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Sioux Uprising

The Sioux Uprising was an armed conflict that began on August 17, 1862 along the Minnesota River in Minnesota, also known as the Dakota Conflict or the US–Dakota War of 1862.

Payments guaranteed by treaty to be made to the Dakota people by the United States government in exchange for Dakota land had not been made due to federal preoccupation with the American Civil War. Non-payment, past broken treaties, loss of land, combined with lack of buffalo and a crop failure, led to famine and great discontent among the Dakota people with the new white settlers who were taking their land without the promised compensation. The uprising began when four young Dakota men killed five whites on August 17, followed by the killing of 20 white men on August 18, reluctantly led by chief Little Crow who had led peace negotiations with the USA in the past. White settlements all along the Minnesota River were then attacked.

Dakota warriors decided on August 19 not to attack the heavily-defended Fort Ridgely, and instead turned to the settlement of New Ulm, killing many white settlers along the way. They also scalped the federal agent on that day, looted his warehouse, and roamed through their territorial homeland, killing perhaps a dozen whites.

Although this was in the middle of the American Civil War, enough US troops were gathered to put down the rebellion, and more than 300 Dakota were sentenced by local courts to die for the crimes of murder or rape six weeks later.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln commuted the death sentences of all but 38, largely due to the pleas from Bishop Henry Whipple for clemency. The 38, for whom the evidence seemed strongest, were executed in a single day on December 26, 1862.

A photograph of the mass hanging was long a familiar icon in Minnesota. The 38 are remembered each year at two separate Pow-wows in Minnesota. The Mankato pow wow, held each year in September, commemorates the lives of the 38 but also seeks to reconcile the white and Indian communities. The Birch Coulee pow wow, held on Labor Day weekend, honors the lives of the 38 who were hanged in the largest mass execution in United States history.

Additionally, over 1600 Dakota people were rounded up and held in a concentration camp below Fort Snelling in the winter of 1862-63. In the spring the camp was moved southwest toward the current site of the Mall of America, prior to the mass removal of these people to Nebraska and South Dakota. More than 130 Dakota died in the camp and subsequent removal.

References

  • Carley, Kenneth. The Sioux Uprising of 1862, Minnesota Historical Society (1976), second edition. ISBN 0873511034
  • Schultz, Duane. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862, St. Martin's Press (1992). ISBN 0312070519
Last updated: 06-01-2005 23:56:16
Last updated: 08-17-2005 12:47:57