A week into their 1862 uprising Dakota warriors assaulted the Minnesota town a second time, spawning a frenzy of flames and destruction.

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The battle was “one of the wildest scenes of frontier warfare” ever witnessed, said a participant. The town was engulfed in flames. Dakotas torched buildings in a tightening circle to drive the whites into town and burn them to death. Whites in town burned their way out to open a field of fire and keep the Indians back. To whites the scene was one of “hideously painted naked savages running in and out of the firelight, often recklessly exposing themselves in their mad dance, yelling like fiends….The almost continuous discharge of guns, the shrill hiss of bullets, added to the apparent hopelessness of the situation, made the bravest pale.” It was wildly surreal, like an abstract impressionist canvas with splashes of light and dark, or Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, all detached shapes in a constantly changing cacophony of color and sound. Savagery, however, was not the monopoly of either side that day. Some fought naked, some fought clothed; but they all sought to kill their enemies in an orgy of destruction.

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Such was the situation nearly 150 years ago, on Saturday, August 23, 1862, in the normally peaceful town of New Ulm, Minn. The Dakota attack followed years of pent-up frustration brought on by greed, deceit and land hunger. It came in the early stages of one of the bloodiest Indian-white conflicts in American history, variously known as the Minnesota Uprising, the Sioux Uprising or the Dakota War of 1862. The fight at New Ulm, culminating the first week of the uprising, was the most intense battle waged by any tribe against any fort or town in all the Western Indian wars.

The uprising had begun a week earlier, on Sunday, August 17, when four Dakotas killed five white settlers and stole food near Acton, Minn. When the young warriors reported their deeds, many Dakotas argued that as the whites would punish everyone, they might as well strike first. Not everyone wanted to fight, however. The Mdewakanton leader Little Crow initially advised against war, correctly predicting that while the Dakotas might kill many whites, “10 times 10 will come to kill you.” Perhaps half of the Dakotas, who comprised the eastern division of the three main Sioux tribes, would not take up arms. Little Crow knew war would spell disaster, but on this day he was a politician and opportunist and not a statesman. When a fellow chief labeled him a coward, it was more than he could take. “Ta-o-ya-te-du-ta is not a coward!” Little Crow roared. “He will die with you.” Reason often limps in a poor second to passion; Little Crow could not abide being called “chicken,” and the Dakotas went to war that Monday morning, August 18.

The exact number of white deaths in the Minnesota Uprising will never be known, but counts range from 400 to more than 800. The only Indian war that approaches the 1862 conflict in numbers of white deaths was King Philip’s War of 1675–76 in colonial New England, during which Indians killed some 600 to 800 colonists. Those colonial losses occurred over 15 months and were devastating, but in Minnesota the Indians killed about 400 people in the first week alone. The August 23 Battle of New Ulm was the high point of the Dakota war effort.

It was not the first time the Dakotas had tried to take the town. On Tuesday, August 19, they had made an uncoordinated attack, but the New Ulm defenders had driven them off. By the following morning reinforcements had arrived, and Judge Charles E. Flandrau of Traverse des Sioux was chosen to command the defenders, with the honorary rank of colonel. His force numbered some 400 citizen-soldiers, but not all had firearms. The American myth of frontier families each with its trusty rifle did not hold true in Minnesota. The guns they did have were largely double-barrelled shotguns; they had only a half-dozen rifles. Others carried pitchforks or axes. These were farmers and shopkeepers, without military training, many of whom had left families in jeopardy elsewhere and were now entrusted to protect some 1,500 women, children and old men. In fact, that week many worried men had called it quits and gone home.

As New Ulm’s force diminished, Little Crow and his band struck. Dissension between the Dakota war and peace factions limited Little Crow’s force to only about 650 warriors. He had failed with fewer men on Tuesday and failed again on Wednesday and Friday in attacks on Fort Ridgely, about 18 miles up the Minnesota River. But perhaps a concentrated assault on New Ulm would work. Besides, the Dakotas would face no soldiers or cannons, and the potential for spoils was greater. They first struck a small guard post northwest of town and shot down 1st Lt. A.W. Edwards, the first man killed in the battle.

