New headstone marks grave of Native soldier from Minnesota who fought in the Civil War

A descendant of Dakota and French Canadians, Hercules LaChapelle was 30 and working as a raftsman on the Mississippi River near his Wabasha farm when the Civil War broke out in 1861.

He joined 50 men from the Wabasha area who formed Company G of the 5th Minnesota Infantry and went on to fight in more than 20 battles, from the regiment's first clash near Corinth, Miss., in spring 1862 to one of the war's last pivotal battles in Nashville in late 1864.

Uninjured amid the carnage that wound up killing 2,500 Minnesotans and maiming many more by war's end, LaChapelle's luck ran out within two months of leaving the Union Army. He died of tuberculosis at 34, just eight weeks after mustering out as a corporal at Fort Snelling.

LaChapelle likely had been sick for some time; tuberculosis doesn't kill quickly. "He was one tough guy to go through the battles and living in harsh conditions while suffering with TB," said Jerry "Fritz" Anderson of Chaska, who has researched LaChapelle and more than 300 Native Americans from Minnesota who fought in the Civil War.

When LaChapelle returned from the war, he went to live with his sister Matilda in Wheatland Township in Rice County rather than his wife Marie and four children in Wabasha. According to Anderson, he had discovered that Marie had a child with another man while he was away at war. Perhaps she assumed he had died in battle or on his way home.

LaChapelle died in Wheatland on Nov. 1, 1865, and "was buried without a marker or service and was seemingly lost to the world," Anderson said.

Until last year. Then Anderson unearthed an 1880 letter in LaChapelle's pension records written by his brother-in-law, John Montour, who described how "Hercules had come to their home very ill and that they nursed him."

Because tuberculosis was contagious and no priest was available for a funeral when LaChapelle died, Montour wrote, he and a neighbor took the body to a French Catholic cemetery. The tiny burial ground, now known as St. Louis Cemetery, sits beneath burr oak and cedar trees amid rolling corn and alfalfa fields about three miles west of Lonsdale.

Today a new regulation Veterans Affairs headstone graces LaChapelle's final resting place, thanks to Anderson, fellow Civil War researcher Ken Fliés and Native Vets Remembered, a group chaired by Anderson that provides official markers for Indian veterans of the Civil War. LaChapelle's headstone was formally dedicated at a July ceremony held with Civil War re-enactors.

People who drive by the rural Rice County cemetery are "very rarely aware heroes lay in their midst," said Anderson, who grew up in Wabasha County near LaChapelle's old farm. "It was an honor to be able to celebrate the life of a Native man who served his country."

Born in Prairie du Chien, Wis., in 1831, LaChapelle came from a family that apparently valued education at a time when it wasn't readily available; he and two of his brothers were literate enough to fill out applications for land under the Treaty of 1837. Their uncle, Theophilus LaChapelle, was the first Native American to pass the bar in Wisconsin Territory and served in the Legislative Assembly in the 1840s, Anderson said.

St. Louis Cemetery dates back to 1865, the year LaChapelle was interred there. When the French Canadian families in Wheatland had dwindled to 15 in 1906, the local French church closed and the cemetery was deeded to a church in Lonsdale. Since 1999, a local 4-H Club and the Lonsdale American Legion have helped keep up the graveyard.

Not all those at rest there are as obscure as LaChapelle. Buried nearby is Joseph "Jack" Frazer, a child of Dakota and Scottish parents who became a hunting partner and friend to both Dakota Chief Little Crow and Minnesota's first governor, Henry Sibley.

Known to the Dakota as Ite Maza (Iron Face), Frazer adopted the white man's ways later in life. When the U.S.-Dakota War erupted in 1862, he carried a message from Fort Ridgely to Sibley in St. Peter and Gov. Alexander Ramsey in St. Paul, warning of the outbreak. He served as a scout in his 50s for Sibley, who interviewed Frazer for a 16-part series in the St. Paul Pioneer that ran in 1866-67. When Frazer died in 1869, Sibley paid for his tombstone, a story told in a column six years ago (tinyurl.com/JackFrazer).

I visited the little graveyard with the long history this fall alongside local history buffs Fliés, Dennis Dvorak and Steve Vosejpka — making history come alive in a most unlikely place.

"It's kind of mind-boggling to stand here and know that Henry Sibley stood right where we're standing 150 years later," Vosejpka said.

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear every other Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.