Category: 19th Century

The Dakota War (1862): Part Five

9/9/2017

Source: Scott W. Berg. 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow,
and the Beginning of the Frontier's End (2012)

On 27 May 1863, Little Crow and the dozens of Dakotas still with him marched through the gates of Fort Garry (similar to Fort Snelling) in high style, with the Union Jack being prominently displayed. Over the next three days, Little Crow negotiated with Governor Alexander Grant Dallas, a British official that wanted nothing more than for Little Crow to turn around and go away. Dallas was the administrator of 1.5 million acres held by the Hudson Bay Company, but he had little influence/power over those in-or-near Fort Garry. Given a decent continent of British soldiers, Dallas would have forced Little Crow back to the U.S. on that very day.
Little Crow saw that there was very little chance of success in terms of being granted sanctuary in Canada, but he kept negotiating, swearing hatred for the U.S., and peace/friendship to Dallas and Britain. Increasingly desperate, Little Crow brought up the agreement his grandfather had made with the British over 50 years before. To Little Crow, that agreement might as well have occurred yesterday, but to Dallas, it was ancient history and irrelevant. Even after a second meeting, Dallas made his position clear to Little Crow that he should return to the U.S. Little Crow responded that if he was sent back, he and his followers would be forced to fight to the last man. Little Crow suggested that it would be to the advantage of Dallas and the British if they negotiated an agreement with General Henry Sibley that would allow Little Crow to peacefully return to Minnesota. All that idea accomplished was that Dallas could now make empty promises in order to get rid of Little Crow.

After the last fruitless meeting with Dallas on 29 May 1863, Little Crow knew that he would no longer be in a position of leadership among the Dakota that followed him to Canada. In June 1863, Little Crow returned to the U.S. with only 18 Dakota in tow, and he moved quickly to avoid conflict and/or capture. In early-June 1863, Little Crow was able to get an item in a St. Paul newspaper, which told Sibley and the rest of the authorities in Minnesota to look for him soon in the Lower Agency along the Minnesota River. Great curiosity and conjecture followed, with the fears of the whites in southern Minnesota once again stoked to a frenzy. Little Crow was truly returning to Minnesota, but with very few Dakota still following him.
For the Dakota that weren't hanged at Mankato or imprisoned at Fort Snelling, they would experience a sort of "Long Walk" via steamboat to a reservation in Missouri that was the rough equivalent of Bosque Redondo, all courtesy of outgoing Secretary of the Interior, Caleb Smith.

  In June 1863, General John Pope's punitive expedition started, months after Little Crow thought they would do so. Pope now operated like General George McClellan (cautious, playing "not to lose"), not as the bragging general he was before the 2nd Battle of Bull Run (a.k.a. 2nd Battle at Manassas) in August 1862. Pope was obsessed with the idea that Little Crow had well over a thousand warriors and was ready to invade Minnesota, and that the would even threaten St. Paul. Pope was still in Milwaukee, so it wasn't very difficult for Governor Alexander Ramsey to fuel Pope's fantasy by insisting that Little Crow still posed a significant threat to the state.
   Under Sibley's command, 3000 soldiers would execute a pincer movement in western Minnesota, cross into the Dakota Territory, and advance towards Devils Lake. Sibley's orders were to capture, kill, or scatter the masses of Dakota warriors; Sibley would kill over 100 Dakotas from every band of the Eastern Dakota during his trek west, but few of them would be warriors.
   In July 1863, Little Crow crossed back into Minnesota, and his small band split, some wanted to attack whites, while other wanted to steal horses. Little Crow and his son headed for the Big Woods. On 3 July 1863 (which was the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg), Little Crow and his son were picking raspberries northwest of Hutchinson, very near the site of the largest pitched battle of the Dakota War eleven months earlier. Suddenly, Little Crow was shot in the midsection, badly injured, but he got back up on a knee, and started to return fire on a white father/son duo. Little Crow wounded the father, but soon the son of the white father shot Little Crow in the chest. After doing just enough to ensure his father's successful transition to the afterlife, Little Crow's son, Wowinape, fled.

