Who associates Minnesota with Indian wars anyway? Few do. I do not. And it seems that many of the people who live in Mankato and that area did not know the history as well. More and more books have been written about this tragic event and if you go to Amazon, you can find many, many books that have been written fairly recently.
I like to listen to "This American Life" while I do my bead work. Recently I had the latest episode playing. It was titled "The Little War on the Prairie". I was stunned to hear that it was about the largest public hanging ever in the US that took place during the Civil War. 38 Indians were hanged!
The Indians who took part in the fighting had been cheated by agents who were supposed to give the Indians their agreed upon annuities. But the agents in charge of paying out the annuities had been cheating the Indians and not giving them their supplies, so the Indians were starving.
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This is what Wikipedia says:
The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, (and the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow's War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux (also known as eastern Dakota). It began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.
Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that the government give the annuity payments directly to them (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders to the exclusion of the Dakota). In mid-1862 the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit under those conditions, and negotiations reached an impasse.[3]
On August 17, 1862, one young Dakota with a hunting party of three others killed five settlers while on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley to try to drive whites out of the area. There has never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, although as many as over 800 settlers have been cited.
Over the next several months, continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota bands.[4] By late December 1862, soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota, who were interned in jails in Minnesota. After trials and sentencing, 38 Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. In April 1863, the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota. The United States Congress abolished their reservations.
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According to "This American Life", the settlers were going to execute some 350 to 360 Indians after the fighting was over. They had sent a report to Pres. Lincoln to that effect. Lincoln wrote back that they could NOT execute that many people. It seems that among those slated for hanging were Indians who had just "tagged" along and had not really done anything. Lincoln decreed that the only ones who could be hanged were those who had admitted to raping woman, so the numbers were reduced to 38. I highly recommend that you listen to the This American Life episode (link above) for the whole story. Also, here are two of the many books now avaiable about this sad piece of our history:
Gary C. Anderson
North Country: The Making of Minnesota
Mary Lethert Wingerd
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I emailed some relatives about this story and John Vangsness had this to say and has allowed me to add it here:
Our Son, John Michael Vangsness, forwarded this link (to the "This American Life" story). He grew up in Mankato. We lived there for 14 years before moving back to Wanamingo.
Our ancestors moved to Minnesota in 1862 or '63 from Wisconsin. The uprising happened in the summer of 1862. Most of the fighting during the uprising happened just west of Mankato, in the New Ulm and Redwood Falls area. This is about 100 miles west of Belle Creek Township.
It is a little surprising to me that they chose to move to Minnesota from Wisconsin at this time. I've read that emigration to Minnesota slowed down significantly at this time because of the 'Indian problems'. Goodhue County was totally settled by 1860. I have read that in 1850 the European population of Goodhue County was zero. By 1860 there was no more land for sale....it was all sold & owned by farmers or investors. It's a misconception that land was homesteaded in Goodhue County, or any of eastern Minnesota for that matter. By the time the Homestead Act was passed by Congress all the land in this part of the state was under privet ownership already. There was homesteading in western Minnesota.
The time & place of our ancestors arrival in Minnesota makes it unlikely that any of them were affected directly by the Sioux Uprising of 1862. I do remember hearing as a kid that our great grandfather, John, had to walk to Holden Church from the farm for confirmation classes. Minneola congregation had not been formed yet. This would have been between 1862 when they moved to Minnesota, and 1867 when Minneola Church was founded. (I was curious, so I looked on Google Maps. From the home place to Holden Church is an eight mile walk......one way.) I have a vague memory of my Grandmother or Father, saying that on this walk he once encountered Indians camped along the road. They may have been refugees, but I doubt it. Most of the Indians were rounded up after the war & sent out of state. More likely they were just people passing through. They could have been Indians. It's also possible that my memory about this story was dreamed up by an eight year old kid (me) playing cowboys & Indians one day in 1959......... but I don't think so. I'm afraid there is no one left that could confirm this for us.
