The Soldiers’ Weapons
Tom Barnes and his fellow soldiers were armed with muzzle-loading rifled muskets called Springfield Rifles. The Civil War was one of the last major wars in which these were used as standard weapons. The standard weapon for armies in the previous century and a half had been smooth bore muskets. The bullet that they fired was a round ball of lead that tended to curve like a baseball after leaving the barrel so that hitting what you were aiming at was very problematic beyond a few yards. However, they were simple to learn how to use and easy to maintain. Sharp shooters used rifled muskets. Spiral grooves were cut into the inside of the barrel, which imparted a spin to the ball when it was fired. This made rifles many times more accurate than smooth bore muskets, but they were expensive to manufacture, needed much more training to use, and were hard to keep clean. They were also slower to load.
The Springfield Rifle overcame some of the liabilities of the old rifled muskets. It fired what was called a Minie Ball, which was not round but conical in shape. The base of the bullet was indented, so that when it was rammed down the barrel it expanded into the grooves. This created a tighter fit, produced a tighter spin to the bullet when it was fired, and cleaned the grooves at the same time. It was also faster to load than the old rifles, but no faster than the smooth bores. Two shots a minute was about the maximum rate of fire. It was war in slow motion.
American soldiers used other types of weapons as well. The Renville Rangers had carbines, a shorter version of the rifled musket, because they were easier to load on horseback. Officers carried pistols, which could fire six shots in succession but were inaccurate and slow to reload. Also, for hand-to-hand fighting, the soldiers had bayonets, which turned their rifles into spears. But using the bayonet takes some training that most of Sibley’s soldiers did not have.
The soldiers also had artillery, which proved to be decisive in the battles to defend Fort Ridgley. Cannon had changed very little since the American Revolution. Essentially, they were enlarged smooth bore muskets that could fire several different types of ammunition, including solid shot that was just a large, solid iron ball, and hollowed out shells containing gunpowder and timed to explode through the use of a fuse. It appears that it was the shells that had the biggest deterrent effect on the Dakota, although they did not seem to have caused many casualties. Two other types of ordinance, grapeshot and canister, were used extensively in the Civil War. They were shells that fired lead balls which essentially turned the cannon into a gigantic shotgun. If they were used in the Dakota War, however, there is no record of it.
Dakota Weapons
Most of the Dakota had firearms which they had purchased or stolen from the traders’ stores. Most were double-barreled shotguns. These were smooth bore weapons with similar characteristics to smooth bore muskets. Their only advantage over the soldiers’ rifles was that they could fire two shots in succession. Bows and arrows were also used, and they could be shot more rapidly than rifles. However, their lethal range was shorter. How much they were used in the fighting is not really known.
For close fighting the Dakota used knives, tomahawks, and war clubs. By all accounts the warriors were quite skilled in the use of these weapons but few got close enough to the enemy to use them in any of the battles.
The Soldier’s Tactics
During the Civil War, the main infantry tactic on offense was to advance in massed formations. This required a lot of training and discipline, since the files of advancing soldiers would be under artillery fire from at least a half a mile away and very lethal rifle fire for at least a quarter of a mile. Such attacks produced huge casualty counts. It seems unlikely that General Sibley’s mostly untrained troops could have executed such an assault. Fortunately, they never had to do so, since in all of the battles they were on the defensive and could fire from behind cover. The only exception was the bayonet charge of the Third Regiment at Wood lake, and the Third was the only veteran unit in Sibley’s army.
The Dakota’s Tactics
Offensive war among the various Indian tribes of North America almost always took the form of hit and run raids. Ambushing an unsuspecting group of enemies was the main tactic. A battle would usually begin with a volley of arrows or bullets followed by a rush to close with the defenders. Seldom did a Dakota war party launch an attack against an equal or superior force, nor did the fights last very long. Once enough enemy warriors were killed, horses stolen, or captives taken, the Dakota would break off the attack. Mass assaults that involved hundreds of fighters almost never occurred. Had any Dakota warrior witnessed a Civil War battle, they would have been appalled by the carnage. The two attacks on Fort Ridgley started out as mass assaults, but quickly lost momentum. The Dakota warriors were as brave as any fighters anywhere, but they were not trained to keep advancing against massed fire power. The attack on New Ulm was similar, and though more successful for the Dakota it was still not a complete victory. Birch Coulee was more of an ambush, and might have been more successful had the soldiers not been reinforced from the fort. At Wood Lake, the ambush might have worked, but the trap was sprung to soon. Only at the Battle of the Redwood Ferry did the ambush tactic deliver a complete victory.