General Sibley had reached a point in the Dakota Territory where he had enough of the pursuit of Dakota warriors, and returned to Minnesota after, ironically, his advance scouts had captured Wowinape in late-July 1863 at Devils Lake trying to cross into Canada. An interview with Wowinape appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer on 13 August 1863, with the death of Little Crow prominently featured; no more rumors . . . Little Crow was dead.
Wowinape was put on trial, and four of the six white jurors agreed that he should be hanged. Sibley set the date of execution for 20 November 1863, pending approval from President Lincoln. Ironically, Pope interceded and stayed the execution, saying that a violation of military due process had occurred under the Articles of War. To Sibley, Pope's decision to obstruct the execution of Little Crow's son sullied the hangings of the 38 Dakotas, making them, in his eyes, illegitimate. But by late-1863, the whites in Minnesota didn't care if Wowinape was executed or not . . . in their eyes, the threat of a Dakota invasion ended when Little Crow was killed.

Summer 1864, the Battle of Killdeer Mountain: General Alfred Sully's forces killed over 100 Native warriors in what is now western North Dakota while only losing two soldiers (KIA). One of the warriors that learned a strong lesson at Killdeer Mountain was a 33 year old warrior by the name of Sitting Bull, who in just a few years would become the main figure among the Plains Natives that resisted white expansion. Sitting Bull vowed to never let his warriors fight using the strategies/tactics that the whites preferred; rather, Sitting Bull would hit-and-run and be scarce. However, Sitting Bull would eventually have to do what Little Crow was forced to do . . . draw a hard line in the ground, and do his best fighting it out with the white forces in what he knew would be a lost cause.

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The Dakota War (1862): Part Four

9/8/2017

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Source: Scott W. Berg. 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow,
and the Beginning of the Frontier's End (2012)

Lincoln knew that he couldn't delegate the authority to anyone else for the 303 Dakotas that were awaiting execution in Minnesota. The relevant section of the Articles of War demanded that Lincoln review the verdicts of Brigadier General Sibley's military court . . . but should Lincoln be a savior, or an executioner. Lincoln needed men he could trust, and one of them was Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher, who had just returned from Minnesota, and had firsthand knowledge of what was going on in the state.
Ass't SecInterior Usher had been sent to Minnesota after one-too-many of General John Pope's exaggerated dispatches had been received. On 1 December 1862, Lincoln instructed Usher and two other trusted men to review the military court transcripts, and find out which Dakotas were the most violent offenders (e.g. murder of noncombatants, rape, etc.). In Lincoln's point-of-view, the worst offenders deserved to be executed, but those convicted of less in his mind simply did not deserve that fate. Pope's criteria for execution had been soundly rejected by President Lincoln, and his troika, headed by Usher, was to get to the truth of the matter.

In Minnesota, the temperature among whites was boiling, and no one, Governor Ramsey, Pope, or Sibley was doing anything to simmer it down. By early-December 1862, Right Reverend Henry Whipple was in Minnesota, and publicly stated/wrote that it was wrong to execute all 303; like Lincoln, if there were going to be executions, Whipple believed only the most violent should be hanged.
On 4 December 1862, before a Cabinet meeting, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had reached the conclusion that Lincoln would spare most of the Dakotas. On 5 December 1862, Lincoln sent a communique to Sibley, ordering him to only execute 38, and also ordering Sibley to keep the remaining Dakotas safe until he received further orders. Lincoln had eliminated over 260 Dakotas from Sibley's list; in Lincoln's mind, once he decided on the final list of 38, he was done with the Dakota War and its aftermath in Minnesota.

Over 1000 soldiers were in Mankato, since the town was being overtaken by spectators that wanted to see the mass executions, and perhaps more than that. The constructed gallows measured 24 square feet and had 40 nooses, 10 to a side. The platform was designed so the 38 that were to be hanged would be dropped at the same time. The executions were originally scheduled for 19 December 1862, but they were delayed a week so enough of the right type of rope could be gathered.
At 10 am on 26 December 1862, the 38 were led to the gallows in the midst of a thick layer of revenge in the air among the assembled whites. The commander of the 1000 soldiers had done his best to limit the amount of alcohol that would lead to out-of-control mobs, but there was no way he could stop the many groups that were making plans (most of them haphazard) to kill the 260+ Dakota that were spared execution. When the 38 Dakotas would make their final walk to the gallows, there would be over 5000+ whites watching, which to the 38 would seem to be all the whites in the world.

