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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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BIRCH COULEE BATTLEFIELD
Minnesota
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Location: Renville County, just off U.S. 71, about
1 mile north of Morton.
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The battle at this site near the junction of Birch
Coulee and the Minnesota River, about 16 miles northwest of Fort Ridgely
and just opposite the Lower, or Redwood, Sioux Agency, marked the high
tide of the Sioux during their 1862 revolt. After killing hundreds of
settlers in the Minnesota River Valley and attacking Fort Ridgely and
New Ulm, on September 2 Chief Little Crow's Santee Sioux surrounded a
force of 170 Volunteers under Capt. Hiram P. Grant. Col. Henry Hastings
Sibley had sent them ahead from Fort Ridgely to reconnoiter the Redwood
Agency, which the Indians had attacked the previous month, and to bury
the dead. Besieged for 31 hours, the soldiers lost 22 killed and 60
wounded before the arrival of Sibley and reinforcements on September 3.
The Indians, who had few casualties, fled.
A marker on U.S. 71 directs the visitor to the
battlefield site, which is preserved in 32-acre Birch Coulee State
Memorial Park. The rolling, tree-studded battlefield is relatively
unchanged.
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FORT RIDGELY and NEW ULM
Minnesota
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Location: The park commemorating the fort site is
in Nicollet County, on Minn. 4, about 7 miles south of Fairfax. The city
of New Ulm, on Minn. 15, is in Brown County.
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This fort (1853-67) and town bore the brunt of the
1862 Minnesota Sioux uprising. They provided refuge for settlers from
the Minnesota River Valley, and countered successive onslaughts. The
fort also provided troops for the 1862-64 retaliatory campaigns of Gen.
Henry Hastings Sibley westward into Minnesota and the Dakotas.
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Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley led
the campaign against the Santee Sioux of Minnesota. Engraving by J. C.
Buttre after a photograph by J. W. Campbell. (Library of
Congress) |
The Spirit Lake Massacre of 1857, when some Santee,
or Eastern, Sioux killed nearly 50 settlers just across the Minnesota
border in Iowa, was a significant portent of future violence arising
from Indian opposition to settlement on their lands. But, although the
Sioux and Cheyennes raided periodically, the big explosion did not come
until 1862. In August of that year the Santees of Minnesota went on the
warpath under Chief Little Crow. After killing the whites at the Lower,
or Redwood, Sioux Agency, his warriors swept up and down the Minnesota
River Valley and slaughtered perhaps 800 settlers and soldiers, took
many captives, and inflicted immense property damage. Refugees from the
valley swarmed into Fort Ridgely, about 12 miles below the agency, and
New Ulm, a German settlement 15 miles farther south down the valley from
the fort.
Sending a courier to Fort Snelling for
reinforcements, Capt. John S. Marsh left a skeleton guard at Fort
Ridgely and set out for the agency with 45 men and an interpreter. Just
before he reached there, an overwhelming force of Indians struck. In a
running fight back to the fort, half the soldiers died, including Marsh.
More refugees poured into the fort. When about 400 Sioux attacked on
August 20, and 2 days later about twice that number, the artillery and
rifle fire of the 180 Volunteer and civilian defenders beat off repeated
charges. Their casualties heavy, the Indians finally abandoned the
effort.
While the main body of warriors was preparing to
attack Fort Ridgely, on August 19 about 100 had raided New Ulm, whose
normal population of 900 had been swollen to 1,500 by the influx of
refugees. Judge Charles E. Flandrau, a leading citizen, organized a
defense force of about 250 poorly armed men. After putting three houses
to the torch, the Indians withdrew. Four days later, having failed to
take Fort Ridgely, 650 warriors again moved against New Ulm. They drove
the defenders from the outskirts and occupied outlying houses. Fighting
raged back and forth throughout the day. Finally, Flandrau and 50 men
charged, forced the Indians from the houses, and burned them. Deprived
of these shelters, the Sioux departed. In New Ulm about 34 settlers lost
their lives and 60 suffered wounds; fire destroyed 190 buildings. Indian
losses are not known. That same month, farther west, the Sioux launched
a series of attacks on settlers in the region of Fort Abercrombie, N.
Dak., and the next month besieged the fort.
As soon as news of the Little Crow uprising reached
St. Paul, Gov. Alexander Ramsey commissioned his predecessor, Henry
Hastings Sibley, as a colonel in the State militia to put it down.
Assembling all the Volunteer troops who had not been sent off to the
Civil War, Sibley advanced up the Minnesota River at the head of nearly
1,500 men and on August 28 arrived at Fort Ridgely. On September 3 the
command relieved a 170-man detachment that Sibley had sent on August 31
to reconnoiter the Redwood Agency and bury bodies. The detachment had
been besieged for 31 hours by a large band of Sioux at Birch Coulee,
about 16 miles northwest of Fort Ridgely.
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Chief Little Crow, leader of the
Minnesota Sioux uprising. (photo by A. Zeno Shindler, Smithsonian
Institution) |
On September 19 Sibley and 1,400 Volunteer troops set
out from the post. Four days later they managed to escape the full brunt
of an ambush and won a decisive victory over Little Crow in the ensuing
Battle of Wood Lake, Minn. The Minnesota outbreak ended, though many of
the Sioux, including Little Crow and another principal leader,
Inkpaduta, fled westward into Dakota rather than surrender.
