It was not till Wednesday the 20th that Little Crow could muster and hold together a body of warriors sufficient to undertake regular warfare and carry out a well-laid plan to capture Fort Ridgely. He was aware, of course, that its little garrison had lost its commander and fully half of its men. He probably did not know of the arrival of two reinforcements: one, Sheehan’s detachment recalled by Captain Marsh before beginning his fatal march; the other, the party of recruits, enlisted at the agencies and taken by Agent Galbraith as far as St. Peter. They took and kept the name of “Renville Rangers.” The information brought to Agent Galbraith at St. Peter on the evening of the outbreak indicated Fort Ridgely as the point where his recruits would be most needed. He had therefore led them thither at daylight of Tuesday, armed with some Harper’s Ferry muskets belonging to a local militia company. He had to give bonds to the exacting custodian. What with these troops and with male refugees from the agencies and the surrounding farms, Lieutenant Sheehan, the ranking officer, had not more than one hundred and eighty combatants. Upon the withdrawal of the regular garrison the year before, six pieces of artillery of various patterns had been left behind with Ordnance-Sergeant John Jones in charge. Of this the Indians may not have been informed. The so-called fort consisted of buildings grouped on the sides of a square of three hundred feet, one of them of stone. Outside were small log houses for civilian employees, stables, and stacks of hay and grain. The site was on the bluff separated from the river (Minnesota) by a bottom a half mile in width. Ravines of erosion cut the hillside into excellent places of approach and cover.

Without warning, at one o’clock on Wednesday afternoon a volley was poured into the central inclosure. Two soldiers fell, one dead, the other badly wounded. One citizen was killed soon after. The fire was returned from such points of advantage as the structures afforded. Sergeant Jones had already made up three gun detachments, partly from citizens who had seen service and partly from soldiers whom he had instructed. It was not long before he had his guns in action, to the great surprise of Little Crow, who presently drew off his men. Thursday was a day of rain, and seems to have been spent by the Sioux chiefs in consultation and in preparing for a stronger assault. The time was well spent by the besieged in fitting ammunition, building barricades of cordwood, covering roofs with earth, and other practicable strengthening of defenses.

At one o’clock P. M. of Friday, Little Crow delivered his main attack, with a force largely increased, on the south and west of the post. From the cover of ravines he kept up a lively fire till late in the day. His last move, unusual in Indian warfare, was that of massing a body of warriors in a ravine running up toward the southwest angle of the inclosure, for a charge on the garrison. Sergeant Jones thereupon had his twenty-four pound cannon pointed down that “coolie,” and landed a single shell which sent Crow’s warriors flying off the field. In the two half days’ fighting there had been three persons killed and thirteen wounded within the post.

As refugees, many wounded, came pouring in to New Ulm on Monday, the need of outside help was felt and no second thought was necessary to suggest the one man to whom the townsmen should appeal. Charles Eugene Flandrau, for many years resident at old Traverse des Sioux, who had been Sioux agent, member of the constitutional convention, and a judge of the state supreme court, was the best known man all up and down the Minnesota valley. His name was a household word. At four o’clock on Tuesday morning a messenger brought him the summons of the people of New Ulm. Riding into St. Peter he found the citizens awake and alert, but without organization. In a public meeting in the courthouse he was elected captain of the relieving party to be formed. About noon a detachment of eighteen mounted men was put upon the road, which arrived in New Ulm in time to reassure the citizens after their repulse of the Indians. Early in the afternoon Flandrau’s company marched and was swelled to one hundred and twenty-five men by accessions along the route. It was late in the evening when he arrived. Early on Wednesday morning Captain Bierbauer arrived from Mankato with one hundred men, and other squads came in that day.

In a public meeting Captain Flandrau was promoted to colonel, and proceeded with dispatch and excellent judgment to form a staff, to organize the fighting force, and to fortify a central stronghold for non-combatants. Choosing three blocks of the main street, he threw up barricades across the ends and connected the rear walls of abutting buildings with bullet-proof constructions, and loopholed the walls of the brick buildings. On Thursday parties were sent out to the neighboring hamlets and farms to bury the dead and bring in the wounded.

No Indians appeared on that day or the next. Early on Saturday (August 23) the smoke of scattered fires was seen off to the eastward beyond the Minnesota. Had Little Crow captured the fort, and were his warriors burning the farmsteads? To ascertain, Colonel Flandrau sent over a detachment of seventy-five men, which soon encountered a fire from its left front and was obliged to retreat to the eastward to meet reinforcements expected from that quarter. Crow’s real attack came from the northwest, over the terraced plain stretching along the river above the town. Flandrau had left some three hundred and fifty men, ill-armed and undisciplined. When aware of the approach of the Indians, he moved them out and posted them upon the slope of one of the terraces, with a line of skirmishers to the front. At eight o’clock Crow’s warriors in a long line with flanks curved forward moved on in silence till within about a half mile of the line of defenders. Then raising such a shout as only savages can, they broke into a run, firing as they ran. The skirmishers fell back in alarm, and the whole line, spite of the exhortations, polite and other, of Flandrau and his officers, retreated to the barricades. The Sioux did not follow in, but stopped and sought cover in the emptied outer buildings of the town.

