A. P. Connolly

“ A PATHETIC CHAPTER—CAPTAIN CHITTENDEN’S MINNEHAHA.
In August, 1862, what do we see? Homes, beautiful prairie homes of yesterday, to-day have sunken out of sight, buried in their own ashes; the wife of an early love has been overtaken and compelled to submit to the unholy passion of her cruel captor; the prattling tongues of the innocents have been silenced in sudden death, and reason dethroned. ”

“ The force was well organized, and the appearance of the train alone would awe the whole Sioux nation. It was a season of drouth such as was never before known in the West. The prairies were literally parched up with the heat, the grass was burned up, and the sloughs and little streams were dry. The fierce prairie winds were like the hot siroccos of the desert, and great clouds of dust, raised by the immense column, could be seen for miles and were viewed in wonder. We suffered from the heat, the dust « 206 » and the weight of our knapsacks, gun and equipments, for the first day. ”

“ The moving spirit « 105 » among the hostiles was Little Crow, a wily old chief, without principle, but active and influential. He had harangued his people into the belief that the fight going on among the whites in the South had drawn off all the able-bodied men, leaving none but old men, women and children. “Now,” he said, “is the time to strike for Minnesota. These fertile fields, stolen from us, are ours; the buffalo are gone; we have no food, and our women and children are starving. Let the warriors assemble in war paint and drive the pale-faces from the face of the earth!” ”

“ What a transformation,—then unknown and unexplored,—no highways, no railroads, no civilization,—to-day the onward march of our race has left its imprint by railroads, beautiful farms, busy cities, busy factories, Christian civilization, education and the “little red school house.” But I am anticipating; turn back the leaves and we are again on the Knife river, and we snuff a battle, for the Indians are ahead in great numbers. ”

“ As one grows old, memory in some sense is unreliable. It cannot hold on as it once did. The recollection of the incidents of youth remains, while the more recent occurrences have often but a slender hold on our memories; often creeps in touching dates, but the recollections of August, 1862, and the months that followed, are indeed vivid; the impress is so indelibly graven on our memories that time has not effaced them. ”

“ There is a great diversity of opinion on this question, and while not particularly in love with the Indian, I have not the temerity to criticise the Almighty because he puts his impress white upon some, and red upon others; neither shall I sit in judgment and say there are no good Indians—except dead ones. ”

“ The avenue winds along the bluff, and the outlook up and down the river calls forth exclamations of delight from those who can see beauty in our natural American scenery. In the springtime, when the trees are in their fresh green garb, and budding forth, and in the autumn when the days are hazy and short, when the sere of months has painted the foliage in variegated colors, and it begins to fall, the picture as unfolded to the beholder standing on the bluffs is delighting, enchanting. ”

“ I have no apology to make for the savage atrocities of any people, be they heathen or Christian, or pretended Christian; and we can point to pages of history where the outrages perpetrated by the soldiers of so-called Christian nations, under the sanction of their governments, would cause the angels to weep. Look at bleeding Armenia, the victim of the lecherous Turk, who has satiated his brutal, bestial nature in the blood and innocency of tens of thousands of men, women and children ”

“ The bodies were carried away in United States mule teams and dumped in one common grave, dug in the sand bar in front of the city, the half-breeds in one corner of the hole so they might be found by their friends if they so desired. There may be times and circumstances when a Christian people can afford to act as we expect the benighted to do; but it has not arrived yet. No matter what the crime, the penalty has been paid, and after the spirit has gone to God to be adjudged, it is part of our civilization to be decent in our conduct toward all that remains mortal. ”

“ He was a fugitive, a miserable creature, bereft of home, country and parents—a human being without a country, but with a soul—in a land where every hand was raised against him; a fugitive from an enraged white people because of the sins of his father. He hid by day and travelled by night until beyond the white settlements. He was captured by a company of soldiers who were out hunting Indians in the region of Devil’s Lake, Dakota. When captured he was in a starving condition and glad to get even among Uncle Sam’s soldiers. ”

“ All nature is aglow; the sun rises from his eastern bed and spreads his warm, benign rays over this prairie land, and its happy occupants, as this terrific sound rings out on the morning air, are aroused and the cry: “Come over and help us” from the affrighted families, as they forsake their homes and flee for their lives, speeds on its way to ears that listen and heed their earnest, heart-piercing not, of despair, for the “Boys in Blue” respond. ”

“ Make an effort to civilize, and if civilization exterminates them it will be an honorable death,—to the nation at least. Send missionaries among them instead of thieving traders; implements of peace, rather than weapons of war; Bibles instead of scalping knives; religious tracts instead of war paint; make an effort to Christianize instead of encouraging them in their savagery and laziness; such a course would receive the commendation and acquiescence of the Christian world. ”

