Freeborn County, Minnesota - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 31 of those read), 1882

Missouri

INDIAN SYMPATHIZERS - MEMOKIAL TO THE PKESIDENT - THE HANGING OP THIKTY-EIGHT ANNULLING THE TREATIES WITH CERTAIN SIOUX REMOVAL OF WINNEBAGOE3 AND SIOUX TO THE UPPER MISSOURI.

After the campaign of 1862, and the guilty parties were confined at Camp Lincoln, near Mendota, the idea of executing capitally, three hundred Indians, aroused the sympathy of those far removed from the scenes of their inhuman butcheries. President Lincoln was importuned, principally by parties in the East, for the release of these savages. The voice of the blood of innocence crying from the ground, the waiKngs of mothers bereft of tlieir children was hushed in the tender cry of sympathy for the condemned. Even the Christian ministers, stern in the belief that, "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," seemed now the most zealous for the pardon of these merciless outlaws, who, without cause had shed the blood of innocent women and children in a time of peace.

Senator IM. S. Wilkin.son and Congressmen C. Aldrich and William Windom, made an urgent appeal to the President for the proper execution of the sentence in the case of these Indians. From this appeal the following extract will be sufficient to indicate its character:

"The people of Minnesota, Mr. President, have stood firmly by you and your Administration. They have given both you and it their cordial support. They have not violated any law. They have borne these sufferings with patience, such as few people have ever exhibited under extreme trials. These Indians now are at their mercy; but our people have not risen to slaughter, because they believed their President would deal with them justly.

"We are told, Mr. President, that the committee from Pennsylvania, whose families are living happily in their pleasant homes in that state, have called upon you to pardon these Indians. We protest against the pardon of these Indians; because if it is done, the Indians will become more insolent and cruel than they ever were before, believing, as they certainly will, that their Great Father at Washington either justifies their acts or is afraid to punish them for their crimes.

-'We protest against it, because, if the President does not permit the execution to take place under the forms of law, the outraged people of Minnesota will dispose of these wretches without law. These two people cannot live together. We do not wish to see mob law inaugurated in Minnesota, as it certainly will be, if you force the people to it. We tremble at the approach of such a condition of things in our state.

"You can give us peace, or you can give us lawless violence. We pray you, as in view of all we have suffered, and of the danger which still awaits us, let the law be executed. Let justice be done to our people."

The prcsri of Blinnesota, without a single exception, insisted that the condemned Indians should expiate their dreadful crime upon the gallows, while the Eastern press, with some few exceptions, gave vent to the deep sympathy of the sentimental philosophers and the fanciful strains of the imaginative poets. It seemed to our Eastern neighbors that Minnesotians, in their contact with savage life, had ceased to appreciate the that they had looked upon the modem race of savages in their criminal degradation until they had well-nigh forgotten the renoun of Massasoit, and his noble sons Alexander and Philip.

But two hundred years never fails to change somewhat the character and sentiments of a great people, and blot from its memory something of its accredited history. This may have happened in the case of our fellow-kinsmen in the Eastern and Middle States. They may not now fully enter into the views and sentiments of those who witnessed the outrages of Phihp and his cruel warriors in their conspiracies against the infant colonies; . in their attacks upon Springfield, HatfieldJLiancaster, Medfield, Seekong, Groton, Warwick, Marlborough, Plymouth, Taunton, Scituate, Bridgewater, and Northfield. They seem not fully now to appreciate the atrocities of the savages of these olden times. The histoiian of the times of Philip was not so sentimental as some of later days.

"The town of Springfield received great injury from their attacks, more than thirty houses being burned; among the rest one containing a 'brave library,' the finest in that part of the country, which belonged to the Kev. Pelatiah Glover."

" This," says Hubbard, "did, more than any other, discover the said actors to be the children of the devil, full of all subtilty and malice." And we of the present can not perceive why the massacre of innocent women and children should not as readily discover these Minnesota savages, under Little Crow, to be children of the devil as the burning of a minister's library two hundred years ago. Minnesotians lost by these Indians splendid, not to say brave libraries; but of this minor evil they did not complain, in their demand for the execution of the condemned murderers.

Indians are the same in all times. Two hundred years have wrought no change upon Indian character. Had King Philip been powerful enough, he would have killed all the white men inhabiting the New England Colonies. "Once an Indian, always an Indian," is fully borne out by their history during two hundred years' contact with the white race.

