, 1862-11-01
The Indian War in Minnesota.

The Legislature of Minnesota convened in spe
cial session at St. Paul on the 9th of September.
Governor Ramsey Immediately sent in a message
setting forth the history q the Indian outbreak
in detail, and showing the necessity of the utter
extermnaton, or at least the expulsion, of the
whole Dakotah nation from Minnesota.
After aluding to the amity which had existed
for years between the indians and the whites, the
Governor reviews the events of the past month.
The first hOstilities took place at Acton, in Meek
er county, on the 10th of August, where fami-
y ol six persons were murdered.
On the 18th of August force of forty-fve SOL
diers was sent to Fort Ridgley 1t was attacked
from an ambush, and half their number were
slain. The horrible work Of murder. plllage and
devastation was swiftly ended through the
Sioux reservations, asd shuIa-dlls of every age
and sex perished by the hands of these remorse-
less butchers The alarm was general and
thousands of people abandoned their homes
Meanwhile the Chippewa band had assumed a
threatening attitude, but no depredations have
been committed by them, and there is lot suffi-
cient evidence that they contemplate hostility.
Over two thousand troops were raised and sent
against the Dakotahs who seemed to be retreat
ing but it was learned they were continuing their
massacres. The settlers at Breckenridge on the
Red River were murdered, and Fort Amber
crombe seriously menaced. The Governor thus
forcbly depicts their atrocities:
"But massacre itself had been mercy if it could
have purchased exemption from the revolving cir
cumstances with which it was accompanied
Nothing which the brutal lust and wanton cruelty
of these savages could wreak upon their helpless
and innocent victims was omitted from the cate
CORY of their crimes.
"Helplessness and innocence, indeed, which
move pity in any breast but theirs, seemed to in
spire them only with more fendish rage.
"Infants hewn into bloody chips of flesh, or
nailed alive TO doorposts to linger out their little
life in mortal agony, or torn untimely from the
womb of the murdered mother and in cruel
mockery cast in fragments on her pulseless and
bleeding breast; rape joined to murder in one
awful tragedy; young girls, even children of
tender years, outraged by their brutal ravshers
till death ended their shame women held in cap
tivity to undergo the horrors of living death;
whole families burned alive and, as if their dew
ilish fury could not gut itself with outrages on
the living, its last efforts exhausted in mutilatng
the bodies of the dead such are the spectaces
and a thousand nameless horrors besides, which
their first experience of Indian war has burned
into the brains and hearts of our frontier people
and such the enemy with whom we have to deal
1t is estimated that five hundred persons of ev-
cry age and sex pershed and worse than per-
ished, by the banda of these remorseless butchers
in the course of the two or three days succeeding
the outbreak, before their progress was checked
by our forces, and hundreds of them lie vet un-
buried where they fell, hidden in the grass and
bushes of prairies and ravines. Many doubtless
in the attempt to escape have become lost, or
fainting from exhaustion and terror have died of
starvation.
The theater of depradations as far as ascer-
tanned, has extended from Otter tail Lake and
Fort Ambercrombie, on the Red River, to the
Iowa boundary, on front of two hundred miles,
and from the western border of the State east.
wardly to its heart at Forest City, an area of
twenty thousand square miles,
The property destroyed Or carried off as booty
is estimated at millions of dollars, including large
supplies of arms and ammunition pillaged from
tie Government and private stores on the reser-
walton, and the cattle, horses and household eff
fects of settlers. The indirect damage to our cit
izens is vastly greater, and if we include its prob
able effects on our future prosperity, is beyond
calculation
In all, probably not less than 10000 people
are involved directly indirectly in the loss of
life or loss of property from piage, destruction
or abandonment"
The Governor proceeds to recite the treaties
existing between the Government and the Indians,
and declares the United States exonerated from
further obligations. So far as the Sioux are con-
cerned, the day of annuities and Indian paym ents
in Minnesota is passed. The goods forfeited by
this outbreak amount in value to 100000. Our
course, he adds is plain. The Sioux Indians
must be exterminated or driven forever beyond
the borders Of the State. They must be regard
ed and treated as outlaws
The st. Paul Pioneer & Democrat has long
article upon the calamities of the Dakotah war
now scourging that portion of Minnesota, declar-
ing that the danger might have been foreseeu and
guarded against and fixing the responsibility up
on Governor Ramsey