THE TIMES OF THE REBELLION IN MINNESOTA. THIS new state of the far north was early in sending her regiments to the field. Her 1st regiment was in that opening battle of unfortunate issue, the battle of Manassas, in July, 1861. Her 2d regiment in the succeeding January, was at the battle of Mill Springs, Ky., where the union troops made the first bayonet charge of the war. Small in population, yet MINNESOTA Contributed 20,000 soldiers to the union army. But the rebellion had been in operation a little more than a year, when her own soil became the theater of most horrible tragedies, the suppression of which, for a time, absorbed all her energies. The times of the rebellion, therefore, was, in Minnesota, also, the times of the bloody scenes of savage barbarity known as THE SIOUX WAR. The most awful visitation of savage warfare that ever occurred to any community since the first settlement of this continent befel Minnisota, in August, 1862, under the leadership of Little Crow, the Sioux chief. Sunday, the 7th, the massacre began by the murder of six per sons, at Acton, Messler county. The next (Monday) morning, occur red the horrible butchery at the lower Sioux agency. Some fugitives, at about 9 o'clock, A. M., carried the tidings to Fort Ridgley, twelve miles distant. Forty-six men, more than half of its little garrison, under Captain Marsh, started across the country to the scene of blood. At the lower-agency ferry they fell into an ambush; when the captain and a large part of his men, after a desperate battle, were slain, On Wednesday, the savages laid seige to the fort, which continued for several days. In it were several pieces of artillery, and which, being well-served, the enemy were at last obliged to retreat. The German town of New Ulm, eighteen miles southwest of the fort, was attacked, and one hundred and ninety-two houses burnt. The defense was most heroic. The defenders were reinforced by armed bands from Mankato, La Seur and other points. These constructed rude barricades around a few of the buildings in the center of the village, and eventually suc ceeded in driving the enemy from the place: but all outside had been laid in ashes. New Ulm, a few days before, was a beautiful town of nearly 2,000 inhabitants. Its main street ran parallel with the river for one and a half miles; the dwellings, the homes of comfort and happiness. In a few short hours, it was all one mass of ruins, only a small cluster of buildings remaining of what had been a smiling, peaceful village. Fort Abercrombie and other points were attacked by the enemy. Off from the villages, among the farmers, the brutal savages had unobstructed scope for their cruelty. The country visited by them was studded with the homesteads of that most amiable of people, German emigrants, who were the greatest sufferers. No language can express the fiendish outrages perpetrated during this saturnalia of savage cruelty. "Not less than two thousand men, women and children, were indiscriminately murdered and tortured to death, and barbarities of the most hellish magnitude committed. Massacre itself had been mercy, if it could have purchased exemption from the revolting circumstances with which it was accompanied; the torture of unborn infants torn from their bleeding mothers, and cast upon their breasts; rape and violence of even young girls till death closed the horrid scene of suffering and shame. The theater of depredations extended from Otter-tail Lake and Fort Abercrombie, on the Red river, to the Iowa boundery, over a front of 200 miles, and from the western boundery of the state, eastwardly, to its heart, at Forest City; an area of 20,000 square miles. Eighteen counties were depopulated; 30,000 people driven from their homes, and millions, in value, destroyed.." "The parts visited by the Indians was one common scene of ruin and devastation; but very few houses left standing, and those sacked of everything worth the trouble to steal or effort to destroy-every bed and mattrass, every blanket, spread and sheet, every article of wardrobe taken, every trunk broken open and spoiled, every article of provision carried off, every horse driven away, nearly every house burned with everything in it, and hundreds of families murdered or driven into a captivity worse than death. Hardly a harvest finished, the grain uncut, the reaper standing where the horses were taken off in fright, or by the Indians; unbound, the rake lying on the gravel; unshocked, unstacked, every harvest-field trodden under foot, and every corn-field ravaged by herds of cattle howling for food, where no hand was left to give. "The outraged inhabitants who escaped, wandered over the prairies, enduring hardships, trials and sufferings next only to death itself. One little boy, Burton Eastlick, less than ten years of age, alternately carried