The next day, September 27, as construction began on a temporary wooden enclosure on the far side of the bluff, toward the Minnesota River, Sarah Wakefield and some of the other former captives returned to the Dakota camp to collect their things. While there she attended a Christian prayer meeting with Chaska, who was very frightened and told her that the soldiers had already begun to arrest Indians. If he was arrested, he said, he would know that she had lied about him. Stung by his words, she gave him reassurances and told him of a “long conversation with one of the officers” who had praised Chaska as a hero. As soon as she recrossed to Camp Release on the path through the grass, already well-worn from traffic back and forth, Sarah learned that she would be the first person interrogated by a court of inquiry made up of several soldiers and the Presbyterian missionary Stephen R. Riggs, who were charged with beginning the process of sorting the guilty Dakota from the innocent.
After she finished her story of Chaska’s bravery and solicitude, one colonel hinted that Sarah should speak to Riggs alone, as he “thought it very strange that I had no complaints to make,” probably because the officer felt she might be too proper or embarrassed to describe the sexual assaults he assumed must have occurred. The suggestion that the soldiers might not have believed her tale led Sarah to ask for Chaska, who came to her “pale and frightened,” saying that “the white men were not doing as they promised, and he knew they would kill him.” Apparently something said in the inquiry had changed Sarah’s mind about Sibley’s intentions, for she now tried to persuade Chaska to leave for the West, promising to care for his mother in his absence as she had so often cared for Sarah.
“No,” answered Chaska. “I am not a coward, I am not afraid to die.”
Later that night, Sarah was told by another captive that “seven of the black devils” had been arrested. She emerged from her tent to find one of the officers, Captain Hiram P. Grant, and ask him if Chaska was in the group.
“Yes,” the soldier answered, “and he will swing with the rest.”
Sarah responded with heat: “Captain Grant, if you hang that man I will shoot you.”
She tried to take the comment back, but it was too late. There was no reason for Grant to make his reply other than to taunt Sarah, and there was no reason to taunt Sarah except that the gossip about her was already spreading. Other captive women were talking to the soldiers as well. All of Sarah’s words on the long trip up the valley came back to damn her: her threats to kill her own children, her admonitions to other white women not to talk badly of their captors, her “confession” that she had been Chaska’s wife, her determination to stay with the Dakota if her husband truly was dead. Colonel Sibley himself wrote to his wife that Sarah “had become so infatuated with the red skin who had taken her for his wife, although her white husband was still living at some point below, and had been in search of her, she declared that were it not for her children, she would not leave her dusky paramour,” and followed with another letter reporting that Sarah “threatens that if her Indian, who is among those who have been seized should be hung, she will shoot those of us who have been instrumental in bringing him to the scaffold, and then go back away with the Indians. A pretty specimen of a white woman she is, truly!”
On September 28, Sibley wrote to General Pope to announce the formation of a military commission to try the Dakota and added, “If found guilty they will be immediately executed, although I am somewhat in doubt whether my authority extends quite so far. An example is, however, imperatively necessary, and I trust you will approve the act, should it happen that some real criminals have been seized and promptly disposed of.” He wrote in a similar vein to a subordinate, calling the order to execute those found guilty possibly “a stretch of my authority,” but maintaining that “necessity must be my justification.” Sibley, at the start, was uncertain about his power to sign off on death penalties; calling courts-martial was far outside his experience, but he knew enough to understand that some post-trial review was in order. The message to Pope seems to have been an appeal to the federal commander to take over the responsibility for capital punishment and may also have been a way to appease Governor Ramsey, the settlers, and the men under his command in order to head off the immediate threat of vigilante justice.
