The anniversary of the Dakota war upon us and everyone I know is talking about how the Natives 'slaughtered' 400 plus white men while only casually mentioning how they were starving and conned out of their deal with the government. So my question - how many of them starved waiting for the government to enact their promise (before they finally had enough and retaliated). Basically where I live I always hear about how 'awful' the Natives where without the slightest empathy of what happened to the settlers we took the land from.
Every site that I have checked out gives a very vague synopsis (maybe there isn't one?) But I still feel that Natives are getting the short end of the stick even in this day and age - can anyone help me with giving the Native causalities? Just want to present a different side to everything. Thanks!
The Dakota War is a tragic episode in American history for those on both sides of the conflict. Raiding parties of Dakota soldiers massacred hundreds of men, women, and children in an orgy of violence that shocked a nation already reeling from the American Civil War. Unfortunately, for a long time, “civilized” America did not talk about the causes of the uprising that sparked an explosion of the frontier violence. People viewed it as savages bein’ savages. Furthermore, the vast majority of surviving sources were from the perspectives of the settlers, who portrayed themselves as terrified victims. Of course, in an era where white America was the pinnacle of the American dream, where anti-Indian sentiment remained high, and blatant racism dominated the academic and cultural discourses, most history books reflected this perspective; it is a perfect example of “history being written by the winners.” Interestingly, if you visit the site where the 1851 treaty was signed (unless it has changed in the last couple of years since I visited), the signs are all very settler-centric, glossing over the hardships that the Dakota suffered at the hands of the settlers. Though your sources don’t like to admit it, the Dakota War was a reaction to betrayal and conflict, stemming from the American genocide of the Dakota. I realize that that statement is perhaps unnecessarily inflammatory (with the majority of Native Americans and whites as enablers at worst, innocent bystanders at best), but if we are going to tell the other side of the story, perhaps we should call it what it was.
Mni Sota was the traditional heartland of the Allies (the Dakota), a territory that stretched from the shores of Lake Michigan down into Iowa and Illinois and out onto the plains of North and South Dakota. The name “the Allies” refers to the legendary councils that tied the seven bands of Dakota together. From the 1830s on though, the Dakota faced increasing encroachment from white settlers, forcing the various Dakota bands to migrate to new lands. From 1850 to 1860, the white population of Minnesota alone grew from 6,000 to 200,000.
This led to increased pressure on the Dakota to sell their land to Minnesota and open it up for farming. In Traverse des Sioux in 1851, today St. Peter, Minnesota, settlers and Dakota leaders signed a treaty granting 24 million acres of Dakota territory to the United States in exchange for a reservation, development for schools, farms, and commerce, and yearly payments and food. Their reservation would straddle the Minnesota River through the heart of Minnesota. They were also promised $500,000 to move their villages and to settle their debts with the traders.
Unfortunately, white fur traders claimed most of the money to cover the debt into which the Dakota had fallen as a result of unscrupulous trade deals that they had orchestrated over the years. Thus, the traders made a huge profit as a result of the treaty, which was technically illegal. So Alexander Ramsey, the governor of Minnesota, had to rewrite the treaty and get follow-up signatures of Dakota leaders agreeing that they didn’t actually own the land of the reservation and were merely living on the land for five years. Through arm twisting and false promises, they managed to get the necessary signatures. Settlers poured into the newly opened territory. They intruded on the newly created Dakota reservation, further concentrating the 6,000 to 8,000 Dakota of the area around the Minnesota River (it’s difficult to know exactly how many people were living there at the time since censuses were not carried out). Virtually none of the guarantees for food, clothing, or money were carried out. Thus, the indigenous people who controlled much of the midwest for millennia were starving and freezing to death in their own land.
Tatanka Najin, a Dakota leader wrote: “I was to receive a great quantity of money every year. The money left the hands of my Great Father, but in passing from hand to hand, each one taking his part, nothing reached my hand more than a dollar. I was to receive a great quantity of goods and blankets. My Great Father did send me all of these, but on the road, each one took his morsel and I often got but a small bit of cotton. All this made my heart sad...”
Dakota leaders traveled to Washington D.C. in 1858 to air their grievances. However, the officials in Washington pointed out that their five-year rights to the land had expired and forced them into negotiations for a new treaty. The government refused to allow them to keep the land, instead only granting small 80 acre plots south of the Minnesota River to individual families (tantamount to rejecting traditional ways of life in favor of settling and farming in the traditional European style). In short, the land promised to them once again vanished, reducing their land holdings to mere slivers. Trapped in Washington, the leaders were forced to sign the treaty for which they were guaranteed $1.25 per acre, which was later reduced to $.35 per acre by Congress. The Dakota would receive virtually none of the money.
Taoyateduta, one of the Dakota leaders wrote in response: “You promised us that we would own the same land forever, and yet you now want to take half of it away...after a while, we will have nothing left”
Obviously, the Dakota were not happy about the new terms; their suffering was made worse by the destruction of most of the corn grown in the summer of 1861 by insects. The winter that year was exceedingly brutal, and game was harder and harder to find as a result of more competition for resources.
By now, roughly 5,000 Dakota people were near starvation. Dozens, likely hundreds, lost their lives waiting for American promises that never came. Taoyateduta explained that “we have waited a long time. The money is ours but we cannot get it. We have no food but here these stores are filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement so we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry, they help themselves.” Dakota warriors went to the settlers to claim their food, but they were rebuffed. One government official famously said, “let them eat grass or their own dung.”
At this point, virtually anything would have sparked a war. Some Dakota men got into a scuffle with a settler family and killed them. This was the event that sparked the war, but as you can see, it was not Dakota warriors victimizing innocent white settlers as some would later claim. The Dakota had put up with violation after violation for more than a decade. Furthermore, despite all of these transgressions, a large section of the Dakota population remained steadfastly against violence. There was hearty debate about their course of action. Eventually though, the most important Dakota leaders consented to the war and led raids throughout southern Minnesota. At the same time, other Dakota bands and mixed raced indigenous people actually helped white settlers escape the violent onslaught according to Anderson and Woolworth.
Again, precise figures of Dakota casualties were never collected. Of the thousands of starving Dakota, only a few hundred, no more than 800 participated in the fighting. Of those, several hundred are estimated to have been killed, according to the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. However, it became increasingly clear as frontier militias and American regulars and cavalry arrived that the Dakota could not win. Anti-war sentiments divided Dakota groups; many sued for peace. Eventually all would agree to end the fighting, which led to the largest mass execution in American history.
Ramsey is quoted to have said: “the Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” Thus, after the conflict thousands of Dakota were forced to relocate to other reservations. Of those, hundreds, perhaps thousands, died of starvation, exposure to the elements, and disease. Many thousands more Dakota fled west into North and South Dakota and North into Canada where they integrated and mixed with other subjugated and non-subjugated groups. All of this change resulted in another devastating consequence: the irreconcilable loss of culture and language. Other states forced their non-subjugated Native Americans to move west as well. Refugees met up with other indigenous bands, and conflicts continued throughout the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, eventually leading to the famous massacre at Wounded Knee. The consequences of the Dakota War sped up the destruction of the Dakota and the accompanying cultural change, resulting in a massive loss of oral history, cultural customs, and life.
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