Heroes of the Uprising

By Michael keigan

In 1862, a mere four years after becoming a state, the Dakota Uprising was a watershed event that would affect Minnesota at all levels. The tenacity and stoicism of the settlers and pioneers would be tested; but, so too, the very survival of the Eastern Dakota and their society, all were in the balance.
The Dakota Uprising was one of the many chapters in the story of the American Indian wars that occurred across the western United States up into the 1890s. However, the Dakota Uprising was largely overshadowed by a greater conflict that was occurring in the East the Civil War.
This book, this story, is an attempt to relay the events surrounding the Uprising before, during, and immediately after. But, the author has tried to shift the focus of the story off of the battles slightly and to highlight the heroes that emerged during the Uprising. The heroes are well represented on both sides settler and native.
These heroes in this story, both native and settler, are highlighted because we need to remember their deeds and the effort they put forth in trying to save themselves, their families, and their people. In our modern society, where we spend so much time keeping track of what is going on in exotic places around the globe, we sometimes forget the very important history that occurred right in our own backyards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468558845

Michael keigan

Bill is a native of Florida, but has lived throughout the state and the South. Retired from the USAF, he received his B.A. from FL Atlantic Univ., M.A. from FL State Univ., and J.D. from Univ. of FL. A member of the Florida Bar, Bill practiced law in Florida, then moved to Tennessee. Most recently he has been a “Rule 31 Mediator” in the TN court system, specializing in domestic violence.

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© 2012 by Michael Keigan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/29/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5886-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5885-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5884-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012903824

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

VISITING THE MONUMENTS AND THE SITES OF THE DAKOTA UPRISING

MCLEOD AND MEEKER COUNTIES

STEARNS COUNTY

KANDIYOHI COUNTY

SWIFT COUNTY

CHIPPEWA COUNTY

LAC QUI PARLE COUNTY

OTTER TAIL COUNTY

ABERCROMBIE, NORTH DAKOTA

MURRAY COUNTY

YELLOW MEDICINE COUNTY

REDWOOD COUNTY

RENVILLE COUNTY

NICOLLET COUNTY

BLUE EARTH COUNTY

BROWN COUNTY

JACKSON COUNTY

SPIRIT LAKE AND LAKE OKOBOJI, IOWA

REFERENCE LIST

VERY HELPFUL AGENCIES

CREDITS FOR PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS

DEDICATION

I would like to dedicate this book to three people who very important in my life.

First, to my mom and dad, Barb and Bill, I dedicate this book because through you I have had the greatest example of how to live, learn, and love.

Last, I dedicate this book to my wife, Julie. With you at my side, it makes the journey of life so much better.

Ego amo te.

FOREWORD

In the summer of 2009, when Julie and I were traveling all over and visiting so many of the state parks here in Minnesota, I found myself becoming quite fascinated with the story of the 1862 Dakota Uprising and the scope of its effect on southern and south-western Minnesota. I have always had a great interest in history; but, all of the traveling that we did opened up whole new areas of learning and information about the Uprising and the state. It was fun to go to each of the state parks that we were visiting and then to learn what part that area may have played in the battles that occurred in that fateful summer. Learning these new lessons just whetted my appetite and when we would return home, I would get to the computer and go on-line to see if I could find more information on a particular person or a particular event. Many books have been written about the Uprising and there are numerous documents that can be found on the internet about the war; but, I still want to try and put down some of my thoughts and observances here for you to read.

Before I get started in this tale, I need to tell you some background of the story and my personal history. I was born in Minnesota. Through the course of living at home with my parents and sisters, we eventually found ourselves living in northern Wisconsin. I graduated from a high school in the small town of Winter, in Sawyer County. My sisters went to high school in the town of Webster, in Burnett County. We were brought up in the standard fashion that almost all of our generation was in the 1970’s and 1980’s. My sisters and I were always encouraged to do well in school by our parents. With their help and the traveling that our family did on vacations we took around the country, I feel that we all came away with well-rounded educations. We were products of our time and of our upbringing.

During those years in school, I was never far from exposure to the native tribes that inhabit the Upper Midwest. In northern Wisconsin, as well as northern and northeastern Minnesota, the predominant tribe is the Ojibwe. The schools that my sisters and I attended had fairly large populations of Ojibwe. Each of the school districts, Winter and Webster, had large amounts of the district that fell within the borders of the nearby reservation. I went to class with these other teenagers and never once did I recall ever thinking that they were anything different than friends of mine. We were all struggling with the same questions that teenagers have to deal with. We all played on the same basketball team, we took many of the same classes in school and when we graduated, we all headed off in various directions to seek out our futures.

