Part 8: The war spreads across the prairie

By John Biewen

The morning after Little Crow's speech, and after the murders at the Acton farm -- Aug. 18, 1862 -- several hundred Dakota warriors, led by Little Crow, started their assault at the federal outpost that sat on their land: the Lower Sioux Agency.

They took food from the stone warehouse, burned buildings, and killed about 20 men -- one-fourth of the whites at the agency.

The dead included Andrew Myrick, the storekeeper who said that if Dakota families were hungry, they could eat grass.

"He was more than likely fleeing from his home to the tall grass and the trees," said Andrew Morse of the agency's history center. "He didn't quite make it, and his body was found filled with arrows and with grass stuffed in his mouth."

Most of Minnesota's trained soldiers were off fighting in the Civil War. When word of the attacks reached Fort Ridgely nearby, some green, unprepared soldiers came to help. The Dakota ambushed, killing most of them and sending the rest fleeing for their lives.

From there the Dakota men fanned out down the river valley, attacking the homes of settlers, most of whom were unarmed.

Joseph Godfrey was a young black man who lived among the Dakota. He testified later that fall, telling how Dakota warriors he was with went house to house.

Dinner was on the table, and the Indians said, 'After we kill, then we will have dinner.' ... When we got near to a house, the Indians all got out and ran ahead of the wagons, and two or three went to each house, and in that way they killed all the people along the road.

Some of the Dakota killed every settler they saw. Others killed only the men and took women and children captive.

Many Dakota warriors spared white people they knew. Chief Little Crow allowed a white woman named Sarah Wakefield -- the wife of the local doctor -- to be protected in his house during the six weeks of the war.

One Dakota woman who opposed the fighting, named Snana, traded with a warrior -- giving him a pony in exchange for a 14-year-old German girl the warrior had captured. Snana later wrote down her story. Turns out her daughter had died recently and she was heartbroken.

The reason why I wished to keep this girl was to have her in place of the one I lost. So I loved her and pitied her, and she was dear to me just the same as my own daughter. During the outbreak, when some of the Indians got killed, they began to kill some of the captives. At such times I always hid my dear captive white girl. ... I thought to myself that if they would kill my girl they must kill me first.

The historian, Mary Wingerd, is a fifth-generation Minnesotan. She says for 100 years or more, Minnesotans who heard the story at all heard a one-sided tale of savage Indians attacking innocent whites out of the blue. Now, most historians like herself blame the war mainly on white double-dealing and bullying.

"But I also think it's a mistake to try to pretend that there was no wrong committed by the men who rode against the settlers," Wingerd added. "At minimum, 400 innocent civilians were murdered, most of them who didn't even have weapons -- women and children. The Dakota people were victims, big time. But most of the people who died were victims as well. The people who would have been worthy opponents in a war were untouchable."

Meaning, the men in St. Paul and Washington who wrote, then violated, the treaties.

The fighting lasted 36 days. The Dakota won a battle against an Army outfit at a place called Birch Coulee, killing 13 soldiers and wounding almost 50. Dakota warriors twice attacked the town of New Ulm. They killed dozens of settlers, but local people set up barricades and held the town.

White settlers turned into panicked refugees, fleeing across the prairie.

Part 9: Sibley chosen to defeat the Dakota >>>

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