Birch Coulie: The Epic Battle of the Dakota War

9. Little Paul

Little Crow rode east across the prairie in the box of a horse-drawn wagon whose axles creaked and grunted . Following the battle plan agreed to over the kettle of dog stew, he was leading an expedition of 110 Dakotas who would try to block the route of government reinforcements headed for Fort Ridgely. At the same time his head soldier, Gray Bird, had been picked to lead the effort to overrun Mankato and St. Peter. It was a plan to which Little Crow had given his blessings. But there had been repeated Indian defeats at New Ulm and Fort Ridgely. And only a few Upper Agency Dakotas had joined the war effort. It left Little Crow without the huge army he knew he needed to defeat Sibley. Additionally, Gray Bird had been deflected from his part of the mission by the sudden opportunity to wipe out Grant’s troops at Birch Coulie. That opportunity at Birch Coulie had ended in a standoff . For Little Crow the conclusion was inescapable. It was 9. Little Paul 88 . . little paul time to make peace, and as he bounced along in the wagon, he set to work composing in his head a note to Sibley and Governor Ramsey. His hope was that they would agree to peace terms rather than the annihilation that Little Crow’s soldiers had grimly argued was inevitable. Little Crow’s note to Ramsey and Sibley proposed a cessation of hostilities and then a treaty. Perhaps, the Dakota leader hoped, a treaty could be drawn up without provisions for all of the Dakota soldiers to be hanged. Little Crow and his men made camp that night on the prairie. His soldiers listened carefully as he read the note that he had composed for Governor Ramsey and Sibley. When he was done reading, the men hooted and jeered his idea of a peace overture. Some of his men threatened to kill him. His soldiers were not ready to give up on a war they had been so ardent about fighting, and Little Crow quickly tore up the note. The next morning seventy-five of Little Crow’s men refused to follow the reluctant general any farther east to set up the blockade. It left Little Crow with just thirty-five men willing to accept his leadership. There was no point any longer in pretending that he was the battle leader Dakota warriors had wanted the night they woke him up from a dead sleep. Instead, he was just another Dakota soldier in a fight that already seemed lost, and he turned over his command to one of his half brothers and rode quietly in the wagon that creaked and grunted across the prairie. Before Colonel Sibley departed the Birch Coulie battlefield, he had a detail of men temporarily bury the dead. When that was done, he fed Grant’s hungry troops a meal of pork, flour cakes fried in the pork fat, and coffee. The tents were struck, and the wounded men were loaded moaning and wheezing into ambulance wagons. Finally, unaware that Little Crow had not fought at Birch Coulie and had already entertained the idea of a truce, Sibley left a note for the chief in a cigar little paul . . 89 box tied to a stake which he drove into the ground. The note demanded to know why the war had been started. “If Little Crow has anything to say,” Sibley wrote, “send a flag of truce.” Then Sibley led a long column that left Birch Coulie and headed back toward Fort Ridgely. By the time Little Crow got the note, he had returned to the Upper Agency. He immediately responded to the note, saying that the war had started because the government had not lived up to its treaty promises. He wrote, “We made a treaty with the government but have to beg for what we get, and we can’t get that until our children are dying.” Little Crow went on to warn that he was holding many captives, women and children. There was no mistaking the implications: they could be used as bargaining chips for peace. Sibley answered quickly. He reminded the chief that Little Crow and his men had already killed hundreds of settlers. Release the captives, he told Little Crow, and then they could talk “man to man.” Whatever overtures for peace that Little Crow had originally entertained were now gone...