I am white. My family history is German and Irish. As I lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin during my formative years, I don’t believe that I was raised with any prejudices. However, in many cases, I am presumed to be prejudice just because I am white.

When I was in school, I took the same pre-requisite courses that most students had to take with doses of math and English, science and history, and social studies. The history that I learned in school was the good generic history that was geared at getting children educated in the larger events of history involving the United States and the world. When I was a young child and growing up, I was a big fan of the movies. Maybe, just maybe, my favorite genre was that of the Western, or as we called it—the Cowboy and Indian movies. I watched hours and hours of John Wayne, Glenn Ford, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart as they rode off into their collective sunsets after righting wrongs and saving the prairies and western frontiers for the settlers. I learned of the ‘Hollywood view’ of Indian leaders such as Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. These were movies, and in our home we had always been instructed to take these stories with a grain of salt; because, Hollywood is a far cry from that of real life. I can’t say that these movies didn’t affect me; because, they did. I grew up with that romantic notion of the western frontiers of the mid-1800’s playing around in my imagination. When I joined the US Army at the age of eighteen and was sitting in that recruiter’s office looking through all of the different jobs skills that I could enlist into, the one that really caught my eye was—Cavalry Scout. There I sat with visions running through my head of me charging down a hill on a white horse, crisp black Stetson on my head, with a saber flashing in the sun. When I arrived at Fort Knox, outside of Louisville, Kentucky, I found that my white horse had been replaced by a thirteen ton armored personnel carrier, my Stetson has now a steel helmet, and my saber was now the infantryman’s most important tool—the M-16.

The reason that I have rambled on about my schooling is to try and illuminate a shortfall that I think I have discovered in our school systems and the history that they are teaching. With the demands of our lives now needing to be more and more in tune with world politics and happenings, we have allowed our very close and intimate histories of the places where we live to fall to the side of the road. Yet, it is this history of the place where our homes are, where we stand barefooted feeling the coolness of the soils on our toes, which should hold just as much import to each of us as anything that happens in Asia, the Mid-East, or Africa.

The history that we are losing, I fear, is that rich history of the early years of each of the individual states of these United States. We know much about the larger events in our country’s history—the Revolution, the Civil War, the World Wars, the Depression, and numerous others. But, we miss the details. The story is in the details and each state in this union has details galore to learn about. In this book, I wish to try and convey just a small section of that wonderful and sometimes tragic history of our state—Minnesota.

In the fall of 2010, I attended a gathering of people that had a shared interest in getting a battlefield site in Minnesota included in the National Historic Registry. The Wood Lake battlefield, located just a few miles southeast of Granite Falls, is recognized as the last of the organized skirmishes in this state between the militia of Minnesota, led by Henry Sibley, and the Eastern Dakota, who were being led by Little Crow and his other chiefs.

At this conference, we were privileged to hear from many different people with regards to the Wood Lake battlefield; but, two of the speakers really stood out in my mind. These two men were respected leaders of their tribe, they were father and son, and they came to impart a different view of the importance of the Wood Lake battlefield site. From the stand point of the Eastern Dakota, this battle represented the end of the lifestyle that the Eastern Dakota had lived in Minnesota for the previous 150 years or more. I listened intently to the words and to the emotion that was conveyed by these men and came away knowing that the first, rough draft of this story that I had been writing needed to have some revising done.

I have spent hours and hours reading all of the different accounts of the Uprising from authors that have come before me. I have spent hours and hours at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul and at the local library. I was able to view many documents that helped to shed new light on this subject. All of this documentation has been used by me to come up with my version of this story. Because I have read so many of the previously written books and accounts of the Uprising, I don’t want to just re-hash stories that have already been covered in great detail. So, I have attempted to create my story from a different angle.

