Redwood County, Minnesota - Chapter 8: The Lower Sioux Agency, 1916

The Sioux Indian Reservation as established by the treaties of 1851, embraced a strip of land, twenty miles wide, ten miles on each side of the Minnesota, extending from the mouth of the Little Rock (Mud creek) a few miles west of New Ulm, to the western boundary of the state. A reservation was divided into the Upper and Lower reservations by a line a few miles west of Redwood county. The strip on the northern side of the river was little used by the Indians, and was by them relinquished in 1858.

The work of removing the Indians of the Mississippi and lower Minnesota river country to the lower reservation was a long and difficult task, and stretched over a period of several years. Ft. Ridgely, a few miles east of Redwood county, was started in 1853, but there were at that time no considerable number of Indians living in the Lower reservation. In 1854, the Lower Redwood agency was established in Sherman township, Redwood county. A building was erected for agency headquarters, and in time other structures for the officials, teachers, gov- eminent farmers, mechanics, laborers, missionaries, and even for the Indians themselves were erected. Several stores were also put up. In 1855 a sawmill was constructed at the falls within what is now the city of Redwood Falls.

Gradually the Indians settled about the agency, and here, too, gathered quite a colony of white people, and a few half-breeds also settled near by.

The events in the life of the agency, will be related in the following chapter under the head of "Causes of the Outbreak," and in that chapter also will be found the location of the different tribes.

Splendid communication existed between the Lower agency and the outside world. The ferry connected it with the government military road to Ft. Ridgely, and from Ft. Ridgely there were roads to St. Peter, and to Henderson, as well as trails to many other pioneer points. From the Lower agency the military road led to the Upper agency on the Yellow Medicine, while across the river was the road westward from Ft. Ridgely to Ft. Abercrombie. Another road from the Lower agency led south to Col. Nobles' Government Wagon road from Ft. Ridgely to the South Pass of the Rocky mountains. Many boats were plying the Minnesota, bringing both supplies and passengers.

With the building of the Lower agency, the Government undertook the difficult task of making white men out of the Indians. The civilization and habits which the white race had acquired through countless generations of development was to be thrust upon a people whom Nature had designated for a wholly different life. The race which had lived on the boundless sweeps, sleeping in God's fresh air, and getting their livelihood by the chase, were to be confined in houses and made to till the soil, while proud warriors at whose command had been the unlimited wealth of river and lake, of forest and stream, of hill and prairie, were to be made into common laborers, splitters of wood, and delvers of the earth.

Many of the white men concerned in this purpose were high minded men of sincere convictions, but many were mere parasites, preying upon the Indian, debauching his womankind, cheating him in trade, and securing his funds and substance through trickery and fraud.

In September, 1857, Joseph R. Brown was appointed agent for the Sioux agency, succeeding Charles E. Flandrau. He immediately began important reforms and his influence was vastly more powerful than that of all his predecessors in the aggregate. The Indians were nearly all blanketed and wild when Major Brown took charge, but shortly he had influenced scores of them to wear the garb of the white man, to have their hair cut short, to cast their ancient adornments aside and instead to carry hoes or spades or axes in their hands. They began to live in houses, to cook their food on stoves, and to sleep on four-post bedsteads. Numbers of them professed to be Christians. The Indian farming operations, the work of building houses, and the other improvements were superintended by white men in the employ of the Government, but in some instances a full-blood Indian was instructor in farming for the other members of a band; such a character was called a "farmer Indian." Oxen for teams, wagons, plows, and other implements were issued by the Government, and distributed among the bands. The annual payments and issues of other supplies were made, for a time, regularly, and a skilled physician was in attendance at each agency to minister to the Indians in case of sickness, the medicines being furnished by the Government. The majority of the Indians, however, continued the repose and trust of their faith in the "medicine man" of the olden times.

