After the war, about 1,600 Dakota were penned up in a wooden enclosure on the river flats below the fort. More than a hundred died there during a measles epidemic. Dozens of Little Crow's relatives, including a wife and children, were held there. Two Dakota warriors, Medicine Bottle and Shakopee, were hanged at the fort in 1865 after being drugged and kidnapped in Canada.
Many modern-day Dakota are offended by the fort's re-enactments of cannon blasts and other "celebratory narratives." They consider it the site of a concentration camp. Despite its unfortunate name, the Thomas C. Savage visitors' center at Fort Snelling State Park offers worthwhile Dakota perspectives.
New Ulm
No other Minnesota town has embraced its role in the 1862 war more than New Ulm, where the fanciful stone Brown County Historical Society is chock-full of stories and artifacts. Admittedly skewed toward the settlers' perspective, the museum is a must-see and so is its website (www.browncountydakotawarcommemoration.com).
Museum researcher Darla Gebhard's ancestor fought in the two battles of New Ulm, when townsfolk barricaded themselves in a six-block area and withstood Dakota attacks.
"He never talked much about it, but he was fishing once with my uncle, who was at the time a young boy, and my great-grandfather told him he still had nightmares about picking up dead bodies," says Gebhard, a treasure trove of New Ulm history.
Another New Ulm resident, John LaBatte, descends from Dakota, traders and mixed-blood scouts. His frequent tours are equally rich and detailed.
Lower Sioux Agency
About 40 miles northwest of New Ulm, you'll find the stone warehouse that is perhaps the most historically important remnant of the war still standing. It was packed with food that could have eased Dakota starvation in August 1862, but President Abraham Lincoln's new Indian agent, Thomas Galbraith, refused to distribute any until the delayed gold annuity payments arrived. They showed up at Fort Ridgely one day too late. Galbraith's initials can be seen carved in the stone above the warehouse window.
'Door to the valley'
With no walls for defense, Fort Ridgely wasn't much of a fort in 1862 and not much is left today. Former St. Paul newspaper reporter, Civil War veteran and historian Return Ira Holcombe, who placed many of the monuments, also was among the first to interview Dakota war participants in the 1890s. Big Eagle, a Little Crow contemporary, told Holcombe:
"We thought the fort was the door to the valley as far St. Paul, and that if we got through the door nothing could stop us this side of the Mississippi. But the defenders of the fort were very brave and kept the door shut."
A mile west, on a rise just beyond cannon range, is where Little Crow unsuccessfully urged warriors to attack the then-understaffed fort on the second day of the war. Had they listened, instead of riding south to New Ulm, the Dakota likely would have taken the fort and the war might have played out much differently.
Birch Coulee Battlefield
On Sept. 2, 1862, a burial party picked this exposed prairie to camp. Big mistake. Dakota warriors attacked and nearly overran the camp in a 36-hour siege before relief arrived. It was the last Dakota victory.
The turning point
About 11 miles southeast of Granite Falls, just west of Hwy. 67, a rickety fence and an open gate are covered with a white-lettered sign proclaiming "Sioux Indian War 1862." Inside, a towering obelisk festooned with rifles serves as a monument to the Battle of Wood Lake. On Sept. 23, 1862, some U.S. soldiers sick of the food went foraging for potatoes. Dakota warriors were about to ambush hundreds of soldiers, but the foragers sprung the ambush and the battle became a turning point, prompting Little Crow to flee as hostages were freed at a nearby spot dubbed Camp Release.
Mankato
While most folks nowadays know this Minnesota River city as the home of Vikings training camp, three months after Wood Lake it became the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Lincoln reduced from 303 the number of condemned Dakota men to 39 and one more last-minute reprieve left 38 hanged the day after Christmas 1862. A beam from the scaffold remains in storage at the Blue Earth County Heritage Center, considered too ghoulish to display.
Curt Brown • 612-673-4767
To read the series "In the Footsteps of Little Crow" on the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, and see videos, photo galleries and more, go to startribune.com/dakota.
To download "In the Footsteps of Little Crow" as a 10-chapter e-book for Apple, Kindle and Nook e-readers, go to startribune.com/ebooks.
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