When you visit Historic Fort Snelling, look for the following opportunities to learn more about the war:

• In the Wood Barracks, talk to historical interpreters about the role of the Indian Agent.
• Take the History on the Spot cell phone tour (877-411-4123), which describes the fort’s role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 and its aftermath.
• Look for signage describing key 1862 events near the spots where they happened.
• A comprehensive slate of programming and a web site is being developed for the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Dakota War in 2012.

Between 1805 and 1858, treaties made between the U.S. government and the Dakota nation reduced Dakota lands and significantly altered Minnesotas physical, cultural, and policitcal landscape. These treaties had serious implications for the future of Dakota-U.S. government relations throughout the first half of the 1800s, and many historians agree that major factors in the lead-up to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 lie in those treaties. The treaties established that the Dakota would be paid for their land in yearly installments called “annuities,” but in many cases traders received a portion of these annuities directly from the U.S. government because of claims of debts owed to them by the Dakota. By the summer of 1862 the situation for many Dakota families had grown desperate; annuity payments were late due to the U.S. government’s priority in financing the Civil War; some traders at the Indian Agencies refused to extend credit  for food and other goods until they had cash to pay their debts; and recent droubts had contributed to poor harvests which left many Dakota families hungry. Due to these and other factors, tensions within Dakota communities reached a breaking point.

Taoyatedute (Little Crow), ca. 1860.
MHS photographic collections.

On August 17, 1862 four young Dakota men killed five people living at the farms of Robinson Jones and Howard Baker near Acton, Minnesota. When word of the killings spread to the people at the Lower Sioux Reservation, a group of Dakota men argued that it was time to go to war with Minnesota’s European-American population to reclaim their ancestral land. Without consensus within the Dakota community at large, these men went directly to Taoyateduta, “His Scarlet Nation” (Little Crow), an influential Dakota leader, to convince him to lead a military effort. After intense debate, Taoyateduta reluctantly agreed to lead them, even though he feared the war may end disastrously for their nation. “You will die like rabbits when the hungry wolves hunt them in the Hard Moon,” he is quoted as having said, but added “Taoyateduta is not a coward: he will die with you.” The following day a group of Dakota under the command of Taoyateduta attacked the Lower Sioux Agency, killing many of the civilians there. Over the next several weeks, groups of Dakota soldiers attacked European-American communities throughout the Minnesota River Valley, including New Ulm, as well as launching attacks on U.S. military posts. The war lasted nearly six weeks, during which more than 400 civilians and U.S. soldiers, as well as an unknown number of Dakota, lost their lives.

The war fractured Minnesota’s Dakota community. The war was fought primarily by a relatively small group of Dakota who lived on the Lower Sioux Reservation, and there was not universal support for the war within the Dakota community at large. Throughout the war, many Dakota as well as individuals of both Dakota and European ancestry (called “mixed-bloods” during the period) protected prisoners captured during the war and worked to secure their release to U.S. soldiers. For a tense period of time it seemed as though a civil war might erupt between the various Dakota communities on both reservations over the war.

Fort Snelling played a role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 as well. Soldiers and local militia were organized at the fort under Col. Henry H. Sibley for a military response to the Dakota. After the Battle of Wood Lake (Sept. 23, 1862), the last major battle of the war in Minnesota, many Dakota left the state, while others surrendered to U.S. military forces at Camp Release (near present-day Montevideo). Col. Sibley established a military commission to try Dakota men suspected of killing or assaulting civilians, and by the end of the process 303 men were convicted and sentenced to death. However, upon further review of the evidence the number was reduced to 39 by President Abraham Lincoln who sought to distinguish between Dakota men who had only fought in battles with U.S. armed forces and those accused of killing and assaulting civilians. Just prior to the execution a man named Tatemina (Round Wind) was reprieved because his conviction had been based on questionable testimony. The remaining 38 men were hanged in Mankato on Dec. 26, 1862 in the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

Fort Snelling Internment Camp, 1862-63.
MHS photographic collections.

