By Sheila Regan 
As the sesquicentennial of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 approaches, our series addresses the ongoing "war" about the accuracy of historical description, about the naming of events, and about the relation of peoples and history in Minnesota in the 21st century -- and about the remembrance and commemoration of the historical events of 1862. This is a three-part series produced by Sheila Regan, edited by Twin Cities Daily Planet and funded by the Spot.Us community.
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The Minnesota Historical Society doesn't mention the concentration camp on their website’s Brief History Page on Fort Snelling. However, the Visitor Center at Fort Snelling State Park, which is run by the Department of Natural Resources has a memorial for the Dakota who were held at the camp and uses the term “concentration camp.” (Photo by Sheila Regan)
In 1987, on the 125th anniversary of the execution of the Dakota warriors who were hanged at the end of the war, Minnesota's Governor Rudy Perpich declared a Year of Reconciliation. A statue, called Winter Warrior was created at the site of the execution, and the remains of the executed men were returned from museums to the Dakota for proper burial.
Naming events and places is a powerful part of history-making, and today's battles center over both naming and telling the story.
Many historians and activists insist that Fort Snelling was, in fact, a concentration camp for the 1600 Dakotas interned there after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Those interned in the camp were women, children and old men, not combatants. Hundreds died as a result of the cold and abuses, and those who lived were removed from Minnesota in the spring.
The Minnesota Historical Society, which has a historical interpretive center at Fort Snelling, doesn't call it a concentration camp and doesn't mention the concentration camp on their website's Brief History Page. However, the Visitor Center at Fort Snelling State Park, which is run by the Department of Natural Resources, does have a memorial for the Dakota who were held at the camp and uses the term "concentration camp."
In Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America, Jack Weatherford writes about a picture from the 1862-3 encampment at Fort Snelling:
The tepees seem so traditional, yet the identical appearance of the tepees, neatly arranged with an enclosure, offers a strange glimpse of a form that was to haunt the twentieth century. The pictures show us the birth of an institution, the beginning of a whole new social practice of concentrating innocent civilians into an area and imprisoning them for protracted periods without charging them with any crime.
Slide show of memorials at Fort Snelling State Park Visitor Center
Mankato State University's Minnesota history website also describes Fort Snelling as a concentration camp:
The remaining Dakota surrendered. Sibley's force rounded up 1700 Dakota women, children, and elders and began a forced march from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. They walked 20 miles a day. Along the way they were subjected to physical and verbal violence by local white people. New Ulm residents poured hot, scalding water over their heads. Many were killed or died from hunger and sickness. ...
The remaining Dakota prisoners were treated with brutality. Soldiers held prisoners at Fort Snelling through the winter. The soldiers treated them brutally, violating the women and then killing them. Many people died from disease because of the crowded conditions. Others committed suicide because of the horrors they saw there. Some days soldiers buried as many as 50 people in a mass grave.
The Lower Sioux Agency historical site, which is run by the Minnesota Historical Society, also does not use the term "concentration camp." Instead, the term "prison camp" is used. The problem with "prison camp," is that it implies that the inhabitants of the camp were criminals, which they were not.
At the Lower Sioux Agency Historical Site, which is run by the Lower Sioux Community with funding from Minnesota Historical Society, Anthony Morse provided documentation for changes that were made on the historical markers inside the visitors' center. The changes were made, he said, in 2000.
The documents indicate historical information that used to be shown at the site and which now has been removed. For example, there was information about Major Lawrence Taliaferro, an Indian Agent at Fort Snelling. Previous signage spoke of Taliaferro's "sincere interest in the welfare of the Dakota and Chippewa," who "came to respect his truthfulness." The marker read: "His efforts went far to keep peace on the Minnesota frontier for many years."
Another marker, about Fort Ridgley, formerly titled "Big Guns Hold the Fort," then was changed to "The Door to the Valley."
While efforts have been made in recent years to tell a more balanced story, the old markers, pieces of history themselves, remain. Plans for commemoration of the anniversary in 2012 also focus on story-telling from the point of view of white settlers.
Bob Burgess, from the Brown County Museum in New Ulm, said that the museum is already planning for the 2012 anniversary exhibit. That is not uncommon, as the museum often plans 5-10 years in advance. Burgess said that the museum will have 40 narratives of white families who survived, whether they left their homes or stayed to defend. There will also be a Katie Groper walking tour that will lead tourists through sites of the war, telling the story through the eyes of a white child who lived through it.
The exhibit will also feature stories from the Dakota who helped the settlers.
