Chapter XXVII

_At Fort Ridgeley_

The officer in command of the battery when it left Fort Ridgeley was

Captain and Brevet Major John C. Pemberton, U. S. A. He had won his

brevet by gallant services in action at Monterey and Molino del Rey.

He accompanied the battery as far as Washington, where he resigned

(April 29, 1861), and tendered his sword to the Confederacy. He was

rapidly promoted until he reached a major-generalcy in that army, and

had the distinguished honor to surrender his army of thirty thousand

men at Vicksburg to Major General Ulysses S. Grant, July 3, 1863.

Pemberton was born in Pennsylvania, being appointed to the army from

that state, so that he had not even the flimsy excuse of serving his

state in thus betraying his country.

The battery was known as the Buena Vista Battery, or still better as

Sherman's. But Major Sherman, although long its commander, was not

with it at the time we transferred it down the river. Major Sherman

rendered distinguished service during the war, and retired (December

31, 1870) with the rank of major-general. Two other officers

were with the battery--First Lieutenant Romeyn Ayres, and Second

Lieutenant Beekman Du Barry. The battery was known in the Army of the

Potomac as Ayres's Battery, and under that name won a wide reputation

for efficiency. Ayres himself was a major general of volunteers

before the close of the war, and Lieutenant Du Barry was (May, 1865)

brevetted lieutenant-colonel for distinguished services.

At the time of our visit there was a large number of Indians encamped

on the prairie in front of the fort--estimated at seven or eight

hundred by those best versed in their manners and customs. They had

come down from the Lower Sioux Agency, sixteen miles farther up the

river. They were alive to the situation, and on the alert to learn

all they could of the "white man's war", which they had already heard

of as being fought in some far-away place, the location of which

was not clear to them, and for which they cared nothing so long as

it promised to be a contest that was likely to draw away soldiers

from the fort, and especially the "big guns", which they feared

more than they did the "dough boys". One of the best posted of the

frontiersmen, a "squaw man", who had the ear of the tribal council,

told our officers that there would be trouble when the battery was

withdrawn, for they felt themselves able successfully to fight and

exterminate the few companies of infantry left to garrison the fort.

How true this prediction was, the uprising of August, 1862, and the

Indian war in Minnesota, with its massacre at New Ulm and outlying

regions, abundantly verified.

As soon as we were made fast, the work was begun of loading cannon,

caissons, battery wagons, ammunition, and stores, as well as horses

and men. By the light of torches, lanterns, and huge bonfires built

on the bank, the work was rushed all night long, while the engineers

labored to put the engines and particularly the wheel, in the best

possible condition; and the carpenter, aided by artisans from the

fort, put on new guards forward, and strengthened the weak places

for the inevitable pounding that we knew must attend the downstream

trip. With the raging river pressing on the stern of the boat as she

descended, there was ample reason for anticipating much trouble in

handling the steamer.

The teamsters, with their six-mule teams, hurried the stores

and ammunition down the narrow roadway cut in the side of the

bluff, running perhaps half a mile along the side in making the

perpendicular descent of two hundred feet. Whatever time we had from

our duties on the boat was spent either in the fort, out in the

Indian village, or on the side hill watching the teams come down

the bluff, one after the other. Not being able to pass on the hill,

they went down together, and all went back empty at the same time.

The two hind wheels of the big army wagon were chained, so that they

slid along the ground, instead of revolving. Then the three riders,

one on each "near" mule, started the outfit down the hill, the off

mules being next the bluff, while the legs of the drivers hung out

over space on the other side. In places the wagons would go so fast,

in spite of the drag, that the mules would have to trot to keep out

of the way. This was exciting and interesting to the spectators, who

were expecting to see a team go over the precipice. The drivers did

not seem to care anything about the matter, and were no doubt well

pleased to become the centre of attraction.

Those of the spectators who had time and patience to continue the

watch were finally rewarded for their persistence, and justified in

their predictions by seeing one of these teams, with its load of

fixed ammunition, roll for a hundred feet down the bluff--men, mules,

and ammunition in one wild mix-up, rolling and racing for the bottom.

