THE SIOUX WAR.

Compared with the great storm of rebellion which has darkened and overspread our whole national sky, the Indian war on our northwestern frontier has been a little cloud "no bigger than a man's hand;" and yet, compared with similar events in our history, it has scarcely a parallel. From the days of King Philip to the time of Black Hawk, there has hardly been an outbreak so treacherous, so sudden, so bitter, and so bloody, as that which filled the State of Minnesota with sorrow and lamentation, during the past summer and autumn, and the closing scenes of which are even now transpiring. We were beginning to regard the poetry of the palisades as a thing of the past, when, suddenly, our ears were startled by the echo of the warwhoop, and the crack of the rifle, and our hearts appalled by the gleam of the tomahawk and the scalping knife, as they descended in indiscriminate and remorseless slaughter, on defenceless women and children on our border.

In the year 1851, the Sisseton, Wahpeton, M'dewakanton and Wahpekuta bands of Dacotah or Sioux Indians by treaty ceded to the United States, in consideration of certain annuities to be paid them, all their lands within the present limits of the States of Iowa and Minnesota, excepting a reservation set apart for their habitation and use, embracing a narrow strip along the southern side of the Minnesota River, of about ten miles in width and one hundred and fifty in length. To this reservation these four bands removed their people, numbering some seven thousand souls, of whom, perhaps, twelve hundred were warriors. During the eleven years which have elapsed since this treaty was made, they have lived there, the State of Minnesota being meanwhile peopled by the whites with unparalleled rapidity, and the Indians seeing flourishing and populous settlements springing up all about them. With but a single interruption, peace and amity has existed between the two races; missions, schools, and to some extent, agriculture, have been established among them; and a large number of halfbreeds, springing from marriages between white traders and Sioux women, have formed, apparently, a link of consanguinity and interest, which, aided by the influence and laws of civilization, would hereafter prevent any trouble or bloodshed on the part of the savages.

One single and very grave interruption to these peaceful relations has, however, occurred. In March, 1857, Inkpadutah, a Wahpekuta Dacotah, with a small band of followers, committed a terrible massacre near Spirit Lake, in the northwestern corner of Iowa, slaying fifty persons, and carrying away four women into captivity, two of whom were, after some months, ransomed and restored to their friends, the other two having been previously murdered by their captors. But Inkpadutah and his band were outlaws, driven away by their own people for creating internal dissensions; and although the perpetrators were never properly pursued and punished, it was not thought that the outrage had been countenanced by the rest of the nation, or that any danger existed of similar acts on their part.

The cause of the recent outbreak cannot, perhaps, be absolutely determined; the manner of its beginning is more easily traced. It must be understood that, for the purpose of receiving their annuities, the Indians, at a certain period every summer, come down from their hunting grounds to the two Agencies, one at Redwood, near Fort Ridgely, and the other at Yellow Medicine. It is the custom to keep a certain quantity of provisions at these Agencies to feed them during these visits, and also to sometimes send them supplies during times of great want and scarcity of game in winter. Unfortunately, they came last year much earlier than common, and before they had received their usual notification from the Agent, that the annuities were awaiting them. In addition, as if all the accidents were destined to be adverse, the session of Congress was very long, the Appropriation Bill, which included the Indian appropriations, did not pass until the day before the adjournment, and the immense pressure of business on the Departments, and the great difficulty of obtaining coin, all occasioned long and unusual delays. The coin, $71,000 in silver (Indians understand silver coin, and will scarcely take any other), was finally shipped by express from the sub-treasury in New York city, on the 12th of August, reached St. Paul on the 16th, and was immediately despatched by private conveyance to Yellow Medicine, via Fort Ridgely, at which latter place it arrived on the 18th.

The Indians came down to the Agency at Yellow Medicine about the middle of July, to the number of four thousand, men, women, and children. Here they remained in waiting some three weeks. Provisions, in small quantities, were given to them, but for so large a number of mouths the rations were scanty. This supply, with the few wild ducks and pigeons which they could shoot from time to time, the little flour they were able to buy on credit from the trading houses, and the half-grown potatoes they stole from the fields, enabled them to eke out a scanty subsistence.

