The 1862 Sioux Uprising

On August 18, 1862, Sioux Indians began an uprising in Minnesota. An excerpt from the article:

"On August 17, four Dakota warriors killed five settlers, including two women, near Litchfield while foraging for food. A tribal council decided that night to drive the whites from the river valley. Led by Chief Little Crow, the Dakotas attacked the Redwood Agency, killing more than 40 civilians and soldiers. Among the dead was Myrick, whose body had grass stuffed into the mouth.

During the next two weeks, bands of Sioux swept through the countryside, burning farmsteads, slaying men and seizing scores of women and children. An estimated 650 Dakotas attacked the village of New Ulm, where the defenders fought from behind street barricades. Although most of the town’s buildings were destroyed, the warriors were repulsed. By month’s end, much of the white population of southern Minnesota had abandoned the region.

When the Dakotas struck, Governor Ramsey appointed Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley (not to be confused with his distant cousin, Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley) to raise a volunteer force and lead it against them. Sibley’s ill-armed and ill-equipped 1,400- man army advanced up the Minnesota River valley, finally meeting Little Crow’s warriors at Wood Lake on September 23. The engagement amounted to a standoff, but it ended the uprising. While Little Crow and other Dakotas fled west, the soldiers herded about 2,000 Dakotas into custody. Sibley, who was promoted to brigadier general on September 29, established a military commission to “try summarily” individual Sioux for “murder and other outrages.” A diarist recorded that there was a “thirst for revenge” in the white community.

A week before the Battle of Wood Lake, Maj. Gen. John Pope arrived in Minnesota. Exiled by the Lincoln administration to the Department of the Northwest after his defeat at Second Bull Run, Pope directed the final efforts against the Dakotas. In the ensuing weeks, Pope initiated plans for future campaigns against the tribe in Dakota Territory. The military commission, meanwhile, conducted the semblance of trials against 393 accused warriors, convicting 321 of them and sentencing 307 to death.

Lincoln directed, however, that the records of the proceedings be forwarded to him before any sentences were carried out. He listened to pleas of clemency and knew of the clamor for revenge. In the end, Lincoln approved the executions of 38 Dakotas who had been convicted of either rape or murder. New evidence later spared one of the condemned men. On December 26, in Mankato, Minn., 2,000 onlookers watched the hanging of the 38 Dakota men, the largest mass execution in American history."