The fringe of timber alone saved the cortege from plunging into the

river. Those who saw the trip made, were betting that neither a man

nor a mule would come out alive. They all came out alive. Some of

the mules were badly scratched and banged, but not a leg was broken

among the six. The men were also badly bruised, but they also brought

all their bones out whole. One mule had his neck wound around the

wagon-tongue, his own tongue hanging out about the length of that of

the wagon, and all hands were certain of one dead mule, at least. But

when the troopers ran in and cut away the harness the mule jumped

to his feet, took in a few long breaths to make good for the five

minutes' strangulation, and then started up the roadway, dodging the

down-coming teams by a hair's-breadth, and never stopping until he

reached his corral, where he began munching hay as though nothing out

of the ordinary had happened.

The next morning everything was stowed aboard. With a salute from the

little howitzers in the fort, and the cheers of the "dough boys",

who wanted to go but could not, the "Fanny Harris" backed into the

stream, "straightened up", and began her downstream trip. I shall not

attempt to follow her down, in all her situations. With the heavy

load, and the stream behind her, it was possible to check her speed

in a measure at the bends, but totally impossible to stop her and

back her up against the current. The result was, that she "flanked"

around points that raked her whole length, and then plunged into

timber, bows on, on the opposite side of the river, ripping the

ginger-bread work, and even the guards, so that it would seem as

though the boat were going to destruction. Some of the artillerymen

were sure of it, and all of them would sooner have risked a battle

than the chance of drowning that at times seemed so imminent. We made

good time, however, and ran the three hundred miles in two running

days of daylight, laying up nights, and repairing damages as far as

possible against the next day's run.

When we rounded to at Fort Snelling landing we had one chimney about

ten feet high above deck; the other was three feet--just one joint

left above the breeching. Both escape pipes and the jack staff were

gone--we lost the latter the first day, going up. The stanchions on

both sides of the boiler deck were swept clean away, together with

liberal portions of the roof itself. The boat looked like a wreck,

but her hull was sound. The officers and crew were game to the last.

Many of them had been hurt more or less, and all had been working

until they were scarcely able to move. It was war time, however. Fort

Sumter had fallen, and the president had called for seventy-five

thousand men. We were doing our part with a will, in hastening

forward a battery that was to give a good account of itself from Bull

Run to Appomattox.

At Fort Snelling we lost two of our firemen and a number of our

deck crew, who deserted while we were lying at that place, taking

on additional stores and men. We thought it a cowardly thing to do,

under the circumstances. A few weeks later, however, we saw the two

firemen going to the front with a volunteer company from Prescott,

afterwards Company "B", 6th Wisconsin Infantry, in which "Whiskey

Jim", the Irishman, and Louis Ludloff, the "Dutchman", distinguished

themselves for valor in battle. Richardson gave his life for his

country at the Wilderness, while Ludloff fought all the way through,

rising from private to corporal, sergeant, and first sergeant, and

being wounded at Antietam and the Wilderness.

In talking with Ludloff in later years, I learned that the reason

they deserted the steamer, leaving behind their accrued wages and

even their clothes, was because they feared that they would not be

able to get in among the seventy-five thousand if they lost any time

in formalities and details. There were others, higher up in the world

than the humble firemen, who also miscalculated the length of the

impending war--by four years. Distinguished editors and statesmen,

and even soldiers, made this error. And there were a good many who

failed to "get in" even then.

We ran to La Crosse with our pieces of chimneys, which the artisans

at the Fort had helped our engineers to piece together so that the

smoke would clear the pilot house. It did not give the best of

draught; but we were going downstream on a flood, and we might have

drifted five miles an hour without any steam at all. We delivered

the battery at La Crosse, and immediately went into dry dock, where

a hundred men made short work of the repairs. The United States paid

our owners, the Minnesota Packet Company, eight thousand dollars

for the week's work. The officers and crew who earned the money for

the company were not invited to assist in its division. It was the

hardest week's work that most of us had ever known--certainly the

hardest I had ever experienced up to that time. A year or so later I

got into work fully as hard, and it lacked the pleasant accessories

of good food and a soft bed, that accompanied the strenuous days and

nights spent on the Fort Ridgeley excursion.

