The trials were elaborately conducted
until the commission became acquainted with the details of the different outrages
and battles, and then, the only point being the connection of the prisoner
with them, five minutes would dispose of a case.
If witnesses testified, or the prisoner
admitted, that he was a participant, sufficient was established. As
many as forty were sometimes tried in a day. Those convicted of plundering
were condemned to imprisonment; those engaged in individual massacres and
in battles, to death.
If you think that participation in
battles did not justify such a sentence, please to reflect that any judicial
tribunal in the state would have been compelled to pass it, and that the retaliatory
laws of war, as recognized by all civilized nations, and also the code of
the Indian, which takes life for life, justified it. The battles were
not ordinary battles. The attacks upon New Ulm were directed against
a village filled with frightened fugitives from the surrounding neighborhood,
and the place was defended by civilians, hastily and indifferently
armed, and were accompanied by the wanton burning of a large portion of the
town, and by the slaughter of horses and cattle, and the destruction of all
property which came within the power of the enemy. A number of persons
from the country, who endeavored, while the attack was progressing, to make
their way into the town, where alone was possible safety, were shot down and
horribly mutilated. The attacks upon the forts were also accompanied
by similar acts.
The battle of Birch Coolie commenced
with an attack, just before daylight, upon a small part of soldiers and civilians
who had been engaged in the burial of the dead at the Red-Wood Agency, by
over three hundred Indians, who started for the purpose of burning the towns
of New Ulm, Mankato, and St. Peter, and butchering the inhabitants.
The war party to the Big Woods marched a distance of eighty miles on a general
raid through the settlements. They murdered and mutilated a number of
unarmed fugitives, burned many houses, stole a large quantity of horses and
cattle, killed a portion of Captain Strout's company at Acton, and partially
destroyed the town of Hutchinson. On all these occasions, as they were
attacked by largely superior numbers, the whites would have surrendered could
"quarter" have been expected. It was with the utmost resistance and
despair that the defense of Fort Ridgely and New Ulm was sustained after the
burning of all the outbuildings, and an attempt to set fire to the fort itself.
The timely arrival of re-enforcements alone saved the part at Birch Coolie
from total massacre. One hundred and four bullet-holes through a single
tent, the slaughter of over ninety horses, and the loss of half the party
in killed and wounded, indicate the peril of their situation. The purpose
of these Indians, as frequently stated, was to sweep the country as far as
St. Paul with the tomahawk and with fire, giving the men "no quarter;"
and these battles were but part of the general design, and rendered the acts
of one the acts of all. The fact that those engaged in such a mode of
warfare acted together in organized bands, and directed their attempts against
a large number of whites, was not a matter of mitigation, but of aggravation,
arising from increased ability and opportunity to accomplish their purpose.
Besides, most of these Indians must
also have been engaged in individual massacres and outrages. Those who
attacked New Ulm on the second day after the outbreak, and Fort Ridgely on
the third day, were undoubtedly parties who had scattered through the neighborhood
in small marauding bands the day before. The extent of the outrages,
occurring almost simultaneously over a frontier of two hundred miles in length
and reaching far into the interior, and whereby nearly one thousand people
perished, can not be accounted for without their participation. The
fact that they were Indians, intensely hating the whites, and possessed
of the inclinations and revengeful impulses of Indians, and educated
to the propriety of the indiscriminate butchery of their opponents, would
raise the moral certainty that, as soon as the first murders were committed,
all the young men were impelled by the sight of blood and plunder--- by the
contagion of example, and the hopes entertained of success--- to become participants
in the same class of acts.
