Talk:Battle of Wood Lake

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Military history: North America / United States / American Civil War

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"1169" was a typo in the Alan R. Woolworth article

In the 1976 edition of his book (now called The Dakota War of 1862: Minnesota's Other Civil War), historian Kenneth Carley says that Sibley left Fort Ridgely on September 19, 1862 with 1,619 men. He first mentions that the Third Minnesota Infantry Regiment had 270 infantrymen (p. 61). Then he adds:

"Besides the men of the Third Minnesota, his army consisted of nine companies of the Sixth regiment, five companies of the Seventh under Lieutenant Colonel William R. Marshall (a future Civil War hero and state governor), a company of the Ninth Minnesota, thirty-eight Renville Rangers, twenty-eight mounted citizen guards, and some sixteen citizen-artillerists – in all 1,619 men." (p. 62)

Compare this to what Alan R. Woolworth says in his article on the Wood Lake Battlefield web site:

"By mid September, his army was ready to take the field against the hostile Dakota Indians. He had the Sixth Minnesota Regiment; five companies of the Seventh Minnesota Regiment; a company of the Ninth Minnesota Regiment, nearly forty Renville Rangers, mounted civilian guards, sixteen civilian artillery men, and two hundred seventy men of the Third Minnesota Regiment for a total of 1,169 men."

It seems quite clear that Woolworth is referencing Carley (without actually citing him by name) and that his "total of 1,169 men" is most likely a mistyping of Carley's original "1,619 men."

(I have also searched for other articles by Woolworth on this topic, just in case, but have been unable to find any related material by him so far. Woolworth passed away in 2014, so it's too late to ask.)

For this reason, I am removing "1,169" from the infobox for now. (Also, the number does seem rather low given the number of units that were there.)

Cielquiparle (talk) 20:42, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"1450" is from the Minnesota Commission Report on the Battle of Wood Lake

If you are wondering why Gary Clayton Anderson referred to Sibley's "entire command of fifteen hundred men" on p. 181 of Massacre in Minnesota (2019), it's most likely because he was rounding up from the number given in the 1907/1908 Report on the Battle of Wood Lake, which says "In all there were about 1,450 men in Sibley's command that left Fort Ridgely on the 19th of September." (p. 3) (And if you look closely at their breakdown of the various units and numbers of men, it's a little different from what Carley came up with 54 years later.)

The Minnesota Commission on the Wood Lake Battlefield which authored the 1907/1908 report for submission to the governor consisted of three veterans, including Ezra T. Champlin, the former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

The Hon. Ezra T. Champlin was one of two sources featured in Chapter XIV of Daniel Buck's Indian Outbreaks (1904), where he is quoted saying that Sibley's command "consisted of about 2,000 men." Buck was drawing on Champlin's handwritten reminiscence dated September 1, 1886, which Champlin read at the regiment's reunion that year.

Given that the 1907/1908 report came about 20 years later and was co-authored by the same person as part of a formal reexamination of all the facts, it seems fair to strike his earlier and rather vague estimate of "about 2,000 men" in favor of the lower and better explained estimate, which was "1,450 men."

Cielquiparle (talk) 22:34, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]