As might be readily imagined, this state of things bred great discontent. On the morning of the 4th of August, a large number of Indians came over from their encampment, and some on horseback, and some on foot, with guns and hatchets, rushed to the door of the warehouse, cut it down, and commenced carrying out bags of flour. The few soldiers who were stationed at the Agency, were, as well as the Agent and employés, taken completely off their guard by this movement; but in a short time they recovered themselves; got a field piece loaded and turned upon the crowd, and sent a squad of soldiers to the warehouse. At these preparations, the Indians desisted; but the military force was too small to make more than a formal demonstration. The pile of flour taken out of the warehouse had not been carried away, and while the soldiers prevented this being done, the Indians placed a guard to hinder its being recovered by the whites. Thus they stood during the remainder of the day, in an attitude of mutual defiance, yet neither party was willing to inaugurate hostilities. The next morning, when the Indians again as usual flocked down to the Agency, a couple of arrests were promptly made by the guard. This had the effect of driving them all back to their camps. Almost immediately afterward they struck their tents, and removed to a distance of from two to four miles. This was looked upon at the Agency as a war movement, and all possible defensive preparations were at once made. Some of the women were sent away, guns and pistols were loaded, field pieces and troops were placed in position, and pickets were thrown out. Everything looked like war. Still there had been no actual bloodshed. Through the mediation of Rev. Mr. Riggs, who had long resided among them as a missionary, peaceful counsels finally prevailed with the Indians. Thirty-six of the chiefs met the Agent in council, smoked the pipe of peace, acknowledged their offence, and expressed their sorrow and shame at its occurrence. Three days afterward another council was held, in which they agreed to receive certain rations, and promised to induce their people to move away until the annuity money should arrive. The Agent, on his part, forgave their trespass, and promised to send for them as soon as he should be prepared to make their payment. So confident was he that the arrangement was amicable and satisfactory, that he went soon afterward to St. Paul on business, leaving his family at the Agency.

Things remained in this condition until Sunday, the 17th of August, 1862. On that day, four young Indians, belonging to Little Six's band, went to the house of Mr. Jones, at Acton, Meeker county, Minnesota. As they evinced an unfriendly disposition, Mr. Jones locked his house, and with his wife, went to the house of Mr. Howard Baker, a near neighbor, where he was followed by the Indians. They proposed to go out and shoot at a mark, but after leaving the house, suddenly turned and fired upon the party, mortally wounding Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr. Baker, and a Mr. Webster. Mrs. Baker, with a young child, concealed herself in the cellar and escaped. The Indians then returned to Jones' house, which they broke into, killing a young woman who had been left there. This was the first bloodshed of the war.

Up to this time there seems to have been no deliberate preparation, no concerted arrangement for the outbreak against the whites. There was excitement and discontent among the Indians on account of hunger, the delay of their payment, and the real or supposed wrongs and frauds committed by white traders and officials; but no organized hostile movement had been agreed on. They knew that a great war was in progress between the whites; that armies were being raised, and the country was being drained of men. All this was known and discussed among them. There are also grave suspicions, and not without considerable show of evidence, that rebel emissaries, Indians or half breeds from the Missouri border, had been among them fomenting the discord and urging war.

When these four young men returned on the 18th to their band, which was then with others at the Sioux Agency at Redwood, the recital of their murders created the most intense excitement among the Indians. They became infuriated at the idea of bloodshed. Before the whites were aware that trouble was brewing, Little Six's, Little Crow's, Grey Iron's, and Good Road's bands of M'dewakantons, and a part of the Lake Calhoun band, gathered around the buildings, and, with a general rush and yell, massacred the whites, some twenty-five in number, robbed and plundered the stores, and laid the whole place in ashes.

The party who were conveying the annuity money to the Agency, reached Fort Ridgely on the afternoon of the same day, and there learned that the outbreak had taken place. A garrison of about seventy-five men was in the fort at the time the news of the massacre reached it, and Captain Marsh, taking fifty of them, proceeded toward the Agency, fifteen miles up the river. In the evening twenty-one of the men returned, to tell that the detachment had fallen into an ambush, and that all the others, including the captain, were either killed or drowned.

