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Dakota Plan Events for Minnesota Sesquicentennial
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by Nancy Nielsen, W A M M
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As the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission plans yearlong events to celebrate 150 years of statehood, the Dakota people, who 150 years ago lost lands and lives in southern and western Minnesota, will host events to air their story—some as part of the sesquicentennial and others in response to it.
Many readers have probably heard about the six-week U.S.-Dakota War in August 1862. Starving Dakotas waited for gold promised in their treaties, but always late from the government. Some Dakotas attacked settlers to obtain food, and the war began, with Dakota soldiers attacking farms, the town of New Ulm, and Fort Ridgely. Angry settlers immediately demanded that all Dakotas be removed from Minnesota.
“[All] Sioux Indians must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state,” responded Governor Alexander Ramsey in an act of state-condoned genocide. He commissioned Colonel Henry Sibley to lead the troops. When the war ended, over 300 Dakota men were sentenced to death: among them, Dakotas and mix-bloods who had opposed the war. In December, Sibley presided over the hanging of 38 men in Mankato. Most of the rest of the Dakota were forcibly removed from the state or killed for a $25 to $200 bounty on their scalps.
While most textbooks end Dakota history at this point, the Dakota survived, and many today live in Minneapolis and other urban areas. (Together with the Lakota and Nakota people, the Dakota make up the Sioux Nation.) One of four Dakota bands, the Mdewakanton have communities in Mendota and Shakopee and three reservations (Prairie Island, Lower Sioux near Morton, and Upper Sioux near Granite Falls) in Minnesota. (This article tells the story of the Mdewakanton Dakota only; every band and nation, including Anishinabe—Chippewa, Ojibwe—from northern Minnesota has, of course, its own story to tell.)
Dakota leaders in Minnesota today would like the public to understand their history. In 1805, they ceded land in a fraudulent treaty that made room for Fort Snelling and other military posts at the mouth of the St. Croix River and along the Mississippi River. In 1837, they ceded all land west of the Mississippi River. In 1851, Ramsey and Sibley pressured and intimidated them to cede all Dakota land except two 150-mile strips along the Minnesota River. In 1858, the Dakota were forced to give up the north strip.
The land could no longer support them; the people had been pushed to desperation and were literally starving. Merchants refused to sell food being stored for them in warehouses until the Dakota had gold to pay for it. “If they are hungry, let them eat grass,” stated one of the merchants. Many felt they had this choice: fight or starve.
After the war ended, about 1,700 Dakotas (mostly women and children) were force-marched to Fort Snelling, where they spent the winter in a prison camp in tipis, barricaded in an area so small and crowded that it contained no trees; henceforth, the people did not have sufficient firewood or food. Three hundred died. In spring, women and children were sent by boat to St. Louis on a trip that missionary John Williamson described as “nearly as bad as the Middle Passage for slaves.” From there, they traveled up the Missouri River to exile on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. Meanwhile, remaining Dakota men were sent to prison in Davenport, Iowa, where they were held for three years. Their treatment was so poor that only one-third of them survived.
Believing that not only the Dakotas but society at large must confront the truth of our state history, Dakota writers have recently published several books and articles that recount events from the Dakota viewpoint. In her collection of essays, In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors, Waziyatawin (Angela Wilson, PhD) provides accounts passed from generation to generation of the women’s forced march from Morton to Fort Snelling in December, 1862. These are in the words of her grandmother, Maza Okye Win (Isabel Roberts)
“. . . They [Dakotas] passed through a lot of towns, and they went through some where the people were real hostile to them. They would throw rocks, cans, sticks, and everything they could think of—potatoes, even rotten tomatoes and eggs.
“. . . When they came through New Ulm, they threw cans, potatoes, and sticks. Then there was a big building at the end of the street. The windows were open. Someone threw hot, scalding water on them. The children were all burned and the old people too. As soon as they started to rub their arms the skin just peeled off. Their faces were like that, too. the children were all crying, even the old ladies started to cry, too. . . .
“They would feed them, giving them meat and potatoes, or bread. But they brought the bread in on big lumber wagons with no wrapping on them. They would just throw it on the ground. . . . The meat was the same way. They had to wash it and eat it. A lot of them got sick. They would get dysentery and diarrhea and some bad cases of whooping cough and smallpox. . . . A lot of them were complaining that they drank the water and got sick. . . .
“It was on this trip that my maternal grandmother’s grandmother was killed by White soldiers. . . .”
Telling these stories of ethnic cleansing and genocide is an important step that helps Dakotas and all of us do the work of grieving and eventually healing. The Winona Dakota Unity Alliance will hold a daylong healing circle in Winona on May 16 in conjunction with the sesquicentennial; go to www.mn150years.org for updated information. Another group, called the Oceti Sakowin (the Seven Council Fires), has planned its own events and protests surrounding the sesquicentennial.
As peace activists, we have often stood up for justice around the world. We chant, “No justice, no peace.” The Dakota (and other indigenous people) cannot have peace without justice here in our state. This May, we have an opportunity to stand with them for justice for the grievous injuries they have suffered. Please respectfully support the Dakota at these events.
To read the internet blog where several StarTribune articles and letters to the editor are posted, go to: www.waziyatawin.blogspot.com. |
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© 2008 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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