General Pope had relocated to Milwaukee, and was in the process of planning a major offensive to find/defeat Little Crow, who Pope still believed was ready to invade Minnesota with thousands of warriors.
Pope's main reason for relocating his headquarters was that he wanted to be closer to Illinois, where his friends and political connections were located; Pope planned on making a successful comeback in the Union Army. Governor Ramsey was in St. Paul, while General Sibley was in Mendota, having just taken command of the "Minnesota District" in Pope's new military/administrative reorganization. Sibley was finally free of the Dakota War, and he looked forward to being able to put his personal, political, and business affairs back in order.
Right Reverend Henry Whipple decided to attend the executions, but on the way to Mankato he literally became stuck in the mud due to the extremely unseasonable warm weather. Whipple's vision of converting and assimilating Dakotas had become as impossible as trying to find passable roads to Mankato. Whites whose property had been destroyed assumed that the federal government would provide reparations, expecting that the unused annuities would be heading their way. Secretary of the Interior Caleb Smith had already agreed to the complete expulsion of the Dakota (and the Ho-Chunk) from Minnesota, emptying the fertile southern half of Minnesota for whites.

One of the whites present at the executions was William W. Mayo, whose sons (Will and Charles) would become the most famous siblings in the medical world. When the "master rope" was cut, the 38 condemned Dakotas fell, but their necks didn't snap, killing them relatively quickly, since there wasn't enough of the "right kind of rope" for the usual dropping distance; so, as a result, the 38 suffocated to death.
After the 38 were buried in a mass grave, Mayo had received permission (or was the first granted permission) to exhume and take the bodies he wished, which was a common medical practice during those years. Mayo wanted the body of Cut Nose for examination, the most brutal of the 38 hanged, since he had crossed paths with the huge Dakota warrior when he tried to steal Mayo's horse while drunk. Due to other doctors, grave robbers, and Mother Nature, by the Spring of 1863, none of the 38 remains were to be found in the mass grave. As for the gallows, pieces were auctioned-off, purchased by exhilarated whites . . .

. . . Little Crow Continues to Try and Find Sanctuary . . .

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The Dakota War (1862): Part Three

9/2/2017

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Source: Scott W. Berg. 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow,
and the Beginning of the Frontier's End (2012)

On 28 September 1862, Colonel Henry Sibley of the Minnesota state militia wrote General John Pope to announce the formation of a military commission to try the captured Dakotas. Sibley asked permission from Pope to quickly hang those that were found guilty, since he was unsure how far his authority reached on the matter of execution. Most likely, Sibley was trying to get Pope to take charge of the aftermath of the war, as well as trying to appease Governor Alexander Ramsey (and other state politicians), and to avoid vigilante justice at the hands of white mobs.
Sibley created a five man military commission, and all were officers under his command who had seen action against the Dakota in the last month. Never before had a military commission been created after a conflict between Natives and whites; many convictions would depend on the testimony of mixed-bloods and peace-party Dakotas.

For the 400 or so Dakota prisoners, there were was little food or provisions, winter was coming, and there was the constant threat of vengeance at the hands of white Minnesotans, both military and civilian.
Pope wrote Sibley that his goal was to exterminate the Sioux in Minnesota, meaning those under arrest and the Dakota still at large, and that all should be treated as wild beasts.
General-in-Chief Henry Halleck informed Pope that Sibley had been promoted to Brigadier General (of the Volunteers) in the Union Army, and that Sibley should remain in command of his troops in the field. Halleck wanted to deny Pope his goal of building his own system of military patronage under his command in Minnesota. In effect, Halleck's promotion of Sibley (mildly) told Pope to know his place in the chain of command; Pope took more than a week to inform Sibley of the promotion. Sibley was no longer a Minnesotan acting on behalf of Governor Ramsey and the state . . . Sibley now answered to Lincoln.