The fire returned from the barricades discouraged the Sioux from attempting an assault. Late in the afternoon a demonstration was made below the town by a party, some of which wore white men’s clothes. Thus misled, the brave Captain Dodd, second in command, unduly exposed himself and was shot to death. Other weak attempts were made by the persistent Indian leader, which came to naught. Ten of the defenders were killed and fifty wounded. Flandrau estimated the attacking force to be six hundred and fifty in number. Expecting a renewal of the fight on the following morning, Colonel Flandrau ordered the destruction of all buildings outside his fortification. Including those burned by the Indians, one hundred and ninety were destroyed. Indians rarely fight by night; and on Sunday morning they sent in a few long range shots, and the “Battle of New Ulm” was over.

Nearly two thousand people had been confined in the narrow fortified space. The women and children had been huddled in the cellars. Food was failing and sickness breaking out. Their homes destroyed, it was resolved to move the whole population to Mankato, thirty miles distant. On Monday morning they took the road; the women, children, and wounded on wheels, the men and boys on foot, escorted by the extemporized army. The column reached its destination late at night, and the refugees met with a generous reception. The next day, August 26, Colonel Flandrau’s force dissolved.

Little Crow had staked everything on his attack on New Ulm. Had he captured the place, and dispersed its defenders, Mankato, St. Peter, Le Sueur, and all the towns in the valley would have been abandoned, and the Sioux would have resumed possession of the fairest part of their ancient country. The Indian commander understood that after this failure there was little hope of success in any offensive movement unless better supported by the upper bands. He therefore broke up his camp below the Redwood and reËstablished it behind the Yellow Medicine. His men burned the buildings at the upper agency, and the mission houses.

The Minnesota legislature in the extra session of 1862 authorized an official count of the victims of the Sioux massacre, but as no citizens could be induced to undertake the service for a per diem of three dollars in paper money, no such reckoning was made. The estimates vary from 500 to 1500. That of Agent Galbraith, made with deliberation, may be accepted: In Renville County, 221; in Brown, 204; in other Minnesota counties, 187; in Dakota Territory, 42; total, 654. His estimate of government property losses is: On the upper reserve, $425,000; on the lower reserve, $500,000.

When Governor Ramsey got the tidings of the outbreak of the Sioux in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 19, his knowledge of Indians made it unnecessary to deliberate upon the measures that must be taken, or upon the choice of a proper person to have the command. For that duty he instantly selected his old political opponent, Henry Hastings Sibley, whom he commissioned as colonel and commander of the Indian expedition. Mr. Sibley had maintained his robust and athletic constitution; he knew the whole region of operations, spoke French and Dakota, understood Indian nature, and was acquainted with all the leading men of the Sioux nation.

Early the next morning Colonel Sibley left Fort Snelling by steamer, with four companies of the Sixth Minnesota Infantry. At Shakopee he was obliged to disembark. It was not till late on Friday, August 22, that he reached St. Peter, which was to be his base of operation. Here Jack Frazer, who had escaped from Fort Ridgely, brought him the information that the whole body of Sioux chiefs and braves, probably two thousand in number, were on the warpath. His four hundred raw infantry men would be no match for them, the more because the Austrian rifles furnished them at Fort Snelling were unfit for use. Sending down to Governor Ramsey for reinforcements, with suitable arms and ammunition, Colonel Sibley devoted himself to impressing teams, provisions, and forage, and making other preparations for his campaign. Governor Ramsey in a proclamation issued on the 21st called on the militia of the Minnesota valley and frontier counties to arm and mount and join Sibley’s expedition with a few days’ subsistence. Companies from the valley towns, from Minneapolis, Faribault, and elsewhere reported. The remaining companies of the Sixth came up with Springfield rifles. On the morning of the 26th the expedition marched for Fort Ridgely. An advance party of mounted men reached the post on the following day, to the joy and relief of the long imprisoned garrison. The main body came up on the 28th and made an intrenched camp outside the fort. To protect the column from rear attack around its left flank, Governor Ramsey appointed Judge Flandrau colonel, and authorized him to collect and dispose the militia companies coming in from the southeastern counties. He presently formed a line of posts from New Ulm and Mankato up the valley of the Blue Earth and on to the Iowa line.