I am not using it as an excuse; but, as I tell you the story, you have to realize that this story is what has been passed onto us by the documentation that was recorded at the time of the event. Some of the records are those that were written by the very hands of the people that lived through the events. We can only take those documents at their face value. An old cliché states that ‘history is written by the victors’, which is so true in this particular case. We have many hundreds and thousands of documents from the settlers, from the soldiers, as well as from the state concerning actions and events that occurred at that time. What we may lack is more written documentation from the Native point of view. It is a sad fact that many of the native tribes of the Americas kept no written records of their history. They were more versed in the oral tradition of passing on their history from one generation to the next. Because of this, we lack some of the insight as to what they were thinking at the time that these events occurred. We, as readers and amateur historians, can attempt through conjecture to try and piece together some semblance of a story from their viewpoint; but, it would be wrong; maybe close, but still wrong. I can only do my best to try and piece the story together for me; acknowledging all the time, that I continue to view the history from the eyes of a ‘white man’. As I was talking about earlier, I may be presumed to be prejudiced because of my heritage; but, I have always tried to live my life and the way I think without these influences affecting the decisions I have made.

As I have grown older, I have begun to appreciate more the things that are tangible around me and desire to learn as much as I can about this area on the planet that I call home. I find myself desiring to try and pass on some of the things that I have learned to the new and upcoming generations that will follow. My German fore-fathers didn’t come to the United States until the 1890’s. My fourth generation removed, paternal grandfather arrived in the States from Ireland in the 1850’s and spent his time trying to piece together a life as a farmer and salesman in Illinois. As far as I can discern from the study that I have done on my family tree, none of my ancestors were ever involved in any of the troubles that occurred with the Native tribes. But, then again, they were members of the ever growing horde of immigrants to the United States during the 19th century that pushed the boundaries of the frontier westward and continued to displace the natives from the lands that they had once called their home.

I grew up hearing the stories of the battle at Acton, Minnesota. I heard the story of how Little Crow had been killed by Nathan Lamson in a field five miles north of Hutchinson. I heard these stories because my grandparents had farms that were very close to these sites. Each time my family and I would go and visit our extended family in those areas, we would drive by those spots. For many years, the stone marker on the spot where Little Crow was shot stood beneath a large tree in the middle of a farmer’s field. The farmer and his family had enough respect for the gravity of that spot, that they allowed the tree to stay there protecting the monument. As a child, when we passed by that field on the road going to my grandfather’s farm, I would see that tree and think of Little Crow.

So, I allow you, the reader, to be the judge of my efforts at telling the story of a very pivotal point in the history of this great state. I ask you to read the story and to remember where you come from, what is your history, and then to judge what importance these events and people had in shaping Minnesota.

CHAPTER ONE

A Short History and Persons of Note

Before we get into the meat of this story, I want convey to you the ‘twist’ I am going to use in telling this story. As I mentioned in the foreword, there have been many books written about the Dakota Uprising. These books are scholarly works that display the hours and hours of research that the writers pursued in order to create their works. These books, those that are historically based, are very factual and they, at times, delve deep into the details of the events of the Uprising. As I said before, I don’t want to just re-hash information that has already been described.

So, I sat for a long time and tried to come up with the angle that I could use that would make my story a little different—and I think I have found that angle. As I continued my research and I traveled all over the state in order to take pictures of and to walk the actual grounds where the battles of the uprising occurred, there were parts of the story that really started to stick in my head. You can ask just about anyone in my family or those that I work with about the stories from the uprising that I love to tell. Those stories are about those people that I feel are heroes.

Over the course of my lifetime, there has been a huge shift in the use of the word ‘hero’. When I was young, my heroes were men that did things that were absolutely mind-boggling, super human, or so far beyond my scope of comprehension that I would never be able to do what they did. Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the surface of a different world—July 22, 1969. He, ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, and Michael Cooper accomplished something so fantastic as to be forever remembered by all of mankind. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech still sends shivers down my spine every time I hear him speak the words. These are just a few of the people that I learned to look at as heroes—for me.

Today, all you have to do is turn on the evening news broadcast on any network and you are likely to find some story where people are touting that some person or another is a hero. This is not a bad thing. If people, or our society, want to broaden the definition of who a hero is and want to include those people who in their day to day lives show us how to be ‘good’ people; then, they are heroes, too. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word hero means: any person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose; especially, anyone who has risked or sacrificed their life. On September 11, 2001, our country and the world saw heroes by the hundreds and thousands.

So, here, in my attempt to tell this story, I want to emphasize the heroes that I learned about. I want to try and help you feel the awe that I felt when I first learned of the things that they did and the sacrifices they made; which, for me, make them heroes.

