Thirty-eight condemned to hang

Part 2 of 2

Dakota warriors attack White settlements during the Dakota War of 1862

Even out in the rough and tumble American West, war had rules, and history clearly indicates both sides had a problem observing them. The folks in Washington knew the rules, and expected others to observe them when warring against the United States. They routinely broke those rules when warring against others. The tribes had no rules. For most of them, the nicest thing they would do to their enemies was kill them. When tribes appeal to justice, to humanity, they base that appeal upon the standard of White people, pointing out their hypocrisy, but what is again swept under the shame stained historical carpet, is that tribes had no standards.

A prime example of the no standard reality occurred in the 1640’s, when the Iroquois attacked their cousins and chief rivals, the Huron. Both tribes numbered between 30 and 40 thousand, and were evenly matched save that the Iroquois were armed with Dutch muskets. The Huron could not get muskets from their French ally unless they agreed to convert to Catholicism, which the Tribe would not do. The Iroquois showed no mercy, and when they were done over half of the Huron tribe was wiped out. The remnants fled down into what is now the United States, and are scattered from Ohio to Oklahoma.

We know many elders counseled the Dakota against a war on the Whites, but the initial attack on the trading posts at Lower Sioux Agency set the no holds barred stage, where nothing was off the table, and slaughter ensued—women, children, the elderly, the infirm, no one was spared. This was not war, it was war crime. That both sides are war criminals at some point, in an indisputable manner, never excuses war crime as an acceptable standard. There is never any excuse for the wanton slaughter of children, the rape of women, and the mutilation of victims.

There will never be an exact accounting of how many settlers died this way during Little Crow’s War. But by all accounts it was well over 500, but it may have been twice that. Large scale professional soldier retaliation was certain to come. The Whites brought the incompetent John Pope, fresh from his sad defeat at Second Bull Run, to Minnesota to coordinate and direct that retaliation. At the Battle of Wood Lake, on September, 23, 1862, cannon fire softened up the Dakota resistance hunkered down in a canyon, and then the resistance surrendered to overwhelming force. Little Crow’s War was over.

Charles Eastman’s account covers Little Crow’s return from Canada, and what happened when he was three days from St. Paul: “(Little Crow) meant to steal into the city by night and go straight to Governor Ramsey, who was his personal friend. He was very hungry and was obliged to keep to the shelter of the deep woods. The next morning, as he was picking and eating wild raspberries, he was seen by a wood-chopper named Lamson. The man did not know who he was. He only knew that he was an Indian, and that was enough for him, so he lifted his rifle to his shoulder and fired…the brilliant but misguided chief, who had made that part of the country unsafe for any white man to live in, sank to the ground and died without a struggle.”

For just over a month the Dakota controlled their portion of Minnesota. They convincingly defeated three militias, they obliterated two small settlements and twice besieged the hamlet of New Ulm, burning much of the town. They ambushed many detachments, and attacked two forts. They raided farms and waylaid travelers. They did take prisoners, so even among the warriors there were those urging restraint. Little Crow is purported to have said on August 19: “Soldiers and young men, you ought not to kill women and children…you should have killed only those who have been robbing us for so long. Hereafter make war after the manner of white men.”

It is reasonable to argue that this does not jibe with his actions before, during and after the conflict. On the day he died he was attempting to contact his friend Governor Ramsey, the same Ramsey that would exhort Lincoln to sign the execution order for over 300 Dakota warriors. Anything less, Ramsey insisted, would result in great bloodshed.

When a rage subsides there is deep regret for the death and destruction left in its wake, and no doubt these same warriors, had they the chance to do it differently, would not have slaughtered women and children. But the conflict was over, and given the gravity of the times, from Minnesota to Washington, DC, the trials would be swift and severe and far below the standard of acceptable military justice.

Back in Washington, Lincoln was tasked with reviewing over 300 execution sentences, case by case, in the thick of the greatest conflict in American history, a conflict that would three years later, claim his life. After about a month, Lincoln addressed the Senate on December 11, 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.”

One of the condemned, Wamditanka, was later considered to have been falsely accused, and after two years in prison, he received Lincoln’s presidential pardon. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota were hanged, the largest single mass execution in US history.

Large scale horror is common to war, sometimes excused as the acceptable conduct of war, such as the firebombing of Dresden or the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, despite the deaths of untold thousands of women and children. Other actions, like the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazi Reich, are rightly considered war crimes. The Nuremberg Trials addressed Nazi atrocities, and the hasty military trials in Minnesota in late November 1862 attempted to address Dakota atrocities. There is no doubt at least thirty-eight Dakota were guilty of heinous war crimes, probably many times that number, but severe doubt the worst 38 were correctly identified and fairly tried.

For his part, Lincoln is unjustly denounced by intellectually dishonest activists looking for a villain to blame for the loss of their land and their independence. Trying to counsel them against such misguided character assassination is little different than Many Lightning’s trying to counsel the Dakota warriors to not attack Lower Sioux Agency.

In the final analysis Little Crow was a fairly decent but mediocre man, attempting to be a great leader, and scrambling for schemes to make himself such in tumultuous times that required the leadership of a truly great man. He appears to have initially conspired with his friends, the White traders, all the way up to Governor Ramsey’s office, to help them take what they wanted from the Dakota people. His reward, if any aside from their friendship, history does not record. Later, painted into a corner by events beyond his control or comprehension, he attempted to ride with both camps, be a hero to his people, and a loyal friend to the traders. Given all that, his sad fate seems poetically deserved.

The long term consequence of Little Crow’s ill-considered war, was the expulsion of most of his tribe from Minnesota. Those of the Tribe that did not fight and were allowed to stay, like the group at Shakopee, are now rich beyond even Governor’s Ramsey’s imagination. But they are not heroes. There can be no heroes when a once proud and prosperous people are rapaciously marginalized and then eliminated from the land they loved and called home.

 

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com)

 

 

 

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