WOOD LAKE BATTLEFIELD - Colonel Henry Sibley and over 1,600 soldiers marched for days over the open prairie of western Minnesota to reach a site above the Yellow Medicine River where he intended to engage Little Crow and his warriors in September 1862.
Ten Black Hawk and two Chinook helicopters carried 150 National Guardsman to the same site Tuesday in an hour’s time from a starting point at Camp Ripley, nearly 100 miles to the north.
“Thank you for your service,’’ said John Coulter and others who welcomed the troops to both the Wood Lake Battlefield and the Fagen Fighters Museum at the Granite Falls Municipal Airport. The Guardsmen are completing their summer training exercises at Camp Ripley.
The trip to tour the Civil War era battlefield and the museum focused on the U.S. air campaign in World War II represented a break in routine for them. It was offered as part of a professional development program, and as an opportunity for the helicopter pilots to gain training time in the air, according to Major Jeremy DeGier, who led the soldiers.
DeGier grew up just down the road from the battlefield, and knew what the soldiers could learn by touring the two sites. The soldiers are part of two units. Some are members of Charlie Company, 2-211th general support aviation battalion based in St. Cloud. Others are members of the 2-147th assault helicopter battalion based in St. Paul.
The 2-147th is just returned from a nearly year-long deployment in Kuwait and Iraq. DeGier had led Charlie Company during a 2011 deployment in Afghanistan.
Until now, only a few men or women among either of the units have had the opportunity to learn about the Wood Lake Battlefield history or that told at the Fagen Fighters museum, where everything from a B-25 bomber to P-51 Mustang fighter could be toured.
The Wood Lake Battlefield remembers the last battle of the U.S. Dakota War of 1862. Little Crow led over 700 warriors armed mainly with double barrel shotguns. Sibley and his force of over 1,600 carried Springfield and other rifles along with artillery.
Little Crow had intended to ambush Sibley, but the element of surprise was lost when a group of soldiers disobeyed orders and slipped out of camp. They were on their way to forage a garden when they came across the warriors concealed in the tall prairie grasses.
The fighting lasted about two hours, according to Tom Hosier, president of the Wood Lake Battlefield Preservation Association.
John and Muriel Coulter own the battlefield site, which is maintained as a historic site by the Association under terms of an easement. Muriel Coulter’s grandfather had purchased the land in 1880. Formerly a pasture, it has been restored as native prairie to allow visitors to see the terrain as the warriors and soldiers knew it.
Hosier said the Association recently obtained a $69,000 grant which allow for the use of ground radar to get a more accurate record of the battle that took place here.
