Dakota Conflict, Sioux Uprising, American Civil War

 Quoted for you from the Ancestry, Life, and times of Hon. Henry Hastings Sibley, L.L.D. page 250 as the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Dakota Conflict continues.

The annexed sad poem is worthy of preservation, not only because of its literary merit, but because of its theme. The incident on which it is founded was a deeply touching one. When Colonel Sibley dispatched McPhail and his command up the Minnesota valley, to raise the siege at Fort Ridgley, Charles Nelson, a Swede, having walked, with bleeding feet, twenty-five miles, joined the expedition. His dwelling had been burned to the ground the day previous, his daughter outraged, the head of his wife Lela cleft by the tomahawk, and while seeking to save himself, saw, for a moment, his two sons, Hans and Otto, rushing through the corn-field, the Indians in swift pursuit. Returning with the troops, under McPhail, and passing by the ruins of his home, he gazed about wildly, acting mechanically, and, closing the gate of the garden, asked: "When will it be safe to return?" His reason was gone! Captain Chittenden, of McPhail's command, while sitting a few days after under the Falls of Minnehaha, embodied in verse the sad tragedy, and has given to the world the following lines, which, with the incident just narrated, Mrs. Harriet E.B. McConkey has made a chapter by themselves, entitled "The Maniac," in her admirable work, "The Dakota War Whoop," P. 195.

Minne-ha-ha, laughing water,
Cease thy laughing now for aye,
Savage hands are red with slaughter
Of the innocent today.

Ill accords thy sportive humor
With their last despairing wail;
While thou'rt dancing in the sunbeam,
Mangled corpses strew the vale.

Change thy note, gay Minne-ha-ha;
Let some sadder strain prevail -
listen, while a maniac wanderer
Sighs to thee his woeful tale:

"Give me back my Lela's tresses,
Let me kiss them once again!
She, who blest me with caresses,
Lies unburied on the plain!

See you smoke; there was my dwelling;
That is all I have of home!
Hark! I hear their fiendish yelling,
As I, houseless, childless, roam!

Have they killed my Hans and Otto?
Did they find them in the corn?
Go and tell that savage monster
Not to slay my  youngest born.

Yonder is my new-bought reaper,
Standing 'mid the ripened grain,
E'en my cow asks why I leave her
Wandering, unmilked, o'er the plain!

Soldier, bbury here my Lela;
Place me also 'neath the sod;
Long we lived and wrought together - 
Let me die with her - oh God!

Faithful Fido, you they've left me.
Can you tell me , Fido, why
God at once has thus bereft me?
All I ask is here to die.

O, my daughter Jennie, darling!
Worse than death is Jennie's fate!
Nelson, as our troops were leaving,
Turned and shut his garden gate.


Read the story in the format of your choice here at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002HWSX12

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-on-the-prairie-a-novel-of-the-sioux-uprising-sesquicentennial-edition-steven-m-ulmen/1110322785?ean=2940014643931