It’s probably one of the saddest places in this local area.

Mr. Ross talks about his experience at Birch Coulee, a battle site of the U.S.-Dakota War.

Audio Chapters

DL: Here’s another place: Birch Coulee?

DR: There’s a lot of spirits there in the form of ghosts if you believe in them. It was kind of an embellished place on both sides I guess. As far as I was told, there were only two Dakotas killed there. They are buried there someplace. That’s another place that has a lot of confusion. I’m not sure that even the spirits that dwell there are comfortable there for some reason. These are just personal things that I feel around me. It’s probably one of the saddest places in this local area. I mean there are many of them but that’s probably one of the saddest. That’s when the Dakota started to realize, this is my own belief that their future was not going to be good. So those memories end up staying there, too. They were fighting knowing that in the end it’s a futile fight, but they were going to do what they could anyway. At that point it was starting to settle in that their lives were going to be changed forever and there wasn’t a thing they could do about it.

Oral History- Interview | Narrator Dallas Ross Interviewer Deborah Locke made at Granite Falls, Upper Sioux Community, MN | Sunday, May 1, 2011

Citation: Minnesota Historical Society. U.S. - Dakota War of 1862. It’s probably one of the saddest places in this local area. March 28, 2024. http://www.usdakotawar.org/node/1097

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