The Indians seem to have at once despatched messengers with the news of these hostilities to the bands at the Upper Sioux Agency, at Yellow Medicine. The chiefs there immediately called their followers into council. About one hundred Sissetons, Wahpetons, and thirty young Yanktons, were present. The council was stormy, and divided in sentiment; the Sissetons urging the killing and robbing of the whites, saying the M'dewakantons had already gone so far that they could not make matters worse, and that, as the whites would inflict punishment upon all alike, the best thing to be done was to kill them and take their goods. The Wahpeton chiefs, though willing to rob the whites, insisted on sparing their lives, and sending them off with their horses and wagons across the prairies.

About one fourth of the Sioux, previous to these events, had, through the efforts of the Government and missionaries, renounced their savage life, and adopted the customs of civilization. They had cut off the hair, discarded the blanket, adopted the civilized costume, and undertaken to live by the cultivation of the earth, instead of the chase. One of the chiefs who joined in this reform was An-pe-tu-to-ke-ca, or Other-Day, an Indian of more than ordinary intelligence and ability. He had been much among the whites, and was a convert to Christianity. Some years previous, while he was at Washington city with a delegation of his tribe, a rather good-looking white woman, who had lost caste in society, fell in love with him, married him, and followed him to his Indian home in Minnesota.

Other-Day took part in this deliberation. He arose and addressed the council, warning them against the consequences of the attack they were meditating. They might succeed in killing a few whites, he told them, but extermination or expulsion would be their fate if they did. But his pacific arguments produced no effect. Toward evening, the Yanktons, Sissetons, and a few of the Wahpetons rose from the council, and moved toward the houses of the whites, to prepare for the attack. All the afternoon the Indians had been busy taking their guns to the blacksmith shop to have them repaired, which the unsuspecting smith, being told they were going on a buffalo hunt, had done.

Other-Day now left the council, took his wife and his gun, and went to warn the whites of the impending danger. They had, up to this time, known nothing whatever of the council. At his suggestion, sixty-two persons assembled in one of the Agency buildings, gathered their arms, and prepared to defend themselves. Part of the farmer Indians assisted Other-Day in standing guard round the house that night, part of them guarded the house of Rev. Mr. Riggs, their old missionary, to whom they were very much attached, and another part joined the insurgents.

Small bands of hostile Indians were seen prowling around the house during the night, and by the next morning it was nearly surrounded. At daybreak, several shots were fired near the warehouses, some distance away, and then a triumphant yell was heard from the Indians as they broke into the stores and killed the inmates. At this, the savages who had prowled around the house during the night ran off to the scene of the riot to share in the booty; and even the farmer Indians who had stood guard for the whites, excepting only Other-Day, followed them.

Other-Day now advised the whites to make their escape, and offered to pilot them out of danger. They were at first inclined to doubt his faithfulness; but in their extremity, finally consented to follow him. While the hostile Indians were occupied in the work of plundering the stores and warehouses, the whites managed to collect three two-horse wagons, and two buggies, and placing as many of the women and children as they could in these, the party, sixty-two persons in all, started off in a direction opposite to the usually travelled route. They reached and forded the Minnesota River, eluded pursuit, and after a three days' march of great severity and privation, under the faithful and successful guidance of Other-Day, they arrived at a place of safety. True among the treacherous, he should be gratefully remembered, and liberally rewarded and protected for the remainder of his life, by the people of Minnesota and the Government of the United States. When he reached St. Paul, after the escape, he wrote the following, in answer to the many questions asked him:

"I am a Dakota Indian, born and reared in the midst of evil. I grew up without the knowledge of any good thing. I have been instructed by Americans, and taught to read and write. This I found to be good. I became acquainted with the Sacred Writings, and there learned my vileness. At the present time, I have fallen into great evil and affliction, but have escaped from it; and with fifty-four men, women, and children, without moccasins, without food, and without a blanket, I have arrived in the midst of a great people, and now my heart is glad. I attribute it to the mercy of the Great Spirit.

