers had amounted to nothing. There was the general remark in the Indian eamps that the whites, with all of their vaunted bravery, were "as easy to kill as sheep."
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Before the successful ambuscade there had been apprehension among many of the Indians that the outbreak would soon be sup- pressed, and they had hesitated about engaging in it. There were also those who at least were loyal and faithful to the whites and would take no part in the uprising. But after the destruction of Captain Marsh and his command all outward opposition to the war was swept away in the wild torrent of exultation and enthusiasm created by the victory. Heard says:
"The Indians were highly jubilant over this success. What- ever of doubt there was before among some of the propriety of embarking in the massacre disappeared, and the Lower Indians became a unit upon the question. Their dead enemies were lying all around them, and their eamp was filled with captives. They had taken plenty of arms, powder, lead, provisions and elothing. The . Farmer' Indians and members of the church, fearing, like all other renegades, that suspicion of want of zeal in the cause would rest upon them, to avoid this suspicion became more bloody and brutal in their language and condnet than the others."
If Captain Marsh had succeeded in fighting his way across the river and into the agency, thereby dispersing the savages. it is probable that the great red rebellion would have been suppressed in less than half the time which was actually required. The friendly Indians would doubtless have been encouraged and stimulated to open and even aggressive manifestations of loyalty; the dubious and the timid would have been awed into inactivity and quieseenee. As it was, the disaster to the little band of sol- diers fanned the fires of the rebellion into a great conflagration of murder and rapine.
Immediately after the destruction of Captain Marsh's com- pany at the ferry Little Crow dispatched about twenty-five young mounted warriors to watch Fort Ridgely and its approaches. About midnight these scouts reported that a company of some fifty men was coming toward the fort on the road from Hutch- inson to Ridgely. Little Crow then believed that the garrison at Ridgely did not number more than seventy-five and that it would be a comparatively easy matter to capture the fort with its stores, its cannon and its inmates. At the time he did not know that the Renville Rangers had returned from St. Peter and reinforced the garrison.
Tuesday morning. August 19, Little Crow with 320 warriors from all of the Lower bands except Shakopee's-only the best men being taken-set out from the' ageney village to capture Fort Ridgely. Half way down dissensions arose among the rank and file. A majority wanted to abandon the attack on the fort temporarily and to first ravage the country south of the Minne- sota, and if possible seize New Ulm. Little Crow urged that the fort be taken first. before it could be reinforced, but this prudent
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counsel did not avail with those who were fairly ravenous for murder and plunder, which might be accomplished without danger, and cared less about the risk of attacking the fort, which would be defended by men with muskets, even though its capture would be a great military exploit. About 200 of this faction left and repaired to the settlements in Brown county about New Ulm and on the Cottonwood, Little Crow, with about 120 men, remained in the vicinity of the fort watching and waiting.
The attack and siege of Ft. Ridgely, which took place after the Redwood disaster and before the Battle of Birch Cooley, is de- seribed elsewhere.
CHAPTER XIL.
BATTLE OF BIRCH COOLEY.
Second Expedition Sets Out-Encampment at Birch Cooley- Attacked by the Indians-Heroic Defense-Inaction of Rescue Party-Relief by Sibley.
The incidents preceding the battle of Birch Cooley are briefly related. General II. II. Sibley occupied Fort Ridgely with his relief force on the twenty-seventh of August, nine days after the beginning of the outbreak. On the thirty-first he dispatched a foree of about 150 men to the Lower ageney with instructions to ascertain if possible the position and condition of the Indians, and to bury the bodies of the victims of the massacre which might be found en route. This force, which was under the command of Major Joseph R. Brown, the well-known prominent character in early Minnesota history, and then acting as major of a newly organized militia regiment. was composed of Company A, Sixth Minnesota Infantry, under Captain H. P. Grant : seventy mounted men of the Cullen Guards under Captain Joseph Anderson; a detail of other soldiers from the Sixth Regiment and the militia force, seventeen teamsters with teams, and some unorganized volunteer soldiers and citizens. The next evening several of the citizens returned to the fort.
The command reached the agency on the first of September. Captain Grant, with his company and the wagons, proceeded up the valley, on the north side of the Minnesota, to the mouth of the Beaver creek, thence up the creek about three miles, and then marched east about six miles to near the head of Birch Cooley. This portion of the command buried the bodies of Captain Marsh's men killed at Redwood Ferry and those of perhaps forty citizens at various points on the route. On Beaver creek "some thirty bodies" were buried, according to Captain Grant. On the way,
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too, in the Minnesota bottom, a German woman, named Mrs. Justina Krieger, who had been badly wounded by the Indians, and was hiding in a marsh, was resened and carried along.
Major Brown and Captain Anderson, with the "Cullen Guards," erossed the river at the Redwood Ferry, went to the ageney, buried the bodies of the slain there and went up the river, or westward, to the location of Little Crow's village, which the Indians had abandoned a few days previously. Nothing was seen which in the opinions of Major Brown, who for thirty years had been intimate with the Indians and the country; Major T. J. Galbraith, the Indian agent; Alexander Faribault, for whom the city of that name was ealled, and his son, George Faribault, both mixed blood. Sioux, and Jack Frazier, a half-breed, indieated that a hostile Indian had been in that vieinity for four days, although careful examination was made. Recrossing the Minne- sota at a ford opposite Little Crow's village the party aseended the bluff on the north side and reaching the prairie rode east- ward to the Birch Cooley, where Captain Grant's company had already encamped.
The camp selected by Captain Grant was on an excellent site. It was upon level ground, convenient to wood and water, and less than half a mile from a road running between Fort Ridgely and Fort Abererombie, on the Red River of the North. A growth of fairly good timber fringed the Cooley on either side, and in the channel was plenty of good running water. To the west, north and east stretched level prairie miles in extent. In his report Major Brown says:
"This eamp was made in the usual way, on the smooth prairie, some 200 yards from the timber of Birch Cooley, with the wagons paeked around the camp and the team horses fastened to the wagons. The horses belonging to the mounted men were fastened to a stont pieket rope, between the tents and wagons, around the south half of the tent. Captain Anderson's tents were behind these horses, and Captain Grant's were inside the wagons which formed the north half of the eamp."
The encampment was virtually, therefore, a corral in its form and general character. Captain Grant detailed thirty men, with a lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers, for a eamp guard, and established ten pieket posts-or really ten eamp posts-at equal distanees around the eamp. The guard was divided as usual into three "reliefs." Although in what might properly be termed the enemy's country, no danger of an attack was appre- hended, and therefore no pieket posts worth the name were estab- lished. The eamp guard posts were only about 100 yards from the eorral. Major Brown assured the men that they might sleep as soundly "as if in their mothers' feather beds," and the weary soldiers lay down to rest in faneied security.
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