The Dakota Conflict

Indian - settler relations in the Minnesota territory had never been good. One of the earliest French explorers, Father Louis Hennepin, was taken prisoner by the Dakota in 1683. Hennepin was released and went on to write about his explorations. While his captivity is a very minor incident, it represented the suspicion and misunderstanding that would plague Indian - settler relations in Minnesota into the twentieth century.

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 United States government and the Dakota and Ojibwa peoples 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. The Native American way of life in Minnesota had entered a downward spiral. The subsistence lifestyle of Native American tribes in Minnesota was irrevocably altered by the emergence of a European free market economy.  Animal and plant resources that sustained Indians for so long became commodities in an increasingly crowded region.  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 & 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 it's 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, twenty-six 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 Dakota Conflict. On August 18th, 1862, a Dakota force struck the Lower Sioux Agency killing the inhabitants and taking control. 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 leaving Sibley's force to round up Dakota who participated in the conflict. Military trials of 425 pure and mixed-blood Dakota took on a farcical air, with many trials lasting only a few minutes each. Many convictions relied upon testimony of other accused who plea-bargained in return for leniency. When 321 men were convicted and all but 18 sentenced to die, an Episcopalian bishop who had worked with the Dakota, Bishop Whipple, convinced President Abraham Lincoln to intervene. Upon examining the convictions, Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but convicted rapists and murderers to prison. On December 26, 1862, three thousand people gathered to watch the hanging of these thirty-eight Dakota in Mankato, MN.  It is the largest mass execution in United States history. Life was not easy for the survivors. The government declared the various land treaties negotiated with the Dakota as null and void due to the conflict. No Dakota were permitted to live in Minnesota and the bounty on Dakota scalps was raised. Indian annuities were ended and given to settlers to help them rebuild their shattered lives. 1700 Dakota were rounded up and marched to Fort Snelling where they lived in cramped conditions. Various epidemics took the lives of many. These Dakota were eventually repatriated by force to Crow Creek in the Dakota Territory. Little Crow 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 conflict but the true count of war dead was 77 soldiers, 413 white civilians, and 71 Indians (38 of which were those executed in Mankato). Both sides suffered greatly. Unfortunately the suffering would only continue as the frontier of the United States pushed farther and farther west without any significant improvements in United States Indian policy or Indian - settler relations. A memorial to the memory of the dead, both white and Indian, now stands in downtown Mankato at Reconciliation Park.

Reconciliation Park - Mankato, Minnesota

Sources:

Awesome Almanac Minnesota
Minnesota: A History by William E. Lass
The Dakota Conflict