Little Crow by Gary Clayton Anderson

Author:Gary Clayton Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-87351-196-4
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2009-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

8

War

Monday morning came with promise to Redwood Agency. The rising sun warmed the combination of log, frame, and brick buildings that surrounded the large council square. The daylight prompted activity inside the structures among the many different men and women—farmers, carpenters, clerks, teachers, cooks, and missionaries—who worked there. Government laborers, rising early in the large boarding-house and taking advantage of the long summer day, readied themselves for fieldwork by six o’clock. The traders, who had stores about one-quarter of a mile northwest of the agency compound, prepared to open for the week’s business. They had sold little merchandise, due to the struggle with the Mdewakanton soldiers’ lodge, and optimistically looked to the days ahead for profit. The annuity money, long overdue, was expected daily. Indeed, the cash, more than eighty thousand dollars in gold coin, would arrive at Fort Ridgely later that very day, August 18, 1862.1 Unfortunately it would never reach the Indians for whom it was intended, for two violent storms suddenly followed the sun’s bright entrance. One brought deafening thunder and heavy rain; the other, unbelievable human tragedy.

Just as the traders settled down to breakfast, a long file of painted Dakota warriors, attired in breechcloths, entered the compound from the north. Small parties broke off from the main body and stationed themselves near the stores. It was now seven o’clock. At a signal, the warriors raised their motley array of rifles and shotguns and opened an indiscriminate fire, many weapons being discharged into each trade house. James W. Lynd, a clerk, fell first, being shot as he stood in the doorway of Myrick’s newly built store. Moments before, the warrior who killed him was heard muttering in an excited fashion: “Now I will kill the dog who wouldn’t give me credit.”2

An orgy of wild killing followed, Indian warriors becoming more impassioned with each passing shot. Myrick’s cook, a German affectionately called “old Fritz,” fell seconds after Lynd, and Andrew Myrick himself was slain as he tried to escape from a second-story window in his store. Myrick was supposedly shot first by an Indian who wished to avenge his sister. Myrick had fathered three children with the man’s sister and then abandoned her for a younger, more attractive woman. Maddened warriors shot several arrows into Myrick and thrust an old scythe into his ribs.3 As Dakota men broke into the other three commercial establishments, trader François La Bathe and half a dozen other clerks met a similar fate. Only two men, who were wounded in the attack, survived the rage of the Indian warriors. The looting of the stores, however, brought an end to the organization apparent at the beginning of the bloodbath.4 Most warriors commenced loading carts and wagons with spoils, leaving only a few Indians to confront other whites at the agency below.

For the most part, white men who had been part of either the trading enterprise or the agency staff received no quarter. A Dakota warrior shot George Gleason, Galbraith’s clerk, as he approached Redwood on the Yellow Medicine road.

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