Mrs. Panter tells about 1862

From the STEPHEN MESSENGER 1940


How would you like to of been held prisoner in an uprising of the Sioux Indians?


Horrifying experiences which occurred almost 78 years ago when she was held captivity by Sioux Indians for three weeks were vividly recalled by Mrs. George Panter of Mankato. Mrs. Panter, a half-sister of Mrs. Kindler of Stephen, frequently visits our town.


Mrs. Panter, was 82 years old when she told this story. She remembers the advance of August 16, 1862, when her father and her friend were killed and her brother cut and bruised by rampaging Sioux.


Two white man came to our house, and said the Indians had broken out and planned to rid the world all of the whites. They told my father they had just passed the June home, a short distance from theirs, and found Mrs. June in her small child laying floor of the cabin, terribly mangled and slain by an ax.


My father turned to my mother and said to take the children and leave at once for New Ulm. Mike, a young Irishman, was to drive the oxen hitched to a wagon. We had 36 head of cattle and father told us he would try to drive them to New Ulm and would be there later. Those were the last words we heard father speak. Soldiers found his body near the Birch Coulee, where he had been murdered by the Indians and buried in an unmarked grave.


We had gone but a short distance on the way to New Ulm with the slow moving oxen when Indians riding ponies came upon us. They told us to get out of the wagon. Mike helped mother and we children out of the wagon and then turned to the Indians to see what they wanted us to do next.


Without a moment’s warning, the Indian shot the Irishman down at our feet. We all cried and childlike tried to wake him up, but he was dead.


Mother turned to us and said to run to a nearby slough and hide in the tall grass. The Indians took the possession of our wagon and Took off. However, one young brave loitered behind and put my brother Pete on one of his ponies. Pete fell off, striking his head on a rock, causing severe bruises and a cut which bled profusely. The Indian, thinking people die from the injury, rode off. My little sister ran from her hiding place and tied her apron around Pete’s head and managed to stop the bleeding.


After hiding in the slough for three hours, two white men approached. We told them we wanted to get to New Ulm and asked them if they would show us the way. My four-month-old sister kept crying all the time.


We had just got started towards New Ulm when another team in possession of the Indians drove up. They had a white woman prisoner in the wagon. Her hands were tied behind her back. Two white men accompanying us were shot at once and in gruff tones the Indians told my mother and we children to get into the wagon. My mother hesitated; the woman prisoner in the wagon advised her to do as she was told otherwise there would be trouble.


Child that I was, I was terribly sickened and horrified to see the remains of an infant tied to one of the wheels of the wagon in such a manner that each revolution of the wheel destroyed the body more and more as a wagon preceded.



Mrs. Panter also remembers hearing about a husband and wife became separated and each believed the other was killed. The man went farther west and after a few years the woman remarried and had two more children.
One day the man returned, and his former wife and after finding that she was happily married said I will be on my way and you will not see me again. You have two children to make you happy. I have no one of the world to love and cherish. Would it be too much to ask you for the child we had together be mine to care for? The mother consented to give up the child and the man and his son were never seen again in the vicinity.

Regarding the uprising:

On August 15, 1862, Santee Sioux Chief Little Crow went to the Indian Agency located on the Minnesota River to ask government agent Thomas J. Galbraith to distribute the Indians' government-stockpiled provisions to his hungry people. "We have no food, but here are these stores filled with food", he yelled at Galbraith. "So far as I'm concerned, if they are hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung", reported trading post operator Andrew J. Myrick. The angry Indians left, but a few days later Myrick's corpse was found- with grass stuffed in his mouth.


The Santee Sioux had lived in Minnesota for hundreds of years before 1851, when the U.S. government forced them to give up their 24-million-acre hunting ground and live in a reservation on the Minnesota River. Seven years later the United States swindled them out of half of the reservation land. The provisions and annuities the Santee were promised never seemed to get through the graft-ridden government agency. The Santee finally had enough of the white man and decided that with the United States engaged in the Civil War, the time had come to reclaim their land. Little Crow knew the Santee had little chance of defeating the U.S. Army; however, he told his braves, "Little Crow is not a coward; he will die with you!"


By the end of September the Sioux uprising in Minnesota was mostly over, though other Sioux tribes in neighboring territories had taken to the warpath. The U.S. troops who were rushed to Minnesota contained the uprising, but not before 800 white settlers had been murdered and several million dollars' worth of property had been destroyed. Of 2,000 Indians captured and tried, a military board sentenced 303 to be hanged. President Abraham Lincoln reviewed the list and trimmed it to 38. The United States' largest public mass execution was held December 26, 1862, when the 38 Indians were hanged.