In mid-September 1862, more than 1,600 soldiers under Colonel Henry Sibley marched northwest from Fort Ridgely into the Minnesota River Valley to end the U.S.-Dakota War. News of the movement reached the Dakota soldiers’ lodge near present-day Montevideo, where Taoyateduta, or Little Crow, urged a risky nighttime attack while others rejected that as cowardly and favored an early morning assault. Sibley’s command camped at the site of Lone Tree Lake, later mistakenly associated with Wood Lake. At dawn on September 23, 1862, hundreds of Dakota warriors prepared an ambush from the tall grass near Sibley’s encampment, three miles south of the Yellow Medicine Agency, now the Upper Sioux Community, but the plan failed when men from Sibley’s camp rode out in a wagon searching for potatoes and nearly ran over the hidden Dakota, triggering gunfire and alerting the camp. Veterans of the Third Minnesota Infantry quickly joined the fight and strengthened the inexperienced recruits and volunteers in the final battle of the war. After two hours of fighting across the 600-acre site, Sibley’s command won and the war ended. Taoyateduta retreated west with 200 to 300 warriors who would not surrender, while surrendered Dakota were taken into custody and nearly 400 men, including non-combatants, were hastily tried by military tribunal. Of these, 303 Dakota men were convicted and sentenced to hang, but after aides to President Abraham Lincoln reviewed the records, Lincoln reduced the sentences. On December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 men were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history.