The uncondemned Sioux prisoners marched to Fort Snelling in November, 1862, were kept in a guarded camp till May, when they were transported to a chosen reservation on Crow Creek on the Missouri, some sixty miles below Pierre. The land was so barren and the seasons so unfavorable that the government was obliged to feed them for three years, when they were moved to the Niobrara reservation in Nebraska, where they have remained. A small remnant of some twenty-five families of friendlies, many of them Christians, were suffered to remain in Minnesota, because they could not safely live among the heathen people. A small donation of $7500 was made to them by Congress in 1865, the distribution being intrusted to General Sibley and Bishop Whipple. A handful still survive. The Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux, who had removed themselves from Minnesota after the battle of Wood Lake, had no fixed home till 1867, when Congress settled them on two reservations in Dakota Territory: one west of and adjoining Lake Traverse, the other around Devil’s Lake.
As for the Sioux who had escaped from Sibley after Wood Lake, and others living on the Missouri regarded as dangerous, there was no other thought than that they must be followed, and, if not exterminated, so punished and scattered that they could never again lift a finger against their beneficent guardian, the white man. General Pope at Milwaukee still commanding the department of the Northwest, early in the winter of 1863 devised a plan for a campaign which was to have such results. Two columns were to penetrate the Indian country between the Minnesota line and the Missouri: one, of cavalry, to move from Fort Randall directly up the Missouri; the other, from the upper Minnesota, under the command of Brigadier-General Sibley; both to move so soon as the buffalo grass should be high enough for pasture. Sibley’s expedition rendezvoused at Camp Pope in the angle of the Minnesota and Redwood rivers. He had 3200 infantry, including the Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Minnesota, the Minnesota Mounted Rangers 500 strong, 120 artillerymen, 170 scouts headed by Major Joseph R. Brown; in all some 4200 men. Leaving Camp Pope June 16, the expedition marched up the Minnesota to and past Big Stone Lake, and then struck across to the valley of the Cheyenne, which it followed to within two or three days’ march of Devil’s Lake. Here Sibley got word of a body of Indians off to his left. Leaving one third of his force in a fortified camp, he turned to the southwest, crossed the James River, and in Burleigh County, North Dakota, on July 24, came upon a body of Indians, perhaps two thousand in number.