1. Big Eagle was the chief of a band of Mdewakanton Dakota in Minnesota.
26 Facts About Big Eagle
1. 2.
Big Eagle played an important role as a military leader in the Dakota War of 1862.
3.
Big Eagle surrendered soon after the Battle of Wood Lake and was sentenced to death and imprisoned, but was pardoned by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
4.
Big Eagle was born in 1827 at Black Dog's village near Mendota, in present-day Eagan, Minnesota.
5.
Big Eagle was a cousin of Little Crow's half-brother, White Spider.
6.
Big Eagle went to Washington, DC, in 1858 as part of the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute Dakota treaty delegation led by Little Crow, when he was Little Crow's head warrior.
7.
Big Eagle took part in the outbreak, murdering women and children, but I never saw him in a battle.
8.
At the outbreak of the Dakota War of 1862, Big Eagle's village was at Crow Creek, near Little Crow's village.
9.
Chief Big Eagle took part in all major battles during the Dakota War of 1862, except for the Battle of Redwood Ferry, where he arrived after the fighting had stopped.
10.
Big Eagle led his band at the second battles of New Ulm and Fort Ridgely, as well as the Battles of Birch Coulee and Wood Lake.
11.
Alvin and a young son were in the field stacking grain when Big Eagle came to warn them that if they did not go to New Ulm at once they would be killed.
12.
Big Eagle decided to join Gray Bird, Mankato and Red Legs in leading more than 200 warriors, accompanied by women and wagons, south along the river to collect plunder left behind in Little Crow's village and in New Ulm, which had been abandoned.
13.
Big Eagle told me he did not take more than fifty, but he scattered them out and they all yelled and made such a noise that the whites must have thought there were a great many more, and they stopped on the prairie and began fighting.
14.
Big Eagle was tried by the military commission and was sentenced to death, but was given a reprieve and was sent to the prison camp in Davenport, Iowa.
15.
The famous portrait of Big Eagle was taken during the summer of 1864 when he was in prison at Camp Kearney.
16.
Big Eagle left Santee in the spring of 1869 and settled with his family near Birch Coulee.
17.
Big Eagle became known as Jerome Big Eagle and was baptized as "Elijah".
18.
In June 1894, while on a visit to Flandreau, South Dakota, Big Eagle was interviewed by historian and journalist Return Ira Holcombe with the help of two interpreters, Nancy Huggan and her son-in-law, the Reverend John Eastman.
19.
Big Eagle spent his final years living in Granite Falls, Minnesota, where he died after two days of illness on January 5,1906.
20.
In June 1894, Big Eagle was interviewed by historian and journalist Robert Ira Holcombe through two interpreters.
21.
Mr Big Eagle was first informed that his statements were wanted solely in order that a correct knowledge of the military movements of the Indians during the war might be learned.
22.
Big Eagle readily consented to tell his story, and gave full permission to use his name.
23.
Holcombe was satisfied that Big Eagle was honest in his statements:.
24.
Big Eagle did not seem to wish to avoid or evade an answer to a single question.
25.
Big Eagle's narrative was the first comprehensive account of the war to be published from the point of view of a Dakota leader who had fought alongside Little Crow.
26.
One early critic of Big Eagle's narrative was Samuel J Brown, son of Joseph R Brown, who wrote a letter to Holcombe on February 6,1896, expressing skepticism about Big Eagle's version of events.