Birch Coulie: The Epic Battle of the Dakota War

7. Dr. Daniels

By nightfall the men inside Grant’s encampment could make out campfires on the bluffs across the Minnesota River, where the Indians were gathered to enjoy a relaxing feast of cooked cattle captured earlier in the day and prepared by their women. If it were meant to tantalize Grant’s hungry and thirsty troops, it served its purpose, and the trapped men watched with envy as the distant Indian figures moved like ghosts in the light of their campfires. Grant and his men could hear the voices of the Indians celebrating their successes. The Dakotas had taken half the troops out of action while losing only three of their own warriors, whom they had buried wrapped in blankets in the soft soil of the coulie. As the Dakotas relaxed and ate, they quarreled in loud voices. The issue was as old as warfare itself. Should they continue to surround the enemy stronghold, sit tight, and hold the noose around Grant’s neck until he and his men surrendered from hunger and thirst? Or should they attack again at first light? 7. Dr. Daniels dr. daniels . . 71 The Dakotas chose to attack again at dawn. In anticipation of that attack each of Grant’s men readied the extra loaded musket beside him. A few of the mule drivers and teamsters with the expedition were positioned in the rifle pits beside the soldiers to load each rifle after it had been fired. For mule drivers, whose genius was knowing how to make mules behave, the task of loading muskets might have proved confusing. But it wasn’t all that difficult: tear open a paper powder cartridge, pour the powder down the musket muzzle, and slip in the Minié ball, seating it with the ramrod . With proper coordination the preparation could cut the musket firing time significantly. The men resolved not to fire before dawn. They periodically called “Wide awake!” to each other to encourage vigilance. The only additional sounds in the encampment came from the wounded men groaning in the hospital tent. Captain Grant distributed a quarter of a hard cracker to each of his men, who tried to make jokes about their “heavy diet.” To aid in washing down the dry crackers, they chewed bullets or pebbles to get their saliva flowing. A heavy cloud cover moved over Birch Coulie and obscured the full moon. Some of the men cheered the prospect of rainfall, but the best the laboring heavens could produce was an electrical storm in the distance that shot jagged bolts of white to the earth. Listening to the Indian voices, Grant rightly guessed that they were discussing strategy. Now that it was pitch dark—a night of “black despair,” some of the men called it—Grant dispatched Louis Faribault, a half-blood scout who spoke perfect Dakota, to crawl through that dark to eavesdrop on the Indians and determine exactly what they were planning. Faribault returned in an hour. “Captain,” he told Grant, “I think you will have hard fighting in the morning.” Grant wanted an explanation. “There are five hundred more Indians coming,” Faribault told Grant. They were from the Upper Agency. 72 . . dr. daniels How could Faribault be sure? The scout explained that he had gotten close enough to hear them talking around their cooking fires. Before Faribault sprinted back to the encampment, he had shouted to the Dakotas, “You do very wrong to fire on us. We did not come to fight you. We only came out to bury the bodies of the whites you killed.” Unaware that Lieutenant Sheehan had already made a successful ride back to Fort Ridgely for help, Grant immediately decided that in view of Faribault’s report the only chance for rescue of his trapped troops lay with themselves. He resolved then to send a man on horseback down Abercrombie Road to Fort Ridgely with an appeal for reinforcements. The only issues to be decided were who would make the ride and on which horse. Grant instructed his men to crawl along the rope of picketed horses and select the sturdiest one. Apparently, Grant had forgotten just how deep his fix was because only two horses had survived the Dakotas’ initial attack—Grant’s white mount and another sturdy animal that remained on the picket rope. During the heaviest fighting that day, Grant had released his horse from the picket rope, and the animal had wandered outside the...