About 8 a.m. rooftop lookouts saw smoke off in the direction of Fort Ridgely, and Flandrau called for men to investigate. Lieutenant William Huey volunteered his 75-man company, but there were dissenters in the ranks. Some claimed the Dakotas had set fires to lure them across the river and cut them off. Another faction believed it best to battle the enemy outside the town, away from the women and children. With Huey went 20 percent of the defenders’ strength. Years later Flandrau said Huey made “a mistake in judgment” in crossing. Jacob Nix, who had been in charge of the town defense during the first battle, placed the onus on Flandrau, stating “that one of the biggest mistakes” was to send men across the river.

Huey detached 20 men to guard the rope ferry and crossed over. The Dakotas promptly scattered this force and took possession of the ferry and adjacent mill, cutting off and then driving off Huey and 50 of his men. When the defenders of New Ulm looked for them later that day, it would cause additional problems.

New Ulm now had about 250 defenders. Most of the Dakotas had approached town from the north and west, keeping behind several long terraces that shielded their moves from the defenders’ sight. At about 9:30 a.m. Little Crow’s warriors suddenly appeared.

As the Dakotas fanned out to encircle New Ulm, Flandrau made another mistake by moving his men outside of town “to give them battle in the open field.” His men were not open-field fighters, and the move gave his enemy a great advantage. Unlike their cousins the Nakotas and Lakotas, who had fully taken up the Plains horse culture, the Dakotas were both a prairie and woodland people, and when it came to a crunch, they still preferred to do battle on foot. Even dismounted Dakota warriors were more mobile than dismounted farmers, and they carried firearms as well as tomahawks and clubs. If Flandrau’s men were too widely dispersed, they would lose effective fire control and be subject to swift Dakota concentrations. Conversely, if Flandrau consolidated his men for compact firepower, they would make better targets and could be easily outflanked. Flandrau explained, “A man with a shotgun, knowing his antagonist carries a rifle, has very little confidence in his fighting ability.” If so, his tactics are inexplicable.

Predictably, the nervous defenders quickly broke and rushed for the center of the city. Although most of them formed behind the barricades in town, some fled to cellars to hide among the women and children.

Most structures in town were wooden, but several brick buildings offered key strongpoints. The defenders’ dilemma was whether to hold the outlying buildings, thereby expanding the perimeter, allowing maneuver room and keeping the women and children farther from the action; or to abandon the buildings and concentrate in a small central bastion, which would leave little wiggle room and place the noncombatants at greater risk.

Flandrau later admitted that had the Indians “boldly charged into the town and set it on fire, they would have won the fight.” But the Dakotas likely perceived the white retreat as a ruse to draw them into an ambush. Instead, they occupied outlying buildings from which they could snipe from close range. Their hesitation provided the defenders of New Ulm time to refine their strategy and man the barricades.

Men of Captain William Bierbauer’s company from Mankato and Captain Edwin C. Saunders’ Le Sueur Tigers took up positions at the Roebbecke Mill on State Street, which Flandrau described as “an old Don Quixote windmill, with immense tower and sail-arms about 75 feet long, which occupied a commanding position.” Some 20 to 30 sharpshooters transformed the building into a fortress, piling wheat and flour sacks against the walls and knocking out loopholes from which to fire.

The two-story brick Forster Building (Post Office) served as another strongpoint, its cellar crammed with women and children. Defenders there knocked loopholes in the walls and blocked the windows with feather beds. Its upper floor provided defenders a clear field of fire to the top of the western terrace.

As the Dakotas tightened the cordon, they began to set fires. It appeared Little Crow had as little command control and tactical sense as Flandrau. Chief Big Eagle later claimed, “There was no one in chief command of the Indians at New Ulm.” Either way, the lack of coordination was telling.

With the dwellings intact, the Dakotas had shelter and could infiltrate to within close range with impunity. Instead, they burned their cover.While the wanton arson infuriated Jacob Nix, teacher Rudolph Leonhart recognized their mistake. “In their rage,” he said, “the Indians didn’t seem to realize that they hurt themselves more than us, as with every house that collapsed into ashes they destroyed a position from which they could have been able to launch an attack on us.”

A party of Dakotas took shelter in Turner Hall, only about 400 feet from the windmill, and a gunfight erupted between the two buildings. There was chaos at all points. Flandrau said the firing “became general, sharp and rapid, and it got to be a regular Indian skirmish, in which every man did his own work after his own fashion.”

