The Dakota War of 1862: The History and Legacy of the Sioux Uprising during the American Civil War by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2023-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

A depiction of the fort in the 1860s

The first major incident of the war occurred at the Lower Agency, which held the warehouse for storing food and the houses for various staff, including interpreters, the superintendents of farming and education, a blacksmith, and a carpenter. There was also a stable with horses, wagons, and assorted supplies. In all, on August 18, there were 17 traders and clerks and 65 others, including various officials and their families. Traders’ houses also contained goods, including food, guns and ammunition, alcohol, and various other goods.

The attack on the Lower Sioux Agency was a surprise, though tensions had obviously risen. The attackers killed 20 people at the Agency and captured 10, while about 47 escaped. There were no Dakota casualties. Trader Myrick, who’d said that if the Dakota couldn’t pay for food, they could eat grass and their own excrement, was among those killed at the Lower Agency. His body was found decapitated, and the mouth of his head was stuffed with grass (Anderson, 2019, pp. 84-85).

After the killings at the Lower Agency, many young Dakota men spread out and went on a killing rampage. The warriors burned houses and barns, killed livestock, and wiped out families. Hundreds of victims were recent immigrants from Germany and Norway, and the rampage was far larger than Inkpaduta’s of a few years before. Some 15 to 20 warriors raided the small settlement of Milford and massacred the inhabitants. At one house, they killed the parents and four children, aged two to eight. They killed at least 53 people in Milford, including 20 children. At Leavenworth, another tiny settlement, all 23 inhabitants were killed. On that day, at least 13 settlers were killed at each of eight settlements, the majority of them women and children. Renville County near the reservation had 1,200 settlers in 1862, and of them, 160 settlers were killed and 100 taken captive.

The Upper Agency was evacuated on the nineteenth, and the residents were led to safety by Anpetutokeca (John Otherday), a Christian Dakota with many white friends. It’s likely that the incident in July, when food was reluctantly distributed, tempered the Dakotas’ anger at the residents of the Upper Agency. The Dakota on the upper part of the reservation were much less involved, and many of them opposed the war.

It is not known how many of the Dakota participated in the killing spree or the battles that followed. Most of the fighting was done by men from the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute tribes, and it has been estimated that only about a thousand took part in the war.

Atrocity propaganda spread widely and included stories about children being murdered, babies being cut from their mothers’ wombs, and men being tortured and dismembered. Lurid rumors spread and contributed to the panic, compelling tens of thousands of settlers to flee east as far as the state capital, St. Paul. Some of the rumors were true, and among the 600 to 800 settlers killed, many were women, children, and elderly. Some families were simply butchered, though others were protected by some of the warriors.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.