In 1862 the Sioux Nation stretched from the Big Woods of Minnesota to
the Rocky Mountains. There were seven Sioux tribes, including three
western tribes, collectively called the Lakota, and four eastern tribes
living in Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas called the Dakota. About
7,000 members of the four Dakota tribes lived on a reservation bordering
what was in 1862 the frontier, the Minnesota River in southwestern Minnesota.
The Dakota Conflict (or Dakota War or Sioux Uprising) involved primarily
the two southernmost Dakota tribes, the Mdewakantons and Wahpekutes.
Tribes consisted of bands, each with a leader or chief. The Mdewakantons,
for example, were divided into nine bands. A majority of the 4,000 members
of the two northern tribes, the Sissetons and the Wahpetons, were opposed
to the fighting. A large number of Sissetons and Wahpetons had been converted
both to farming and Christianity, and had both moral objections and strong
reasons of self-interest for keeping peace with the whites. In addition
to pure-blood Indians, there were many so-called mixed-bloods, the products
of relationships between Indians and settlers. A majority of mixed-bloods
sided with whites or avoided participation in the Conflict altogether.
A decade before the Dakota Conflict, the Minnesota Territory, stretching
from the upper Mississippi to the Missouri River, was still mostly Indian
country. The conifer forest and lakes of Northern Minnesota belonged
to the Ojibway (or Chippewa), while the deciduous forests and prairie of
southern Minnesota was shared by the Dakota and a much smaller number of
Winnebago. In 1851, however, the Dakota by treaty agreed to give
up most of southern Minnesota. The land was ceded to the United
States in return for two twenty-mile wide by seventy-mile long reservations
along the Minnesota River and annuity payments totaling $1.4 million dollars
over a fifty-year period. Seven years later, in exchange for increased
annuity payments, the Dakota ceded about half of their reservation land.
[LINK
TO MAP SHOWING RESERVATION LAND]
The causes of the the Dakota Conflict are many and complex. The
treaties of 1851 and 1858 contributed to tensions by undermining the Dakota
culture and the power of chieftains, concentrating malcontents, and leading
to a corrupt system of Indian agents and traders. Annuity payments reduced
the once proud Dakota to the status of dependents. They reduced the
power of chiefs because annuity payments were made directly to individuals
rather than through tribal structures. They created bitterness because
licensed traders sold goods to Indians at 100% to 400% profit and frequently
took "claims" for money from individual Dakota paid out of tribal funds.
No effective means of legal recourse was available to wronged Dakota, leading
some Dakota to talk of the only means of dispute resolution with which
they were familiar: robbery and violence. The fact that the Dakota people
were squeezed into a small fraction of their former lands made it easy,
according to Minnesota historian William Folwell, "for malcontents to assemble
frequently to growl and fret together over grievances."[LINK
TO BISHOP WHIPPLE'S DISCUSSION OF CAUSES OF WAR]
Annuity payments for the Dakota were late in the summer of 1862.
An August 4, 1862 confrontation between soldiers and braves at the Upper
Agency at Yellow Medicine led to a decision to distribute provisions on
credit to avoid violence. At the Lower Agency at Redwood, however,
things were handled differently. At an August 15, 1862 meeting attended
by Dakota representatives, Indian Agent Thomas Galbraith, and representatives
of the traders, the traders resisted pleas to distribute provisions held
in agency warehouses to starving Dakota until the annuity payments finally
arrived. Trader Andrew Myrick summarized his position in the bluntest
possible manner: "So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry, let
them eat grass." Unbeknownst to those gathered at the Lower Agency,
the long delayed 1862 annuity payments were already on their way to the
Minnesota frontier. On August 16, a keg with $71,000 worth of gold coins
reached St. Paul. The next day the keg was sent to Fort Ridgely for
distribution to the Dakota. It arrived a few hours too late to prevent
an unprecedented outbreak of violence.
On Sunday, August 17, four Dakota from a breakaway band of young malcontents
were on a hunting trip when they came across some eggs in a hen's nest
along the fence line of a settler's homestead. When one of the four
took the eggs, another of the group warned him that the eggs belonged to
a white man. The first young man became angry, dashed the eggs to
the ground, and accused the other of being afraid of white men, even though
half-starved. Apparently to disprove the accusation of cowardice,
the other Dakota said that to show he was not afraid of white men he would
go the house and shoot the owner. He challenged the others to join
him. Minutes later three white men, a white woman, and a fifteen-year
old white girl lay dead.
[LINK TO CARTOON STORY OF FIRST VIOLENCE]
Big Eagle, a Dakota Chief, recounted what happened after the young men
reached Chief Shakopee's camp late on the night of August 17:
The tale told by the young men created the greatest excitement.
Everybody was waked up and heard it. Shakopee took the young men
to Little Crow's house (two miles above the agency), and he sat up in bed
and listened to their story. He said war was now declared.
Blood had been shed, the payment would be stopped, and the whites would
take a dreadful vengeance because women had been killed. Wabasha.
Wacouta, myself and others still talked for peace, but nobody would listen
to us, and soon the cry was "Kill the whites and kill all these cut-hairs
who will not join us." A council was held and war was declared.
