On September 26, 1862, 270 men, women, and children taken captive by the Dakota during the war were released to military commander Henry H. Sibley at this site, afterward known as Camp Release. Years later, Major James Madison Bowler recalled officers and frontier troops forming along the road near the wheat field before Sibley received the surrender of the Indians and the release of the captives on that ground. Some of the freed captives later recorded their experiences, including seventeen-year-old Samuel J. Brown, who had been seized with his siblings and their mother, a member of the Sissetowan tribe, after their house was attacked and burned while their father, Joseph R. Brown, was away. Brown remembered the arrival of Sibley and his men, the formal demand for the captives, and the sight of the troops marching by, and he counted 2,188 people at Camp Release excluding soldiers: 1,918 Indians, 4 captive white men, 104 captive white women and children, and 162 captive mixed bloods. Sarah Wakefield, wife of the Yellow Medicine Agency doctor, was captured with her two young children as they fled toward Fort Ridgely after a man traveling with them was killed; she later wrote of fear, hardship, and the kindness of some Dakota during her captivity. She also recalled the difficult conditions at Camp Release, where those holding prisoners were ordered to give them up, she was taken to a large tent surrounded by soldiers, questioned the next day, and then sent away with four other former prisoners for a journey of more than 70 miles without escort through the scene of the killings.