A few days previous to the attack upon the whites at the upper agency
a portion of the band of Little Six appeared at Action, Meeker county.
There they murdered several people and then fled to Redwood. It was
the first step in the great massacre that soon followed. On the
morning of the 18th of August, without a word of warning, an
indiscriminate massacre was inaugurated. A detachment of Company B of
the Fifth regiment, under command of Capt. Marsh, went to the scene
of the revolt, but they were ambushed and about twenty-five of their
number, including the captain, killed. The horrible work of murder,
pillage and destruction was spread throughout the entire Sioux
reservation, and whole families, especially those in isolated portions
of the country, were an easy prey to these fiendish warriors.

* * * * *

The Wyoming massacre during the Revolution and the Black Hawk and
Seminole wars at a later period, pale into insignificance when
compared to the great outrages committed by these demons during this
terrible outbreak. In less than one week 1,000 people had been killed,
several million dollars' worth of property destroyed and 30,000 people
rendered homeless. The entire country from Fort Ripley to the southern
boundary of the state, reaching almost to the mouth of the Minnesota
river, had been in a twinkling depopulated. How to repel these
invaders and drive them back to their reservations and out of the
state as they had forfeited all rights to the land they had occupied,
was the problem that suddenly confronted both the state and national
authorities.

* * * * *