At Wood Lake, an engagement on Sept. 23, 1862, between Minnesota volunteer soldiers commanded by Col. Henry H. Sibley and Sioux Indians led by Chief Little Crow cost the lives of Anthony C. Collins, Richard H. McElroy, Ernest Paul, Charles E. Frink, Edwin E. Ross, De Grove Kimball, and Matthew Cantwell, and left thirty-four men wounded. The state erected the monument in 1910 under the supervision of commissioners appointed by Governor Loren W. Collins, Ezra T. Champlin, and Mathias Holl, participants in the battle.