Little Crow was part of a group of over 1000 Dakotas heading west made up of all four bands of the Eastern Dakota, over half of the number Mdewakantons. But over 700 abandoned Little Crow before he left Minnesota, some going west at a faster pace, while others went back to throw themselves at the mercy of Brigadier General Sibley. By the time Little Crow was poised to leave Minnesota for the Dakota Territory, he had only about 300 in his group, which included only 100 or so warriors. To make matters even worse, only a few dozen Mdewakantons were truly loyal to Little Crow.
Little Crow reached Big Stone Lake, which was the area of Chief Standing Buffalo, the most powerful and influential of the Dakotas in the Upper Agency. Standing Buffalo told Little Crow about Sibley's letter offering peace if he captured/detained Little Crow. Standing Buffalo told Little Crow that while he wouldn't detain him or his people, he would not allow Little Crow passage through his territory as they moved west. Standing Buffalo added that he would not join, supply, or support Little Crow in any way. In closing, Standing Buffalo basically scolded Little Crow in front of the gathered Dakotas, and told him to go and leave his land. So, with no other option, Little Crow detoured around Standing Bear's lands, and left the prairies of Minnesota for the Great Plains of the Dakota Territory in order to escape Sibley's pursuit.

The Dakota War didn't end with a complete route of the Natives; Little Crow and the Dakota warriors had killed 93 white soldiers and between 400 - 600 white civilians while only suffering a few dozen warriors killed in action (most of the KIA were at the Battle of Wood Lake). But it was during the aftermath of the conflict that the numbers would shift back to the reality of the demographics in Minnesota, tilted heavily against all Dakotas, regardless of the level of involvement in the war. To the whites in Minnesota, Little Crow's escape to the Great Plains meant that the "Incarnate Demon" was still a major threat.
At Camp Release, the number of Dakota and mixed-blood prisoners reached over 1200, with about 300 of fighting age. Pope, all the while in St. Paul, sent message-after-message to Sibley, dispatches that were not grounded in any reality. Pope wanted Sibley to scorch the earth so Little Crow wouldn't have any supplies on his return; Pope had convinced himself that Little Crow would return with thousands of warriors to invade Minnesota. It simply didn't register to Pope that most Dakotas were not even remotely a threat, or that Little Crow was currently focused on escape, not invasion. In the field, Sibley had zero plans to send men into the Great Plains in pursuit of Little Crow, regardless of any orders to do so from Pope.

Pope was a posturing egomaniac with no grasp of the reality in the field, while Sibley was detailed, knowledgeable, and circumspect. Pope was still acting out of a furious sense of injustice at being stationed in Minnesota during the Civil War, very angry at being out of favor with his superiors in the federal government. Sibley, even 8 weeks after the Dakota War started, could only mount 100 men, with few supplies in tow for both men and animals. At this point, Sibley wanted out of his command, since he was feeling his age with a seemingly impossible task in front of him, and Sibley knew it wouldn't be difficult to replace him if the powers-that-be wanted to do so, but he kept on nonetheless.
On 6 October 1862, Sibley received a letter from Pope that directed him to offer a $500 reward for Little Crow, and to round up all Dakotas and make them prisoners in the Lower Agency. And, after a trial, those found guilty would be executed in front of the others. Under pressure to produce results based on those orders, Sibley arrested 250 Dakota in the Upper Agency, many of which were part of the peace-party aligned against Little Crow.

. . . Lincoln's Decision in Terms of How Many Dakotas Should be Executed . . .