An-pe-tu-to-ke-ca. (Other-Day.)"

Another party of about forty persons escaped from the vicinity of Yellow Medicine, under the guidance of the missionary, Rev. Mr. Riggs, who was also warned and aided by a few of the farmer Indians.

Having thus successfully attacked and destroyed the Lower Agency, at Redwood, and the Upper Agency, at Yellow Medicine, and having obtained large supplies of arms and ammunition from the stores and warehouses they sacked at these points, part of the Indians divided into small marauding bands, and scoured the country, attacking and murdering isolated settlers, burning houses, and stealing horses and cattle; but the larger portion remained together, and, under the leadership of Little Crow, planned further attacks.

Fifteen miles below the Lower Agency, on the north bank of the Minnesota, is Fort Ridgely; and twenty miles below the fort, on the southern bank of the river, is the town of New Ulm, which, as its name indicates, is mainly populated by German settlers. Early in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 19th, a party of citizens from New Ulm, returning from a neighboring village, where they had gone to aid in recruiting volunteers for the Union army, were fired upon from an ambush by a number of mounted Indians, and several of them killed. Those who escaped had barely time to get back to New Ulm and give the alarm before the Indians advanced upon the town, and began firing at long range upon the distressed and panic-stricken inhabitants, who were huddled together, in helpless confusion, in a few of the more protected houses. Fortunately, a squad of eighteen armed men from one of the lower counties had arrived there an hour or two previous. Only six of the number had good guns; but they immediately organized themselves, and went forward to meet the savages. By dint of determined coolness and bravery, they held the Indians at bay, killing several of them, until, seeing the town reënforced by another small party of mounted whites, the savages retreated. The fight lasted two or three hours, and a number of the Germans were killed.

Beaten back from New Ulm, the Indians retraced their course up the river, and being joined by other bands, a concerted and deliberate attack was next made on Fort Ridgely. Like too many of our frontier forts, it is a fort only in name. Situated on a projecting spur of the river bluff, it is almost completely encircled by deep and wooded ravines, the edges of which are within a stone's throw of the buildings. A long, two story stone building with an ell, standing in the centre, and a number of log and frame houses ranged around it in an irregular circle, with several barns and outhouses beyond them, constitute what is called the fort, but what is really only barracks for a small number of troops.

When on Monday Captain Marsh left the fort to quell the disturbances at the Agency, only about twenty-five soldiers remained to protect it. After his party was cut up in ambush, only twenty-one, wounded and all, returned. Luckily, however, on Tuesday, two detachments of reënforcements, of about fifty men each, reached the garrison in safety. On the other hand, from the beginning of the outbreak, the women and children of the surrounding country who had escaped massacre, sometimes a whole family, sometimes only a single member—now a mother, and then a child—fresh from the scenes of savage violence and blood, had been fleeing to the fort for safety, until the number had been swelled to some three hundred. Six cannon, a few old condemned muskets, and considerable supplies of provisions were fortunately in the fort. Such hurried preparations for defence as could be, were soon made. Small squads of Indians were seen prowling about during Monday and Tuesday, but they were promptly scattered by a shell from the howitzer, accurately planted by the veteran artillery sergeant who was in charge of the guns.

At a quarter past three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, about three or four hundred Indians, led by Little Crow, advanced under cover of the woods and ravines to the attack of the garrison. It was a complete surprise, the first announcement being a deadly volley through one of the north entrances into the parade ground of the fort. For a moment there was uncontrollable confusion and alarm among the whites, and had a storming assault immediately followed, the fort must have fallen. The garrison, however, quickly rallied, manned the guns, and poured a steady fire on their assailants. The Indians, as usual, took shelter behind every available cover—trees, ravines, outhouses, high grass and logs—the whites directing their return shots as best they could. In this way, a brisk fusilade was kept up until half-past six o'clock in the evening. A number of the outbuildings were fired by the enemy, but the flames did not reach the fort. The houses that remained nearer the fort were destroyed by the garrison after the enemy withdrew. The garrison lost twelve or fifteen men killed and wounded in this engagement.