Long before the arrival of European settlers on the eastern shores of North America, the Dakota thrived in the areas of the upper Mississippi River Valley, the areas west beyond the Missouri River, and across the ‘great sea of grass’—the prairie. The lands that we know as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana were the territory of the Dakota Nation. These people were a nation of loosely banded tribes that lived in a diverse area of lakes, prairies, and woods. We refer to them as ‘Sioux’; but, this was not the name that they called themselves. The various bands of the tribe that lived in the east, (Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and the eastern parts of the Dakotas), referred to themselves as: ‘Dakota’. In their language that word means—‘The People’. Another name that was commonly used was ‘Santee’. The bands of the tribe that lived further west, deeper into the great prairie grasslands, referred to themselves as: ‘Lakotah’. The term ‘sioux’ came from a derivation, or shortening, of the term (nadowessioux) used by the Ojibwe and French that meant—‘snake-like people.’ It was not meant to be complimentary because at the time of white settlement, the Dakota and the Ojibwe were enemies. It is sad that the original names for themselves didn’t catch on more as the tribe’s common names. I think ‘Santee’ and ‘Dakota’ have a wonderful ‘old west’ feel to them. Plus, by continuing to call these people by a term that was originally an insult, is ‘insulting’.

The Dakota as a ‘nation’ of people can be divided into three large groups: Lakotah, Eastern Dakota, and Western Dakota. These can be further divided into the small group names that we easily recognize today: Mdewakanton, Oglala, Teton, Wahpeton, Sisseton, Yankton, Wahpekute, and many others. These tribes lived in the Central and Northern Plains and ranged all the way to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. As the white settlers in the east continued to push further west this applied pressure to the tribes of the east and they in turn started to pressure the Dakota. Most notable of these tribes was the Chippewa/Ojibwe. With assistance from the French and utilizing weapons brought by white settlers, the Ojibwe were able to push the Dakota out of places that had been their ancestral homes. But prior to that, the Eastern Dakota had a long, long history of living in the lakes and river regions of all of Minnesota and into Wisconsin. The Eastern Dakota were the tribes that met Father Louis Hennepin when he came through on his journey of exploration in the late 1600’s. The first French and English fur traders into the region of northern and eastern Minnesota did their trading with the Dakota.

Many places that are now tribal areas belonging to the Ojibwe originally were inhabited by the Dakota. Just down the road from our little cabin in the woods is Mille Lacs Lake. This lake used to be referred to by the Dakota as ‘Mdewakan.’ In their language, this term means ‘spirit lake.’ The tribe that lived near the lake was called—Mdewakanton, people of the spirit lake. Even today in our modern, white society, there is a small town on the shores of that big lake called Wahkon. It is easy to see the connection.

In 1750, at a spot very near to the present day location of Mille Lacs/Kathio State Park, the Dakota and the Ojibwe fought a large battle with the ultimate outcome being the defeat of the Eastern Dakota.

Today the tribal lands of the Mdewakanton are further south and west. This is where they moved to under the pressure exerted by the Ojibwe as they migrated into the area of western Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota. Because of the pressure from the east by the newly arriving whites and their long-time enemies, the Ojibwe, the Eastern Dakota, as a people, were forced to undergo a monumental societal change. They had to leave the homes and traditions they had developed as a people that occupied wooded areas, lakes, and their former hunting and fishing grounds. They were forced out onto the open prairie. They had to change what they used as primary food sources and they had to adapt almost every part of their culture to enable themselves to exist in this new region.

For years as a boy, while I grew up and watched hundreds and thousands of cowboy and Indian movies, I always thought of the Dakota as the Indians that lived out on the open plains—the people of the buffalo. I was right; but, then again, I was wrong. This is very easy to see when a person takes time to study the name of one group of the Dakota nation that is found in western Minnesota and the eastern parts of North and South Dakota. That tribe is—the Wahpeton. The meaning of that tribal name is—‘dwellers in the leaves’. These people lived in the woods and among the lakes. It was only later on that they were forced into more open areas of the northern Great Plains by the pressure from the east. The Dakota were and still are a very diverse group of peoples. They carved out an existence in the central part of the North American continent long before Europeans even realized that the world wasn’t flat.

A great deal of credit has to be given to those eastern bands with regards to having to go through the tumult of uprooting themselves from their homes and moving themselves, as a group, to new lands further south and west. This move was softened slightly by the fact that they moved many of their villages to the area around the confluence of the Minnesota River with the Mississippi River, where you can now find the large metropolitan areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul. They found themselves dwelling among the many lakes, rivers, and streams that were in the area and ‘the woods’, which was such a large part of the life of the eastern bands of the Dakota. At the time they moved their villages, those areas were still covered with plush forests of oak, maple, black walnut and many other species.

