Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/114

 surprise. Efforts were at once made to secure State protection. A detachment of Sioux City cavalry was immediately sent to the lakes and the Dickinson County courthouse was fortified. Here the families were gathered under the protection of the soldiers, while men worked on the defenses. A saw mill was kept running, cutting logs into plank four inches in thickness. A trench, three feet deep, was dug around the court-house, about thirty feet from its walls and into this the palisades were firmly planted, making a defense against any weapons in possession of the Indians. Here the settlers remained in security while the terrible massacre was desolating western Minnesota. Thousands of the Sioux were on the war path and troops were hurried to the frontier. The chiefs had planned to sweep swiftly down the Des Moines valley and the Little Sioux by way of the lakes of Dickinson County, thus exterminating all of the settlements in northwestern Iowa above Fort Dodge and Sioux City. They soon met with vigorous resistance, however; in Kossuth and Palo Alto counties preparations were at once made by the settlers to defend their homes.

The Minnesota authorities were soon thoroughly aroused, as they came to realize that they were assailed by the greatest Indian uprising of the century. The settlers seized such arms as they could find and hurried to the aid of their frontier neighbors. Such troops as were within reach were hastily called to their assistance but before the savages could be checked, more than 1,000 men, women and children had been slaughtered and 5,000 driven from their homes.

Houses were pillaged and burned, stock killed or driven off, fields devastated and more than two hundred and fifty women and children taken into captivity. In magnitude it exceeded any massacre ever perpetrated in North America, and in atrocities it has never been surpassed in any country. Desperate battles were fought at New Ulm, Fort Riley and Birch Coulie, with heavy losses on both