To disabuse the reader of the possible impression that the people of Minnesota were more frightened than they had reason to be, he is asked to recur to the season of 1863. To guard the frontier from attacks of marauding parties of Indians, General Sibley left in the state the Eighth Infantry, which had already been distributed in a line of posts to cover the settlements. Despite its vigilant patrols, parties of savages broke through at various points. In April there were three murders in Watonwan County, household goods and provisions were seized, and cattle and horses run off. In June a squad of Company A of the Eighth chased a horse-stealing gang out of Meeker County, one of whom shot Captain John S. Cody, causing instant death. In the course of the summer the Eighth Minnesota lost more men killed and wounded than Sibley’s troops in all his battles. On the 29th of June the most atrocious murder of the season was committed within thirty miles of Minneapolis, near Watertown, Carver County. Amos Dustin, traveling by wagon with his family, was waylaid, and he and his aged mother instantly shot to death by arrows. His wife and one child were fearfully wounded. A girl of six, hiding under a seat, was not discovered. Her clothing was soaked with her father’s blood. To aid the troops in protecting life and property, Governor Swift organized a company of volunteer scouts and put them under the command of Captain James Sturgis of Wright County. In addition to their promised pay, the sum of one hundred dollars was offered to any scout bringing in a Sioux scalp. This command scouted the big woods from Sauk Center to the Minnesota River so effectively that people who had abandoned their homes and farms took heart and ventured back.
On the 3d of July, 1863, a citizen of Hutchinson, Nathan Sampson, was hunting some five miles to the north of that village, accompanied by his son Chauncey. Espying an Indian picking berries, he fired. Though wounded, the Indian returned the fire, and hit Mr. Sampson in the left shoulder. A shot from the young man’s rifle proved fatal to the savage. That Indian was believed to be Little Crow, and a certain deformity of the wrists from a gunshot in early life was probably sufficient evidence of his identity. A half-starved Indian boy was picked up by a detachment of Sibley’s army in North Dakota on July 28, who gave his name as Wo-i-non-pa; he said that he was a son of Little Crow, and that he was with his father when he was killed. The errand of the chief, according to the boy, was to capture horses enough to mount the small remnant of his warriors and ride away to Canada.