William
A. Sutherland
| Name: William A. Sutherland Company: B Veteran; wounded August 18, 1862, at Redwood, Minnesota |
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Birth
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Mustered In
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Death
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Mustered Out
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William A. Sutherland Biography and Military Service Narrative
William A. Sutherland was born about 1844 and enlisted in the 5th Minnesota on February 18, 1862, as a Private. Being a member of Company B, he participated and was wounded in the Dakota Sioux conflicts at Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, during the summer of 1862.On August 18th, word was received at Fort Ridgely that a massacre of whites was taking place at the Lower Sioux Agency. Company B's Captain John S. Marsh, who had joined the Company on April 16, immediately led a rescue party of 46 men, including Private William A. Sutherland, and an interpreter to the Lower Sioux Agency. About three miles out of Fort Ridgely, the party was overtaken by wagon teams who followed them, carrying extra ammunition and otherwise empty wagons. Picking up the marching rescue party, the wagons continued on toward their destination, passing fleeing citizens, burning houses, and mutilated corpses. About six miles out of Fort Ridgely, the rescue team continued on by foot. When the rescue party reached the Redwood ferry crossing on the Minnesota River shortly after noon, the Indians ambushed them from all sides. Sutherland was hit by a bullet during the battle.
The following account of wounded Sutherland's struggle back to Fort Ridgely is taken from Recollections of the Sioux Massacre by Oscar G. Wall, a fellow member of Company B stationed at Fort Ridgely:
Sutherland
was shot in the breast,
the ball passing through the right lung, and out near the point
of the right shoulder-blade, at his back.
The wound
rendered him unconscious for a time, and while in this condition
the Indians took from him his gun, cartridge-belt and box, his
cap, coat and shoes, leaving him destitute of clothing, save his
shirt (saturated with blood from his wound), and his trousers.
The mystery is that he was not scalped, but his escape was no
doubt due to a distracted state among the savages who were rent
with dissension over the personal effects of their victims.
Sutherland fell near the river, where he lay for several hours. Returning to consciousness, he found himself crazed with pain and thirst. Lifting his head cautiously, he looked about him, half stupefied, yet curious to learn whether his comrades, who were in action when he fell, had been annihilated.
While
the savages had completed their hellish work, they were still in
the vicinity, and he could hear their voices not far away, and
the firing of guns far and near warned him of the havoc being
wrought upon the settlements of the vicinity. He determined
to crawl to the river and slake his burning thirst, even though
to do so should cost him his life. He tested his strength in an
effort to turn over,
having fallen on his face when shot. He found he could move his
body, and down through the high grass and weeds he dragged
himself to the water's edge, leaving a trail stained with blood
to betray him should an Indian cross his path. He was much
refreshed with copious draughts of water, and crawled back
into the weeds, where he meditated, and wondered if escape was a
physical possibility. He reasoned that no attempt at escape
should be made before nightfall. Thirst compelled him to make
several visits to the river. Near his drinking place was a skiff,
lodged against the river's bank, and partially filled with water.
The waterlogged boat suggested a possible means of escape, and he
resolved that if not discovered and slain before dark he
would make a superhuman effort to save his life. At about ten
o'clock at night, after all the savages had joined in the hideous
orgies of the scalp-dance on the Agency side of the river, he
felt that now if ever he must carry out his resolution. He
crept cautiously to the water's edge,
removed as much water from the boat as possible with his hands
while the craft lay on its edge, and pushing it into the stream,
got in. There was no seat in the boat, no oars, no paddle, and
nothing with which to bail out the water, of which there was a
considerable quantity at the outset. He sat down in this in
the bottom of the boat, hatless and without clothing to
protect his shattered body from the penetrating chill of night,
with no nourishment of any kind.
Thus
he began his solemn
journey, dependent wholly upon his boat and the current of the
sluggish river.
As
he drifted silently away under the southwestern hills, the
hideous din of the scalp-dance, conducted but a matter of rods
away from where he had lain for hours, became less and less
distinct, until croaking frogfs or an occasional bittern alone
broke the silence of night. In this hapless plight, this country
boy of twenty summers, who had left all the comforts of a happy
home, tenanted with loved ones, to enter the army and serve his
country, began a voyage under conditions seeming to challenge
fate and which fiction, in all its reckless extravagance,
would scarce attempt a parallel.
All that night, all the next
day, and all the following night until nearly dawn, this
ghostly figure drifted silently along, now backwards, now sidewise and
now for an hour or so whirled helplessly in an eddy.
The nights were gloomy and solemn, but not more so than the light
of day, that revealed the pall of death on every hand. Sutherland
was seized with a delusion that haunted him against reason,
from the outset of his journey. He felt that he was helplessly
being carried in the wrong direction that he should go up stream
instead of down, and this fantasy gave him no end of trouble. He
was shot on Monday afternoon. He entered his boat Monday
night, and there remained until the break of day Wednesday
morning. He knew his progress had been very slow, but he felt
that if the boat had carried him in the proper direction, he must
be in the vicinity of the Fort. At all events he found that
he must abandon the waterlogged boat, for he had become so
stiffened he could scarcely move. Against his better judgement,
the bewildering delusion
that had been his pursuing nemesis, impelled him to land, by
paddling with his hands, on the wrong side of the river, or on
the side opposite the Fort. Benumbed and weakened, but stimulated
with the hope that he would soon reach the garrison, he
picked his way through a jungle of underbrush, and out of the
valley and up the wooded hills until he reached the open prairie
on the highlands.
He
saw Indian cabins that were strange to him,
but no trace of the garrison or of any familiar object. His
heart sickened, and despair overwhelmed him, and he sank to the
earth. But his great will-power triumphed, and he rose to his
feet again. The sun had now risen to flood the earth with its
exhilarating light. Sutherland realized that he must return to
the shelter of the river valley, as he was in great danger of
being discovered; and as he turned his face to the northeastward,
to his amazement and joy he beheld Fort Ridgely in the favoring light
of the morning sun, on the hills beyond the river,
the colors flying at full-mast, assuring him that without doubt
the Fort had not fallen. He now knew he had abandoned his boat
not far above the road crossing the river by a ferry, and leading
to the Fort. He set out to reach the river at the
ferry-crossing, but on his arrival at the stream a new
disappointment awaited him. The rope spanning the river had
been cut and the ferry was gone.
There
was but one alternative :
he must swim the river or perish in the attempt to do so. He lost
no time, but got down into the water, which was soon beyond
his depth, compelling him, while suffering excruciating pain in
the effort, to exert himself to keep from sinking. By the assistance of
the current he
landed on the opposite side, where, having been carried several
rods down stream, he experienced great difficulty in pulling"
himself up the abrupt and brush-grown river bank. He accomplished all
this, however, and walked a mile, most of the
way up-hill, and reached the Fort, a gaunt, bent, blood-stained,
half-naked specter, as if risen from the dead to affright his
surviving comrades. He arrived at the garrison between 8 and 9
o'clock of Wednesday morning, August 20th, and an hour later
the Indians came in swarms over the road by which he had barely
made his escape. [Recollections
of the Sioux Massacre, Oscar G. Wall,
pp. 55-59]
William A. Sutherland survived his wound and continued serving in Company B throughout the Civil War until he was mustered out with the 5th Minnesota Regiment on September 6, 1865.
