Causes
The 1862 U.S.-Dakota War was a result of repeated breaches of treaty agreement by the U.S. government. When the War of 1812 began, the indigenous tribes of Minnesota sided with the British, whom they believed represented their interests better than the agents of the United States. A series of treaties between the U.S. government and the Dakota and Anishinabe were signed in Minnesota over the course of the next forty years. Native Americans were forced to negotiate due to the pressures placed upon them due to land requirements of the ever expanding American frontier. Animal and plant resources that sustained Indians for so long became commodities in an increasingly crowded region. The lifestyle of Native American tribes in Minnesota was irrevocably altered by the emergence of a European free market economy. Native peoples of Minnesota quickly became a minority in their homeland with an ever-increasing debt to white traders. The Treaty of Traverse de Sioux on July 23, 1851 between the United States government and indigenous representatives saw the Dakota give up their rights to most of southern Minnesota in return for a reservation; assistance with schools, trade, and farming; and yearly payments in food and gold. Additionally, the government agreed to pay $500,000 to move Indian villages and pay for debts the Dakota owed to traders. The United States Senate eliminated the passage granting the Dakota a reservation before ratifying the treaty. Governor Ramsey had to gain presidential permission to allow the Dakota to live on the reservation for five years before moving. Dakota resistance was understandable. To entice the Dakota to sign the treaty, traders in Minnesota took advantage of their extensive family connections in Dakota villages since many of them had married Dakota women. Somehow the treaty received enough Dakota signatures to be ratified. Very little of the $500,000 saw its way into Dakota hands. It went directly to traders instead to pay Dakota debts.
A massive influx of immigrants began to encroach on the Dakota reservation established by the Traverse Des Sioux of 1851. The government redrew the boundaries of the reservation which severely crowded the Dakota yet allowed most settlers to stay. Traders continued to hold the Dakota beholden to their services and the debts of the Dakota rose again. Prices were high, government payments were often late, and food subsidies were all too frequently rotten. On March 13, 1858, 26 Dakota chiefs were taken to Washington to meet with President James Buchanan. They were held in Washington for four months before being told they had to move off another portion of the reservation. According to Indian accounts, most of that money went to the traders as well. A blight severely damaged Dakota crops in the spring and early summer of 1862. Food shortages coupled by late annuity payments from the government caused widespread hunger since most traders ended Dakota credit. Frustration and hunger led to foraging. One Indian foraging party attacked a family of settlers near Acton, MN on August 17th, 1862. With three men and two women dead, the Dakota gathered. Tribal members somehow managed to convince the Dakota leader Little Crow (Taoyateduta) that the time to go to war against the settlers was at hand. Thus began the U.S.-Dakota War. On August 18th, 1862, a Dakota force struck the Lower Sioux Agency. They then surprised a forty-man relief party of United States Army troops from Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, killing nearly all the troops. Attacks on Fort Ridgely and New Ulm took place over the course of the next week. Stiff resistance from settlers and soldiers prevented complete Dakota victory but New Ulm was so badly burned the inhabitants abandoned it and fled for safety. The Dakota fought in their traditional manner; only women or children were taken as prisoners. News of atrocities spread quickly and settlers throughout the Minnesota River valley fled their homes only to find refuge in houses abandoned by other fleeing settlers. Governor Ramsey commissioned Henry Sibley as a Brigadier General to lead a relief party 1400 strong. This motley crew of poorly equipped raw recruits proceeded at an agonizingly slow pace from Fort Snelling, gathering provisions, munitions, and even draft horses wherever they could. Upon arriving at Fort Ridgely, Sibley sent out a burial party that was promptly ambushed by Dakota led by their leader Mankato near Birch Coulee. Sibley continued to move up the Minnesota River valley, requesting Little Crow surrender. Little Crow refused to yield without a guarantee of amnesty for his people. The fighting ended at Wood Lake on September 23 in a clumsy standoff with neither side sustaining major casualties. Little Crow fled to the Dakota Territory after Wood Lake. He appealed to the British in Canada in hopes of a renewal of their 1812 alliance but to little avail. On July 3rd, 1863 Little Crow was shot by farmer Nathan Lamson while picking raspberries near Hutchinson, MN. Little Crow's scalp and some other personal memorabilia were publicly displayed by the state until being laid to rest in 1971.
