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December 26 is a grim day in the Dakota tribal calendar.
Over at Bluestem Prairie, Sally Jo Sorensen reminds us of something many conservatives would like forgotten — the largest mass execution ever to take place in the United States, which occurred on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota, in the wake of the Dakota War:
While Bluestem’s editor learned as a child–from family and school–about the execution, the concentration camps at Fort Snelling and elsewhere, the deportation of the Dakota people from the Minnesota River Valley land that they owned, and the hunting down for the bounties on the heads of those fugitives who remained–many Minnesotans don’t know this history.
A recent episode of This American Life, Little War on the Prairie, explored why so few Minnesotans knew about the war and its terrible consequences for Dakota people.
It would be unfortunate if it were buried again. The standards aren’t perfect–but neither should they be a whitewash.
For those of us largely unfamiliar with the Dakota War and its aftermath, the Yankton Press and Dakotan has some basic information:
What is now referred to as “The Dakota War of 1862” was one such conflict that began over broken promises of food and other goods that the U.S. government made the Dakota in exchange for land. The uprising, which lasted only six weeks, left hundreds of Indians, settlers and soldiers dead along the Minnesota River valley.
There were actually 303 Sioux prisoners sentenced to death in 1862, but upon President Lincoln’s review of the trial records, clemency was granted to 264 prisoners, with an order to execute 39 men for crimes against U.S. civilians.
One of the 39 condemned prisoners was later granted a reprieve. The Army executed the remaining the 38 in the public execution performed on a single scaffold platform.
Afterward, they were buried in a mass grave in a sandbar along the riverbank.
For more information, see http://www.usdakotawar.org/history/war.
12 Comments
Thanks for bringing this out to us at FDL. As much as possible, the white historians have hidden the history of the predations of the whites on Indian lands.
Ran out of Indians so now we are doing it in Afghanistan and supporting Israel to do the same thing in Palestine.
The US so loves killing indigenous peoples.
“This is a true story, the names have been changed to protect the names of the guilty.”
Bravo, thank you Phoenix Woman.
PW, as always, thank you. Never knew about this.
This was clearly an application of terror to serve as a warning to the Sioux not to mess with the United States during the Civil War. If memory serves, wasn’t there another conflict between whites and the Sioux going on in the same area at about that time?
It was worse in Texas. The Comanche rolled back the frontier several hundred miles during the Civil War. Lubbock and Fort Worth were burned to the ground. There were massacres and retaliatory massacres between the several different Native American tribes and the Texas Rangers.
White supremacy and recolonization didn’t recur until Phil Sheridan and his cavalry showed up, during which time Sheridan made his now infamous remarks:
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” and “Nits make lice,” in response to questions about massacring entire village populations.
Another bloody little chapter in American history they don’t teach you in school.
What’s remarkable here is that the Dakota had to be driven to the extremes of starving desperation before they snapped — and even then, only a few did. In fact, there was a large contingent that was for peace. One group, called “the Fool Soldiers” by the Dakota, actually traded their own food and blankets to ransom white captives and deliver them, after an arduous journey, to the nearest US military post. (Their “reward” was to be immediately imprisoned under atrocious circumstances that saw many of them die in prison.)
I don’t guess only conservatives don’t want to know this history, it’s any white people. But thanks for memorializing it.
Larry Long marked it with a wonderful song many years ago: ‘Water in the Rain’.
LOL! My mouse misbehaves once in a while. That’s a nice Emmylou Christmas song, but this is ‘Water in the Rain‘. ;o)
PW, you probably won’t see this, but again, big thanks. I will now have to research this story for myself.
Recommended.
And Genocide against the Lakota-Dakota-Nakota Sioux nation continues through Fracking their land (though the UN instructed the United States to give it back, this year), and through destruction of their Hemp crops (even though humans have depended for survival on Hemp [the first cultivated plant] since at least as early as the end of the last Ice Age).
Some more horrifying data on fracking in N. Dakota:
“UPDATE 3: EPA’s FRACKED UP REPORT – New Pics of Wells on Banks of Missouri River” (Dec. 27, 2012)
Note [Film] Dakota 38 and recall use of bounty hunters as pointed out by Mary re Bagram and Guantanamo.
Event announcements:
Dec. 29 – 31, 2013: Tuweni Tsa Obsni; They Never Died- Tentative Schedule for 1st Annual Survivor’s Run from Wounded Knee to Takini
Feb. 27, 2013: Honoring & Wacipi for 1973 Wounded Knee Veterans
PW and others I don’t know the extent of your interest in researching but I have an ancestor who did abhor what he saw and I believe for the times he made efforts to counter the horror in that area. I am too old to travel but his extensive papers in the Univ. of Wis. collection I imagine contain first hand information. I have wanted to see his entire remarkable life story in a book someday. Anyone interested in researching data to reveal a more honest history let me know.
The genocide in the service of stealing the assets and living space of others was so vast as to be incomprehensible. Most of us live on such property. I feel shame.
There were some who opposed and found the genocide of the Plains Indians abhorrent. I am grateful my ancestor is likely to have been such a man. He commanded a brigade in that region which came in to make some order following some of the slaughter. That he trusted the Native Americans is proven by his lending his revolver to one of the Chiefs considered hostile. That they saw him as friend is proven in their gift of a tipi with historic pictographs.
He later became Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma Territory and continued efforts to to limit the lawlessness even of so called law enforcement. He officially adopted three Kiowa children and unofficially cared for more. My great grandmother was his niece and grew up in his home.
The conditions of random unrestrained violence and cruelty committed by criminals and a really lawless military following the Civil War is the “freedom” pursued by our Tea Party and Libertarian co-habitants in this country.