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| Sunday, 27 November 2005 |
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Famous Trials that shook the world : The Dakota conflict trial by Lionel Wijesiri Long before Europeans made their first forays into the American territory now known as Minnesota, Native American tribes regularly crossed the Minnesota River at a fording place few miles away from the city of Mankato. Early French explorers gave the site its present name, Traverse des Sioux (Cross Place of the Sioux People).
As a well-travelled junction, it became a natural convergence point for commerce both for the Native Americans and for European traders and trappers. By the 1820's, Louis Provencalle, a Frenchman had set up a permanent fur-trading post at Traverse Des Sioux. Soon a settlement sprang up around the post. Treaty On July 23, 1851, one of the most significant Indian treaties in American history was signed between the US government and the Native Americans of the Dakota. This treaty was mainly instrumental in opening the American west to European settlement. Some 24 million acres in Minnesota were ceded by the Dakota chiefs in exchange for reservation lands and for $3,075,000 to be paid over a 50-year period in annual annuities of goods and money - about 12 cents an acre for some of the finest agricultural land in the country. The treaty left about 7,000 Dakota people with two reservations, each 20 miles wide and 70 miles long, with a 10 mile strip on each side of the Minnesota River. Most of the younger Dakota population believe that the treaty undermined their age-old culture. Before long, annuity payments reduced the once proud Dakota to the status of dependents. They reduced the power of chiefs because annuity payments were made directly to individuals through licensed traders and agents rather than through tribal structures. The licensed traders sold goods to Natives at exorbitant profit and frequently took "claims" for money from individual Dakota paid out of tribal funds. Delayed and skipped payments drove the Dakota to increasing desperation with each passing year. Through deceptive business practices, unscrupulous traders and government agents took much of what the Indians had. Poverty, starvation, and general suffering led to unrest that in 1862 culminated in the US-Dakota Conflict, which launched a series of Indian wars on the northern plains that did not end until 1890. Beginning of the conflict The first fight had broken out in Spirit Lake, Iowa in 1857. Most historians trace the beginning of the conflict to the killing of five whites by four young breakaway band of discontented Dakota men on August 17, 1862. This event caused uproar among the settlers and confrontation began. Natives living on the reservation convinced a reluctant Chief Little Crow to lead further attacks. Events moved quickly. Forty-four Americans were killed in the first full day of fighting. Nearly two hundred additional whites died over the next few days. Panicking settlers fled eastward from twenty-three counties, leaving the south-western Minnesota frontier largely depopulated. On August 23, a second Dakota attack left most of the town burned to the ground, and 2,000 refugees, mostly women, children, and wounded men, set off in wagons and on foot for Mankato, thirty miles away. On August 26, Governor Alexander Ramsey appointed Colonel Henry Sibley, a former governor, to command American forces and to suppress the uprising. Sibley advanced with 1,400 soldiers and the next day, succeeded in lifting the Dakota siege. Counterattacks However, further counterattacks by Minnesota troops resulted in another massacre of white soldiers on September 2. Repeated appeals for help were required before President Abraham Lincoln appointed General John Pope to assemble troops from the Third and Fourth Minnesota Regiments to quell the violence. Although the expedition got off to a slow start, the Natives were finally defeated at the Wood Lake on September 23, 1862. Most Dakota fighters surrendered at Camp Release on September 26. Records conclusively show that more than 150 soldiers and settlers died in the conflict, though many more are believed to have died in small raids or after being captured. Estimates for US losses range up to 800, though there is no accurate accounting of Dakota deaths. Over the six weeks that followed, the military court tried a total of 393 cases, convicting 323 and sentencing 303 to death by hanging. The trials were quick affairs, getting quicker as they progressed. The court heard nearly forty cases on November 3, the last day it met. The court believed that mere participation in a battle justified a death sentence, so in the many cases, perhaps two-thirds of the total, where the prisoner admitted firing shots it proceeded to a guilty verdict in a matter of a few minutes. After the defendant gave whatever response he cared to make to the charge, prosecution witnesses were called. Where prosecution witnesses contradicted the testimony of the defendant, the court almost invariably found the prisoner to be guilty. Largest mass execution However, President Lincoln commuted the death sentences of all but 38, largely due to the pleas from Bishop Henry Whipple for clemency. The 38, for whom the evidence seemed strongest, were executed by hanging in a single day on December 26, 1862 in Mankato. This event stands as the largest mass execution in American history. A drawing of the mass hanging was for long a familiar icon in Minnesota. The 38 men who were hanged are remembered each year at two separate pow-wows in the state. The Mankato pow-wow, held each year in September, commemorates the lives of the condemned men, but also seeks to reconcile the white and Indian communities. The Minnesota Native War of 1862 was the first violent engagement between the Sioux Indians and the United States. It would not be the last, however. The battle of Killdeer Mountain occurred in 1864, Red Cloud's War followed in 1866-1868, and the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 and Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 also involved the two parties. When the Dakota were defeated, the federal government rounded up the survivors. They were forcibly expelled from the state. Most were sent to Crow Creek in South Dakota, where disease and starvation killed many. This event was one of the most heartbreaking results of the 1862 war. There's still a reservation there, and (according to many human activists) times are still hard. |
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