Following the
Dakota War of 1862
The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, or Little Crow's War, was an armed conflict between the United States and several eastern bands of Dakota people, Da ...
, the U.S. government executed 38 Dakota men in
Mankato, Minnesota
Mankato ( ) is a city in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, Blue Earth, Nicollet County, Minnesota, Nicollet, and Le Sueur County, Minnesota, Le Sueur counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is the county seat of Blue Earth County, Minnesota. The ...
, on December 26, 1862, in the largest mass execution in American history.
[Anderson, Gary Clayton (2019). ''Massacre in Minnesota: The Dakota War of 1862, the Most Violent Ethnic Conflict in American History.'' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ] In the course of the conflict, 358 American settlers, 77 soldiers, and 36 militia had been killed. A military commission assembled in the aftermath carried out rushed trials of the Dakota men, some lasting only minutes, and ultimately sentencing 303 to death.
President
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
reviewed the cases, commuting 264 sentences but approving 39 executions, one later reprieved, amid pressure from Minnesota officials for harsher punishment.
The executions, conducted on a specially built gallows before 4,000 spectators, were guarded by 2,000 troops due to local hostility.
[Lincoln and the Hanging of 38 Sioux, 1862, American History: Western Exploration & Native Americans, Bad Ideas, JF Ptak Science Books LLC, John F. Pta]
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A 1912 monument to the hangings was removed in 1971 amid protests, and today, the Mankato Pow-wow and memorial rides honor the executed, reflecting ongoing efforts to address this traumatic history.
Background
During the 1862 Dakota War, Dakota men attacked over 500 white settlers and took hundreds of "mixed-blood" and white hostages, almost all women and children, causing thousands more to flee southern Minnesota.[Anderson, Gary Clayton (2019). ''Massacre in Minnesota: The Dakota War of 1862, the Most Violent Ethnic Conflict in American History.'' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ] By the end of the war, 358 settlers had been killed, in addition to 77 soldiers and 36 volunteer militia and armed civilians killed in battle. The total number of Dakota casualties is unknown, but 150 Dakota men died in battle. Approximately 2,000 Dakota surrendered or were taken into custody at Fort Snelling
Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint An ...
, including at least 1,658 non-combatants, as well as those who had opposed the war and helped to free the hostages.
Trials
On September 27, 1862, Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley
Henry Hastings Sibley (February 20, 1811 – February 18, 1891) was a fur trader with the American Fur Company, the first U.S. Congressional representative for Minnesota Territory, the first governor of the state of Minnesota, and a U.S. mi ...
ordered the creation of a military commission to conduct trials of the Dakota after the Dakota War of 1862
The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, or Little Crow's War, was an armed conflict between the United States and several eastern bands of Dakota people, Da ...
. One year later, the judge advocate general determined that Sibley did not have the authority to convene trials of the Dakota, due to his level of prejudice, and that his actions had violated Article 65 of the United States Articles of War
The Articles of War are a set of regulations drawn up to govern the conduct of a country's military and naval forces. The first known usage of the phrase is in Robert Monro's 1637 work ''His expedition with the worthy Scot's regiment called Mac-k ...
. However, by then the executions had already occurred, and the American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
continued to distract the U.S. government.[Anderson, Gary Clayton (2019). ''Massacre in Minnesota: The Dakota War of 1862, the Most Violent Ethnic Conflict in American History.'' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ]
The trials themselves were deficient in many ways, even by military standards; and the officers who oversaw them did not conduct them according to military law. The 400-odd of trials commenced on 28 September 1862 and were completed on 3 November; some lasted less than 5 minutes. No one explained the proceedings to the defendants, nor were the Dakota represented by defense attorneys.
The trials were also conducted in an atmosphere of extreme racist hostility towards the defendants expressed by the citizenry, the elected officials of the state of Minnesota and by the men conducting the trials themselves. By 3 November, the military commission had held trials of 392 Dakota men, with as many as 42 tried in a single day. By 7 November the verdicts were in; the military commission announced that 303 Dakota prisoners had been convicted of crimes murder and rape and were sentenced to death.
President Lincoln was informed by Maj. Gen. John Pope of the sentences on 10 November 1862 in a telegraphic dispatch from Minnesota. His response to Pope was: "Please forward, as soon as possible, the full and complete record of these convictions. And if the record does not indicate the more guilty and influential, of the culprits, please have a careful statement made on these points and forwarded to me. Please send all by mail."
When the death sentences were made public, Henry Benjamin Whipple
Henry Benjamin Whipple (February 15, 1822 – September 16, 1901) was the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, who gained a reputation as a humanitarian and an advocate for Native Americans.
Summary of his life
Born in Adams, New York, he w ...
, the Episcopal
Episcopal may refer to:
*Of or relating to a bishop, an overseer in the Christian church
*Episcopate, the see of a bishop – a diocese
*Episcopal Church (disambiguation), any church with "Episcopal" in its name
** Episcopal Church (United States ...
bishop of Minnesota and a reformer of U.S. Indian policy, responded by publishing an open letter. He also went to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
in the fall of 1862 to urge Lincoln to proceed with leniency. On the other hand, General Pope and Minnesota Senator Morton S. Wilkinson warned Lincoln that the white population opposed leniency. Governor Alexander Ramsey
Alexander Ramsey (September 8, 1815 April 22, 1903) was an American politician, who became the first Minnesota Territorial Governor and later became a U.S. Senator. He served as a Whig and Republican over a variety of offices between the 18 ...
warned Lincoln that, unless all 303 Dakota were executed, " ivate revenge would on all this border take the place of official judgment on these Indians."
