From Gettysburg to Geronimo, Minnesotan Albert Sieber led a Wild West movie-worthy life

Arizona ranks as the No. 1 destination for Minnesota snowbirds, according to government figures showing 25,000 state residents moving there at least part time during the last decade.

Albert Sieber was perhaps the first such Minnesota-Arizona transplant — and an awfully resilient one at that. From fighting at Gettysburg to chasing Geronimo, Sieber survived more than two dozen gun and arrow shots.

His larger-than-life story arced from his days as an early Minneapolis cop, lumberman, teamster and wounded Civil War soldier to years as an Army scout in government clashes with Apache and other tribal fighters in the Arizona Territory of the late 1800s. Robert Duvall is among the actors who portrayed Sieber in western movies.

He's buried 90 miles east of Phoenix in the Odd Fellows section of the cemetery in Globe, Ariz. Just shy of 64, he died when a runaway boulder crushed him in 1907 as he supervised a road construction crew working on a dam northeast of Phoenix.

A year before his death, a doctor examining Sieber for his military pension reported a finger-sized depression in the right side of his skull from a Gettysburg shell fragment. As he fell during that fabled 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment charge on July 2, 1863, a Minié ball struck his right ankle and exited near his knee. His left leg, meanwhile, was 3 inches shorter after 1887 gunfire with the Apache Kid prompted surgeons to remove a chunk of his tibia.

Historians vary on exact details of Sieber's birth, but records point to the last week of February 1843 in Mingols­heim, Germany. His German accent remained, even though he emigrated with his widowed mother and siblings in 1849 when he was about 6.

After first stopping in Pennsylvania, the family drifted west in 1856 to what would become Minneapolis. "The city of Minneapolis — if it could be called such in 1856 — was a buckshot scattering of log cabins and rude shanties," author Dan Thrapp wrote in his 1964 book "Al Sieber: Chief of Scouts."

Sieber volunteered with the Minneapolis police and found paying work hauling logs to sawmills and lumber to docks. Nearly 6 feet tall, he listed his home as Stillwater on Civil War enlistment forms, apparently pushing logs there in 1862 when he joined the Army. Using the name "Sebers," he took his expert shot to 1st Minnesota battles from Antietam to Chancellorsville.

More than 80% of the 1st Minnesota fell fending off a Confederate charge at Gettysburg. "Among the casualties lay Albert Sieber, unconscious on that bloody field," Thrapp wrote.

An artillery shell fractured his skull, caved in his face and cost him some brain tissue. Sieber rode out the war in military hospitals before guarding prisoners. He once said he was "too full of the devil — played too many pranks" to ever move up the ranks. But in 1864 he earned a promotion to corporal.

He came home with $300 in his pocket, but Minnesota had changed.

"The country had tamed down. The railroads had arrived," Thrapp wrote. "… One could no longer stand on a snowy street corner and hear a wolf splitting a winter's night with his lonesome cry."

Experiencing what his biographer called an "inexplicable restlessness" common among war veterans, Sieber left Minnesota and headed west. He worked as a cowboy in San Bernardino, Calif., prospected silver in Nevada in 1867 and spent the rest of his life in Arizona.

By 1871, the Army had hired him as a chief scout in violent exchanges with Apaches and other tribes. Brutal at times, Sieber said he earned Apache respect by being truthful. "When I tell them I'm going to kill them, I do it," Sieber said, "and when I tell them I am their friend, they know it."

Once, Sieber — told to take no prisoners — said he killed a man as they sat around a breakfast fire, his rifle shot striking "behind the ear just as he was biting into a piece of bread."

Eden Prairie author Wayne Jorgenson's book "Every Man Did His Duty" details the 1st Minnesota's history and includes a lengthy Sieber profile. "He believed in supporting the Indians and was an advocate for their well-being," Jorgenson said in an e-mail. "His advocacy for the Indians eventually got him fired.''

Sieber, who never married and left no children, had a chance to get rich out West. He staked a gold claim around what became Jerome, Ariz., but sold his mineral rights before copper, gold and zinc were discovered there.

In 1887, he lost that chunk of leg bone in a gun battle with the Apache Kid. But it could have been worse. The Minneapolis Tribune reported a telegram had arrived from the 7th Cavalry in Arizona to a brother-in-law in Minneapolis. "Al Sieber was not killed in the engagement with the Indians ... as reported," the newspaper said, "but that he was only badly wounded."

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com.