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The Dakota War (1862): Part Two

8/16/2017

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Source: Scott W. Berg. 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow,
and the Beginning of the Frontier's End (2012)

   On 21 August 1862, news of the Dakota War reached the War Department in Washington, D.C. The telegraph room in the War Dept. had already become Lincoln's headquarters; the President's strategy was to take control of the war over his generals and to stay connected in real time with developments in the field as the technology allowed. The first telegram from Minnesota concerning the Dakota War was sent by Governor Ramsey to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and there was probably no worse time than late-summer 1861 for Ramsey to expect a quick reply from Stanton or Lincoln.
   Lincoln was under pressure from Horace Greeley, perhaps the most powerful newspaper publisher in the world, to immediately free the slaves with an official statement. Greeley had at least tacitly supported President Lincoln so far, since both were former Whigs that became Republicans. But Greeley had become apoplectic at Lincoln's refusal to issue an order of immediate emancipation. Lincoln paid attention to Greeley, since he was basically the voice of the Liberal Republicans, and he needed that wing of the party to support the war effort.
   On the same day that news of the Dakota War reached the War Department, Lincoln received a copy of an open letter Greeley had published in New York titled "The Prayer for the 20 Millions". In that open missive, Greeley accused Lincoln of dereliction of duty as President in terms of emancipation, telling Lincoln to get a backbone and declare slavery illegal everywhere so the Civil War could shift to a war for human rights. Lincoln wanted/needed to quickly respond, but the President was walking a political tightrope, in that he had already sent out secret "feelers" to publishers, including Greeley, about emancipation. As it turned out, Greeley published his open letter before he received Lincoln's secret letter concerning emancipation.

Lincoln's personal secretary, John G. Nicolay, arrived in St. Paul on 22 August 1862. Nicolay, more than any other observer in Minnesota at that time, was closest to Lincoln. Nicolay and John Hay were Lincoln's most trusted aids, and both came to see Lincoln as a father figure. Nicolay was the sour-and-crusty counter to Hay, who was a rakish people-person; they were an oddly paired but very effective/efficient team. Nicolay was part of a group sent by Lincoln to negotiate with the Ojibwe tribe for land in northern Minnesota. Nicolay was in the state to help the Department of the Interior gain the additional lands with making an additional mess of the situation. Nicolay and the other members of the President's group were trying to secure the last section of Minnesota for whites still held by Natives.
By the time Nicolay reached St. Paul, the Dakota War was in its fourth day, with warriors having already attacked Fort Ridgely and the town of New Ulm, and hundreds of whites had been killed or captured. Several companies of soldiers from Fort Snelling had been sent to the Minnesota River Valley to engage-and-defeat the Dakota warriors. Minnesota whites saw Natives everywhere in the state as a threat, with the conventional wisdom holding that the Ojibwe would soon be on the warpath in support of the Dakota as well as to protect their own lands. Nicolay started to head north per Lincoln's instructions, but the negotiations with the Ojibwe would be much different and more difficult than he or President Lincoln had originally envisioned.

By late-August 1862, it had become very difficult for the state of Minnesota to meet Lincoln's quotas for soldiers and to deal with the Dakota War. After being refused by SecWar Stanton and General-in-Chief Henry Halleck for additional support, Governor Ramsey sent a telegram directly to Lincoln; it was the first time Lincoln had been directly told what was going on in Minnesota. Very soon thereafter, Lincoln received a telegram from Nicolay on the Dakota War, which increased Lincoln's attention, since the telegram was from one of Lincoln's favorite people. Nicolay sent a much longer/detailed telegram to SecWar Stanton, and given Nicolay's reputation for understatement, his telegram (and those that followed), raised eyebrows in Washington, D.C. For the first time, Lincoln started paying attention to events occurring in Minnesota.
Lincoln notified Nicolay to inform Ramsey that he could hold back sending men to the Union Army to "attend to the Indians", but to not use the President's name in doing so. On 25 August 1862, the same day Little Crow began his retreat to the northwest, Greeley published two items in his New York Tribune. One of the items was Lincoln's reply to Greeley's "Prayers", which contained Lincoln's statement that if he could save the Union by freeing all, some, or none of the slaves, he would do so. Little did Greeley know at the time (nor did anyone else), but that phrase would become historically significant, showing Lincoln's political/military acumen at a crucial stage of the Civil War.

