Birch Coulee: history revisited

Tour retraces steps of burial

detail during Dakota Conflict

By RACHEL WEDDIG

Journal Staff Writer

FAIRFAX -- It's hot and humid and you're in search of dead bodies from battle.

Some 50 visitors to Fort Ridgely State Park Saturday were invited to step back in time about 140 years, retracing the steps of the burial detail of volunteer soldiers and civilians who left Fort Ridgely on Sept. 1, 1862 during the U.S. - Dakota Conflict.

During a 20-mile driving tour visitors learned the steps leading up to the Battle of Birch Coulee, as guides through the Lower Sioux Agency recounted the story of the conflict, highlighting areas where the troops camped and where early settlements like Beaver Creek once stood.

On July 23, 1851, one of the most significant Indian treaties in our nation's history was signed at Traverse des Sioux between the U. S. Government and the Dakota Indians. Some 24 million acres in Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota were ceded by the Indians in exchange for reservation lands and for $3,075,000 to be paid over a 50-year period in annual annuities of goods and money - about 12 cents an acre for some of the richest agricultural land in the country.

Delayed and skipped payments drove the Dakota to increasing desperation with each passing year. Poverty, starvation and general suffering led to the unrest that in 1862 culminated in the conflict.

The Battle of Birch Coulee occurred Sept. 2, 1862, less than two weeks after hundreds of Dakotas attacked the fort and New Ulm and drove white settlers from the area. As local forces were trying to build up and re-group, Col. Henry Sibley dispatched a group from Fort Ridgely to look for survivors, bury the dead and see where the Dakotas had gone.

Dan Fjeld was the lead tour guide from the Lower Sioux Agency, accompanied by other staff. Fjeld took the group along the government road that the burial detail took during their journey. He explained that probably most of the burial detail walked the hike from Fort Ridgely to the battlefield of Birch Coulee.

"The Battle of Birch Coulee was a little like the Civil War, " Fjeld said. "People were fighting on both sides and may have ended up fighting their friends."

Most of the burial detail were civilians and volunteers who were only enlisted as long as needed. He said there aren't any records exactly of the burials and who was buried. Sometimes the bodies were so decomposed from the hot sun that by the time anyone found them it was impossible to know for sure who the deceased were.

One stop the group made was near Three Mile Creek. Fjeld said the creek plays an important part in history. Before the conflict ended, the area near the creek served as a business area of hotels and sawmills.

On the journey from Three Mile Creek to one of the next stops, visitors got a chance to drive by an old cabin that may have dated back to before the conflict.

Fjeld described one of the first initial attacks of the Battle of Birch Coulee.

"The Dakota attacked the white soldiers right away," Fjeld said. "The Dakota had more horses than the soldiers. The Indians also had lots of shotguns."

The battle was a surprise to the settlers and the Dakotas.

"The Dakotas weren't wild savages. They had been living with the whites for years and some had even taken American customs," Fjeld said. "It was a shock -- to both the white settlers and the Dakota people. The Dakota had worked for 10-11 years right along the side of the white settlers."

Fjeld said Fort Ridgely wasn't made for defense because the people there didn't think they'd ever be attacked. Most forts West of the Mississippi River hadn't been attacked and the people there just weren't trained for combat.

Another stop was at Purgatory Creek, near burial mounds.

Pointing to Faribault Hill, Fjeld said, "there are many burial mounds on this hill. The burial detail buried bodies all the way through this area."

After going along the burial route, Fjeld explained that to cover the most possible land, the burial detail split in two. Capt. Joseph Anderson took his troops on the route south of the Minnesota River, and Capt. Hiram Grant and crew scoured the land to the north.

The last stop of the tour was at the Birch Coulee Battlefield where the two groups met up again during the second night of their expedition. There, visitors were greeted with informational signs and a replanted and relandscaped prairie which offers a better look into a crucial moment in Minnesota's past.

Fjeld explained that Grant choose a site on level ground close to trees and water, and less than a half mile from the road to Fort Ridgely. Grant was unconcerned about the location because he thought the Dakotas were not in the area. The soldiers slept under wagons and in open areas convinced there was nothing to worry about -- but Grant and company were wrong.

Around 4 a.m. the first shot was fired, and 30 soldiers were wounded in the first few minutes. The siege lasted for 32 hours, until about 240 reinforcements from Fort Ridgely appeared. When all was said and done, about 20 men and 90 horses were killed during the conflict's bloodiest battle.