Memorials To The President

try spoke and felt in regard to Indians very much as Minnesotians now speak and feel. When Weetamore, queen of Pocasset, and widow of Alexander, Philip's eldest brother, in attempting to escape from the pursuit of Captain Church, had lost her Hfe, her head was cut off by those who discovered her, and fixed upon a pole at Taunton! Here, being discovered by some of her loving subjects, then in captivity, their unrestrained grief at the shocking sight is characterized by Mather as "a most horrid and diabolical lamentation!" Have Minnesotians exhibited a more unfeeling sentiment than this, even against condemned murderers ? Mather lived, it is true, amid scenes of Indian barbarity. Had he lived in the present day and witnessed these revolting cruelties, he would have said with Colonel H. H. Sibley, "My heart is steeled against them." But those who witnessed the late massacre could truly say, in the language of an Eastern poet,

Early in December, 1862, while the final decision of the President was delayed, the valley towns of Minnesota, led off by the city of St. Paul, held primaiy meetings, addressed by the most intelligent speakers of the diifeient localities. An extract from a memorial of one of the assemblages of the people is given as a sample of others of similar import. The extract quoted is from the St. Paul meeting, drawn up by George A. Nourse, United States District Attorney for the District of Minnesota:

"To the President of the United States: We, the citizens of St. Paul, in the State of Minnesota, respectfully represent that we have heard, with regret and alarm, through the public press, i-eports of an intention on the part of the United States Government to dismiss without punishment the Sioux warriors captured by our soldiers; and further, to allow the several tribes of Indians lately located upon reservations within this State to remain upon the reservations.

"Against any such policy we respectfully but firmly protest. The history of this continent presents no event that can compare with the late Sioux outbreak in wanton, unprovoked, and fiendish cruelty. All that we have heard of Indian warfare in the early history of this country is tame in contrast with the atrocities of this late massacre. Without warning, in cold blood, beginning with the murder of their best friends, the whole body of the Annuity Sioux commenced a deliberate scheme to exterminate every white person upon the land once occupied by them, and by them long since sold to the United States. In carrying out ihis bloody sciieme they have spared neither age nor sex, only reserving, for the gratification of their brutal lust, the few white women whom the rifle, the tomahawk and the scalping-knife spared. Nor did their fiendish barbarities cease with death, as the mutilated corpses of their victims, disemboweled, cut limb from limb, or chopped into fragments, will testify.- These cruelties, too, were in many cases preceded by a pretense of friendship; and in many instances the victims of these more than murderers were shot down in cold blood as soon as their backs were turned, after a cordial shaking of the hand and loud professions of friendship on the part of the murderers.

"We ask that the same judgment should be passed and executed upon these deliberate murderers, these ravishers, these mtitalators of their murdered victims, that would be passed upon white men guilty of the same offense. The blood of hundreds oE our muidered and mangled fellowcitizens cries from the ground for vengeance. 'Veugeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord;' and the authorities of the United States are, we bslieve, the chosen instruments to execute that vengeance. Let them not neglect their plain duty.

"Nor do we ask alone for vengeance. We demand security for the future. There can be rfo safety for us or for our families unless an example shall be made of those who have committed the horrible murders and barbarities we have recited. Let it be once understood that these Indians can commit such crimes, and be pardoned upon surrendering themselves, and there is henceforth a torch for every white man's dwelling, a knife for every white man's heart upon our frontier.

"Nor will even the most rigorous punishment give perfect security agaiust these Indians so long as any of them are left among, or in the vicinity of our border settlements. The Indian's nature can no more be trusted than the wolf's. Tame him, cultivate him, strive to Christianize him as you will, and the sight of blood will in an instant call out the savage, wolfish, devilish instincts of the race. It is notorious that among the earliest and most murderous of the Sioux, in perpetrating their late massacre, were many of the 'civilized Indians,' so called, with their hair cut short, wear-

"We respectfully ask, we demand that the captive Indians now in the bands of our military forces, proved before a military commission to bo guilty of murder, and even worse crimes, shall receive the punishment due those crimes. This, too, not merely as a matter of vengeance, but much more as a matter of future security for our border settlers.

"We ask, further, that these savages, proved to be treacherous, unreliable, and dangerous beyond example, may be removed from close proximity to oureettlements, to such distance and such isolation as shall make the jieople of this State safe from their future attacks."

Djsappoxntment Of The People In Minnesota

The final decision of the President, on the 1 7th of December, 1862, ordering the execution of thirty-nine of the three hundred condemned murderers, disappointed the people of Minnesota. These thirty-nine were to be hung on Friday, the 2Gth of December.

It was not strange that the people of Minnesota were disappointed. How had New England looked upon her Indian captives in her early history ? Her history says :

" King Philip was hunted like a wild beast, his body quartered and set on poles, his head exposed as a trophy for twt n'y years on a gibbet, in Plymouth, and one of his hands sent to Boston; then the ministers returned thanks, and one said that they had prayed a bullet into Philip's heart. In 1677, on a Sunday, in Marblehead, the women, as they came out of the meeting-house, fell upon two Indians that had been brought in as captives. and, in a very tumultuous way, murdered them, in revenge for the death of some fishermen."

