Wood Lake--the last battle

There’s a sign, but not much more, and there's a tree down the path adorned with a couple of colorful prayer streamers from someone sworn to remember. You can’t miss it. Just take the path at the crest of the hill—very much worth a hike if the weather smiles because the twisting creek down below is so charming it’s hard to imagine that once upon the time a fight down there meant men dying. The monument across the road bears the names of the fallen—the white men anyway—if you’re looking for specifics.

The minimalism at the site of the Battle of Wood Lake is apropos. A couple dozen died here, but the engagement itself wasn't much more than a skirmish, just a couple hours of fighting--and the whole event wasn't anywhere near Wood Lake. It was fought at the edge of Lone Tree Lake, a pond that up and left long ago.

Still, what happened here, just a few miles from the Minnesota River, was the last battle of the bloody Dakota War of 1862. What happened here ended the uprising but not the conflict. Battles rarely do.

The government's mission with respect to the Sioux warriors was simple: get rid of the lot of them. Chase them out of state, or kill them all. Exterminate 'em, do a little mid-19th century ethnic cleansing.

By September of 1862, a month after first blood was shed, Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley, commander of the government forces, was roundly criticized for his sluggish pursuit of the Dakota killers. When his troops had grown to almost 1700 strong, when he had enough ammunition and fresh mounts, he was ready.

It was a ragged affair that offers no textbook strategies. Sibley camped below the path you take when you follow that trail east. That was a blunder he might have paid dearly for because the Dakota were not all that far away, just a bit north and east. He never knew, never checked.

His men were a motley bunch. On the morning of September 20, a pack of 'em simply decided-- on their own--to grab some potatoes from the garden at the agency. They left camp, totally on the sly, and when they returned their creaky wagon nearly ran over Dakota warriors lying in the grass poised and ready for an attack. It’s hard to say, 150 years later, who was most surprised. Thank God for small potatoes.

The Battle of Wood Lake was a mess, first lead to last. When that potato wagon tromped through the warriors, it ignited a fiasco that ended two hours later when the Dakota simply backed off and left. Fourteen Indian bodies were left in the grass. Some of them were scalped.

The Battle of Wood Lake wasn't really a skirmish, but it was the final engagement of the Dakota War of 1862.

We stopped by on a weekend when the road to the site was almost blocked by SUVs and vans who’d come out to a pumpkin patch. We sat up above the cutbank and tried to imagine what the battle might have looked like, but it took some diligence to imagine it. An old Farmall was hauling a hay rack full of moms and dads and kids back from a pumpkins to the barn, where they’d gobble up some treats, maybe drink some fresh brewed apple cider, spend some holiday bucks.

Across the highway there’s a stone obelisk behind a broad steel banner. “Sioux Indian War 1862," it says.

You can’t help thinking maybe the whole works ought to come down and get hauled off. Turn the place into a pumpkin patch park, hayrides for kids, pumpkin pie and muffins, ice cream--you know.

If what’s there of the battle stays, I'm thinking somebody is going to have to answer some kid who’ll look up at that sign or the monument behind it, and ask about what the heck happened at Wood Lake--and where is Wood Lake anyway?

Count on it. Someday, someone is going to have to know the answer. Maybe they'll have to ask whoever it is that hangs prayer streamers in the tree up the path on the other side of the creek. Ask him. Or her. They'll know. For sure, they'll know.