JULY 1 - OCTOBER 1, 1864.- Operations against Indians in the District of Minnesota.

Report of Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, U. S. Army, commanding District of Minnesota, including operations from October 1, 1863,to October 1, 1864.*

HDQRS. DIST. OF MINNESOTA, DEPT. OF THE NORTHWEST, Saint Paul, Minn., October 10, 1864.

GENERAL: In compliance with directions contained in dispatch of 5th instant, from department headquarters, I have the honor to make the following report of military operations for the year ending 1st instant:

Upon the return from the expedition under my command against the hostile Sioux Indians in September, 1863, I was instructed to dispatch to the South all the force that could be spared from this district. Orders were accordingly issued to the Seventh, Ninth,and Tenth Minnesota Volunteers to proceed without unnecessary delay to Saint Louis, and report for duty to the commanding officer of the Department of the Missouri, and these regiments left this district accordingly on the 7th and 8th of October following.

The Sixth and Eight Regiments were retained for the protection of the frontier, the former being for the most part posted at Forts Snelling and Ridgely,and at the out stations north of the Minnesota River, to Paynesville, and south to the Iowa line, while companies of the Eighth garrisoned Forts Abercrombie, Ripley, and the intervening stations, and performed escort duty to the trains of public supplies. The Independent Battalion of Minnesota Volunteers, raised and commanded by Major E. A. C. Hatch, having been ordered to report to me for assignment to duty, was dispatches on 10th of October to Pembina, to hold in check the hostile Sioux who had retreated for safety into Her Majesty's conterminous possessions, where they could not be followed by our troops, as I had received stringent orders from General Halleck, through department headquarters, in no case to cross the boundary line with a military force. About ninety Sioux men, women,and children came across the boundary and surrendered to Major Hatch, commanding at Pembina. The battalion, with one section of mountain howitzers of Third Minnesota mixed battery, went into winter quarters at Pembina, and remained until about the 1st of May of the present year, when I ordered Major Hatch with his command to relieve the detachments of the Eighth Regiment Minnesota Volunteers at Fort Abercrombie, and at the stations of Pomme de Terre and Alexandria, that regiment having been designated as part of the expeditionary force to join Brigadier-General Sully on the Missouri. The other three sections of the mixed gun and howitzer battery (Third Minnesota) were stationed respectively at Forts Ridgely, Snelling, and Ripley.

During the month of September, 1863, Sergeant Edwards,of the First Minnesota Mounted Rangers, was killed by a party of savages on the road between Lake George and Paynesville. This was they only outrage committed after the close of the campaign of 1863. In that year within this district I kept employed during the winter an efficient body of Indians and half-breeds, who had proved their fidelity to the Government since the outbreak of 1862, as scouts, and so disposed of them as to secure constant and reliable information of the movements of the hostile bands from time to time, and of their views and intentions.

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*See also Vol. XXII, Part I, pp.352 and 907, and Vol. XXXIV, Part I, p.937.

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