Sibley imprisoned 2,000 warriors and tried them
before a military court. Of more than 300 sentenced to die, President
Lincoln pardoned most of them. In December the Army publicly hanged 38
at Mankato. The following June, near the town of Hutchinson, settlers
killed Little Crow, who had slipped back into Minnesota to steal
horses.
The Santees who had eluded Sibley's troops and fled
to Dakota joined forces with the Teton Sioux, belonging to the Western,
or Prairie, Sioux. In the spring of 1863 Sibley, now a brigadier
general, gave pursuit from Fort Ridgely. Spending the summer
campaigning, he won victories in July in North Dakota at the Battles of
Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, and Stony Lake. Sibley followed the
survivors to the Missouri River, which he reached on July 29, and then
returned to Minnesota.
Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully had intended to unite with
Sibley in a joint campaign, but low water delayed his journey up the
Missouri River from Sioux City, Iowa. Sully nevertheless carried on and
defeated the Indians in the Battle of Whitestone Hill, N. Dak.
(September 1863), and after wintering on the Missouri River near present
Pierre, S. Dak., in the Battle of Killdeer Mountain, N. Dak. (July
1864). By this time the Sioux coalition, which had never been very
cohesive and which had suffered heavily, had been disbanded.
Fort Ridgely State Park is surrounded by essentially
unimpaired prairie and woodlands. Archeological excavations in the
1930's revealed the building foundations, some of which were stabilized
and left exposed and are still preserved today. A log powder magazine
has been reconstructed. A restored stone commissary building houses a
small museum that interprets the history of the fort, along with various
markers. The scene of the fighting in the western outskirts of the
modern city of New Ulm has been completely changed by urban expansion.
At the Lower Sioux Agency site, the Minnesota Historical Society is
creating a center to interpret the Sioux war of 1862.
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The Sioux War (1862-1868).
(click on image for an enlargement in a new
window) |
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LAC QUI PARLE MISSION
Minnesota
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Location: Chippewa County, on an unimproved road,
about 4 miles northwest of Watson.
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Established in 1835 by the Presbyterian Church among
the Sioux, this mission housed one of the first Indian schools west of
the Mississippi. The mission's founder, Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, and
his coworkers devised a phonetic system and translated the Christian
Gospels and other works into the Sioux language. They also helped Rev.
Stephen R. Riggs compile the first grammar-dictionary in the tongue,
published in 1852 by the Smithsonian Institution. The mission was
abandoned the following year. The reconstructed log chapel and school
(1835) is part of Lac Qui Parle State Park.
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SIBLEY (HENRY HASTINGS) HOUSE
Minnesota
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Location: Dakota County, just off Main Street
(Minn. 13, Sibley Memorial Highway), Mendota (Minneapolis-St. Paul
suburb).
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Perhaps Minnesota's most famous old house and the
first in the State constructed of stone, this residence is of
architectural and historical interest. Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-91),
pioneer fur trader and later the first Governor and commander of
Volunteer forces during the Sioux uprising of 1862, erected it in 1835.
The year before, as the local bourgeois for the American Fur Co.,
he had arrived as a young man of 23 at the thriving fur trade town of
St. Peter's, known as Mendota after 1837. Opposite Fort Snelling at the
confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, it was the first
permanent white settlement in Minnesota and the focal point of the Red
River fur trade. Marrying in 1843, Sibley brought his wife to the home,
where nine children were born to them. The leader in making the town a
business and cultural center, Sibley entertained many celebrities in his
home, where Indians also frequently visited to trade. In time,
Minneapolis and St. Paul gained the ascendancy over Mendota, and in 1860
the Sibley family moved to St. Paul.
The Daughters of the American Revolution owns the
house, restored by the Sibley House Association, and several
outbuildings. Of native stone with white wood cornices and trim, the
large two-story home represents the colonial style and closely resembles
many of the stone residences in Pennsylvania and the Western Reserve
territory in Ohio. In excellent condition, it is furnished with period
pieces, some of which belonged to the Sibley family.
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Henry Hastings Sibley House. (photo by
E.D. Becker, Minnesota Historical Society) |
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WOOD LAKE BATTLEFIELD
Minnesota
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Location: Yellow Medicine County, just off Minn.
274, about 7 miles south of Granite Falls.
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The so-called Battle of Wood Lake, which followed the
Army disaster at Birch Coulee, Minn., was the first decisive defeat of
the Sioux in the Minnesota uprising of 1862 and marked the end of the
campaign there. Col. Henry Hastings Sibley set out from Fort Ridgely on
September 19 in command of 1,400 Volunteers. Near Wood Lake on September
23 they managed to avoid an ambush by Chief Little Crow and 700 braves,
and in the ensuing battle killed 30 Indians and wounded many more. In
contrast, Army casualties were seven dead and 30 wounded. Six days later
Sibley won a brigadier general's star.
The State preserves an acre of the battlefield, which
contains a monument. Cultivated fields dot the gently rolling prairie
terrain. Lone Tree Lake, where the battle actually took place, has
disappeared since 1862. Sibley's guide mistook it for Wood Lake, several
miles to the west, hence the misnomer.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec6.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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