Big Mound was a Civil War engagement fought in North Dakota, 1863. It was a Union victory.
Brig. Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley led his troops from Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, into the Dakotas, pursuing the Santee Sioux, who had initiated an uprising in the Minnesota River Valley in August 1862. The Santee had joined forces with the Teton Sioux. Having marched all day on July 24, 1863, Sibley's scouts, around 1:00 pm, reported that they had spotted a large Native American camp a few miles away. Sibley established a camp on a nearby salt lake and set his men to entrenching it for protection. While in the process of making camp, numerous Native Americans appeared expressing friendship. A number of them approached the scouts gathered about 300-400 yards from the camp and began talking with them. Surgeon Josiah S. Weiser, 1st Regiment Minnesota Mounted Rangers, joined the assembly, but soon afterwards a Sioux shot and killed him. The scouts attempted to kill the attacker but he escaped. Native Americans who had hidden behind the surrounding ridges now emerged and attacked. In detachments, the soldiers went out to meet the Native Americans. Sibley, with some men, approached the "Big Mound" on the opposite side of the ravine. He attempted to dislodge those Sioux who were on the upper part of the large ravine firing at the infantry and cavalry with impunity. The Union forces displaced these and other well-placed Sioux in the surrounding ridges by accurate artillery fire and forced them into the broken prairie where they fled in confusion. The mounted troops, with some of the infantry and artillery following, set out in pursuit. A running battle ensued for the rest of the day. Before dark, the soldiers broke off the pursuit and returned to camp as previously ordered, some not arriving until the next morning. The Sioux forces were broken and dispirited.
In July 1863, United States Army forces defeated a coalition of Santee Sioux fighters, joined by allies from among the Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton Sioux, in what became known as the Battle of Big Mound, fought within Dakota Territory.
When Little Crow suffered defeat in the Dakota War of 1862, the Santee Sioux, also called the Eastern Dakota, scattered widely as a result. Of the roughly 6,300 Santee, some 2,000 ended up as prisoners. Around 700 members of the Lower Sioux, drawn from the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands, avoided capture and stayed free. The Upper Sioux, numbering about 4,000 and composed of the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands, had joined the fighting with little enthusiasm, and most of them likewise escaped capture. A handful of these war refugees made their way north into Canada, though the majority, more than 4,000 people, gathered together during the summer of 1863 at a sprawling encampment located in what is now Kidder County, North Dakota. An uncertain but likely substantial number of Teton, Yankton, and Yanktonai kin swelled the camp's population further.
Even with their loss in the 1862 conflict behind them, Santee fighters kept raiding through 1863, killing more than a dozen white settlers across Minnesota. In response, General John Pope directed Henry Hastings Sibley, who held the rank of brigadier general of volunteers, to organize an expedition meant to punish the Santee and shield the frontier from further attacks. Sibley set out from the area near Fort Ridgely on June 16, pushing into Dakota Territory with a force that initially totaled 3,320 men, the largest army ever gathered for a campaign against Indians.
Progress proved sluggish as Sibley's heavy column crept northwestward, slowed by drought conditions, oppressive heat, and scarce drinking water. A full month passed without any sighting of Indians, until a party of buffalo hunters, largely Métis Chippewa, told Sibley where a sizable Santee camp of some 600 lodges could be found. Trimming his force down to 2,056 men, made up of 1,436 infantry, 520 cavalry, 100 artillery, and 60 scouts of mixed blood and Sioux background, Sibley reached the Santee encampment on July 24. Rather than attacking immediately, he stopped his troops nearby and sent Joseph LaFramboise, a scout and interpreter who was half Sioux, ahead to arrange a parley with Standing Buffalo, a leader among the Upper Sioux. Sibley held the belief, likely accurate, that Standing Buffalo and those who followed him leaned toward peace with white settlers. Yet the camp also sheltered Inkpaduta and his band, a group widely regarded as unyieldingly hostile toward whites.
On a rise known as Big Mound, roughly 300 to 400 yards from Sibley's camp, a party of Sioux and the scouts serving under Sibley came together in what seemed a calm encounter, as both sides awaited a planned meeting between Sibley and Standing Buffalo. That calm broke when Dr. Josiah S. Weiser, a surgeon with the army, walked up the mound intending to greet Indian acquaintances and was shot dead without warning by Tall Crown, one of Inkpaduta's followers. Gunfire erupted between the scouts and the Sioux, and the fighting began in earnest.
Sibley judged that between 1,000 and 1,500 Indian fighters faced him, sheltering among the hills and ravines of the terrain. To dislodge them from Big Mound, he pushed forward two companies of Mounted Rangers, backing them with additional troops and a six-pounder cannon. Once his men gained the summit, Sibley watched the warriors fall back while shielding the retreat of the camp's women and children, who fled west with what belongings they could carry. The Santee fighters were ill equipped for battle; roughly half carried firearms, and even those had scant ammunition.
For the rest of the day, several hundred Rangers chased after the retreating warriors, who kept guarding their fleeing families until darkness fell. Meanwhile, the bulk of Sibley's foot soldiers turned their attention to wrecking the vast stores the Sioux had abandoned in their haste, among them jerky, buffalo robes, and cooking gear.
Sibley had planned to keep the Rangers camped in place so they could resume the chase the following morning, but a botched order sent them marching back to their base instead, a distance of 12 miles. They returned worn out, forcing Sibley to give his men and horses a day of rest on July 25 before resuming the pursuit on July 26. His losses that day numbered three killed and four wounded. Sibley's official account claimed 80 Indians had been killed or wounded, though his personal diary put the death toll at only 9.
Command over the District of Minnesota fell to Brigadier General Henry Hastings Sibley, who oversaw a mix of cavalry, infantry, and artillery units drawn together for the campaign. Colonel Samuel McPhail led the 1st Minnesota Cavalry, known as the "Mounted Rangers," while infantry strength came from three separate regiments. The 6th Minnesota Infantry answered to Colonel William Crooks, the 7th Minnesota Infantry served under Lieutenant Colonel William R. Marshall, and Colonel James H. Baker directed the 10th Minnesota Infantry. Rounding out these forces, Lieutenant J. C. Whipple commanded the 3rd Minnesota Light Artillery Battery.
The Sioux showed no real appetite for continuing hostilities against Sibley. Had the army surgeon not been killed, an act that touched off this engagement, Standing Buffalo might well have brought his people in to surrender as a group. Sibley kept up his westward pursuit of the Sioux, leading to the Battles of Dead Buffalo Lake and Stony Lake in short order.
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