and led by the hand, a younger brother of five, taking every precaution to avoid being seen for eighty miles to Fort Ridgely, and safely arrived there with him. A woman with her three children escaped from her home with barely their lives. The youngest, an infant, she carried in her arms; the other two girls walked and ran painfully along by her side, through the tangled brush and briar vines. They lived on wild plums and berries, and when these were gone by the frost, on grape-tendrils and roots. They coverted like a brood of partridges, trembling, starving, nearly dead. The infant died. The mother laid its body under a plum-bush; scraped together a heap of dried leaves and covered it; placed a few sticks over them to prevent the rude winds from blowing them away; then, looking hastily around again, fled with her remaining ones. It was seven weeks ere they were found and rescued. Some of less nerve completely lost their minds by the first fright, and wandered about demented through the thickets until found." A military force was hastily set on foot by the state authorities and placed under command of General Sibley, who checked the massacre, rescued the white prisoners-all of whom were women and children— and, having beaten the Indians in two battles, at Birch Coolie and Wood Lake, captured 2,000 of them, the rest being scattered as fugi tives in all directions. These Indian captives were subsequently tried, and, a large number of them being found guilty, were sentenced to be hanged. The final execution of the law, however, was only carried out on thirty-eight of the assassins. The damage done to that portion of the state which was the scene of the massacre, will not be recovered for years to come. For more than a month a large part of the population of Minnesota were fugitives from their devastated homes, and dependent on the charities of their distant neighbors, and of the generous people of other states for the necessaries of life. Writers of the time give these shocking details of the massacre at the Aower Agency and vicinity. The signal had been given, and almost simultaneously a thousand savage warwhoops rent the air. If massacre alone had been their aim, not one from the agency would scarce have escaped; but the horses in the barns, the plunder in the stores, and the hopes of finding whisky, largely diverted the savages from their murderous work. Not many of the whites had yet left their houses, or even their beds. Some of the savages, having led out the horses, fired the barns. Others rushed for the stores and warehouse, shooting before them whomsoever they met, by the roadside, before doors, or behind the counters. The shelves were soon emptied, with the assistance of the squaws, who had followed for the purposes of plunder, and the spoil carried away to be quarreled over among themselves. Barrels were rolled into the street, boxes tumbled out, and the buildings enveloped in flames. Then they burst into the mission chapel, boarding house, and other dwellings, tomahawk in hand. Some were hewn to pieces ere they had scarce left their beds; others received their death-wounds leaping from windows or endeavoring to escape. But who can tell the story of that hour? of the massacre of helpless women and children, imploring mercy from those whom their own hands had fed, but whose blood-dripping hatchets the next crashed pitiously through their flesh and bone-of the abominations too hellish to rehearse-of the cruelties, the tortures, the shrieks of agony, the death-groans, of that single hour? The few that escaped by any means heard enough, saw enough, felt enough to engage their utmost powers. Those that staid behind never told their story. From house to house the torch soon followed the hatchet; the flames enveloped alike the dead, dying and wounded. Tired of butchery in detail the savages fired a dwelling, and in it burned alive a mother and her five children; a few of their charred bones were afterward found among the ashes. Some escaped through back doors, over fields, down the side of the bluff to the river. Those fortunate enough got over by the ferry or otherwise hastened with utmost speed to the fort. Others hid among the bushes, in hollow logs or holes, behind stumps, or in the water. Maddened with unresisted success-for not a shot, not a blow had yet been aimed at them-with fiendish yells the Indians followed or sought new victims among yet unsuspecting settlers. The ferry was taken possession of, the ferry-man's house, the neighboring stacks, the mills, the piles of lumber, were set on fire. The ferry-man himself, tomahawked before his own door, was disemboweled, his head, hands and feet chopped off and inserted in the cavity. They overtook a boy trying to escape. Tearing off every thread of clothing, they pricked and pierced him with their