Next to Lincoln's reply was Greeley's totally unfounded opinion that the Dakota War had been instigated by Confederates or sympathizers (far too many whites in Minnesota believed that the South was behind the uprising). It never dawned on Greeley, or anyone else that believed in that conspiracy, that the Dakota themselves would have a reason to revolt. While Greeley's reply was based on total ignorance, he did hit the bullseye in terms of national anxiety that Confederate machinations were seemingly everywhere.
Soon, neighboring states to Minnesota sent telegrams to Washington, D.C. claiming sudden Native unrest and agitation (but nothing of the level that was happening in Minnesota). All of the movement and unrest was seen as the work of unseen sinister Confederate forces. In reality, there was no way Natives were able to unite in the way whites claimed, but the belief that the Confederacy was backing/instigating Native unrest continued for the duration of the Civil War. The unity that existed was among whites, fearful that Natives were ganging up on them to take their land.
By February 1863, Lincoln would formally (and very quietly) dismiss the idea of a coordinated offensive of Natives organized by the Confederacy; Lincoln correctly saw the idea as pure fantasy. One of the consequences from not having as many soldiers from Minnesota in the Union Army was that Lincoln, sooner than what he wanted, authorized African-Americans soldiers to be used.

Little Crow knew that Colonel Henry Sibley was finally moving towards his retreating band of Dakota with great force. A message from Sibley was delivered to Little Crow telling him to release his captives, and then they would discuss matters, and talk like men. Little Crow had decided, even before hostilities had actually started, that he would die in the way of a Dakota warrior rather than be captured and hanged.
Sibley also sent out an open letter to Dakotas not involved, telling them in effect to get out of his way, and to make it obvious that they were not combatants (e.g. fly a "truce flag"). Little Crow was not only a target of white soldiers, but also of many Dakota, and even some of those around Little Crow were thinking of ways to capture him to end the war. Little Crow calculated that engaging Sibley and his men very soon would provide a chance to hit-and-then-run to the Great Plains, where Sibley would have to suspend the chase due to the winter.
On 13 September 1862, Nicolay left St. Paul for Washington, D.C., carrying a report for Lincoln and notes that would become the basis for the first article about the Dakota War to appear in the Eastern press. After the disastrous Union defeat at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run in late-August 1862, where Lee gained control of all of Virginia, Lincoln had to figure out what to do with the disgraced General John Pope. Lincoln had replaced General George B. McClellan with Pope (the son of a judge that Lincoln knew and admired) in order to find a general that would defeat General Lee in battle; the move not only backfired, but Lincoln had to place McClellan back in command of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln decided to send Pope to Minnesota, which in essence federalized the Dakota War. Pope, of course, saw the posting as nothing more than punishment and exile, an insult to his honor and abilities . . .

. . . President Lincoln Gets Involved . . .

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The Dakota War (1862): Part One

8/3/2017

1 Comment

Source: Scott W. Berg. 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow,
and the Beginning of the Frontier's End (2012)

The name of the territory/state of Minnesota was from a Dakota word that referred to the clarity of lake water, and it was in the Land of 10,000 Lakes that 38 Dakota warriors were hanged, which represented the largest mass execution in US History. During the Civil War, there were hostile engagements between whites and Natives, such as the Long Walk of the Navajo, the Sand Creek Massacre, and the extended campaigns against the Apache, Paiute, Shoshoni, and Arapaho. However, the first hostile engagement during the Civil War occurred in August of 1862 in southern Minnesota. The Dakota War started a sequence of events that made up the Indian Wars during/after the Civil War, culminating with Little Bighorn (1876), the Flight of
Chief Joseph (1877), the killing of Crazy Horse (1877) and Sitting Bull (1890), and the Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890).

The people that were called "Sioux" by whites were a collection of tribes, bands, and villages loosely bound by language, custom, and kinship (the name "Sioux" was given by the long-time rivals of the Eastern Dakotas, the Ojibwe, before the word was used by whites). In 1862, the Lakota were the largest group, with over 20,000, and lived further west beyond the Missouri River to the Black Hills in the Great Plains The Western Dakota (Yankton / Yanktonais) lived between the Missouri River and the Red River of the North. The Eastern Dakota was the division most involved in the violence in Minnesota in 1862 (The four major bands of the Eastern Dakota were the Sissetons, Wahpetons, Mdewakantons, and the Wahpekutes). The ecosystem of the Eastern Dakota in Minnesota was much different than the Lakota on the Great Plains, with tallgrass prairie, woodlands, rich black soil, and rivers/lakes . . . and the whites in Minnesota deeply resented the presence of the Dakota on lands they coveted.