Lincoln completed his review of the transcripts of the 303 trials with the help of two White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
lawyers in under a month. On December 11, 1862, he addressed the Senate regarding his final decision (as he had been requested to do by a resolution passed by that body on December 5, 1862):
:Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on the one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females. Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found. I then directed a further examination, and a classification of all who were proven to have participated in ''massacres'', as distinguished from participation in ''battles''. This class numbered forty, and included the two convicted of female violation. One of the number is strongly recommended by the Commission which tried them for commutation to ten years' imprisonment. I have ordered the other thirty-nine to be executed on Friday, the 19th instant."
In the end, Lincoln commuted the death sentences of 264 prisoners and allowed the execution of 39 men. On December 23, however, Lincoln suspended the execution of one of the 39 condemned men, Tatemima (Round Wind), after Sibley telegraphed him that new information led him to doubt the prisoner's guilt. Thus, the number of condemned men was reduced to the final 38.
Even partial clemency resulted in protests from Minnesota, which persisted until the Secretary of the Interior Secretary of the Interior may refer to:
* Secretary of the Interior (Mexico)
* Interior Secretary of Pakistan
* Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (Philippines)
* United States Secretary of the Interior
See also
*Interior ministry ...
offered white Minnesotans "reasonable compensation for the depredations committed." Republicans did not fare as well in Minnesota in the 1864 election as they had before. Ramsey (by then a senator) informed Lincoln that more hangings would have resulted in a larger electoral majority. The President reportedly replied, "I could not afford to hang men for votes."
Execution
Companies D, E, and H of the 9th Minnesota, Companies A, B, F, G, H, and K 10th Minnesota and the 1st Minnesota Cavalry were part of the 2,000 man military guard for the 38 prisoners hanged December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota
Mankato ( ) is a city in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, Blue Earth, Nicollet County, Minnesota, Nicollet, and Le Sueur County, Minnesota, Le Sueur counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is the county seat of Blue Earth County, Minnesota. The ...
. It remains the largest single-day mass execution in American history. The size of the guard force was dictated by the numbers of angry Minnesotans encamped at Mankato and the concern of what they wanted to do to the prisoners not being hanged.[Lincoln and the Hanging of 38 Sioux, 1862, American History: Western Exploration & Native Americans, Bad Ideas, JF Ptak Science Books LLC, John F. Pta]
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The execution was public, on a square platform designed to drop from under the condemned. The gallows
A gallows (or less precisely scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sa ...
was built around the outside of the square with ten nooses per side. After the regimental surgeons pronounced the men dead, they were buried ''en masse'' in an unfrozen sand bar
In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is a natural submerged ridge, bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material, and rises from the bed of a body of water close to the surface or ...
of the Minnesota River. Before they were buried, an unknown person nicknamed "Dr. Sheardown" possibly removed some of the prisoners' skin. Despite having a large guard force posted at the grave-site, all of the bodies were exhumed and taken away the first night.
At least three Dakota leaders escaped north to the Red River Colony
The Red River Colony (or Selkirk Settlement), also known as Assiniboia, was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on of land in British North America. This land was granted to Douglas by the Hudson's Bay ...
. In January 1864, Little Six and Medicine Bottle were kidnapped, drugged and taken back across the border
Borders are generally defined as geography, geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by polity, political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other administrative divisio ...
to Fort Pembina, where they were arrested by Major Edwin A. C. Hatch. Hatch's Independent Battalion of Cavalry took the two chiefs to Fort Snelling, where they were tried and later hanged in November 1865.[Winks, Robin W. (1960). ''The Civil War Years: Canada and the United States'', Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press, 1960, p. 174.] Little Leaf managed to evade capture.
Medical aftermath
Because of the high demand for cadaver
A cadaver, often known as a corpse, is a Death, dead human body. Cadavers are used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue (biology), tissue to ...
s for anatomical study, several doctors wanted to obtain the bodies after the execution. The grave was reopened in the night and the bodies were distributed among the doctors, a practice
Practice or practise may refer to:
Education and learning
* Practice (learning method), a method of learning by repetition
* Phantom practice, phenomenon in which a person's abilities continue to improve, even without practicing
* Practice-based ...
common in the era. William Worrall Mayo
William Worrall Mayo (May 31, 1819 – March 6, 1911) was an English American medical doctor and chemist. He is best known for establishing the private medical practice that later evolved into the Mayo Clinic. His sons, William James Mayo and ...
received the body of ''Maȟpiya Akan Nažiŋ'' (Stands on Clouds), also known as "Cut Nose". Mayo brought the body of Maȟpiya Akan Nažiŋ to Le Sueur, Minnesota
Le Sueur ( ) is a city in Le Sueur County in the U.S. state of Minnesota, between Mankato and the Twin Cities. It lies along the Minnesota River and U.S. Highway 169. Le Sueur was named in honor of French explorer Pierre-Charles Le Sueur. ...
, where he dissected it in the presence of medical colleagues. Afterward, he had the skeleton cleaned, dried and varnished. Mayo kept it in an iron kettle in his home office. His sons received their first lessons in osteology based on this skeleton.
In 1998, the identifiable remains of Maȟpiya Akan Nažiŋ and other Dakota were returned by the Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic () is a Nonprofit organization, private American Academic health science centre, academic Medical centers in the United States, medical center focused on integrated health care, healthcare, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science ...
to a Dakota tribe for reburial per the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990.
The Act includes three major sets of provisions. The "re ...
. The Mayo Clinic created a scholarship for a Native American student as apology for having misused the chief's body.
References
{{reflist
19th-century executions by the United States military
Dakota War of 1862
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
Mankato, Minnesota
Massacres in 1862