A night of terrible anxiety and suspense succeeded, but there was no further disturbance. On the next day, Thursday, two more attacks, each lasting about half an hour, were made, one at nine o'clock in the morning, and the other at six in the evening, but they were much feebler than the previous one, and easily repulsed.

The final and most desperate attack occurred on Friday, the twenty-second. The garrison was engaged in strengthening its defences, when, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the sentinel saw at two miles distance great numbers of Indians approaching on horseback. As they neared the fort they dismounted, and advancing from three different points under cover of the ravines, where the shells from the field pieces could do them but little damage, they opened a terrible fire on the garrison. But the previous two days' siege had steadied the nerves of the whites, and they received the onslaught coolly, reserving their fire until they could obtain a fair view of the enemy, and do effective execution. The "big guns," of which Indians stand in so great dread, were also well served. The fight raged all the afternoon, from two until half past six o'clock. Once the savages pressed up so near that the halfbreeds in the fort could distinguish the shout of the chiefs ordering a charge for the purpose of capturing the guns. It was a concerted movement; a feint to draw the fire of the field pieces, and an immediate rush was made to secure them before they could be reloaded. But the old artillery sergeant was not to be trapped; he reserved the fire of his own gun, and when the storming party emerged into open view, he planted a shell among them which sent them howling back to their shelter. At nightfall the savages reluctantly gave up the siege and retired, carrying away a considerable number of killed and wounded. Those in the fort escaped miraculously; only one man being killed, and three or four slightly wounded.

The next morning, Saturday, the Indians were seen again approaching the fort, apparently to renew the attack; but it was soon discovered they were withdrawing, to wreak their thwarted vengeance on the devoted town of New Ulm. In the interim since the first attack, the town had been reënforced by about one hundred volunteers, and had also been put in a partial state of defence. Fire, murder, and pillage marked the way of the savages toward it; the garrison noted their approach by the clouds of smoke which the burning dwellings of the settlers sent up to heaven.

The Indians reached and again attacked New Ulm, on Sunday morning at about eleven o'clock. The commanding officer of the whites had placed pickets, and a considerable part of his force to support them, along the outer edge of the town toward the foe; but so fierce and impetuous was the attack, that the whites were forced back into the town at the first onset of the enemy, giving them possession of several of the outer buildings, from which they pushed their further operations. But the garrison soon rallied, and obstinately held their ground. Finding themselves so unexpectedly held at bay, the Indians, who were to the windward, set fire one after another to the buildings they held, thus literally burning their way into the town. All day long this continued. Toward evening, the whites found they had been forced back, inch by inch, by the fire and smoke and the swift leaden messengers of death, until nearly one half of the town was lost; but they rallied once more, made a vigorous charge on the foe, and drove them out. At this the Indians withdrew, forming themselves into three parties, and camped a short distance off, making the night hideous with fiendish yells and the horrid music of their war dances. During the night the garrison retreated into a still smaller and more defensible part of the town, committing the rest to flames. A brief demonstration was made by the enemy on the following morning, but finding the whites so well posted, they finally abandoned the contest and withdrew. The whites, exhausted and cut up, joyfully welcomed a cessation of hostilities. During the day they evacuated the town, bringing off what remained of the garrison in safety. In this battle they lost ten killed, and about fifty wounded, while the Indians lost about forty. They were seen to haul off four wagon loads of dead.