blunt-headed javelins, laughing at and mimicking his agony till death came to his relief. Narcis Gerrain, as they entered, leaped from the millwindow for the river; ere he had reached it of three shots they fired at him two pierced his breast. He swam across, almost drowned. Four days he went without food, and after dragging himself, more dead than alive, through woods and swamps, for sixty-five miles, was found by a party of refugees and carried to Henderson. Passing a stick through both ankles of a woman, they dragged her over the prairie, till, from that alone, torn and mangled, she died. Those who escaped spread the alarm. As they heard it the people filed precip 496 itately, scarce knowing whither they went. After them the Indians followed throughout the entire line of settlements, over a frontier of hundreds of miles, committing such barbarities as could scarce be exceeded if all hell were turned loose. Not far from the agency a few families of settlers had congregated. The Indians overtook them. The first volley killed the few men among them. The defenseless, helpless women and children, huddled together in the wagons, bend ing down their heads, and drawing over them still closer their shawls. "CutNose," while two others held the horses, leaped into a wagon that contained eleven, mostly children, and deliberately in cold blood tomahawked them all— cleft open the head of each, while the others, stupefied with horror, powerless with fright, as they heard the heavy, dull blows crash and tear through flesh and bones, awaited their turn. Taking an infant from its mother's arms, before her eyes, with a bolt from one of the wagons, they riveted it through its body to the fence, and left it there to die, writhing in agony. After holding for a while the mother before this agonizing spectacle, they chopped off her arms and legs and left her to bleed to death. Thus they butchered twenty-five within a quarter of an acre. Kicking the bodies out of the wagons they filled them with plunder from the burning houses, and sending them back pushed on for other adventures. They overtook other parties, killed all the men and children, and led away the young women and girls captive for fates worse than death. One family of a son and daughter, and their parents, received the alarm. Before they had time to escape they heard the war-whoop, and saw dusky forms approach the door. The father fired a shot at them through the window. Before he had time to load again the Indians broke in; the family rushed out by the back way, but before they had gone many yards the father, mother and son were killed. The daughter, seeing herself alone, fell likewise, and holding her breath feigned herself dead. The savages came up and commenced hacking and mutilating the bodies. Seizing the girl by her feet they began to drag her off. As she instantly made an effort to adjust herself, they took her and sent her back with the others they had captured. Only those that might serve their base passions were saved, the rest were shot down and butchered or tortured to death by inches. One incident, if possible, more horrible than any other, was perpetrated on a member of the Schwandt family. All had been murdered but a son of Mr. Schwandt, aged thirteen years. He was beaten by the Indians until dead, as was supposed; but he lived to relate the entire incidents of the tragedy. This boy saw his married sister, Mrs. Waltz, who was enciente, cut open, the child taken alive from the mother, and nailed to a tree in the yard. It struggled some time after the nails were driven through it! Mrs. Justina Kreiger, in her narrative, relates some shocking incidents. She was, with a party of others, men, women and children, fleeing with their teams, and for safety, to Fort Ridgely, when they were overtaken on the road by a band of Sioux, and most of them butchered. After relating how she saw her husband shot, she contin ues: I now determined to jump out of the wagon and die beside my husband; but as I was standing up to jump, I was shot; seventeen buckshot entering my body. I then fell back into the wagon box. I had eight children in the wagon bed, and one in a shawl; all my own children, or my step children. All that I then knew was the fact that I was seized by an Indian and very roughly dragged from the wagon, and that the wagon was drawn over my body and ankles. I remained on the field of massacre, and in the place where I fell until eleven or twelve o'clock at night, unconscious of passing events. At this time of night, I arose from the field of the dead, with a feeble ability to move at all. I soon heard the tread of savage men, speaking the Sioux language. They came near and proved to be two savages only. These two went over the field examining the dead bodies, to rob them of what remained upon them. They soon came |