Yielding to the prayers of refugees in Fort Ridgely, whose relatives were lying unburied about the ruins of their homes or along the roadsides, Colonel Sibley decided to send out a burial party which should also serve as a corps of observation. It marched on the morning of August 31 under the direction of Major Joseph R. Brown, whom Colonel Sibley had attached to his staff. His party was made up of Captain H. P. Grant’s company of the Sixth Infantry, fifty mounted men under Captain Joseph Anderson, a fatigue detail of twenty, and seventeen teamsters. The column moved slowly, halting to bury sixteen bodies on the agency road, and at nightfall bivouacked on the bottom near the Redwood Ferry. In the morning Major Brown with the mounted men crossed the Minnesota and scouted through the villages above the agency, to find them deserted. The infantry force buried some twenty bodies of Captain Marsh’s men, moved up the north side, struck across the prairie to the head of Birch Coulie, and went into camp on a singularly ill-chosen spot, at which Major Brown arrived at sunset. The wagons were parked in open order, and the animals were tied to picket ropes stretched between them. Within the circle so formed the party went early to sleep, some in Sibley tents, but most under the open sky. At daybreak they were awakened by a blood-curdling yell and a volley of bullets apparently from all quarters and at short range. Captain Anderson, who had seen service in the Mexican War, ordered his men to lie low and fire at will. The infantry commander, after a vain effort to form his men in line, gave a like judicious order. The savages maintained a murderous fire for an hour, at the end of which ten of Brown’s men were killed and forty more wounded, himself included. Desultory firing continued throughout the day, in the lulls of which possible arrangements for defense were made. The bodies of over ninety horses were strung along, and earth, dug up with three spades and one shovel, and with sabres, bayonets, pocket-knives, and tin plates, was heaped over them. The pits thus formed served as good cover for the men who were prudent. At two in the afternoon the boom of a cannon from the eastward gave notice of approaching relief, but night fell and it did not come. The sound of the morning’s battle was heard at Sibley’s outposts, fifteen miles away. With all possible dispatch he sent a relieving party consisting of three companies of the Sixth Infantry, fifty mounted “Rangers,” and a section of artillery, and gave the command to Colonel Samuel McPhail of Houston County. The party crossed the east branch of Birch Coulie and came within sight of Brown’s camp, but the prudent commander did not think it wise to risk his men in a battle. He therefore recrossed the branch, took up a safe position for the night, and sent Lieutenant Sheehan back to Sibley for reinforcements. He reached the fort unharmed, but his horse fell dead soon after from gunshot wounds. By daylight Colonel Sibley reached McPhail’s bivouac with the remaining companies of the Sixth and five companies of the Seventh, which had arrived the day before. The Sioux, seeing themselves outnumbered, made but feeble resistance to his advance and rapidly left the neighborhood. When Colonel Sibley rode into the impounded camp thirteen men lay dead, three more were soon to die, forty-five were severely wounded, and others had received abrasions. For more than twenty-four hours the men had lain without water, and they were worn with their ceaseless watch. The “Battle of Birch Coulie” has been commemorated by a monument erected at the expense of the state, in regard to which an unfortunate controversy has raged. Through misinformation the commissioners accredited the command of the expedition to another than Major Joseph R. Brown. To one looking back after the lapse of a generation it would seem that no one would care to be credited with the leadership of the disastrous affair. Colonel Sibley had given the most precise and emphatic directions to guard against surprise and ambush.

Colonel Sibley now had a double problem before him. He must overtake and destroy the Indian forces, and that without giving their commander pretext to slaughter the three hundred prisoners in his possession. It was rumored, probably by Little Crow’s instigation, that if attacked he would put these prisoners between his men and the whites. A policy of caution and delay was therefore desirable. It was also necessary for the reason that the command at Fort Ridgely was in no way prepared for war. The men were not yet clothed, the supply of food was insufficient and precarious, and ammunition had not yet been provided in sufficient quantity.

The mounted citizens who had rallied so promptly on Governor Ramsey’s call began to disappear as soon as there was “a prospect of meeting the red-skins.” In the middle of the month (September 14) Sibley reported to Governor Ramsey that he had but twenty-eight of that “description of force,” and would not be surprised at a stampede among them. Elsewhere he speaks of it as “base desertion.” These men returning to their homes were able to correct a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction with Colonel Sibley for needless delay in chasing Little Crow to his lair. Some newspapers threw out the vile insinuation that he did not pursue and destroy the Indians because he had so many friends among them.

