the field. We took our time about getting away... There was no pursuit. The whites fired their cannons at us as we were leaving the field, but they might as well have beaten a big drum for all the harm they did. They only made a noise. We went back across the river to our camps in the old villages, and then on up the river to the Yellow Medicine and the mouth of the Chippewa, where Little Crow joined us." Battle of Wood Lake Big Eagle also led his band in the Battle of Wood Lake. Surrender Big Eagle surrendered at Camp Release in September 1862 – a decision he came to regret. As he later explained:"Soon after the battle I, with many others who had taken part in the war, surrendered to General Sibley. Robinson [Robertson] and the other halfbreeds assured us that if we should do this we would only be held as prisoners of war a short time, but as soon as I surrendered I was thrown into prison. Afterwards I was tried, and I served three years in the prison at Davenport and the penitentiary at Rock Island for taking part in the war. On my trial a great number of the white prisoners, women and others, were called up, but not one of them could testify that I had murdered any one or had done anything to deserve death, or else I would have been hanged. If I had known that I would be sent to the penitentiary I would not have surrendered... I did not like the way I had been treated. I surrendered in good faith, knowing that many of the whites were acquainted with me, and that I had not been a murderer, or present when a murder had been committed, and if I had killed or wounded a man it had been in fair, open fight." After the war Imprisonment and pardon Big Eagle was tried by the military commission and was sentenced to death, but was given a reprieve and was sent to the prison camp in Davenport, Iowa. President Abraham Lincoln pardoned Big Eagle in November 1864 and he was ordered released on December 3. Wambditanka's pardon had initially been approved by President Lincoln on October 26, 1864, when he was meeting with George Dow. Legal scholar Carol Chomsky writes, "Lincoln wrote, in pencil, on the back of