These Puritan ideas have greatly relaxed in the descendants of the primitive stock. But, as the sepulchers of the fathers are garnished by their children as an indorsement of their deeds, shall we not hope that those who La e in this way given evidence of their paternity will find some palliation for a people who have sinned in the similitude of their fathers?

On the 2ith of December, at the request of the citizens of Maulcato of a previous date. Colonel Miller, (Ex Governor Stephen Miller, whose death at Worthington, Minn., took place in August, 1881), in order to secure the public peace, declared

On Monday, the 21st, the thirty-nine had been removed to apartments separate and distinct from the other Indians, and the death-warrant was made known to them through an interpreter - the Rev. Mr. Riggs, one of the Sioux missionaries. Through the interpreter. Colonel Miller addressed the prisoners in substance, as follows:

" The commanding officer at this place has called to speak to you upon a very serious subject thit afternoon. Your Great Father at Washington, after carefully reading what the witnesses have t' stifled in your several trials, has come to the conclusion that you have each been guilty of wantonlj and wickedly murdering his white children; and, for this reason, he has directed that you each bb hanged by the neck until you are dead, on next P'riday, and that order will be carried into effect on that day at ten o'clock in the forenoon.

"Good ministers, both Catholic and Protestant, are here, fi'om among whom each of you can select your spiritual adviser, who will be permitted to commune with you constantly during the few days that you are yet to live."

Adjutant Arnold was then instructed to read to them in English the letter of President Lincoln, which, in substance, stated the number and names of those condemned for execution, which letter was also read by Rev. S. R. Rig^s, in Dakota.

The Colonel further instructed Mr. Riggs to tell them that they had so sinned against their fellowmen that there is no hope of clemency except in the mercy of God through the merits of the Blessed Redeemer, and that he earnestly exhorted them to apply to Him as their only remaining source of consolation.

The number condemned was forty, but one died before the day fixed for the execution, and one, Henry Milord, a half breed, had his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life in the penitentiary; so that thirty-eight only were hung.

On the 16th of February, 1863, the treaties before that time existing between the United States and these annuity Indians were abrogated and annulled, and all lands and rights of occupancy within the state of Minnesota, and all annuities and claims then existing in favor of said Indians were declared forfeited to the United States.

These Indians, in the language of the act, had, in the year 1862, "made unprovoked aggression and most savage war upon the United States, and massacred a large number of men, and children within the state of Minnesota;" and as in this war and massacre they had "destroyed and damaged a large amount of property, and thereby forfeited all just claims" to their "monies and annuities to the United Sfcites," the act provides that "two-thirds of the balance remaining unexpended" of their annuities for the fiscal year, not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars, and the further sum of one hundred thousand dollars, being two-thirds of the annuities becoming due, and payable during the next fiscal year, should be appropriated and paid over to three cormnissioners appointed by the President, to be by them apportioned among the heads of famiUes, or their survivors, who suffered damage by the depredations of said Indians, or the troops of the United States in the war against them, not exceeding the sum of two hundred dollars to any one family, nor more than actual damage sustained. All claims for damages were required, by the act, to be presented at certain times, and according to the rules prescribed by the commissioners, who should hold their first session at St. Peter, in the "state of Minnesota, on or before the first Monday of April, and make and return their finding, and all the papers relating thereto, on or before the first Monday in December, 1863.

The President appointed for this duty, and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the Hons. Albert S. White, of the state of Indiana, Eli K. Chase, of Wisconsin, and Cyrus Aldrich, of Minnesota.

The duties of this board were bo vigoroiisiy prosecuted, that, by the 1st of November following their appointment, some twenty thousand sheets of legal cap paper had been consumed in reducing to writing the testimony under the law requiring the commissioners to report the testimony in writing, and proper decisions made requisite to the payment of the two hundred dollars to that class of sufferers designated by the act of Congress. Such dispatch in Government agents gives abundant evidence of national vigor and integrity.

It was, no doubt, the object of this act of Congress to make such an appropriation as would relieve the sufferings of those who had lost all present means of support, and for the further purpose of ascertaining the whole amonut of claims for damages as a necessary pre-requisite to future legislation. Regarded in this light, the act is one of wisdom and economy.

On the 21st of February following the annulling of the treaty with the Sioux above named. Congress passed "An act for the removal of the Winnebago Indians, and the sale of their reservation in Minnesota for their benefit." The money arising from the sale of their lands, after paying their indebtedness, is to be paid into the treasury of the United States, and expended, as the same is received, under the direction of the Secretarv of the Interior, in necessary improvements upon their new reservation. The lands in the new reservation are to be allotted in severalty, not exceeding eighty acres to each head of a family, except to the chiefs, to whom larger allottments may be made, to be vested by patent in the Indian and his heirs, without the right of alienation.