Parties formed and dashed away in the darkness to kill settlers.
The women began to run bullets and the men to clean their guns....
At this time my village was up on Crow creek, near Little Crow's.
I did not have a very large band -- not more than thirty or forty fighting
men. Most of them were not for the war at first, but nearly all got
into it at last. A great many members of the other bands were like
my men; they took no par in the first movements, but afterward did.
The next morning, when the force started down to attack the agency, I went
along.... The killing was nearly all done when I got there. Little
Crow was on the ground directing operations. I saw all the dead bodies
at the agency. Mr. Andrew Myrick, a trader, with an Indian wife,
had refused some hungry Indians credit a short time before when they asked
him for provisions. He said to them; "Go and eat grass." Now
he was lying on the ground dead, with his mouth stuffed full of grass,
and the Indians were saying tauntingly: "Myrick is eating grass himself."
When I returned to my village that day I found that many of my band had
changed their minds about the war, and wanted to go into it. All
the other villagers were the same way.[Big
Eagle's Account, Through Dakota Eyes]
Events moved quickly. Forty-four Americans were killed and another ten
captured in the first full day of fighting in and around the Lower Agency
at Redwood. Nearly two hundred additional whites died over the next few
days as Dakota massacred farm families and attacked Fort Ridgely and the
town of New Ulm. Panicking settlers fled eastward from twenty-three
counties, leaving the southwestern Minnesota frontier largely depopulated
except for the barricaded fortifications at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm. On
August 23, a second Dakota attack on New Ulm leaves most of the town burned
to the ground, and 2,000 refugees, mostly women, children, and wounded
men, set of in wagons and on foot for Mankato, thirty miles away. On August
26, three days after Governor Alexander Ramsey appointed Colonel
Henry Sibley, a former governor, to command American forces that would
attempt to suppress the uprising, Sibley advanced from the east with 1,400
soldiers toward Fort Ridgely. The next day, Sibley and his men succeeded
in lifting the Dakota siege at Fort Ridgely, and the second phase of the
Dakota Conflict-- an organized American military effort to defeat and punish
the Sioux-- began.
The Dakota offensive continued to achieve success through early September.
At dawn on September 2 at Birch Coulee Creek, Dakota warriors attacked
a 170-man party of soldiers sent out to bury the bodies of settlers, killing
twenty soldiers and ninety horses. Other Dakota attacks were made at Acton,
Hutchinson, and Fort Abercrombie.
Little
Crow is generally acknowledged to have been the leader of the warring
Dakota, but Chiefs Mankato, Big Eagle, Shakopee and others played significant
leadership roles.
By mid-September, the initiative had shifted to the American forces.
On September 23, in the decisive Battle of Wood Lake, 700 to 1,200 Dakota
warriors were forced to withdraw after suffering heavy casualties.
Meanwhile, divisions among Dakota on the war increased. To the north,
chiefs of the Upper Agency Sisseton and Wahpeton continued to oppose the
fighting. Chiefs Red Iron and Standing Buffalo threatened to fire
upon any of Little Crow's followers that entered their territory. During
the Wood Lake Battle, "friendlies"
(Dakota opposed to the war) were able to seize control of white captives
and bring them into their own camp. In late September, the friendlies
released 269 white prisoners to the control of Colonel Sibley. Penned
in to the north and south, facing severe food shortages and declining morale,
many Dakota warriors chose to surrender. Together with those taken
captive, the ranks of Dakota prisoners soon swelled to 1,250. A decision
had to be made soon what to do with them.[LINK
TO CARTOON STORY ABOUT WOOD LAKE BATTLE AND SURRENDER]
On September 28, 1862, Colonel Sibley appointed a five-member
military commission to "try summarily" Dakota and mixed-bloods for
"murder and other outrages" committed against Americans. Whether
Sibley had authority to appoint such a commission is a matter of substantial
dispute. The commission was convened immediately, meeting in La Bathe's
log kitchen near Camp Release.
[PHOTO
OF LOG COURTHOUSE] Sixteen trials were conducted the first day,
convicting and sentencing to death ten prisoners and acquitting another
six. Over the six weeks that followed, the military court would try
a total of 393 cases, convicting 323 and sentencing 303 to death by hanging.
Reverend
Stephen Riggs, a man who spoke Dakota and was not unsympathetic to
their plight, reportedly served as a virtual grand jury, gathering evidence
and witnesses.
The trials were quick affairs, getting quicker as they progressed.
The commission heard nearly forty cases on November 3, the last day it
met. The commission believed that mere participation in a battle justified
a death sentence, so in the many cases, perhaps two-thirds of the total,
where the prisoner admitted firing shots it proceeded to a guilty verdict
in a matter of a few minutes. Somewhat more deliberation was required
for trials in which the charge was the murder or rape of settlers, because
admissions were much rarer in these cases. After the defendant gave
whatever response he cared to make to the charge, prosecution witnesses
were called. Where prosecution witnesses contradicted the testimony
of the defendant, the commission almost invariably found the prisoner to
be guilty. The best witnesses for the prosecution turned out to be
some of the accused. A mixed-blood named Godfrey, or Otakle, who
was the first prisoner tried [GODFREY'S
CASE], gave evidence in fifty-five cases and was described by
Recorder Isaac
Heard as "the greatest institution of the commission." With his
"melodious voice" and "remarkable memory" he seemed to Heard "specifically
designed as an instrument of justice."