The Dakotas soon occupied houses on the upper and lower ends of town. Schoolteacher Leonhart had no gun, so he spent the morning melting down lead bars and buckshot and pouring bullets. While the unarmed men and women made bullets, those with weapons were taking heavy fire at the barricades. They sustained their heaviest casualties in the first 90 minutes, with about 10 killed and 50 wounded.

So far bullets had not decided the matter, but perhaps fire would. When the wind picked up from the south and blew toward the town center, the Dakotas shifted to that side and began putting buildings to the torch, hoping the flames and smoke would drive the defenders into the open—or incinerate them. If it didn’t work, however, they were nullifying their advantage. As the fire-starters set to work, Indians in buildings on the western terrace fired straight down the cross streets at human targets like pins on bowling lanes. It was suicide to cross a street.

Flandrau, for his part, recognized that the Indian-occupied buildings beyond the barricades must be burned down. Covered by the guns of concealed defenders, volunteers ran out to burn haystacks, woodpiles and structures. As they burned their way out, the Indians burned their way in. Flandrau’s chief of staff, Salmon A. Buell, explained, “The fight soon became a driving by the Indians and a burning by the whites as [they were] driven back out of the buildings by superior force,” all amid a greater conflagration of flames, smoke and confusion.

The houses on the south end of town went up in flames first. Leonhart described the scene at noon: “Through the smoke of the burning houses I saw the almost naked Indians moving in a zigzag fashion to dodge the aim of our troops. It didn’t require a vivid imagination to see them as devils wandering through the flames of hell.” A horseman in a red blanket charged in swinging his rifle. Leonhart badly wanted a rifle to “stuff his mouth with lead.” A sharpshooter beside him fulfilled his wish, knocking the warrior from his horse in a backward somersault. Leonhart watched the warrior’s companions recover his body and then saw some whites “hasten forward, capture the weapons and decorations of the fallen warrior and return triumphantly to camp.” There may be some truth to the adage that while some may fight for glory or land, Americans fight for souvenirs. At the same time, though, the New Ulm defenders were certainly fighting for survival.

In the afternoon a band of men dressed in civilian clothing and flying an American flag approached from the south. It was believed they were Lieutenant Huey’s men trying to get back into town. Captain William B. Dodd asked for volunteers to venture out and assist them, and some 20 men fell in behind Dodd, who was mounted on a fine black horse. Three blocks down Minnesota Street concealed Dakotas opened fire. Had they waited until the party had gone another block, they would likely all have been caught in the trap. As it was, five bullets slammed into Dodd, several more into his horse, and Jacob Haeberle and John Krueger were mortally wounded. Dodd’s horse carried him back to Kiesling’s blacksmith shop before collapsing, and his men carried the captain inside. Dodd requested the Indians not get his body. Dr. Asa Daniels examined him, but found “there was little that could be done.” Daniels added, “[Dodd] appreciated his condition and met it courageously, giving me messages to his wife and to Bishop [Henry Benjamin] Whipple with the utmost coolness and consideration.”

The “reinforcements” that had prompted Dodd’s action were actually Indians in civilian clothing. The ploy worked, claiming several more casualties. Daniels implied the blame lay with Huey for crossing the river, as defenders had anxiously anticipated his return. Another of Flandrau’s initiatives had gone awry.

Around 2 p.m. the rooftop lookouts observed a strong Dakota concentration behind a grove of trees in South German Park. Asa White, an old frontiersman, informed Flandrau the Dakotas were closing in and said, “Judge, if this goes on, the Indians will bag us in about two hours.”

Flandrau told White to gather 50 volunteers, and the force moved south down Minnesota Street. The Dakotas, perhaps 100 strong, had moved even closer. Two houses remained standing between First and Second streets and Minnesota and German streets, where the defenders’ line formed a right angle. The Dakotas were below the bluff to the east and working their way toward town. Flandrau had some men torch the large house to create a clearing, the billowing smoke concealing them from the Indians’ view. Just then a defender from the smaller house rushed into the street, and the Dakotas shot him down. Flandrau saw an opening. He sent an officer and three men down a cross street to rescue the wounded man, and as the four cleared the smoke, they drew the Dakotas’ attention. “Colonel Flandrau,” said Buell, “followed this feint by rushing with his whole party out of the smoke to the rear of the lot, taking the Indians there, as it were, in their rear and flank.”

