Tours revisit history of area conflict

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

MORTON -- Many of the places that had a role in the Dakota Conflict of 1862 have become invisible to the naked eye.

Sure, there's Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee and both the Lower and Upper Sioux Agencies. But what about the site of the Battle of Wood Lake? What about the village where the Dakota gathered just before the attacks?

Those places aren't even recognizable these days as anything else except corn fields in Redwood, Renville and Yellow Medicine counties.

But on Saturday afternoon, a handful of people got to see some of the sites where the first storm clouds of the war began to swirl.

Starting with the Lower Sioux Agency near Morton and following the old government road up through the Yellow Medicine Agency just outside of Granite Falls, the group got anecdotal lessons in a forgotten part of the war from some Minnesota Historical Society tour guides.

The tour assembled around 1 p.m. on the Lower Sioux. The guides gathered together along the gravel path just beyond the cornfield. It's there that Dan Fjeld, a site technician on the Lower Sioux, began his four-hour narrative on how the war started.

He explained that it was the relationships between the Dakota and the local traders that helped fan the flames of war. The whole point of the Lower Sioux Agency, he explained, was to teach the Dakota how to farm land as the settlers did. Although the Dakota didn't consider all the traders to be bad, many of them took advantage of their location by stretching the prices of their goods.

"The breakdown came from the fact that they didn't exactly explain how the credit system worked," Fjeld said, adding that the Dakota ran up so much debt that whatever money the government owed them often went straight to the traders; most Dakota never saw a dime of their annuities. By 1862, their credit was mostly cut off and the two sides eventually stopped trading together.

It isn't too long after that point is made that Fjeld and the other guides marshal everyone out into the history center's parking lot to drive to the next stop on the tour.

The road to the next site leads off the reservation and over a narrow bridge onto Noble Avenue. The convoy stopped on the right side of the road at the edge of what seemed to be just another farm field.

But once the tourists are assembled, Fjeld explains that this field was once a Dakota village occupied by a man named Little Crow. Big Eagle also had a village near there. Bricks from some of the old houses -- even stovepipes -- keep turning up in the field. It was in this field the Dakota who wanted to fight gathered just before the trouble began. After the fighting began, the Dakota kept their captives here until they fell back across the Minnesota River. Fjeld said some of the captives' hoop skirts and bonnets were found after their captors retreated.

Before long before Fjeld ordered tourists back in the car. The convoy headed up Noble Avenue and onto U.S. Highway 71, which it took west to Redwood Falls. It pulled over outside a vacant commercial building across the highway from a Ford dealership and the tour gathers again near a tree.

"We are standing at a crossroads here," Fjeld told the tourists. "And there's so much history here."

The intersection of two government roads was right about where Joseph R. Brown stopped and turned around after realizing there were no Dakota in the area. He went back to Fort Ridgely and reported what he found to Capt. Joseph Anderson of the 1st Minnesota Regiment.

Fjeld is quick to point out that the two government roads that went through this section of what is now Redwood Falls lasted into the 20th century, a testament to how well they were built. The tour is again ordered back into their cars and again the convoy takes off in a cloud of dust up a frontage road and out to another farm field not too far away.

This farm field, which like the others stands anonymously in the middle of Redwood County, was where Old Shakopee and his son Young Shakopee had their village.

Fjeld pointed out that unlike Little Crow's band, Shakopee's band were divided on the issue of whether or not to attack the settlers.

Some of Shakopee's band later turned themselves in to the U.S Army and were tried in a military tribunal in Montevideo -- a common practice in the 1860s, but one many these days frown on. It was that tribunal that eventually led to the hanging of 38 Dakota in Mankato following the war. The body of Old Shakopee, Fjeld said, is buried along the southern ridge in the field.

"They either turned themselves in, fled to the Dakotas or Canada or were captured," Fjeld explained. "Most were sentenced to be hanged. The ones who weren't put on trial were taken to Fort Snelling for the winter."

There's time for questions for a few minutes, and then it's back to the cars. The convoy snakes its way up Redwood County Road 25 to Redwood County Highway 17. Eventually, it pulls over again beside Redwood County Highway 9. This field, near Rice Creek, is where Red Middle Voice had his village. Red Middle Voice was Young Shakopee's uncle and had a disagreement with his brother over the white settlers. It was here that the first disruption of white settlers started. At one point, over 1,000 tepees stood in what is now a farmer's corn field. This is where the Dakota moved their prisoners after fleeing Little Crow's village.

"These guys were the troublemakers," Fjeld said. "The majority of attacks on settlers were from Middle Voice and Little Shakopee."

The short, close stops on the tour end and the long haul towards the Yellow Medicine Agency begins. The convoy heads up Redwood County 9, stopping for cookies, coffee and lemonade at the Odeon Theatre in Belview before it comes to Boiling Springs.

The tourists are dispatched back to their cars just as a few hard drops of rain begin to fall. The convoy makes the last leg of its tour, heading up 9, across the river and into Yellow Medicine County. The Upper Sioux Agency is just up Yellow Medicine County Road 2, only a few miles past the field where the Battle of Wood Lake was fought.

The only remaining historic structure on the Upper Sioux is Employee's Duplex No.1. The foundations and cisterns of the stable, jail, manual labor school, bakehouse and oven, the annuity center and Dr. Wakefield's house are still intact, but the duplex is the last remaining building. The Dakota burned the agency as they passed through, even though everyone near there had already fled by the time the war broke out.

Barb Schmidt, who is another one of the tour guides, points out that it was 140 years ago today that Lt. Timothy Sheehan and 500 soldiers encountered 400 mounted Dakota warriors and another 150 warriors on foot. The Dakota broke down the warehouse door and shot down the U.S flag in an attempt to recover goods promised them months ago. But Sheehan pointed a howitzer at the building.

"And the Dakota respected the cannon,"Schmidt said.

Unlike the Lower Sioux, the Upper Sioux Agency didn't see much action during the war. Many of the settlers fled after a band of friendly Dakota warned them of the attack before it happened. As the war moved towards the Minnesota border, it stayed on the opposite side of the Minnesota River.