MANKATO — When New Ulm Mayor Robert Beussman was a boy, he was snooping around his home one day and came upon an old double-barreled muzzle-loader broken in several places.

He was told it was his great-grandfather’s gun, and when he asked how it had become broken an aunt told him the tale. As Beussman recalls:



The story goes that they were on a farm in Milford Township and one of the friendly natives (Dakota) came and said there’s trouble, you gotta get out of here.

They were heading into New Ulm and from around a haystack...came a warrior in paint and attacked with a tomahawk. My great-grandfather leveled his double-barrel, pulled both triggers, and nothing happened.

He turned the weapon and used it as a club to defend himself...



Beussman’s recounting of that incident is one of dozens of oral histories from descendants touched by the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Those chronicles have been compiled by the Minnesota Historical Society as part of an oral history project commemorating the 150th anniversary of the conflict.

“Oral histories capture stories of families in their own words and they give us perspective unlike any other,” said project manager Deborah Locke.

“These histories are personal and heartfelt and the interviewees are passionate about their families’ place in the history of Minnesota.”

Fifteen New Ulm war descendants are included in the collected stories. In one, Lisa Besemer tells of her great-great-great grandfather’s murder during the uprising, the same fate that befell fellow farmer Christian Haag as he sped to aid a neighbor.



Apparently he was working outside, as a lot of the farmers were on that August day, and heard some shooting or some chaos over at Hanle farm a mile away.

He took off on his horse...he went down the driveway and that’s where the Indians killed him.

 

The war followed years of broken treaties and promises to the Dakota people. That, combined with a burgeoning white population in the state created a flashpoint.

Dakota factions attacked white settlements in south central and southwestern Minnesota, although a significant number of Dakota were against the war and didn’t participate.

New Ulm resident John LaBatte lends a rare perspective as a “dual descendant” of Dakota and white settlers who became war casualties.



The new settlers on the frontier were a variety of people. Some were afraid of the Indians, some welcomed them...there were other people who tolerated the Indians.

There were also angry Indians; even though they agreed in their treaties  they would stay on the reservation they continued to leave...

There would be petitions from settlers saying that they (the Indians) were supposed to stay on the reservations and the state should be doing something about this.

Some people call it a clash of cultures. I don’t. That’s too general.



Lorraine Wels, another New Ulm descendant of wartime settlers, recalls a German forebear’s travail:



Grandma Koehler befriended the Indians...she was very kind to the Indians when they came to the door. She would give them bread and they gave her moccasins for her children in return.

While her husband was away at Fort Ridgely in Aug., 1862, those Indians tried to warn her of an impending attack by the Dakota warriors, but they couldn’t speak each other’s languages.

Grandma Koehler’s house was burned to the ground and she barely escaped to New Ulm with her children and her life.



All oral histories collected for the Historical Society project can be heard and read on the organization’s website, www.mnhs.org.