Minnesota was a land on the edge of two great bio-regions. The ‘Big Woods’ that could be found throughout the Great Lakes region, nearly covering the entire area we know as Wisconsin today, stretched on into Minnesota northwesterly. The thicker forests were those that were closer to the ‘great’ lakes. The farther you got away from Superior, Gitche-Gumme, there began distinct changes in the forest types of the region. When the Ojibwe pushed the Dakota from the areas of northern and northeastern Minnesota, they were taking over the parts of the deeper forests. The Dakota, when they moved south and west, moved into areas that are generally referred to as ‘oak savanna’. The oak savanna is where the forests start to thin and the influence of the colossal grasslands to the west start to have an effect. From the point where Fort Snelling was built at the spot where the two big rivers come together, the edge of the ‘Big Woods’ traveled nearly straight west to Meeker County and then generally bent in a northwest direction up towards the Red River region.

It is rather important to point out where this natural border of woods was located because almost all of the battles and killing the occurred during the uprising happened along this border and southwest of it.

So, the stage is set. The players in this drama are the natives, the Dakota Indian tribes, and the white settlers who have started to come into the Upper Great Plains by the thousands. The period is the middle of the 19th century. After Wisconsin had become a state in 1848, the territory of Minnesota was then created. More and more settlers were coming to this territory in the northern plains because of the rich farmland that could be found there. The fertile watersheds of the upper Mississippi River, St. Croix, and the Minnesota River attracted all sorts of explorers and seekers of fortune. There was a huge untapped source of wealth just growing out of the ground in the north and northeastern part of the territory—trees. The dark, rich soils of the central and southern parts of Minnesota drew in more and more farmers who recognized the possible success of farming in Minnesota. Like the deep, dark soils of the state of Iowa to the south and Illinois to the southeast, Minnesota had great potential.

Minnesota also found itself becoming engulfed in a larger national argument that was occurring in our country in the middle of the 1800’s. Minnesota had become a territory just shortly after Wisconsin achieved statehood. The territory only existed for a short nine years before it was given its statehood. The year of 1858 found the nation struggling to try and come to some sort of workable agreement on how to handle the issue of slavery. President James Buchannon is looked upon now in history as having done little to slow or divert the headlong rush the country was in towards a period that would nearly destroy it. Buchannon had tried to rely on the dictates of the Constitution to wade through the issues that were fast boiling over in the land. Minnesota received its statehood in an odd effort that was made to keep the balance of the number of the ‘free’ states with that of the number of ‘slave-holding’ states.

As more and more white settlers flooded into the territory, more and more pressure was placed on the people already living here—the Dakota. They found themselves being squeezed into ever smaller areas. Treaties were signed, oh, yes, many treaties were signed. In the 19th Century, the United States was very good at signing treaties—all sorts of them. The problem was trying to keep the United States to abide by those treaties.

The United States was booming, growing outward and westward at a staggering rate. Manifest Destiny was the key phrase of the day. Because of this acceptance of Manifest Destiny, many of the terrible breaches to treaties that had been signed were simply overlooked. One such treaty that was specifically related to Minnesota was the 1851 Treaty—Traverse des Sioux. This treaty set up reservations along the Minnesota River for the various bands of the Eastern Dakota to live on. The treaty created a reservation that would straddle the Minnesota River on both the north and south banks. The reservation land would extend out from the river for ten miles north and south and continue to follow the river for one hundred and forty miles to the northwest. The southeastern end of this reservation was set at the location near where the Little Rock Creek empties into the Minnesota River, about 8 miles northwest of New Ulm, Minnesota. This long reservation was then split again into two parts. The southeastern part of the reservation was set up for the Mdewakanton and the Wahpekute bands. The federal government set up government offices, which became known as ‘agencies’, at each half of the reservation. The Agency then led to the development of several trading posts, sutler’s stores, warehouses, and homes to be built nearby. The Agency for the southeastern half of the reservation was set up on the south bank of the Minnesota River across from the Birch Coulee Creek inlet. This spot became known as ‘the Lower Agency’. The trading post and government buildings for the upper part of the reservation were set up near the location where the Yellow Medicine