The Dakota 38

On Dec 26, 1862, In Mankato MN, 38 Dakota men, were marched in single file, to a scaffold guarded by 1,400 troops in full battle dress. Paraded before a crowd of citizens there to witness the largest mass execution in the history of United States. While a Dakota death Song was being sung, the pull of a single lever ended the lives of 38 Dakota Men.  

 The Dakota War was a culmination of years of broken Treaties (1805, 1851, and 1858), late annuity payments and the refusal to extend credit or provide food and supplies to the starving Dakota preceding the 1862 outbreak. The conflict included a variety of forced geographical and cultural changes, Government agents and Missionaries hoped the Dakota could be taught to live as farmers and worship as Christians. Friction between Dakota and whites grew as white settlements pushed into Indian hunting grounds conditions were further inflamed.  Several days before the 17^th day of August 1862, when the storekeeper Andrew J. Myrick, brutally remarked (referring to the Dakota People) that, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass".   One consequence that later led to four Rice Creek Dakota’s killing five settlers On August 17, 1862, near Acton, MN. "The Acton murders set into motion a series of events that were to have serious consequences for Minnesota and the Nation”.  This became known as the "Sioux Massacre" or” Sioux Uprising”, a war that resulted in exile and the loss of the Dakota (Sioux) traditional way of life.

  At the war’s conclusion 1600 Dakota Men Women and Children were interred at Ft Snelling until May 1863. Of the 1600 several hundred Dakota men were tried by a five man territory commission and on November 5, 1862, and 303 Dakota men were found guilty and were sentenced to death.  After the trial, Henry B. Whipple, A Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota met with President Abraham Lincoln on behalf of the condemned Dakota men. Upon listening to the Bishop and personally reviewing the trial records, Lincoln commuted the death sentence for all but 38 of the prisoners.

 The 265 Dakota men whose death sentence was commuted were later transported to a Prison camp near Davenport Iowa.

 The surviving 1300 Dakota Men Woman and Children that were interned at Ft Snelling until May 1863 were later transported down the Mississippi River and up the Missouri Rivers to Crow Creek South Dakota.

 The Minnesota uprising was one of the nation’s most costly Indian wars, both in lives lost and property destroyed. It resulted in the near depletion of the frontier life and the exile of the Dakota from Minnesota.

 Chief Big Eagle said many years later, “It seemed too sudden to make a change . . . If the Indians had tried to make the whites live like them, the whites would have resisted and it was the same with many Indians.”

 The six-week conflict ended with 38 Dakota being publicly hung in the largest mass execution of American history in Mankato, MN. December 26, 1862.

265 Dakota men sent to Prison near Davenport Iowa.

1300 Dakota Men Woman and Children exiled to Crow Creek, South Dakota.