Battle of Redwood Ferry

August eighteenth, eighteen sixty-two, was the first day of the Dakota War, and it did not go well for the United States Army. It began here, at the ferry crossing on the Minnesota River, in the first major military engagement of a conflict that would convulse the state for months.

Word reached Captain John Marsh at Fort Ridgely that Dakota warriors had attacked the Lower Sioux Agency earlier that morning, killing traders and employees. Marsh responded as a soldier would. He assembled forty-seven men and his interpreter, Peter Quinn, and marched toward the agency. He had no way of knowing that Little Crow's fighters were already waiting for him.

At the ferry, a Dakota leader named Sunka Ska, or White Dog, called out to Marsh from the opposite bank. Come across the river, he said. Marsh was suspicious enough to hold his men back. But the firing had already begun. Warriors concealed in the tall grass and brush on both sides of the river opened up simultaneously. The soldiers were caught in a horseshoe of fire.

Marsh ordered his men to work their way downstream and find a crossing. Four hours of fighting and retreat brought them to a shallow spot in the river. Marsh went in first, sword and pistol raised. Somewhere in midstream he lost his footing. Caught by the current in his heavy uniform and boots, he drowned. Twenty-three soldiers and the interpreter were killed in the ambush. Only a handful made it back to Fort Ridgely.

The significance of the Battle of Redwood Ferry was immediate and psychological. It was the opening military victory of the Dakota War, proof that the warriors could defeat organized United States troops in the field. That success brought more Dakota men into the fight, and the war spread rapidly across the Minnesota River Valley. Within days, panic was spreading across the entire southern half of the state.