At Birch Coulee, the battle is remembered through the accounts of two participants: Joseph Anderson, a captain in the U.S. Army and one of two U.S. commanders there who led the mounted Cullen Frontier Guards, and Wamditanka (Big Eagle), a Mdewakanton chief and one of four Dakota leaders present. Their recollections were published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1894, with Anderson writing to a fellow veteran and Wamditanka giving an interview through an interpreter. The Dakota Indians living in Minnesota in 1862 belonged to four bands—Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, and Wahpeton—and the Dakota leaders who fought at Birch Coulee came from two of them. Wamditanka, Mankato (Blue Earth), and Zitkadaska (Gray Bird) were Mdewakanton leaders, while Hushasha (Red Legs) was a Wahpekute chief. Wamditanka recalled that the two Dakota men killed during the battle, a Wahpekute and a Sisseton, belonged to Hushasha's band.