These several acts of the General Government moderated to some extent the demand of the people for the execution of the condemned Sioux yet in the military prison at Mankato awaiting the final decision of the President. The removal of the Indians from the borders of Minnesota, and the opening up for settlement of over a million of acres of superior land, was a prospective benefit to the State of immense value, both in its domestic quiet and its rapid advancement in material wealth.

In pursuance of the acts of Congress, on the 22d of April, and for the purpose of carrying them into execution, the condemned Indians were first taken from the State, on board the steamboat Favorite, carried down the Mississippi, and confined at Davenport, in the state of Iowa, where they remained, with only such privileges as are allowed to convicts in the penitentiary.

On the 4th of May, A. D. 186.3, at "six o'clock m the afternoon, certain others of the Sioux Indians, squaws and pappooses, in all about seventeen hundred, left Fort Snelling, on board the steamboat Davenport, for their new reservation on the Upper Missouri, above Fort Randall, accompanied by a strong guard of soldiers, and attended by certain of the missionaries and employes, the whole beinounder the general direction of Superintendent Clark W. Thompson. By these two shipments, some two thousand Sioux had been taken from the State and removed far from the borders of Minnesota. The expedition of 1863, fitted out against the scattered bands of the Sioux yet remaining on the boi-ders of the State, or still further removed into the Dakota Territory, gave to the border set* tlements some assurance of protection and security

U I Story Of The Sioux Mass Ac He

On Friday evening, July 3, 1863, Mr. Lampson and his sou Chauucey, while traveling along the ro.id, about six miles north of Hutchinson, discovered two Indians in a little prairie t)pening in the woods, interspersed with clumps of bushea and vines and a few scattering poplars, picking berries. These two Indians were Little Crow and his son Wowinapa.

Statement By His Son

"I am the son of Little Crow; my name is Wowinapa; I am sixteen years old; my father had two wives before he took my mother; the first one had one son, the second one a son and daughter; the third wife was my motlior. After taking my mother ho put away the hrst two; he had seven children by my mother - six are dead; I am the only one living now; the fourth wife had four children born; do not know whether any died or not; two were boys and three were girls; the fiftli wife had five children - three of them are dead, two are living; the sixth wife had three children; aU of them are dead; the oldest was a boy, the olher two were girls; the last four wives were sisters.

"Father went to St. Joseph last spring. When we were commg back he said he could not fight the white men, but would go below and steal horses from them, and give them to his children, so that they could be comfortable, and then he would go away off.

"Father also told me that he was getting old, and wanted me to go with him to carry his bundles. He left his wives and his other children behind. There were sixteen men and one squaw iu the party that went below with us. We had no horses, but walked all the way do-ivn to the settlements. Father .and I were picking red-berries, near Scattered Lake,,at the time he was shot. It was near night. He was hit the first time in the side, just above the hip. His gun and mine were lying on the ground. He took up my gun and fired it first, and then fired his own. He was shot the second time when he was firing his own gun. The ball struck the stock of his gun, and then hit him in the sidf, near the shoulder. This was the shot that killed him. He told me that he was killed, and asked me for water, which I gave him. He died immediately after. When I heard the

"A short time before father was killed an Indian named Hiuka, who married the daughter of my father's second wife, came to him. He had a horse with him - also a gray-colored coat that he had taken from a man that he had killed to the north of where father was killed. He gave the coat to father, telling him he might need it when it rained, as he had no coat with him. Hiuka said he h;;d a horse now, and was going back to the Indian country.

"The Indians that went down with us separated. Eight of them and the squaw wont north; the other eight went further down. I have not seen any of them since. After father was killed I took both guns and the ammunition and started to go to Devil's Lake, where I expected to find some of my friends. When I got to Beaver creek I saw the tracks of two Indians, and at Standing Buffalo's village saw where the eight Indians that had gone north had crossed.

"I carried both guns as far as the Shoyenue river, where I saw two men. I was scared, and threw my gun and the ammunition down. After that I traveled only in the night; and, as Iliad no ammunition to kill anything to eat, I had not strength enough to travel fast. I went on until I arrived near Devil's Lake, when I staid in one place three days, being so weak and hungry that I could go no further. I had picked up a cartridge near Big Stone Lake, which I still had with me, and loaded father's gun with it, cutting the ball iuto slugs. With this charge I shot a wolf, ate some of it, which gave me strength to travel, and went on up the lake until the day I was captured, which was twenty-six days from the day my father was killed."

Here ends this wonderful episode iu our contact with the Indian race in Minnesota. It commenced with Little Crow, in this instance, and it is proper that it should end with his inglorious life. With the best means for becoming an exponent of Indian civilization on this Continent, he has driven the missionaries from his people and become a standing example of the assertion: "Once an Indian always an Indian."

Little Crow has indeed given emphasis to the aphorism of Ferdousi, "For that which is unclean by nature, thou cans't entertain nohojje; no washing will make the gypsy white."