The change in the administration of the Government in 1861, resulting, as it did, in a general change in the minor offices throughout the country, carried into retirement Major William J. Cullen, superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern superintendency, and Major Joseph R. Brown, agent for the Sioux, whose places were filled respectively by Colonel Clark W. Thompson and Major Thomas J. Galbraith. Colonel Thompson entered upon the duties of his office in May of that year, and Major Galbraith on the first day of June. In that month the new agent and many of the new employes, with their families, took up their residence on the reservations.

These employes, save a few young men who were employed as laborers, were, with the two exceptions, men of families, it being the policy of the agent to employ among the Indians as few uumarried men as possible.

The new agent endorsed the policy and adopted the methods of his predecessor almost entirely. Especially, did he endeavor to make the Indians self-supporting. Those who were already "farmers" or "breeches Indians," were favored and encouraged in many ways, and those who were still barbaric and blanketed were remonstrated with, and entreated to enter upon the new life.

The autumn of 1861 closed upon the affairs of the farmer- Indians quite unsatisfactorily ; their crops were light - the Upper Sioux raised little or nothing. The cutworms and blackbirds had destroyed or damaged almost all the crops. Under the direction of Missionary Riggs, who lived among them, Agent Galbraith fed one thousand five hundred of the Indians, with supplies bought on credit, from the middle of December, 1861, to April 1, 1862, when they were able to go off on their spring hunt. He also fed and cared for a number of old and infirm Indians, who,

The "farmer" Indians were kept at work during the winter, making fence rails, cutting and hauling saw logs to the saw mills at the Upper and Lower agency, and other work, and in payment received regular issues of supplies for themselves and families.

In August, 1861, the agent hired the farmer of the Lower agency to plow 500 acres of fallow land, in what was called the public land, or the land cultivated by the Indians in common. The price of plowing was from $1.50 to $2 per acre. At the same time, 475 acres of similar land were plowed for the Upper Sioux ; later the Lower farmers plowed 250 acres and the Upper farmers.325 acres for their individual use. The plowing was done at this time to kill the eggs of the cutworms. In November, 1861, the fine stone warehouse, the walls of which are still standing, was completed at the Lower agency. At this time there was a good steam sawmill, with a corn grinding mill attached, operated by Government employes, at each of the agencies. In the winter of 1861-62, the Indians delivered at the Redwood sawmill 650,000 feet of saw logs and 128 cords of shingle blocks, and the Upper mill received from the same class 178,000 feet of logs. The tree tops and other fallen wood from the log timber, was cut into cord wood by the Indians, who were paid $2.55 a cord at the Lower and $1.25 at the Upper agency ; this wood was used for burning brick. The sawmill supplied the carpenter shops with lumber for repairing sheds and wagons, and other implements, and even for building lumber. The "farmer" Indians built stables and pens for their cattle.

In the early winter of 1862, Agent Galbraith had the plans prepared for fifty new dwelling houses for Indian families, the buildings to cost an average of $300 each, and the "farmer" Indians were promised thirty more houses. In March, he purchased and had shipped to the reservation 472 plows of various sues, shovels, scythes, grain cradles and other implements; four farm wagons and forty-five ox carts; for sowing and planting 20 bushels of beans and peas, 285 bushels of corn, thirty bushels of wheat, 3,690 bushels of potatoes and proportionate quantities of turnip, pumpkin and other vegetable seeds. The wheat, corn, and potatoes were purchased from the "farmer" Indians, and paid for in goods and extra provisions from the Government warehouse. A large number of live stock was also furnished for the Indians. In the spring, Major Galbraith purchased in St. Paul a large quantity of builders' hardware, several hundred suits of ready-made clothing, a set of blacksmith's and two sets of carpenter's tools, a great quantity of wooden ware, furniture, etc., and had them shipped to the Lower agency. During the winter, 1861-62, the "farmer" Indians at the Lower agency made

In the spring of 1862, there were planted for and by the Medawakantons and Wahpakootas, on the Lower reservation, 1,025 acres of corn, 260 acres of potatoes, 60 acres of turnips and rutabages (twelve acres of experimental spring wheat, and large areas of beans, peas, and other field and garden vegetables. These crops were all well cultivated, plowed, hoed and weeded, and when the outbreak came were in much better condition than the fields of many of their white neighbors, only a few miles away.

