Battle of Sugar Point
The last Indian uprising in the United States.
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On October 5, 1898, the 3rd U.S. Infantry clashed with the Pillager Band of Chippewa at Sugar Point, also known as the Battle of Leech Lake. The fight began when troops tried to arrest the Pillager leader Bugonaygeshig over a dispute with Indian Service officials on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota. This engagement is often called the last Indian uprising in the United States and was the first battle in the Old Northwest since the Black Hawk War of 1832. The final Medal of Honor from the Indian Wars went to Private Oscar Burkard of the 3rd Infantry.
Background
Tensions between the Pillagers and Indian Service officials stemmed from frequent arrests of tribal members on minor charges, such as alcohol-related offenses, and their transport to distant federal courts. Witnesses were also taken far from the reservation. Resentment also grew over logging practices: companies paid for dead-and-down timber but often undervalued it and paid late, and some loggers set fire to healthy trees to pass them off as dead.
In early 1898, Bugonaygeshig protested these practices. On September 15, he and Sha-Boon-Day-Shkong were seized as witnesses to a bootlegging operation by Deputy Marshal Robert Morrison and Indian Agent Arthur M. Tinker, who intended to take them to Duluth. Bugonaygeshig had testified in a bootlegging trial there five months earlier. While being led away, several Pillagers attacked the officials, allowing the two to escape to Sugar Point.
Tinker then requested military help from Fort Snelling. Twenty soldiers under Lieutenant Chauncey B. Humphreys were sent to Onigum, and after Bugonaygeshig refused to surrender, reinforcements were called. A larger force of 77 soldiers under Brevet Major Melville C. Wilkinson, accompanied by General John M. Bacon, U.S. Marshals, Indian Police, and reporters, sailed from Walker across Leech Lake to Sugar Point.
Battle
Upon landing at the village, two Pillagers involved in Bugonaygeshig's escape were arrested, but Bugonaygeshig himself had apparently fled. The soldiers made camp and searched the woods and villages for those with outstanding warrants, finding few male Pillagers. Which side fired first is disputed: General Bacon claimed a soldier's rifle accidentally discharged, leading the Pillagers to believe they were under attack; the Pillagers said soldiers fired at a canoe carrying women as the steamship approached. Around 11:30 am, the Pillagers opened fire from the woods.
Many soldiers, young recruits, dropped to the ground, but officers formed a crescent-shaped skirmish line around Bugonaygeshig's cabin. In the first half-hour, several men were killed or wounded. Major Wilkinson, shot in the leg, was moved to the lakeside of the cabin for cover. After his leg was bandaged, he returned outside to encourage the troops but was shot again, through the abdomen, and died in the cabin an hour later.
Sergeant William Butler was killed while informing General Bacon of Wilkinson's wound. Gunfire from the Pillagers became less frequent, though occasional shots continued through the day. That evening, an Indian policeman was killed by a soldier who mistook him for a Pillager. The following morning, a soldier was killed while digging potatoes, the last official casualty.
Aftermath
When the first news of the clash broke, panic swept through the region. Settlers feared a full-scale uprising and attacks on towns like Bemidji, Cass Lake, Deer River, Grand Rapids, and Walker. In response, extra federal troops arrived from Fort Snelling, the Minnesota National Guard was called up, and locals formed their own militias. The Ojibwe, worried about retaliation from soldiers or settlers, quickly scattered to remote areas of the reservation.
Public alarm faded once newspapers printed the facts behind the fight. The day after the battle, the Cass County Pioneer ran a letter from the Pillager chiefs. Later, from October 10 to 15, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones held a council with Pillager leaders at the Leech Lake Reservation. Jones then blamed local and state officials for making arrests of Indians on minor or nonexistent charges, hauling them to Duluth or Minneapolis for trial—two hundred miles from their agency—and leaving them stranded without travel money.
He later submitted a report to Secretary of the Interior Cornelius Newton Bliss. The last survivor, Emma Bear, passed away in Cass Lake on July 13, 2001, at age 103; she had been eight months old during the battle. Her father, Bear (Makwa), and George White tried to arrange a truce with the soldiers but were arrested beforehand. The battle appears in Ojibwe writer Gerald Vizenor's poem Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point (2006).
More in Wars Involving the Indigenous Peoples of North America
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Battle of Sugar Point (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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