One of the first concentration camps in the world - Ft. Snelling, Minnesota, 1862

[dpbrown]

An very comprehensive article on the 1862 Dakota uprising:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862

A page on the 2002 Commemorative Walk of the Dakota from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling:
http://www.dakota-march.50megs.com/prisoners.html

[HopeFor2006]

1. Thanks for the follow up

:hi:

[dpbrown]

11. Know your place names: Chiefs Shakopee and Mankato were leaders of the Dakota during the war

Chiefs Wabasha and Wacouta argued for peace.

The Dakota Conflict Trials

[dpbrown]

2. November 7, 1862 - Trail of Tears: The Forced March of the Dakota

Dakota Commemorative March

On November 7, 1862, a group of about 1,700 Dakota, primarily women, children and elderly, were force-marched in a four-mile long procession from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. Two days later, after being tried and convicted, over 300 condemned men who were awaiting news of their execution were placed in wagons while they were shackled and then transported to a concentration camp in Mankato, Minnesota.

Both groups had surrendered to the United States army at the end of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, believing they would be treated humanely as prisoners of war. Instead, the men were separated out and tried as war criminals by a five-man military tribunal. As many as forty cases were tried in a single day, some taking as little as five minutes. Upon completion of the trials, 307 men were condemned to death and 16 were given prison sentences. The remaining Dakota people, primarily women, children, and elderly were then forced to endure brutal conditions as they were forcibly marched to Fort Snelling and then imprisoned in Minnesota's first concentration camp through a difficult winter.

As both groups were paraded through Minnesota towns on their way to the camps, white citizens of Minnesota lined the streets to taunt and assault the defenseless Dakota. Poignant and painful oral historical accounts detail the abuses suffered by Dakota people on these journeys. In addition to suffering cold, hunger, and sickness, the Dakota also endured having rotten food, rocks, sticks and even boiling water thrown at them. An unknown number of men, women and children died along the way from beatings and other assaults perpetrated by both soldiery and citizens. Dakota people of today still do not know what became of their bodies.

After 38 of the condemned men were hanged the day after Christmas in 1862 in what remains the largest mass hanging in United States history, the other prisoners continued to suffer in the concentration camps through the winter of 1862-63. In late April of 1863 the remaining condemned men, along with the survivors of the Fort Snelling concentration camp, were forcibly removed from their beloved homeland in May of 1863. They were placed on boats which transported the men from Mankato to Davenport, Iowa where they were imprisoned for an additional three years. Those from Fort Snelling were shipped down the Mississippi River to St. Louis and then up the Missouri River to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. A memorial to some of those people was dedicated at Crow Creek in 2001.


The memorial at Crow Creek

This ethnic cleansing of Dakota people from Minnesota was one part of the fulfillment of a larger policy of genocide. Governor Alexander Ramsey had declared on September 9, 1862 that "The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state." The treatment of Dakota people, including the hanging in Mankato and the forced removal of Dakota people from Minnesota, were the first phases of Ramsey's plan. His plan was further implemented when bounties were placed on the scalps of Dakota people which eventually reached $200. Punitive expeditions were then sent out over the next few years to hunt down those Dakota who had not surrendered and to ensure they would not return. These actions cleared the way for white settlement of Minnesota.

While small numbers of Dakota people began trickling back to their homeland by the late 1880s, most Dakota people remain in exile from their ancient homeland.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. The parallels with the U.S. military's treatment of "enemy combatants" and

"insurgents" are part of a shameful tradition.

[dpbrown]

8. President Lincoln's Order Authorizing the Execution of the 38 Dakota

"Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following names, to wit (39 names listed by case number of record: cases 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 22, 24, 35, 67, 68, 69, 70, 96, 115, 121, 138, 155, 170, 175, 178, 210, 225, 254, 264, 279, 318, 327, 333, 342, 359, 373, 377, 382, 383).
The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence.
Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States"

[dpbrown]

9. The execution of 38 Sioux at Mankato, Minnesota on December 26, 1862.

[Pierre.Suave]

4. How sad

thanks for sharing.

[dflprincess]

5. TPT made an excellent documentary called "Dakota Exile"

it originally aired in the late 90s but they do replay in occasionly. Another one is "The Dakota Conflict". It's been on channel 2, but I'm not sure who produced it but I think Garrison Keillor is the narrator.

And, of course, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown is the book to read. I think it was the first one that told American history from the native people's point of view. It has a chapter on the 1862 "uprising" called "Little Crow's War". The book was a real eye opener when it was first published.

[dpbrown]

6. Little Crow was shot by a settler in 1863 while picking raspberries

On June 10, 1863, Little Crow left from his sanctuary at Devil’s Lake to make a raid into Minnesota to gather up horses for himself and his family. He brought with him several men and one woman. The group soon split up, leaving Little Crow and his fourteen-year-old son alone in the "Big Woods". On the morning of July 3, 1863, Little crow and his son, Wawinape stopped to pick raspberries near Hutchinson. A settler named Nathan Lamson spotted the two Indians while he was hunting with his son and shot and killed Little Crow. Wawinape was injured but managed to return to his people at Devil’s Lake.

Wawinape was later captured and sent to Davenport, IA, where he converted to Christianity and took the name Thomas Wakeman. He became the founder and first Secretary of the Y.M.C.A. among the Sioux. Wawinape had four sons and two daughters: Solomon, Ruth, John, Jesse, Ida, and Alex Rev. John Wakeman was a Presbyterian preacher, Jesse Wakeman, who succeeded his father at the Y.M.C.A., and Alexander Wakeman, who was an American Marine in France during World War I, and later graduated from an Eastern medical college and became a prominent practicing physician. Ida discovered Little Crow's bones hanging in a Minnesota museum. She returned home and told her brother, Jesse, who in turn went to the museum to see for himself and then preceded to "fight" for the return of his grandfather. Eventually the bones were returned and Little Crow was buried in 1971.

Famous Minnesotans: Little Crow

[dpbrown]

10. The man who shot and killed Little Crow got a $500 bounty from the State of Minnesota

Assassination. Nice job if you can get it.

[dpbrown]

7. Picture from Wikipedia of the Concentration Camp at Pike Island, below Ft. Snelling

[dpbrown]

12. December 29, 1890: Seventh Army Massacres the Dakota at Wounded Knee

One Hundred and eighteen years ago today the battle begun against the Dakota people in that mass hanging in Minnesota was finished.

Then came the mission schools.

[pengillian101]

13. JUST One Hundred and eighteen years ago...

Hard to imagine.