An incident remotely connected with this trip, offers an excellent

opportunity to philosophize on the smallness of the planet we

inhabit, and the impossibility of escaping from, or avoiding people

whom we may once have met. At a meeting of Congregationalists held

in a city far removed from the fort that stood guard on the bluffs

overhanging the Minnesota River in 1861, the writer was introduced

to Mr. Henry Standing Bear, secretary of the Young Men's Christian

Association of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Standing Bear is a graduate

of Carlisle College, an educated and intelligent and a full-blood

Sioux Indian. In conversation with him it transpired that he was one

of the children who stared open-eyed at the steamboat lying at the

landing place below the fort in 1861, and that he was an interested

spectator of the embarkation of Sherman's Battery. He there listened

to the talk of the braves who were already planning what they would

do when the soldiers should all be withdrawn to fight the "white

man's war" in the South. Standing Bear's own father took part in

the "massacre", as we called it. Standing Bear says they themselves

called it a war. Indians may go about their killings with somewhat

more of ferocity and cruelty than do we whites, but it is their way

of making war. In either case it is "hell", as "Old Tecump" said, and

the distinctions that we draw after all make little difference in the

results. We do not have to seek very far through the pages of history

to find instances where white men have massacred helpless Indian

women and children.

A talk with Henry Standing Bear, or any other educated Indian born

amid surroundings such as his, will throw new light and new coloring

upon the Indian situation as it existed in 1861. They saw the whites

steadily encroaching upon their hunting grounds, appropriating the

best to their own use, ravishing their women, killing their men,

and poisoning whole tribes with their "fire-water". Against their

wills they were driven from their ancient homes--"removed", was the

word--after having been tricked into signing treaties that they

did not understand, couched in legal terms that they could not

comprehend, receiving in exchange for their lands a lot of worthless

bric-a-brac that vanished in a week.[H] If they protested or

resisted, they were shot down like so many wolves, and with as little

mercy. What man is there among the whites who would not fight under

such circumstances? Our forefathers fought under less provocation and

their cause has been adjudged a righteous cause.

[H] This is a pretty wild statement on the part of Standing

Bear, probably made through ignorance of the facts in the case

rather than a wilful misrepresentation. In the treaty made with

the Sioux Indians at Traverse des Sioux, July 2-3, 1851, the

United States covenanted to pay $1,665,000 for such rights and

title as were claimed by the Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes or

bands in lands lying in Iowa and Minnesota. In another treaty,

made with the M'day-wa-kon-ton and Wak-pay-koo-tay bands,

also of the Sioux nation, the United States agreed to pay the

further sum of $1,410,000 for the rights of these two bands

in lands lying in Iowa and Minnesota. In addition the Sioux

had already been paid a large sum for their rights in lands

lying on the east side of the Mississippi, in Wisconsin--lands

in which they really had no right of title at all, as they

had gained whatever rights they claimed simply by driving

back the Chippewa from the country which they had occupied

for generations. The Sioux themselves did not, and could not,

avail themselves of the rights so gained, and the territory was

a debatable land for years--a fighting ground for the rival

nations of the Sioux and Chippewa.

This is the Indian's view-point as stated by a civilized tribesman.

His fathers fought, and are dead. He was adopted by the nation,

educated, and started upon a higher plane of living, as he is free

to confess; but it is doubtful if he can be started upon a higher

plane of thinking than that upon which his blanketed forbears lived,

in spite of the cruelties to which they were born and educated. While

I am no sentimentalist on the Indian question, when I fall into the

hands of a Standing Bear I am almost persuaded that the Indian,

within his lights, is as much of a patriot as many of his bleached

brethren. As to his manhood there is no question. In the long

struggle that has taken place between himself and the white invaders,

he has always backed his convictions with his life, if need be; and

such men, if white, we call "patriots."

[Illustration: BAD AXE (NOW GENOA), WISCONSIN. Scene of the last

battle between the United States forces and the Indians under Chief

Black Hawk, August 21, 1832. The Steamer "Warrior," Captain Joseph

Throckmorton, with soldiers and artillery from Fort Crawford, Prairie

du Chien, took an active and important part in this battle.]