The New Ulm Journal reported that, in February 2009, a group of New Ulm historians and public figures met to discuss ideas for the exhibit and other plans for commemorating the anniversary. The newspaper stated that at the meeting the participants discussed inclusion of the Dakota community:
Participants repeatedly emphasized they would like to be as inclusive as possible; and that the programming should provide a broad, balanced view of the events - including perspectives that have often been left out of the picture - for example, those of Dakota farmers or Dakota Christians, and also views of the war's aftermath.
When I interviewed Burgess, he used the term "friendlies" to describe the Dakota farmers who did not fight. While it is true that there were Dakota people who did not fight, the term further marginalizes the Dakota who fought.
Truth Telling
For many years, the U.S.-Dakota War was not called that, but rather the Sioux Uprising. According to the Sioux Uprising narrative, which still persists, the Dakota people instigated teh war and were responsible for it. As the 150th anniversary of the U.S. - Dakota war approaches, a number of groups are organizing efforts to make sure that the full story is told.
Last fall, more than 100 Dakota people from Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Saskatchewan, came together for the 2009 Dakota Nation "We are One" talking circle/conference. In that conference, open to both Dakota and allies, attendees discussed healing, education and social justice for the Dakota people. There was also a segment of the conference open only to Dakota tribal members to discuss the future. Participants toured the Dakota concentration camp at Fort Snelling, and also sacred sites in the area. The organizers plan a similar event this year.
Dakota people do not agree on how discussions should take place and/or what actions should be taken. Waziyatawin said she decided not to attend last year's conference when she found out that it would take place at Fort Snelling, which she considers an icon of imperialism. "It was appalling to me that they would choose that place," she said. She also said that she was at a different place than some of the organizers, as she is more interested in private discussions, rather than public ones.
"We can't afford to wait any more," said Waziyatawin. "We can't afford to talk about these things. We need action."
"We need a land base," she said. "We now own 0.012 percent of Minnesota land. That is appalling to anybody's standards. If Minnesotans want to do something that is meaningful - that is reparation - they can start with land return."
Mankato State University has an online Minnesota history site, with an account of The U.S.-Dakota War that explains the reasons for the war and the attacks on and repression of the Dakota people after the war.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Historical Society will plan its own way to remember the Sesquicentennial of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. As of the time of writing this article, MHS was seeking a coordinator to oversee plans for the anniversary.
Little Crow was killed after the war, while picking berries near Hutchinson. His body was mutilated, and various pieces of his body, including his scalp and skull, ended up at the Minnesota Historical Society. (Photo by Sheila Regan)
In Minnesota, as in other parts of the country, white settlers stole the Indian people's land, under the cover of laws. According to As the Grass Shall Grow and Rivers Flow, by Clifford Trafzer, In 1500 Native Americans living within the border of what became the United States owned approximately three billion acres of land. By 1887, whites had reduced their land base to 150,000,000 acres.
As the sesquicentennial of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 approaches, our series addresses the ongoing "war" about the accuracy of historical description, about the naming of events, and about the relation of peoples and history in Minnesota in the 21st century -- and about the remembrance and commemoration of the historical events of 1862. The series:
In Minnesota, an 1805 U.S. treaty with the Sioux allowed the United States to establish military posts on nine square miles of land at the mouth of the St. Croix River, including St. Anthony Falls and extending nine miles on each side of the river. In return, the U.S. government was to pay $2,000 (about two cents an acre) to "deliver the value therof in such goods and merchandise as they shall choose." The 1805 treaty allowed the Dakota to continue to pass, re-pass, hunt or "make other uses" of the land.
Waziyatawin is a Dakota writer, teacher and activist with a PhD in American History from Cornell University. She wrote in What Does Justice Look Like? that the 1805 treaty only contained two Dakota signatures, and that the United States also provided 60 gallons of liquor to the men in attendance, a frequent tactic, according to Waziyatawin, used by the United States by "lubricating the dealmaking."
Another treaty with the Dakota was made in 1837 during Andrew Jackson's policy of Indian removal. This treaty ceded all Dakota land east of the Mississippi for $1 million. However, instead of a lump sum, the treaty divided the money, so that while some cash was given out, much of it was to come in payments over time. Some was to go toward farming equipment in order for the Dakota to take on the white man's ways, some was to go toward medical aid, some was to come in the form of goods, and some was to pay off debts to the white traders.
After the 1837 treaty was signed by the Mdewakanton leaders, one of the four Eastern Dakota bands, the promised goods and payments did not arrive on time, according to Linda M. Clemmons in We Will Talk of Nothing Else: Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837.