The events thus far narrated cover a period of nine days, and, though forming the principal ones, were by no means the only events of that brief time. The contagion of murder, arson, and rapine spread over the whole area of country on which the Indians lived and roved, embracing a district one hundred miles in width by two hundred in length. Fort Abercrombie, situated at the upper end of this vast tract, was surrounded and besieged, as Fort Ridgely at the lower end had been. Throughout the intermediate region, scattering parties of the savages appeared in the isolated villages and settlements, spreading death and desolation. Local conditions exaggerated and heightened the horrors of the insurrection. The population of Minnesota, and particularly of these exposed regions, unlike that of the lower Western States, whose settlers, trained in border warfare, were familiar with savage craft and cruelty, and inherited the prowess and spirit of daring adventure which possessed Daniel Boone, was largely made up of foreign emigrants, Germans, French, Norwegians, and Swedes. They were unaccustomed to danger, and unused to arms. They had lived for years in confidence and daily intercourse with the Indians. Engaged in the absorbing labor of building and providing their new homes, they were without guns or other weapons of defence. Still worse, the war for the Union had called into its ranks a large proportion of their young, active, and able-bodied men, and left only the women and children to gather the harvest and guard the hearthstone. Upon their heads this storm burst suddenly, and with a terror which deprived them of all courage and resource to resist it. Emboldened by the feeble opposition they met, and maddened by the carnival of blood in which they rioted, the savages indulged in cruelties and barbarities too horrible to recount in detail. The Governor of Minnesota, in a special message to the Legislature of the State, thus paints them:

'Infants hewn into bloody chips of flesh, or nailed alive to door posts to linger out their little life in mortal agony, or torn untimely from the womb of the murdered mother, and in cruel mockery cast in fragments on her pulseless and bleeding breast; rape joined to murder in one awful tragedy; young girls, even children of tender years, outraged by their brutal ravishers, till death ended their shame and suffering; women held in captivity to undergo the horrors of a living death; whole families burned alive; and as if their devilish fury could not glut itself with outrages on the living, its last efforts exhausted in mutilating the bodies of the dead; such are the spectacles, and a thousand nameless horrors besides, which their first experience of Indian war has burned into the brains and hearts of our frontier people.'....

A wild panic ensued. Those who escaped the tomahawk and scalping knife fled in consternation and dismay, abandoning their little earthly all, leaving their cattle astray on the prairies, and their crops uncut and ungathered in the fields; some fleeing with such precipitation as to leave their food untouched on the table, where but a moment before it had been spread for the daily repast. Women and children wandered for days in the woods, subsisting on nuts and berries. Every road was lined with fugitives, and all the villages were crowded with their surrounding population. The refugees poured by hundreds into the city of St. Paul, situated from eighty to one hundred and fifty miles from the scenes of the outbreak; and many, who were able to do so, embarked on the first departing steamers, and hurried away from the State. It is estimated that ten large and flourishing counties were almost completely depopulated.

It so happened that a portion of the volunteers recruited for the Union army had not yet been ordered out of the State. Though poorly equipped and supplied, they were at once sent into the field against the Indians, and they served as a nucleus around which the irregular organizations could rally. Every old gun, pistol, knife, or other weapon was cleaned up; every pound of powder and lead was bought and distributed; and horses were impressed by military authority, with which to extemporize cavalry companies. The surrounding States promptly sent what aid they could in men, guns, and cartridges. The Governor by proclamation authorized the formation of companies of scouts and rangers in the threatened neighborhoods. Very soon after the outbreak, Colonel H. H. Sibley, an experienced frontiersman, having a thorough knowledge of Indian habits and character, was on the march against them, with about one thousand men. The General Government augmented these forces as rapidly as possible, and sent Major-General Pope to assume command of the Indian Department.

Hearing of Colonel Sibley's approach, Little Crow retreated to Yellow Medicine, taking with him a large baggage train of plunder, and about one hundred white prisoners, chiefly women and children, whom he had captured at different places, and whom, with a few exceptions, they did not specially maltreat, but compelled to labor at camp drudgery.

Colonel Sibley pushed on with his forces, sending in advance a cavalry detachment, which reached and relieved Fort Ridgely on the 27th of August, after it had been besieged for nine days. He himself arrived at that post with the remainder of his troops on the following day. On the 31st, he sent out a detachment of two companies, one mounted, a fatigue party of twenty men, and seventeen teams and teamsters, to reconnoitre the neighboring settlements and to bury the dead. They proceeded to the Minnesota river opposite the Lower Agency, and found and buried sixteen corpses the first day. The next day they continued their search, finding and burying fifty-four. That night they encamped on the open prairie, near the upper timber of the Birch Coolie creek, three miles from the Lower Agency. At about four o'clock of the next morning, September 2, one of their sentinels shouted, "Indians!" and almost immediately, a shower of balls rained upon the camp. From this first fire, and during the confusion attending it, the detachment suffered severely. They soon, however, gained the shelter of their wagons, and from behind them and the piles of dead horses which literally covered the ground, they returned a vigorous fire upon their assailants, meanwhile digging a rifle pit as they fought. It was a fierce morning's battle, and the foe, in largely superior numbers, had nearly surrounded and captured them when reënforcements arrived. So hot was the attack, that one of the tents was found to have one hundred and forty bullet holes through it.

