The so-called Sioux Uprising of 1862 left more than 500 white settlers dead; in the longer term, the hostilities launched a series of final Indian wars on the Northern Plains which culminated in the Wounded Knee tragedy of 1890.
The Eastern Sioux had a long association with whites; they had fought in the War of 1812 on the side of the British, had long been dependent upon the fur trade, and had undergone considerable cultural changes. Some professed Christianity; chiefs lived in houses and dressed as whites. The pressure from the Chippewa and the availability of horses had drawn the Santee from the lakes and forests onto the prairies of the Minnesota River valley. The treaty of 1851, signed by the Wahpetons and Sissetons at Traverse des Sioux and by the Mdewakantons and Wahpekutes at Mendota, signed away their lands in southern Minnesota in exchange for a reservation 20 miles wide and 140 miles long on both sides of the Minnesota River, divided into the Upper (Yellow Medecine) and Lower (Redwood) Agencies serving about 7,000 Indians – although not all of them moved onto the reservation. In exchange the US government was to provide various provisions, cash and annuities over a 50-year period. The Indians became ever more dependent upon the provisions of the treaty, which the government singularly failed to honour. Government payments were often late, leaving Indians in debt to traders and mixed-bloods, so that when they were finally paid the annuities flowed into the hands of white traders. Further settler pressure in 1858 resulted in the northern strip of the reservation being ceded for additional cash and provisions. Winter 1861-62 brought near starvation to the Santee Sioux due to crop failure, and this was exacerbated by the failure of government clerks to distribute the Indians’ cash and provisions in accordance with the treaty agreements.
Little Crow, Mdewakanton, c1858. A dynasty of chiefs from the Kapozha villages in Minnesota bore this name; this, the third, was the principal leader of the Santee Sioux uprising in Minnesota, 1862-63. After his defeat at Wood Lake he fled to the protection of his kinsmen on the Plains. Returning to his old haunts, he was killed on 3 July 1863 while picking berries near Hutchinson, Minnesota, by Nathan and Chauncey Lamson. His body was mutilated before burial, and Chauncey collected a bounty of $75 from the State for his scalp. Little Crow was probably nearly 60 years of age at the time of his death. Photograph by Joel E.Whitney. (Author’s collection)
John Other Day, Wahpeton. Born in 1801, he became chief of the Wahpeton at Lac qui Parle, Minnesota. As a young man he was intemperate and fought against the Chippewa; later he became a Christian, and saved many white lives during the Inkpaduta (1857) and Minnesota (1862) outbreaks. Hostiles burned down his house in 1862, but the government later awarded him $2,500 for his bravery. He used it to buy a farm near Henderson, Minnesota, but later moved to the Sisseton/Wahpeton Reservation, South Dakota, where he died in 1871. (Photograph, author’s collection)
Tension and demonstrations occurred at both agencies, and open conflict finally broke out after the killing of some white settlers near Acton by four Indians from the Lower Sioux Rice Creek village on 17 August 1862. A council of war followed. Wabasha, a foremost Lower Sioux chief, spoke against a war with the whites; but the opportunity offered by the draining of manpower from Minnesota by the American Civil War was urged by the Mdewakanton leader Little Crow, who encouraged an attack the following day on the Lower Agency, killing the hated trader Andrew Myrick. The refugees from the agency fled to Fort Ridgely; the Army retaliated, but were ambushed at the Redwood Ferry.
The Upper Agency Sioux were undecided about joining the war against the whites, and most actually took little active part, although they were often blamed for attacks and suffered as a consequence. John Other Day, an Upper Agency chief, was against the war and led several whites from the area to safety. Dr Stephen Riggs, a missionary to the Upper Sioux who translated the Bible into Dakota, was one who escaped from the Upper Agency.
The war continued as marauding Indians attacked white settlers and farmers over an ever-widening area, but the military at Fort Ridgely held firm despite two determined attacks by Sioux under Little Crow, Mankato and Big Eagle. Although some of the outbuildings were burned the fort’s howitzers kept the Indians at bay. The siege was lifted on 27 August, thus securing the north bank of the Minnesota River from further incursions. The Indian attacks on the south side were halted at the German town of New Ulm, whose volunteer forces were commanded by Charles Flandrau, although the town was evacuated on 25 August 1862.