On the Birch Coulie battlefield Colonel Sibley left in a split stick this writing for Little Crow: “If Little Crow has any proposition to make, let him send a half-breed to me, and he shall be protected in and out of camp.” To this the chief replied in a diplomatic note in which he complained of the agent and the traders, and asked to have Governor Ramsey informed of their ill-doings. He closed it with an adroit reference to the great many prisoners, women and children, in his hands, as if to suggest that Colonel Sibley might desire to make him a proposition. Sibley sent back the curt message: “Return me the prisoners, and I will talk with you like a man.” On September 12 Little Crow sent in another letter, in which he harped upon his prisoners, covertly intimating that he would surrender them on guaranty of immunity for himself and associates. He appealed to Colonel Sibley as an old friend to suggest a way to make peace.

The messenger who brought this letter brought also, unknown to Crow, another from Wabashaw, head chief of the lower Sioux, to say that, if Colonel Sibley would appoint a safe and proper place, he and his friends opposed to Little Crow and the war would come in and bring as many of the prisoners as they could assemble. With this leaven working in the Indian camp, Colonel Sibley could well afford to wait for reinforcements, subsistence, and ammunition, his troops in the mean time being drilled by their officers. Despite the insufficiency of all these, he issued his order for an advance into the Indian country on September 14. A violent rainstorm set in that day, and it was not till the 19th that he was able to ferry his little army across the Minnesota. It had been reinforced by two hundred and seventy enlisted men of the Third Minnesota, paroled after the surrender of Murfreesboro’ and sent home to assist in the Indian war. The cavalry force consisted of twenty-five troopers. Three days of easy marching brought the command to a point on the government road between the agencies about three miles south of the Yellow Medicine, where it went into camp behind a small lake and a stream issuing from it, which curving southward emptied into the Minnesota. Little Crow’s camp had been opposite the mouth of the Chippewa River since the 10th of September. In the councils there held the leader made the best use of his oratorical gift. He flattered, he implored, he bullied; at length he got the chiefs to consent to a stand against the white man’s army. How many of the upper chiefs and their men he prevailed upon to join him is a matter of dispute, but it is certain that some of both did.

In the afternoon of the 22d Crow’s army of some seven hundred and fifty warriors left their camps and marched down to the Yellow Medicine. In the following night they were arranged principally in a line on the east of the road, between the river and Sibley’s camp. A party was placed in the ravine through which flowed the outlet of the little lake mentioned, and still another west of the road, behind a hillock on the prairie. On that Little Crow took his stand. Day dawned, and not an Indian was in sight; all were hid in the timber or tall grass of the prairie. It was Crow’s expectation that Sibley would take the road, and that he would not have flankers far out from his column. When his advance should be near the Yellow Medicine and abreast of the Indian right it was to be attacked in flank, the party concealed in the coolie would close in on the rear, and that behind the hillock would give the finishing blow. All that might have happened, but for an accident. Some men of the Third Minnesota left the camp with teams to bring in potatoes from the gardens about the upper agency. They passed so near the Indian line that the warriors could not be restrained from firing. Several men were wounded, one mortally. Major Welch, commanding the Third, got his men into line, and without orders took them forward on the double-quick and precipitated the fight. Although forced to retire from an advanced position, he held the centre firmly. Lieutenant-Colonel William R. Marshall led the companies of the Seventh into the ravine and cleared it. A detachment of the Sixth dispersed a party attempting to turn its left. The battery of Captain Hendricks, advantageously posted, swept the field generally. After two hours of desultory firing the Sioux warriors disappeared behind the Yellow Medicine, and the “Battle of Wood Lake” was over. Only four white soldiers were killed outright, and thirty-three severely wounded. The Sioux left fourteen dead on the field, all of whom were scalped by savages under white skins. Colonel Sibley, in an order published the following day, expressed his extreme mortification, and threatened severe punishment for any repetition of the brutality. Colonel Sibley’s advices from the Indian camps were such as to convince him that a precipitate march on them might bring on a slaughter of the white prisoners. To give time for the friendly element to obtain possession of them he tarried a day below the Yellow Medicine, and took two days of easy marching to reach those camps opposite the mouth of the Chippewa River. His judgment was fully justified. Little Crow returned from the battle, upbraided his chiefs for cowardice and stupidity, took his family and a small body of adherents and departed for the distant northwest. Other hostile chiefs followed his example. There were others still who had been engaged in the murders and battles who thought it best to go over to the friendly camp and take their chances of being treated as prisoners of war. Colonel Sibley had found a camp of 150 lodges which the friendlies had fortified against the hostiles, who on their dispersion had sent over to it the greater number of their captives; 91 whites and 150 breeds were turned over to him on the afternoon of September 26. The total number was presently increased to 269, 107 whites and 162 mixed bloods. A few had been humanely treated through the interposition of Christian Indians, but the experiences of many may be left to the imagination of the reader.