Fifty screaming volunteers burst upon the Dakotas, taking them by surprise. Some fired at the squad, but the whites kept coming. A bullet struck the breech of Flandrau’s gun, and a young man running nearby took a bullet in the mouth, which severed his tongue. (He died the next day.)

As the whites closed to within 50 feet, the Dakotas panicked and broke. Flandrau’s company gave them a volley at short range and then chased them for half a mile, beyond the perimeter of burning houses. When Flandrau’s men stopped, the Indians stopped, and each side kept up an incessant fire. The attack cost the whites four killed and several wounded. Among the dead was Newell E. Houghton, widely regarded as “the best shot and deer hunter in all the Northwest.” The Dakotas also sustained losses but were later reticent to disclose any details. Big Eagle claimed that only a few of his band had joined him, adding: “We lost none of them. We had but few, if any, of the Indians killed.” One man at least, George Le Blanc, a mixed-blood fur trader, was found dead in the grass within the line of Flandrau’s attack.

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From his advance position, Flandrau ordered everything between him and the barricades to be burnt. Something had to be done, particularly with the houses on the west side, as Dakota riflemen were hitting almost anyone who stepped foot in the street. Hiram Buck was wounded three times while moving among the buildings. Christian Frank was shot in the head and badly wounded. As Jacob Castor left his Broadway bakery in the evening, he was shot down, though it might have been by a citizen who mistook him for an Indian.

Speed dating central near oak forest il. Creszentia Schneider, a widow, lived near the town center, and Flandrau’s men commandeered her house as a hospital. They tore up her sheets, towels, bedding and even clothing to use as bandages. Schneider was happy to help, but when she returned home about two weeks later, the house was a bloody mess and everything had been stolen. Flandrau’s men also used the Dacotah House as a hospital.

Aaron Myers witnessed the chaos in town and noted “the different temperaments of the human race.” During this battle for their lives he entered Fuller’s general store, and Fuller tried to sell him a new pair of shoes. Myers observed the women who packed the store, some crying, others laughing, swearing, praying, and some, incredibly, shoplifting. Myers watched the latter hoist their skirts and stuff under whole bolts of calico. Myers then sought out Flandrau and offered his help; he was given a peck basket filled with ammunition to carry to defenders at the windmill. He dodged bullets all the way, taking one through his long hair and another through his sleeve, but he delivered his precious cargo. Returning unscathed, Myers did not volunteer again.

The mill held out all day. Of the surviving dwellings near the town center, the only remaining Dakota strongpoint was Turner Hall, from which, said Jacob Nix, “they rained their bullets uninterruptedly towards the windmill.” W.H. Hazzard said that around 4 p.m. the men received orders to drive the Indians from the hall. “The Indians were routed, driven back,” Hazzard said, “and immediately began their retreat to the western hills, and we breathed easier.” Fifth Sgt. William Maloney and Privates Mathew Aherin and Washington Kulp were killed in the charge that afternoon.

At dusk the mill defenders realized how hungry they were. Shortly after 9 p.m. they got another order: Abandon and burn the windmill. Reluctantly, Hazzard went to the upper level “and with match and straw tick did the work that destroyed the beautiful mill.” They retreated to the Forster Building, their unpleasant task somewhat assuaged when “we found an elegant supper waiting for us.”

Turner Hall also went up in flames, though no one was sure who burned it. Nix was certain the “murderous Indian firebugs” were the culprits. A hardliner, he could not seem to grasp that the whites had destroyed as many, if not more, of the buildings in town.

If the scene of burning houses merited colorful verbiage during daylight hours, the nighttime fireworks were remarkable. It was after 11 p.m. when the fire in the windmill finally took full effect. Schoolteacher Leonhart called the spectacle “one of the most awesome events of my life,” describing how the siding caught first and vanished, “and the framework, stripped of every cover, now rose into the air like a gigantic chandelier.” Nix said the “demon of fire” rampaged through town. “High toward the firmament whirled bursts of fire, spreading afar their light, turning night into day,” he recalled. “A spectacle so terrible and frightful, it is impossible to express in words, yet it is impressed indelibly as a horrible memory on the minds of surviving eyewitnesses.”

Leonhart made a more practical observation. “When the houses vanished, our rifles were then able to rule the prairie for a considerable distance.” No structures remained in a several block radius. Flandrau reported the loss of about 190 houses, nearly 90 percent of the original structures, “leaving nothing of the town but the small portion embraced within the barricades.”