[HEARD'S
ACCOUNT OF TRIALS]
Critics have challenged the fairness of the trials. In addition
to raising concerns about the sufficiency of the evidence supporting convictions
and the rapidity of trials, critics have charged commission members of
harboring prejudice against the defendants. the critics may have
a point. The commission members, though men of integrity, were also military
men whose troops had recently been under attack by the very men whose cases
they were judging. Critics of the trials also have argued that the commission
was wrong to treat the defendants as common criminals rather than as the
legitimate belligerents of a sovereign power. Finally, they have
suggested that the trials should have been conducted in state courts using
normal rules of criminal procedure rather than by military commission.
[WERE
THE TRIALS FAIR?]
Colonel Sibley may well have viewed summary trials by a commission as
necessary to avoid vigilante justice by angry mobs of Minnesotans.
As it was, the 303 condemned prisoners were attacked in New Ulm on November
9 as they being transported to Mankato to await their execution
[SKETCH OF ATTACK IN NEW ULM]. Another planned attack
of the prison camp by several hundred armed local citizens on December
4 was foiled by soldiers guarding the Dakota prisoners.
The final decision on whether to go ahead with the planned mass execution
of the 303 Dakota and mixed-bloods rested with President Lincoln.
General John Pope, having been sent to Minnesota after his defeat at Bull
Run, campaigned by telegraph for the speedy execution of all the condemned.
Virtually all of the editorial writers, politicians, and citizens of Minnesota
agreed with Pope. One of the few who did not was Henry
Whipple, the Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. Whipple traveled
to Washington to meet with Lincoln and discuss the causes of the Dakota
Conflict. By Lincoln's own account, the visit impressed him deeply
and he pledged to reform Indian affairs. Lincoln knew well that the
lust for Dakota blood could not be ignored; to prevent any executions from
going forward might well have condemned all 303 to death at mob hands.
Lincoln asked two clerks to go through the commission's trial records and
identify those prisoners convicted of raping women or children. They
found only two [cases
2 and 4].
Lincoln then asked his clerks to search the records a second time and identify
those convicted of participating in the massacres of settlers. This
time the clerks came up with the thirty-nine names included in Lincoln's
handwritten order of execution written on December 6, 1862. [PHOTO
OF LINCOLN'S ORDER]
In Mankato, at ten o'clock on December 26, thirty-eight (one person
was reprieved between the date of Lincoln's order and the execution) prisoners
wearing white muslin coverings and singing Dakota death songs were led
to gallows in a circular scaffold and took the places assigned to them
on the platform. Ropes were placed around each of the thirty-eight
necks. At the signal of three drumbeats, a single blow from
an ax cut the rope that held the platform and the prisoners (except for
one whose rope had broke, and who consequently had to be restrung) fell
to their deaths. A loud cheer went up from the thousands of spectators
gathered to witness the event. The bodies were buried in a mass grave on
the edge of town. Soon area doctors, including one named Mayo, arrived
to collect cadavers for their medical research.
[ACCOUNT
OF EXECUTIONS]
In April, 1863, Congress enacted a law providing for the forcible removal
from Minnesota of all Sioux. Most Dakota, after suffering through
a harsh Minnesota winter at a Fort Snelling encampment
[PHOTO
OF ENCAMPMENT], moved to South Dakota. Prisoners previously
held at Mankato were transported on the steamboat "Favorite" down the Mississippi
to Camp McClellan, near Davenport, Iowa.
On March 22, 1866, President Andrew Johnson ordered the release of the
177 surviving prisoners. They were moved to the Santee Reservation near
Niobrara, Nebraska.
Little Crow was not among the Dakota tried by the military commission.
He, along with 150 or so of his followers, fled to present-day North Dakota
and Canada. In June 1863, Little Crow returned to Minnesota on a
horse-stealing foray. On July 3, a farmer shot Little Crow while
the Dakota chief picked berries with his son near Hutchinson. The
farmer received a $500 reward from the state.
The Sioux Wars went on for many years. A military expedition carried
the fighting into the Dakota Territory in 1863 and 1864. As the frontier
moved westward, new fighting erupted. Finally, in 1890 at Wounded Knee,
the generation of warfare that began at Acton, Minnesota in August of 1862
came to an end.
Douglas Linder
University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
linderd@umkc.edu
For further information and documentation, see Professor Linder's Web site on The Dakota Conflict Trials.
© 2001 by Douglas Linder. All rights reserved.
![[PHOTO OF LOG COURTHOUSE]](http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/CTROOM.jpg){kind=link}
![[SKETCH OF ATTACK IN NEW ULM]](http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/citizen.GIF){kind=link}
![[PHOTO OF ENCAMPMENT]](http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/PRISON~2.jpg){kind=link}