“ Colonel McPhail, who was in command of this relief, ordered the howitzer to be fired to give us courage, if the little camp proved to be ours. A shout went up at this welcome sound just as the sun went down. Old Joe Brown, who had been disabled early in the day, called out from his tent: “Captain Grant, instruct the men to be watchful; we are in a bad fix; the Indians will hate to lose our scalps, now that they are so near their grasp; give them a few shots occasionally, assure the wounded men that we will not leave them, and keep the pick and shovel busy.” ”

“ The cloud that is gathering is not an imaginative one, but it will burst in time upon the heads of guilty and innocent alike; and the old chief chuckles as he thinks of the scalps he will take from the hated whites, and the great renown, and wonderful power yet in store for him. ”

“ A detachment of thirty men of the Fifth Minnesota, under Captain Marsh, the commander of the fort, upon receipt of news of the outbreak, had marched in the direction of the Lower Sioux Agency, distant a few miles. The Indians, perceiving the advance of this small detachment, placed themselves in ambush in the long grass at the crossing of the Minnesota River and awaited the oncoming of their unsuspecting victims, and, when in the toils, they opened a terrific fire upon them, which destroyed almost the entire party. ”

“ Lo! the poor Indian, has absorbed much of the people’s attention and vast sums of Uncle Sam’s money; and being a participant in the great Sioux war of 1862, what I write deals with facts and not fiction, as we progress from Fort Snelling, Minnesota, to “Camp Release,” where we found and released over four hundred white captives. But I will digress for a time and look into the causes leading up to this cruel Sioux war that cost so many lives and so much treasure. ”

“ An Indian will avenge a wrong—that is his nature. It is born in him, and it cannot be blotted out; so, too, will he remember a kindness with an equal degree of fidelity, and, under any and all circumstances, will “stick closer than a brother.” Friend Spencer in this case found that the investment he had made in kindness to this red man was a paying one—it came in good time—his life was surely in jeopardy, and no miracle, but a faithful Indian, saved him, and this Indian was Chaska, a chief whom Little Crow had depended upon to help carry on the war. ”

“ It is because I love them and would save others from their fate that I ask that the people shall lay the blame of this great crime where it belongs, and rise up with one voice to demand the reform of the atrocious Indian system, which has always garnered for us the same fruit of anguish and blood. ”

“ Her maternal affection was as deep and abiding as in the breast of her more favored white sister, and her eye of faith looked beyond the stars to the happy hunting ground, where the Greater Spirit abides, and with the assurance that some day she and all her race would stand with the redeemed in the presence of the Judge of all the worlds. ”

“ For this reason the General changed his course somewhat, and making a detour to the right, escaped the necessity or perhaps bloodshed, in trying to save his captives from the hands of this justly furious people. Men and women turned out en masse and hurling imprecations, flourishing butcher knives, table knives, and even scissors, axes, pitchforks—in fact, every sort of weapon—seemed determined to get at them, and abused soldiers and Indians alike because they were held at bay. ”

“ General Sully, being sick in his tent at this time, the command devolved upon Colonel Thomas, of the Eighth Minnesota, and to him he gave orders to “have everything ready to move at six o’clock in the morning, in perfect fighting order; put one of your most active field officers in charge of a strong advance guard, and you will meet them at the head of the ravine, and have the biggest Indian fight that ever will happen on this continent; and let me further say that under no circumstances must any man turn his back on a live Indian.” ”

“ There is not a sensible, unprejudiced man in America to-day, who gives the matter thought, but knows that the broken treaties and dishonest dealing with the Indians are a disgrace to this nation; and the impress of injustice is deeply and justly engraven upon the savage mind. ”

“ At night his bed was the earth, his pillow a stone, and the sky his only covering, the bright stars acting as nightly sentinels over him, as weary, he and his little baby charge slept. If angels have a duty to perform, surely troops of them must have hovered around. ”

“ The Yanktonais, whom we were afraid of, lived above us. We thought nothing about the men until we saw an Indian on a hill ahead of us. He beckoned to others, and before we knew it we were surrounded. De-wa-nea, of Crow’s band, and Cut-Nose and Shakopee, three of the worst among the Lower Indians, came to us first. We were in the head wagon. Mother told them who we were, and they said we must follow them, and that we were all as good as dead. De-wa-nea said that the whites had taken him prisoner a good many times and that it was now his turn. He wanted the rest of the Indians to kill us all. ”

“ The General, satisfying himself that a determined resistance would be offered us, corralled his train and made such disposition of the troops as he deemed necessary. It was here where Dr. Weiser, of the First Minnesota Rangers, was killed while parleying with a delegation from the hostile camp, and it was treachery, pure and simple. The battle was opened by Whipple’s battery, and while the cannon boomed and sent leaden hail and death among the fleeing Indians, the artillery of Heaven opened amid a furious thunder storm, and a private of Colonel McPhail’s command was killed. ”

“ Shall we, then, mercilessly condemn the poor Indians because, driven from pillar to post, with the government pushing in front and hostile tribes and starvation in their rear, they have in vain striven for a bare existence? Whole families have starved while the fathers were away on their hunt for game. ”