The boldness and severity of this attack, demonstrated to Colonel Sibley the necessity for an increase of force and very cautious movements, and accordingly he fell back to the neighborhood of Fort Ridgely. Anxious also to obtain the release of the white prisoners in Little Crow's camp, and fearing that if he won a decided success in battle they would be murdered, he determined to resort to negotiation. He therefore wrote the following note and left it fastened to a stake, on the ground where the last battle had taken place:

'If Little Crow has any propositions to make to me, let him send a halfbreed to me, and he shall be protected in and out of my camp.

H. H. Sibley, Col. Com. Military Expedition.'

A day or two afterward, two halfbreeds came into his camp under a flag of truce, bringing a note signed 'Little Crow, his mark,' excusing and justifying his attack on the whites. Colonel Sibley replied, 'Little Crow, you have murdered many of our people without cause. Return me the prisoners under a flag of truce, and I will talk with you like a man.' After the lapse of a few days, another message came from Little Crow, stating that he had one hundred and fifty-five prisoners, and asking what he could do to make peace. Colonel Sibley replied that his young men had been committing more murders, and that was not the way to make peace.

Having learned from several sources that serious dissensions had broken out in the Indian camp, and having also received the needed reënforcements, Colonel Sibley left Fort Ridgely on the 12th of September, and marched up the Minnesota river to Wood Lake, near Yellow Medicine, arriving there on the 22d following. Little Crow was encamped in the vicinity with his braves. The savages, however, had become demoralized, and he could no longer control them. Little Crow desired to make an attack that night, but his opponents told him in council that if he was a brave Indian he would fight the white man by daylight. Accordingly, next morning he attacked Colonel Sibley's forces with three hundred of his warriors, the others refusing to join in the fight. After a sharp two-hours' battle the Indians were completely routed, losing thirty killed, and a proportionate number of wounded. The whites lost four killed, and forty wounded.

This battle substantially ended the war. The Indians retreated, and the whites pursued them to Lac Qui Parle. Four days afterward, a camp of about one hundred and fifty lodges of Indians and halfbreeds separated from Little Crow's party, met Colonel Sibley in council, surrendered themselves, and formally delivered up to him ninety-one white prisoners, and over one hundred halfbreeds, whom they had obtained. Other parties came in afterward, surrendering themselves unconditionally, until between two and three thousand Indians, of all sexes and ages, were in the hands of the troops as prisoners of war. A military commission was appointed to try the ringleaders and worst offenders, and over three hundred of them were convicted and sentenced to death. Before this paper is printed, some, at least, of these, will have expiated their crimes on the gallows. Little Crow, with a small but desperate band of followers, succeeded in making his escape to Devil's Lake in Dakota Territory.

The future disposition of the Indians of the State of Minnesota is one of the most perplexing minor questions of the day. In their present location, the feud of race engendered by the insurrection will only die with the generation that witnessed its beginning. Humanitarian impulses and humanitarian duties are forgotten in the fierce thirst for private vengeance. With one voice, the people of that State demand the removal or threaten the extermination of their dangerous neighbors. But whither shall they go? The swallowing tides of civilization encompass them on the east, the north, and the south; and the only other avenue, the west, is guarded by the gaunt wolf starvation.

It is proposed by some to colonize them on the island of Isle Royale, in Lake Superior; by others, to purchase some small West India island, and transport them there, where tropical nature will feed them without expense to the Government. Perhaps the more practical measure would be to gather all that remains of the red race within the United States into one Territory, to establish a more thorough guardianship over them, and to subject them to a stricter and more absolute government, which should compel them to assume gradually the duties and customs of civilized life.