In order to obtain information useful in the prosecution of his prisoners, Sibley directed Stephen R. Riggs, founder of the Hazelwood Republic, to gather the mixed-bloods and friendly Dakota, a group of perhaps ninety informants on whose single day of testimony many of the convictions would rest. As Riggs reported his findings, Sibley expanded his court of inquiry into a five-man military commission authorized to “try summarily the mulatto, and Indians, or mixed bloods, now prisoners, or who may be brought before them … and pass judgment upon them, if found guilty of murders or other outrages upon the whites, during the present state of hostilities of the Indians.” The men chosen to decide the fate of more than four hundred Dakotas were all officers under Sibley’s command and all had fought in battle against the Dakota over the past six weeks. The commission that was to conduct the trials of the arrested warriors consisted of officers William R. Marshall, William Crooks, Hiram S. Bailey, Rollin C. Olin, and finally Hiram P. Grant, the object of Sarah’s threat just one day earlier, the man who had told her that Chaska was destined to hang. Isaac Heard, a younger soldier who had already established himself as one of the state’s foremost criminal prosecutors, would act as trial recorder.
Military commissions were a form of wartime legal proceeding used when a standard court-martial or civil trial was impossible. No statute or law dictated when or how they should be used, which threw them into the realm of common law and meant that precedent ruled—except that in 1862 precedent was thin. Only sixteen years earlier, in the Mexican-American War, General Winfield Scott, frustrated that he had no way to punish an American soldier for the murder of a Mexican citizen under the Articles of War, invented a commission according to the rules of courts-martial, setting a standard still active in 1862: defendants had the right to hear charges and specifications, make pleas, and have a decision read out. All sentences were subject to the review of a “convening authority,” meaning that a superior had to sign off on every judgment. How superior this superior had to be depended on the specifications laid out in the Articles of War for similar courts-martial results; some went to the commanding general, some to the judge advocate general, while capital convictions usually went to the desk of the president. No burden of proof was placed on the prosecution: as Stephen R. Riggs would say of the Dakota prisoners, the commission trusted “that the innocent could make their innocency appear.” Once his commissions were established, General Scott had quickly expanded their jurisdiction to include Mexican citizens and combatants accused of offenses against whites that included theft, murder, and rape, and brought the court-martial crimes of spying and encouraging military action against Americans under the same rubric.
This was the precedent, then, that existed during the Dakota War, except that never before had a military commission been convened in a conflict between whites and Indians. Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1832 definition of Indian tribes as “domestic dependent nations” was still the legal standard, but in practice that term had failed to settle any questions of the proper relationship between America and its indigenous people. What exactly it meant to try such “dependents” by a military commission was really anyone’s guess, and adding to the complications, Colonel Sibley was acting under the orders of John Pope, who, as events would demonstrate, did not seem to be conversant with many of the established protocols for such tribunals. All of the difficult questions swirling around the commission would eventually be raised, some within weeks and others many years later, but in the moment there were four hundred prisoners to deal with, little food or other provisions, winter coming on, and a populace demanding vengeance.
The first trial to be held considered the case of the war’s most unusual participant, an ex-slave named Joseph Godfrey who had run away from his masters and been living among the Dakota since the late 1840s. While Minnesota in 1862 was staunchly pro-Union, its abolitionism was not so pronounced, and during its territorial period, at least, Godfrey’s status had not been unique. Many soldiers at Fort Snelling had kept slaves, as had some traders, including Godfrey’s first owner, a big, bellicose man named Alexis Bailly, whose wife, Lucy, had kept the household running smoothly by beating their slaves and his young mixed-blood Indian servants. And when the coffers were light, or when friends needed help, his slaves might provide a ready source of income. So it was that Godfrey had once come into the service of Henry Sibley as an errand boy, several years before he ran away and joined the Dakota.
Whether Sibley and his former hired hand reacquainted themselves before or after Godfrey’s trial is unknown. In any case, there was some irony in the fact that the first man tried in the Dakota War trials was the only non-Dakota defendant, at least by blood. Two days were devoted to Godfrey, who offered detailed testimony regarding the first day’s killings at Milford, setting the ground for his later appearances as a witness, when he would turn state’s evidence against many of the Dakota involved. With the black man’s case out of the way, the commission turned its attention to the Dakota prisoners. Twenty-nine had been taken into custody so far, but more arrests were coming. Winter was fast on its way, and there were hundreds of fates left to decide.