Exaggerated figures abounded immediately after the war but the true count of the dead was 77 soldiers, 413 white civilians, and 71 Indians (38 of which were those executed in Mankato). Both sides suffered greatly.
War Trials
The remaining Dakota surrendered. Sibley's force rounded up 1700 Dakota, including children and elders, and began a forced march from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. Along the way they were subjected to physical and verbal violence by local white people. Many were killed or died from hunger and sickness. Military trials of 425 Dakota warriors took on a farcical air, with many trials lasting only a few minutes each. Many convictions relied upon testimony of defendants that plea-bargained in return for leniency. When 321 men were convicted and all but 18 sentenced to die Bishop Whipple, an Episcopalian who worked with the Dakota, convinced President Abraham Lincoln to intervene. Lincoln commuted most of the sentences to prison, but he upheld the convictions of 38 to appease angry white settlers. On December 26th, 1862, three thousand people gathered to watch the hanging of these thirty-eight Dakota in Mankato, MN. It was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
The government declared the various land treaties negotiated with the Dakota as null and void. No Dakota was permitted to live in Minnesota and the bounty on Dakota scalps was raised. Indian annuities were ended and given to settlers. The Dakota prisoners at Fort Snelling were eventually repatriated by force to the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota.
Reconciliation
The events of the U.S.-Dakota War, particularly the hanging of the 38 Dakota, are a painful and sobering mark on Minnesota history. Relations between the Dakota and non-Dakota people of the area were strained for decades afterwards. In the 1970s Amos Owen, a Dakota spiritual leader, and Bud Lawrence, a white businessman, spearheaded reconciliation efforts by coordinating the first Mahkato Wacipi, a three-day pow-wow to commemorate the 38 Dakota. The Mahkato Wacipi became an annual event, with an Education Day for local schoolchildren. In 1980 the City of Mankato presented the Dakota people with a park, the Dakota Wokiksuye Mokoce (Dakota Land of Memories) where the wacipi is held every September.
Wounds ran deep; the work toward reconciliation continued for decades. Amos Owen started an annual Memorial Relay Run from Fort Snelling to Mankato in 1986. In 1987, the 125th anniversary of the execution, Minnesota's Governor declared a Year of Reconciliation. The City of Mankato commissioned local artist Tom Miller to create the statue "Winter Warrior" that stands at the site of the execution, next to the Mankato Public Library. The remains of the executed Dakota, which had been dug from their graves by frontier doctors for dissection, were returned to the Dakota and buried properly after being hidden in a museum for over a century. In 1992 the City of Mankato purchased the site of the execution and named it Reconciliation Park. People from the Mankato community worked with Dakota people to raise funds for a statue of a white buffalo at the park. People gather there every December 26th, the anniversary of the execution, in prayer and remembrance.
White Buffalo monument at Reconciliation Park, across from the Mankato Library.
Sources:
Barry, Paul
1999 Reconciliation - Healing and Remembering. Canku Ota - A Newsletter Celebrating Native America, December 25.
Berg, Kristian
1993 The Dakota Conflict. KTCA TV, St. Paul, MN.
Blashfield, Jean F.
1993 Awesome Almanac-Minnesota. Fontana, WI: B&B Publishing, Inc.
Coleman, Nick
2007 As Minnesota Turns 150, How Will It Face Up To Its Original Sin? Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, December 22.
Dowlin, Sheryl L. and Bruce
2002 Healing History's Wounds: Reconciliation Communication Efforts to Build Community Between Minnesota Dakota (Sioux) and Non Dakota Peoples.
Peace and Change 27(3):412-436.
Lass, William E.
1998 Minnesota: A History. 2nd edition. New York: Norton&Company.
Manipi Hena Owasin Wicunkiksuyapi (We Remember All Those Who Walked)
Electronic document, http://www.dakota-march.50megs.com/onered.html, accessed May 28, 2009.