In at least two thirds of the cases
the prisoners admitted that they fired, but in most instances insisted that
it was only two or three shots, and that no one was killed; about as valid
an excuse as one of them offered who was possessed of an irresistible impulse
to accumulate property, that a horse which he took was only a very little
one, and that a pair of oxen which he captured was for his wife, who wanted
a pair. In regard to the third who did not admit that they fired, their
reasons for not doing so were remarkable, and assumed a different shape
every day. One day all the elderly men, who were in the vigor of manly
strength, said their hair was too gray to go into battle; and the young men,
aged from eighteen to twenty-five, insisted that they were too young, and
their hearts too weak to face fire. The next day would develop the fact
that great was the number and terrible the condition of those who were writhing
in agony with the bellyache on the top of a big hill. A small army avowed
that they had crept under a wonderfully capacious stone (Which nobody but
themselves ever saw) at the battles of the fort, and did not emerge therefrom
during the fights; and a sufficiency for two small armies stoutly called on
the Great Spirit (Wakan-tonka), and the heavens and the earth (patting the
latter emphatically with the hand), to witness that they were of a temper
so phlegmatic, a disposition so unsocial, and an appetite so voracious and
greedy, that, during the road of each of the battles at the fort, New Ulm,
Birch Coolie, and Wood Lake, they were alone, within bullet-shot, roasting
and eating corn and beef all day! A fiery-looking warrior wished the
commission to believe that he felt so bad at the fort to see the Indians fire
on the whites, that he immediately laid down there and went to sleep, and
did not awake until the battle was over! Several of the worst characters,
who had been in all the battles, after they had confessed the whole thing,
wound up by saying that they were members of the Church!
One young chap, aged about nineteen,
said that he used always to attend divine worship at Little Crow's village
below St. Paul, and that he never did any thing bad in his life except to
run after a chicken at Mendota a long time ago, and that he didn't catch it.
The evidence disclosed the fact that this pious youth had been an active participant
in some of the worst massacres on Beaver Creek.
All ages were represented, from boyish
fifteen up to old men scarcely able to walk or speak, who were "fifty years
old," to use the expression of one, "a long time ago, and then they stopped
counting." Two of these old gentlemen were once brought in together,
who were direct opposites in physiognomy--the face of one running all to nose,
which terminated sharply, giving him the pointed expression, while that of
the other was perfectly flat, and about two feet broad, and fully illustrated
(which I always considered a fable) the fact of persons being in existence
who couldn't open or shut their eyes and mouths at the same moment.
This specimen was apparently asleep the whole time, with his lower jaw down;
and closed eyes being his normal condition, he had to be punched up every
two minutes, when the president of the commission was interrogating him, as
he wished to look in his eyes to judge if he was telling the truth.
"Wake him up! stir him up!"
was the continual injunction to the interpreter. This lively little
proceeding kept the old gentleman's face in continued action, eyes and mouth
alternately opening and shutting with a jerk. If he was simply told
to open his eyes, the operation was slow. The lids peeled up like those
of some stupid noxious bird gorged with carrion, and would shut again before
they were fairly open, the mouth following suit pari passu. Nothing
was proved against him, and the president said, in a loud voice, "Lead him
out." The startled tones awakened him, but the eyes shut again, and
they led him away wrapped in profound slumber.
Another equally antiquated specimen, but by no means
terrific in appearance, and not of the smallest account to himself or any
body else---sore eyed, and of lymphatic temperament---astonished the court
by stating that he was the sole cause of the Sioux difficulty; that he was
living near New Ulm upon the charity of the whites;
that the whites were, in fact, lavishly kind to him, and to such an extent
that the other Indians were jealous of him, and became so excited thereby
that they brought on the war.
Two semi-idiots were tried.
Nothing was elicited concerning one of them except that he was called "white
man," and was picked up when an infant alone on the prairies. He claimed
to be a white, but looked like a "Red" at that. The other had wit enough
to kill a white child, and, unfortunately for him, the plea of idiocy was
not recognized by the commission.
The most repulsive-looking prisoner
was Cut-nose. . . . He was the foremost man in many of the massacres.
The first and second days of the outbreak he devoted his attention particularly
to the Beaver Creek settlement, and to the fugitives on that side of the river.