18 August 1862: Chief Little Crow was 52 years old, and his influence had been waning among the people of his village and tribe (just a few days before, Little Crow had been stripped of his powers as tribal speaker). Little Crow had seen more of the U.S. than any other living Dakota, traveling far to the West and as far East as Washington, D.C., where he met with Presidents and Cabinet members. Little Crow had survived two bouts of smallpox, and had negotiated treaties ceding millions of acres of Dakota land in exchange for annuities (cash payments); the Dakota were dependent on the federal government since the fox/beaver populations had thinned out to next-to-nothing.
In 1845 Little Crow returned from his travels west to take over leadership of his tribe, since his father (also named Little Crow) had died; the village was on the Mississippi River across from what would become St. Paul. Little Crow was a Mdewakanton Dakota, and his warriors on this day were very agitated, and the tensions with area whites was very high. Little Crow was informed of the "Egg Incident" of the previous day: the version the warriors told Little Crow was that they had asked for some food/drink from a white farmer 80 miles from their village on the southern banks of the Minnesota River. The warriors claimed that they had been wrongly accused of stealing eggs and of being cowards, and that they were dared to shoot their weapons by whites.

Whatever the true cause, in the end 3 white men, a white woman, and a 15 year old girl were killed. Other whites raced away to raise the alarm, and the 4 Dakota warriors ran in the opposite direction, stealing a wagon and a team of horses. Adding to the tension were the missing annuities from the federal government (a financial casualty of the Civil War), dishonest white traders, Dakota women being raped by whites, and the ever-vanishing land with more restrictive boundaries. Many Dakota warriors were ready to take revenge on a system that was rigged against them.
Little Crow listened to what the warriors said, saying nothing. Little Crow knew it was impossible to turn back the tide of the advancing white population, since like Red Cloud he had seen with his own eyes the reality of what was coming from the East. Little Crow also knew that the killings near Acton, MN would not go unpunished, in that the Dakota as a whole would be held responsible for the actions of a few. Little Crow, far more than the other Dakota, knew that his people and the whites in Minnesota could no longer pretend to peacefully coexist.

Minnesota had only been a state since 1858, and the feeling of Manifest Destiny was overflowing among the state's whites. In addition to the missing annuity payments, Little Crow and his people were denied credit by the white traders, and while crops were plentiful in the fields, harvest was months away, and game was scarce. Little Crow's people were in a bad situation; the promised annuities weren't coming, and white citizens in southern Minnesota were at the highest level of hostility towards the Dakota.
Little Crow scolded the 4 warriors for their decision-making and impulsiveness . . . and for their intoxication. Little Crow stated that the murder of the women in particular was bad news for the Dakota, in that an onslaught of great magnitude was coming that the Dakota would not be able to withstand. The delayed annuity payments would never arrive, and what was left of Dakota lands would be lost to the whites; they would be forced west to unknown lands. One of the enraged Dakota warriors shouted out that Little Crow was a coward.

After being called a coward, Little Crow jumped up and took the insulting warrior's feathers and threw them to the ground, berating all those present. Little Crow reminded his tribe of the past, and he also told them that he wasn't a fool, either. Little Crow continued, saying that the warriors had no chance against the whites, even with the war to the South taking so much of their attention, men, and resources. Little Crow, however, closed by saying he was ready to die with his people in the coming onslaught.
Little Crow was in the middle of the spectrum compared to the hot-headed warriors who wanted war, and the Peace Chiefs (who were older than Little Crow). The consensus of the council was to go to war, and woe to any Dakota that didn't join in the fight. War parties were immediately formed to go into the night and kill whites. As for Little Crow, in his mind, he had chosen Death With Honor, not war . . .

. . . the Dakota War Continues, and the Reaction
of the Governor of Minnesota . . .

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The Dakota War (1862): Part Five

The Dakota War (1862): Part Four

The Dakota War (1862): Part Three

The Dakota War (1862): Part Two

The Dakota War (1862): Part One

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