It was comparatively quiet in New Ulm overnight. Most fires burned out, leaving only the flickering light from the dying windmill, which cast eerie shadows across the landscape. The fate of hundreds of townspeople hung in the balance, with only 190 men left fit to fight. “If those Indians get these women and children and defenseless men,” Flandrau said, “anyone in responsibility here who escapes cannot live in this community.”

Sunday morning the Dakotas resumed fire, but with less enthusiasm; only about half remained, and these were content to fire from long range. They occupied a few standing houses along the river at the upper end of town, until the whites ran out to destroy them. The defenders shot and badly wounded one warrior concealed behind a house just set ablaze. He tried to roll away from the fire but could not. A few whites wanted to pull him to safety but were not allowed to leave cover. The warrior burned to death.

The Dakotas killed one defender and wounded a few more, but by 9 a.m. they had disappeared, just as reinforcements were arriving. Marching up the Mankato Road came a company from St. Peter under Eugene Saint Julien Cox, along with Huey and his remaining men. Leonhart said the defenders rushed out, and the men “embraced one another even though they were strangers. Tears of joy rolled down many a bearded cheek, and the expressions of joy were endless.”

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What to do next? The majority of residents agreed they must evacuate. Nearly 30 whites lay dead, 80 were wounded and nearly 2,000 people were packed into the town’s 30-odd remaining buildings. Sanitary conditions were appalling. Leonhart said that with their mills burned, surrounding farms and crops destroyed and only 40 sacks of flour left, the “poor refugees would have starved to death” had they stayed.

Nix was among the minority who wanted to remain, concerned the abandoned property would be lost to marauders. He even suspected Flandrau to be in league with others who sought to profit by the town’s abandonment. One might wonder, however, what was left to steal. The town lay smoldering, and most personal belongings had been used up, trashed or already taken.

Those who wanted to leave prevailed. On Monday morning the barricades came down, and the townspeople boarded 153 wagons. The caravan headed downriver, reaching Mankato late in the evening. Buell lamented for the citizens of New Ulm: “Many have left or lost all….Even their nearest and dearest ones…lie buried without coffin, book or bell where they died, with naught to mark the spot.” The survivors, he asked, “are going where? God knows—anywhere away from the Indians!”

The whites fled north, east and south, some not stopping until they had put the Mississippi River between themselves and the rampaging Indians. The Dakotas, however, had stopped chasing. Within a week their offensive was essentially over, as they lacked the political and cultural organization, economic base, unity and manpower to achieve their goals. The desire to sweep away the whites and take back the land was not enough. After their failure at New Ulm, the warriors went back upriver, and the thousands of square miles of middle ground on which the two peoples had once intermingled became a no-man’s land.

The August 1862 clash at New Ulm stands out in the annals of the Indian wars. Indians rarely struck Western towns or made large-scale, direct attacks on frontier Army forts. The two primary examples of the latter are the Dakota attack on Fort Ridgely and a Navajo attack on Fort Defiance (in what is now Arizona) on April 30, 1860. As for towns, Comanches sacked and burned Linnville, Texas, in August 1840, and various bands of Northwestern Indians launched a major attack on Seattle, Wash., in January 1856, but casualties were light. Clearly, no other fight between whites and Indians for the possession of any town or fort was so intense or deadly as the Battle of New Ulm. The Dakotas sought a new dawn, a restored order, but the burning town was a red sky at morning: poised, delicate, ephemeral and boding ill winds of approaching dispersion and destruction.

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Coloradan Gregory Michno is a special contributor to Wild West. His 2011 book Dakota Dawn: The Decisive First Week of the Sioux Uprising, August 1862 is suggested for further reading, along with A History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians in Minnesota, by Charles S. Bryant and Abel B. Murch; Little Crow, by Gary C. Anderson; and Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861– 1865, by the Minnesota Board of Commissioners.

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Originally published in the April 2011 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.

New Ulm is a city in Brown County, Minnesota, United States. Beach hook up sharonville ohio area. The population was 13,522 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Brown County.
Located in the triangle of land formed by the confluence of the Minnesota River and the Cottonwood River, the city is home to the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, the Hermann Heights Monument, Martin Luther College, Flandrau State Park, and the August Schell Brewing Company. New Ulm is the episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of New Ulm.
U.S. Route 14 and Minnesota State Highways 15 and 68 are three of the main arterial routes in the city.