One clause of the 1837 treaty provided that the government would invest $300,000 and pay the Mdewakanton "annually, forever, an income not less than five percent. . . a portion of said interest, not exceeding one third to be applied in such as the President may direct." According to Clemmons, all of the parties agreed that the clause meant that the government was to spend $5,000 per year for the benefit of the Dakota. But instead of paying in cash, the government interpreted the clause to mean that money would pay for educational programs by missionaries. The Dakota disagreed, and argued "that at the time of the treaty they were assured that the money be used for something other than education."
According to Clemmons, because no compromise could be reached, by 1850 the unpaid amount due had accumulated to more than $50,000.
In 1851, the Treaty of Traverse de Sioux was signed with the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands and the Treaty of Mendota was signed with the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands. These two treaties transferred most of the Dakota land in Southern Minnesota to the U.S. government and called for the U.S. government to assist the Dakota in schools, trade, and farming, and to pay them yearly in food and gold. Waziyatawin writes that the United States threatened to withhold rations (guaranteed by previous treaties) if the Dakota leaders did not sign the treaties.
The U.S. government was also to pay for the Dakota to move to reservations. However, before the U.S. officials signed the treaty, the part that secured reservation lands for the Dakota was crossed out.
The treaty also called for the U.S. government to give the Dakota money to pay for the debts the Dakota owed to traders. That money ended up going directly to the white traders, but the Dakota's debt to the traders continued to grow, because prices were allowed to remain very high. Food that was supposed to come to the Dakota frequently arrived rotten, causing widespread hunger.
In 1858, Minnesota became a state, and several Dakota bands, led by Little Crow, traveled to Washington, D.C., to sign the Treaty of 1858, which entailed losing the Northern half of the reservation along the Minnesota River and rights to the quarry at Pipestone, Minnesota.
Meanwhile, more and more settlers came to Minnesota, and game became scarce. Promised goods owed to the Dakota never came. The Dakota were starving. They were angry.
WAR
On August 15, members of the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute went to the Lower Sioux Agency to negotiate to obtain food, and were rejected without payment. According to legend, trader Andrew Jackson Myrick said, "As far as I'm concerned, let them eat grass."
Two days later, violence erupted when several Dakota men attempted to steal food and ended up killing settlers near Acton, in Meeker County. Soon, Little Crow agreed to lead an attack against the Lower Sioux Agency. Andrew Myrick was among those killed, with grass stuffed in his mouth.
The Dakota then attacked various settlements in Milford, Leavenworth, and Sacred Heart. Battles continued at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm. The war continued with the Battle of Birch Coulee, and at Fort Abercrombie. The Dakota lost the Battle of Wood Lake and surrendered at Camp Release on September 26, 1862. In all, the war lasted less than six weeks.
Some 303 Dakota warriors were sentenced to death, but President Lincoln pardoned some of them. On December 26, 1862, 38 were hanged in Mankato -- the largest mass execution in this country's history.
Hanging at Mankato. Library of Congress. From: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, January 24, 1863, page 285. Artist: W. H. Childs
The pardoned prisoners were imprisoned and eventually moved to a camp in Rock Island, Illinois, where a third of them died.
Other Dakota died in the aftermath of the war. Some 1600 Dakota women, old men, and children were sent to a concentration camp in Pike Island, Minnesota, at Fort Snelling. Some 300 died there, according to Corrin Monjeau-Marz in Dakota Indian Internment at Fort Snelling, 1862-1864.
In 1863, the U.S. Congress declared all treaties with the Dakota null and void and expelled the Dakota people from Minnesota. Bounties were set as rewards for killing any Indians who remained in the state. An issue of The Daily Republican, a newspaper from Winona, Minnesota, dated September 24, 1863 stated:
The state reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.
That meant that white settlers were paid for killing Indians.
For Little Crow, the bounty on his scalp was set at $500. He was killed while picking berries near Hutchinson. His body was mutilated, and various pieces of his body, including his scalp and skull, ended up at the Minnesota Historical Society. In 1971, Little Crow's grandson Jesse Wakeman fought to be allowed to bury his grandfather, and eventually managed to have the remains returned. Little Crow is now buried in Flandreau, South Dakota.
The only Dakota who were allowed to stay in Minnesota were those from the Mdewakanton band, who didn't fight in the war. The Mdewakanton were given reservations at Lower Sioux, Prairie Island, and Shakopee.