I will give a single additional instance of the atrocity of this wretch and
his companions. A part of settlers were gathered together for flight
when the savages approached; the defenseless, helpless women and children,
huddled together in the wagons, bending down their heads, and drawing over
them still closer their shawls. Cut-nose, while two others held the horses,
leaped into a wagon that contained eleven, mostly children, and deliberately,
in cold blood, tomahawked them all---cleft open the head of each, while the
others, stupefied with horror, powerless with fright, as they heard the heavy
dull blows crash and tear through flesh and bones, awaited their turn.
Taking an infant from its mother's arms, before her eyes, with a bolt from
one of the wagons they riveted it through its body to the fence and left it
there to die, writhing in agony. After holding for a while the mother
before this agonizing spectacle, they chopped off her arms and legs, and left
her to bleed to death. Thus they butchered twenty-five within a quarter
of an acre. Kicking the bodies out of the wagons, they filled them with
plunder from the burning houses, and, sending them back, pushed on for other
adventures. 
Many of those engaged in the Patville
murder were tried. Patville started from Jo. Reynolds's place, just
above Red-Wood, for New Ulm, on the morning of the outbreak, with three young
ladies and two other men, and on the way they were attacked by the Indians,
as detailed by Godfrey. Patville was killed near the wagon, and the
other men at the edge of the woods, while trying to escape. One of the
girls was wounded, and all three taken prisoners and brought to Red-Wood.
Here the three were abused by the Indians; one, a girl of fourteen, by seventeen
of the wretches, and the wounded young lady to such an extent that she died
that night. Jo. Campbell ventured to place her in a grave, but was told
that if he did so, or for any of the other bodies which were lying exposed,
his life should pay the forfeit. The two other young ladies were reclaimed
at Camp Release, and sent to their friends, after suffering indignities worse
than death, and which humanity shudders to name.
Others were tried who belonged to
a band of eight that separated themselves from the main body which attacked
the fort in the second battle, and went toward St. Peter's burning the church,
the Swan Lake House, and other buildings, and murdering and plundering.
They attacked one party, killed all the men, and them one of them caught hold
of a young girl to take her as his property, when the mother resisted and
endeavored to pull her away. The Indians then shot the mother dead,
and wounded the girl, who fell upon the ground apparently lifeless.
An Indian said she was not dead, and told her first captor to raise her clothes,
which he attempted to do. Modesty, strong in death, revived the girl,
and she attempted to prevent it, but as she did so the other raised his tomahawk
and dashed out her brains---a blessed fate in comparison with that which was
otherwise designed.
An old man, shriveled to a mummy,
one of the criers of the Indian camp, was also tried, and two little boys
testified against him. 
One of them, a German, and remarkably
intelligent for his years, picked him out from many others at Camp Release,
and had him arrested, and dogged him till he was placed in jail, and when
he was led forth to be tried, with the eye and fierceness of a hawk, and as
if he feared every instant that he would escape justice.
These boys belonged to a large party,
who came from above Beaver Creek to within a few miles of the fort, where
the Indians met them, and said if they would go back with them to where they
came from and give up their teams, they should not be harmed. When they
were some distance from the fort, they fired into the party, and killed one
man and a number of women, and took the remainder prisoners. The old
wretch was made to stand up, looking cold and impassable, and as stolid as
a stone, and the boys, likewise standing, placed opposite. The stood
gazing at each other for a moment, when one of the boys said, "I saw that
Indian shoot a man while he was on his knees at prayer;" and the other
boy said, "I saw him shoot my mother."
Another was recognized by Mrs. Hunter
as the Indian who had shot her husband, and then took out his knife and offered
to cut his throat in her presence, but finally desisted, and carried her away
into captivity . . . .
The female sex was represented in
the person of one squaw, who, it was charged, had killed two children.
The only evidence to be obtained against her was a camp rumor to that effect
among the Indians, so she was discharged. Her arrest had one good effect,
as she admitted she had taken some silver spoons across the river, and ninety
dollars. . . , which she had turned over to an Indian, who, being questioned
concerning it, admitted the fact, and delivered the money over to the general.
-- from Isaac Heard, HISTORY OF THE SIOUX WAR AND MASSACRE
(1863)