p. m., having made thirty-two miles in seven hours, in a
drenching rainstorm. The blazing houses in the distance gave a very
threatening aspect to the situation, but we crossed the ferry
successfully, and made the town without accident. The next day we were
reinforced by a full company from Mankato under Capt. William Bierbauer.
Several companies were formed from the citizens of the town. A full
company from South Bend arrived on the 20th or 21st, and various other
squads, greater or less in numbers, came in during the week, before
Saturday, the 23d, swelling our forces to about three hundred men, but
nearly all very poorly armed. We improved the barricades and sent out
daily scouting parties who succeeded in bringing in many people who were
in hiding in swamps, and who would have undoubtedly been lost without
this succor. It soon became apparent that, to maintain any discipline or
order in the town, some one man must be placed in command of the entire
force. The officers of the various companies assembled to choose a
commander-in-chief, and the selection fell to me. A provost guard was at
once established, order inaugurated, and we awaited events.

I have been thus particular in my description of the movements at this
point because it gives an idea of the defenseless condition in which the
outbreak found the people of the country, and also because it shows the
intense energy with which the settlers met the emergency, at its very
inception, from which I will deduce the conclusion at the proper time
that this prompt initial action saved the state from a calamity, the
magnitude of which is unrecorded in the history of Indian wars.

Having described the defensive condition of Fort Ridgely and New Ulm,
the two extreme frontier posts, the former being on the Indian
reservation and the latter only a few miles southeast of it, I will take
up the subject at the capital of the state. The news reached Governor
Ramsey, at St. Paul, on the 19th of August, the second day of the
outbreak. He at once hastened to Mendota, at the mouth of the Minnesota
river, and requested ex-Governor Sibley to accept the command of such
forces as could be put in the field, to check the advance of and punish
the Indians. Governor Sibley had a large experience with the Sioux,
perhaps more than any man in the state, having traded and lived with
them since 1834, and besides that, was a distinguished citizen of the
state, having been its first governor. He