 With the Union party cut off from fresh water and dug in behind their dead mounts, the Dakota maintained a daylong siege, letting occasional gunfire and the hot sun take their toll.The first effort to officially preserve the Birch Coulee Battlefield came in 1893, when the Minnesota Legislature appointed a commission to acquire the land with a $2,500 budget and authority to use eminent domain.Inexplicably the commission chose instead to acquire a property south of the battlefield, where they raised a granite monument.