Most of the remaining Dakota fled Minnesota, with many ending up in Canada or at the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota, where many more died. Others joined up with other Dakota bands for continued struggle against the United States.Every summer since 1976, a celebration called Summer Rendezvous or Stockade Days has taken place at Forest City in Meeker County. Forest City's replica stockade was built, according to its website, "as a memorial to the brave pioneers who settled here and sought safety behind its walls during the Sioux Indian Uprising of 1862."
As the sesquicentennial of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 approaches, our series addresses the ongoing "war" about the accuracy of historical description, about the naming of events, and about the relation of peoples and history in Minnesota in the 21st century -- and about the remembrance and commemoration of the historical events of 1862. The series:
Like the Forest City Stockade, other historical markers reinforce the narrative that white Americans have been telling themselves about the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862: that the Dakota attacked the innocent settlers, that the pioneers bravely fought to defend themselves, that the Dakota got what they deserved. As the 150th anniversary of the war approaches, Dakota people and allies are organizing around a different narrative - a story of a people driven to desperation by broken promises and starvation, and of genocide in Minnesota history.
I attended Stockade Days this year with my friend Sally Jo Sorenson, a blogger who lives in the area and showed me some of the sites and historical markers of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. The Stockade Days celebration reminded me of the Renaissance Fair, with many people dressed in period clothing, and various vendors selling arts and crafts, and mementos of the "olden days."
Some of the vendors sold tomahawks, knives, beaded sheaths and bags, and dolls that looked like Native Americans. All of the vendors and people that I saw at the festival were white. The U.S. Census Bureau shows Meeker County's Native American population as 0.3 percent - fewer than 80 people.
Another example of Minnesota's historical memory of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 is the site where Joseph Brown lived, near Sacred Heart, Minnesota. In 1857, Brown was appointed by Governor Henry Sibley to serve as the United States Indian Agent, a federal appointment.
The Brown House historic site
In 1858, Brown was responsible for leading the Dakota to Washington D.C., where they signed the 1858 treaty and forfeited their reservation on the north side of the Minnesota River in exchange for the promise of payments. They never received those payments, and instead were left devastated and starving.
Brown was replaced as Indian Agent in 1861 by Thomas Galbraith, described on the Brown Memorial's website as "a man who was unfamiliar and unsympathetic with the Dakota people and their needs." During the war, the Brown House was burned to the ground. There are two plaques at the historical site. The older plaque, erected in 1958, reads:
These Ruins are all that remain of a large stone house built in 1861 by Joseph R. Brown, Frontier Fur Trader. The house known as Father and Gay Castle, was a center of hospitality and happy family life for the short time that Brown, his mixed-blood Sioux wife, and their twelve children lived in it. On August 19, 1862, during the Sioux Uprising, the Browns were forced to flee their home which was looted and burned by the attacking Indians.
The plaque doesn't talk about how the Dakota were literally starving to death, and that is why they attacked the white settlers. It makes no mention of the broken promises made by the federal government, which Brown represented to the Dakota.
The newer plaque was installed by the Minnesota Historical Society. While the newer Minnesota Historical Society plaque has a less racist narrative, the 1958 plaque still stands prominently for all to read.
Near the Brown house is another historical site, the Schwandt Memorial Monument in Renville County along CR 15. It remembers the Schwandt family members killed by Dakota warriors. Near the monument, which was erected in 1915, another sign, created with funding by the Federal Highway Administration and Walmart, which reads:
The Minnesota River Valley has a story to tell about Indigenous people struggling to make a home amid a changing environment. The Minnesota River Valley also has a story to tell about the struggles of the pioneering immigrant families who eventually created one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world.
That same plaque, after telling the story of the Schwandt family's murder, goes on to describe what happened to the Dakota:
After General Sibley recovered the white and mixed-blood captives at Camp Release, the Dakota were interned at Fort Snelling for the winter. In this crowded space surrounded by a tall wooden fence, many became ill and died.
The plaque's account of the Dakota internment at Fort Snelling doesn't fully describe what many today call a concentration camp, where hundreds of Indian women, children and old men died that winter.
The dual - and dueling - narratives are evident in the language used to name the events of August and September 1862. Over the past half-century, their name has changed from the Sioux Massacre to the Sioux Uprising to the Dakota Conflict or Dakota War. In this series, we have chosen to call it the U.S.-Dakota War, a name that reflects the reality that two nations were involved. This series both reports the "war" about the accuracy of historical description, about the naming of events, and about the relation of peoples and history in Minnesota in the 21st century, and reviews the historical events of 1862.
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