On Saturday the 23d Little Crow came down the river again to renew his fight upon New Ulm, which, unmolested since Tuesday, had been increasing its defences. Here Judge Flandrau led out the whites in a pitched battle. A few of his men were old frontiersmen, cool and determined, of unerring aim; but most were German settlers, recently arrived, and often terrified by their new experiences. During the week of horrors the depredations covered the Minnesota frontier and lapped over into Iowa and Dakota. Isolated families, murdered and violated, or led captive into the wilderness, were common. Stories of those who survived these dangers form a large part of the local literature of this section of the Northwest. At New Ulm the situation had become so desperate that on the 25th Flandrau evacuated the town and led its whole remaining population to safety at Mankato. Long before the week of suffering was over, aid had been started to the harassed frontier. Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota, hurried to Mendota, and there organized a relief column to move up the Minnesota Valley. Henry Hastings Sibley, quite different from him of Rio Grande fame, commanded the column and reached St. Peter's with his advance on Friday. By Sunday he had 1400 men with whom to quiet the panic and restore peace and repopulate the deserted country. He was now joined by Ignatius Donnelly, Lieutenant-governor, sent to urge greater speed. The advance was resumed. By Friday, the 29th, they had reached Fort Ridgely, passing through country "abandoned by the inhabitants; the houses, in many cases, left with the doors open, the furniture undisturbed, while the cattle ranged about the doors or through the cultivated fields." The country had been settled up to the very edge of the Fort Ridgely reserve. It was entirely deserted, though only partially devastated. Donnelly commented in his report upon the prayer-books and old German trunks of "Johann Schwartz," strewn upon the ground in one place; and upon bodies found, "bloated, discolored, and far gone in decomposition." The Indian agent, Thomas J. Galbraith, who was at Fort Ridgely during the trouble, reported in 1863, that 737 whites were known to have been massacred.