Medicine Bottle, Eastern Sioux warrior, 1864. Medicine Bottle, or Wind-Rustling-Walker, and Chief Shakopee (‘Six’), two Santee refugees in Canada after the Minnesota uprising of 1862, were befriended by US agents, rendered helpless with alcohol and chloroform, and spirited back across the ‘medecine line’ (border). They were subsequently executed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in November 1865. Photograph by Whitney & Zimmerman. (Author’s collection)
After the successful defence of Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, organised military efforts to defeat and punish the Sioux began under Col Henry H.Sibley, a well-known fur trader, Minnesota Territory’s first delegate to Congress, and the state’s first governor. He arrived at Fort Ridgely with reinforcements, principally the 6th Minnesota Regiment. His first direction was for a burial party to leave Ridgely under Maj J.R.Brown and Capts J.Anderson and H.T.Grant; but they were attacked at Birch Coulee by Mankato warriors under Gray Bird, Red Legs and Big Eagle, who were probably diverted from their plans to attack white settlements down river. This event taught the whites the folly of moving in hostile country without a large, well-equipped force. In September the Sioux laid lengthy siege to Fort Abercrombie, but were eventually forced to withdraw. Following these actions the Sioux offensive ground to a halt.
The initiative now passed to Sibley and Flandrau, who were to implement the plan formulated by Governor Ramsey to free the many captives the Sioux held and then drive the hostiles out of Minnesota. After building up considerable forces at Ridgely, Sibley sent out offers of truce after receiving evidence of a division in the Indian ranks, and the peaceable Chief Wabasha arranged for the safe release of several white and mixed-blood captives. Sibley left Fort Ridgely with over 1,600 men including the interpreter Riggs and Other Day, who acted as scout. He encountered Little Crow at Wood Lake, and there followed a decisive victory for Sibley’s forces which marked the end of organised warfare by the Sioux in Minnesota.
After the fighting at Wood Lake, Wabasha, Red Iron and the mixed-blood Gabriel Renville took control of the captives and more whites and mixed-bloods were released. About 1,200 Indians were taken into custody, increasing daily as individuals and small parties of Sioux, many facing starvation, surrendered. A military commission was appointed to try the Sioux at Camp Release and Lower Agency. As a result over 300 were sentenced to death, reduced to 39 due to the intervention of Bishop Henry B.Whipple of Faribault with President Lincoln; but 38 were hanged on 26 December 1862 at the town of Mankato. Those whose death sentences were commuted were later transferred from Mankato and imprisoned near Davenport, Iowa, for three years, while the uncondemned Sioux spent a miserable winter of 1862-63 in a fenced enclosure below Fort Snelling. In spring 1863 they were transported on river packets to Crow Creek in Dakota Territory, along with the Winnebagos who had been living near Mankato and who blamed their own removal on the Santee Sioux troubles. After three years of distress the Sioux were moved to the Santee Reservation near the mouth of the Niobrara River, Nebraska; and here these mostly Mdewakantons and Wahpekutes finally found a new home.
Absent from the punishment of the Sioux in 1862-63 was Little Crow himself, who after the Wood Lake battle had fled with others to the Dakota prairies – probably to Devil’s Lake. In early 1863 he visited Fort Garry in Canada. He returned to Minnesota, however, and was killed on 3 July 1863. General Pope, who was convinced that the Upper and Lower Sioux now roaming the Dakota prairies could still be a menace to the Minnesota frontier, sent out two expeditions – one led by Sibley, which headed towards Devil’s Lake, and the other by Sully from Fort Randall along the Missouri River. Sibley routed the Sioux at Big Mound and Stony Lake. Sully returned to the field in June 1864, and finally caught the Indians in the Killdeer Mountains of North Dakota, killing over a hundred of them. The expedition returned to Fort Ridgely in October after a march of 1,625 miles.
After 1866 Sioux raids on the Minnesota frontier gradually ceased, and the settlers and farmers slowly filtered back along the depopulated Minnesota River valley. Santees who had fled to the plains west of the river – mostly Sissetons and Wahpetons – were finally gathered on reservations in 1867, at Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, and Sisseton or Lake Traverse, South Dakota. A principal leader of both bands between the death of Red Iron in 1884 and his own in 1892 was the mixed-blood Gabriel Renville. A few crossed into Canada and never returned, such as Standing Buffalo’s band; but in the late 1860s small groups of Santees began to return to Minnesota, at Prairie Island, Red Wing, Prior Lake and at their old haunts at the Upper and Lower Agencies, where Chief Good Thunder – who had protected white settlers during the war – purchased lands in 1884. A few who left the Niobrara settled at Flandreau in 1869, where they succeeded as farmers and producers of catlinite pipes from the nearby Pipestone Quarry in Minnesota.