The rest of the approximately 1,600 Dakota and “mixed-bloods” who surrendered at Camp Release (mostly women, children and the elderly) were removed to Fort Snelling where they spent the winter of 1862-63 in an internment camp, sometimes referred to as a concentration camp, below the fort (located in the present-day Fort Snelling State Park) to await forced relocation to western reservations.  According to reports in local newspapers and Dakota oral histories the prisoners endured assaults and violence at the hands of soldiers and local civilians. “Amid all this sickness and these great tribulations,” remembered Tiwakan (Gabriel Renville), a Sisseton Dakota man held in the camp, “it seemed doubtful at night whether a person would be alive in the morning.”

Many detainees sold personal possessions in order to purchase food to supplement the military-issue rations they were given. Some of the “mixed-blood” people owned land vouchers that had been granted them in treaties with the U.S. government. These vouchers granted each head-of-household up to 640 acres of any unsurveyed, non-federal land in exchange for giving up claim to land in Minnesota. Many sold these vouchers to local businessmen at deflated prices in order to have cash in hand to provide for their families while in the stockade. Businessmen, such as Franklin Steele, profited by purchasing these vouchers and later selling them to land developers for large profits.

A definitive number is unknown, but it is estimated that somewhere between 130 and 300 people died within the camp, due mostly to malnutrition and disease resulting from the conditions inside the camp. Those remaining were taken by steamboats to western reservations in May 1863. By summer of 1863 the vast majority of the Dakota had left Minnesota, heading into the western territories or north into Canada, where many of their descendants live today. As a result of the war, approximately 6,000 Dakota and “mixed-blood” people were displaced from their Minnesota homes. The geographical displacement of the Dakota nation resulting from the war has lasted until today, with Dakota communityies remaining spread throughout Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Canada.

After the war many Dakota military leaders were captured and imprisoned by the U.S.military, among them Sakpedan (Little Six) and Wakanozhanzhan (Medicine Bottle). The two men fled to Canada after the war but were apprehended and delivered to U.S.authorities by British agents in January 1864 and subsequently imprisoned at Fort Snelling. The two men were charged convicted by a military tribunal later that August for the deaths of civilians and sentenced to death. Their execution took place at Fort Snelling on Nov. 11,1865 in the presence of the fort’s garrison and numerous civilians. Tradition says that as they climbed the scaffold a steam train whistle blew in the distance, prompting Sakpedan to say, “As the white man comes in, the Indian goes out.”

During the summer of 1863, newly-promoted Brig. Gen. Sibley, along with Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully, mounted a joint military operation, called the “Punitive Expeditions,” against those Dakota who had left Minnesota and headed into the western territories. Throughout the summer, Sibley’s troops pushed past Devil’s Lake and towards the Missouri River, fighting three major battles against combined Dakota and Lakota forces: the Battle of Dead Buffalo Lake (July 26); the Battle of Stony Lake (July 28); and the Battle of Whitestone Hill (Sept. 3). In 1864 Sibley received permission to remain in Minnesota while a second military expedition was launched against the Dakota. Brig. Gen. Sully was given overall command of the operation, and defeated a large, combined group of Dakota, Lakota and Yanktonai at the Battle of Tahchakuty, or Killdeer Mountain (July 28). Eventually, the U.S. military forcibly removed many Dakota to reservations in North and South Dakota. Intermittent fighting continued between the U.S. military and the Dakota nation in the western territories throughout the late 1800s, culminating at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890.

Bibliography/Resources

Anderson, Gary Clayton. Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997.

Anderson, Gary Clayton. Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1986.

Anderson, Gary Clayton and Alan R. Woolworth, eds. Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988.

Carley, Kenneth. The Dakota War of 1862. 2nd ed. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001.

Clodfelter, Michael. The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862-1865. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1998.

Manjeau-Marz, Corinne. The Dakota Indian Internment at Fort Snelling, 1862-64. St. Paul, MN: Prairie Smoke Press, 2006.

Millikan, William. “The Great Treasure of the Fort Snelling Prison Camp,” Minnesota History Quarterly 62, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 4- 17.

Wingerd, Mary Lethert. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Other resources

• US-Dakota War of 1862 History Topic
• History on the Spot cell phone tour: call 877-411-4123 (can be accessed at the historic site as well as from your home phone).
• Fort Snelling: Should its history be told? (by Nina Archabal, Director of Minnesota Historical Society)
• Fort Snelling on the Agenda (Star Tribune editorial by Jeff Kolnick)
• Civil War and U.S. Dakota War of 1862 Collections