The amount of transportation over the road from the Lower to the Upper agency was very large, and traversing this road were numerous sloughs, coulies, brooks, and creeks difficult* of passage. In the spring and summer of 1862, Agent Galbraith built no less than eighteen substantial and permanent bridges over the water courses on the agency road. The bridges were not all completed until August 1, and were not much used prior to the outbreak, but they were of great service to General Sibley's army, when it invaded the Indian country.

In June, 1862, Agent Galbraith promised to build for Little Crow, a good brick house, with all the then modern improvements, if he would aid in bringing around his young men to habits of industry and civilization, and would himself become a "farmer" Indian. The chief made the required promise of reformation and agreed to do part of the work himself. The site has been marked by a granite tablet, put up by the late Charles D. Gilfillan. A part of the cellar was finished, at the time of the outbreak, in August, 1862.

By the second week in August, 1862, the Indian crops were in fine condition, and everything looked prosperous for a bountiful harvest. The worst trouble was with the crows and blackbirds; vast swarms and flocks of these birds attacked the cornfields. The grains were in the milk or soft stage, and the strong-billed pests could easily tear open the husk and ruin an ear of corn in a few minutes. The Indian women and children went to the cornfields at dawn and remained until night-fall, busily engaged all day in keeping off the little black-feathered creatures. All the Indian cornfields at both agencies were strongly fenced to keep out the stock, which was allowed to graze at large.

On the fifteenth of August the agent made a careful and conservative estimate of the crops his Indians would harvest that fall. The lowest estimates were that the Lower Sioux would gather and store 25,625 bushels of corn, 32,500 bushels of potatoes, 13,500 bushels of turnips, 240 bushels of wheat, a large quantity of beans, pumpkins, etc. It was believed that all of this great supply would be available for human food, as the Indians had cut and stacked enough prairie hay to winter their stock, and

In 1862, the agency was a flourishing community, assuming almost the aspect of a city. With its warehouse and other Government buildings, a nearly completed Episcopal church, some traders' stores, a boarding house, and many dwelling houses, both Indians and of whites. The steep road which had been graded down the bank to the ferry, was constantly thronged with Indians, half-breeds, government employes, and the German settlers, who had located in large numbers just across the river in Renville county.

In the near neighborhood of the agency were the Indian villages of Little Crow, Blue Earth, Traveling Hail, Big Eagle, Yacouta, Wabasha and Hushasha.

The four trading houses at the Redwood agency in 1862 were those of Capt. Louis Robert, William H. Forbes, Nathan Myriek & Co., and Francois La Bathe, the latter a mixed blood Sioux. All of these stood west of the principal agency buildings, La Bathe's coming first, and then Myriek 's just east of the big ravine. Across the ravine to the northward, near the crest of the bluff, was Forbes' store, and to the west of Forbes', about 150 yards, was Robert's. Myriek 's was the largest in capacity.

Captain Robert was a prominent early settler and trader of Minnesota. One of the principal streets in St. Paul is named in his honor. He was a steamboat owner and captain, and also the owner of many posts and stores. After the massacre, in 1865, he opened the first store in Redwood Falls.

Authorities and References. This article is based upon material by Return I. Holcombe, appearing in "Minnesota in Three Centuries," and a pamphlet "Monuments and Tablets Erected by the Minnesota Valley Historical Society." Major Holcombe 's articles were based upon the report of Major Thomas J. Galbraith, for 1861-62, upon various published accounts of the massacre, upon personal observations of the region, and upon the personal testimony of Indians and whites, who lived at the agency prior to the massacre, or who participated in some of its stirring events.