On the third day of trials, the commission turned to Chaska. Sarah was asked to step inside the large enclosed tent that dominated Camp Release, surrounded by soldiers and seated Dakota men awaiting their trials, as well as various mixed-blood and white witnesses. She entered and shook Chaska’s hand, placed her hand over a Bible and swore to tell the truth, and thus began case number three. Using a phonetic spelling of Chaska’s proper Dakota name, one member of the military commission read out the charges: “In this that the said We-chank-wash-to-don-pee, Sioux Indian, did, on or about the 18th day of August 1862, kill George H. Gleason, a white citizen of the United States, and has likewise committed sundry hostile acts against the whites between the said 18th day of August 1862, and the 28th day of September 1862.”
Sarah wrote later that Chaska seemed frightened and nervous, and as he spoke little English, a mixed-blood translator named Antoine Frenier asked for the prisoner’s plea. Chaska followed with a statement he had prepared, perhaps with Sarah’s assistance.
I plead not guilty of murder. The other Indian shot Gleason, and as he was falling over I aimed my gun at him but did not fire. I have had a white woman in charge but I could not take as good care of her as a white man because I am an Indian. I kept her with the intention of giving her up. Don’t know of any other bad act since Gleason was murdered. I moved up here with the Indians. If I had done any bad act I should have gone off.
“I have been in three battles,” he added. “I have not fired at any other white man. I wanted to prevent the other Indians from shooting.”
Sarah was recorded as “a witness on the part of the prosecution,” though she aimed only to establish Chaska’s innocence. She spoke at some length, beginning with the story of her ride with Gleason and their encounter with two Dakotas just north of the Lower Agency. She swore that Hapa had fired two shots from his shotgun while Chaska collected the horses and that whatever happened next was immaterial, as Gleason’s fate was already sealed. “When Mr. Gleason was in his death agony this Indian snapped his gun at him,” she said, as Heard took notes. “He afterwards told me that it was to put him out of his misery. I saw this Indian endeavor to prevent the other Indian from firing at me. He raised his gun twice to do it. He said he did not go into this thing willingly.” She detailed the many protections Chaska and his mother had provided during her six weeks of captivity, the way Chaska had squired her from tepee to tepee to find safety from harassment and shelter from the cold, and how Chaska’s mother had spirited her and her children to the woods to escape the imminent threat of murder. All of that time, she said, Chaska “expressed great feeling for the whites” and “had to beg victuals for me.”
Angus Robertson, a captive about whom little is known, largely corroborated Sarah’s reports, except that most of his testimony involved statements Chaska made in the camps. Heard’s notes are thin and sketchy, recording that Robertson “heard the prisoner say before Mrs. Wakefield that he fired the second shot” and adding “he said he shot Gleason,” with the last word crossed out and replaced by “didn’t kill Gleason,” leaving the note “He said he shot didn’t kill Gleason,” a statement which vaguely matched the rest of Wakefield’s narrative and Chaska’s testimony that he had “snapped his gun” at Gleason to deliver a mercy killing. The rest of Sarah’s testimony was unequivocal: Chaska was “a very good Indian” whose “conduct has been uniformly good toward Mrs. Wakefield and her children.”
Both witnesses testified that it was Hapa’s shot, or shots, that killed Gleason; both said nothing about Chaska’s involvement in any battles; both spoke to his efforts to protect Sarah and her children; and both held him up as a man of character and integrity. Evidence gathered by Stephen R. Riggs or another recorder from soldiers named Fowler and Coe was apparently also introduced, though that evidence was never entered into the record—nor, by the terms of the commission, given Chaska’s testimony that he had pointed a gun at George Gleason and pulled the trigger, was it needed—and the two men never set foot inside the impromptu courthouse. Chaska’s unrepresented “defense,” such as it was, was nonetheless the most thorough and reliable of the entire set, and lasted much longer than most of the subsequent trials.
After allowing Chaska and Sarah to depart and taking a few minutes of “mature deliberation,” the commission found Chaska guilty of the murder of George Gleason and of still-unspecified “sundry hostile acts against the whites.” Heard’s transcription ended by noting that the five interrogating officers “do therefore sentence him, the said We-chank-wash-to-don-pee, a Sioux Indian to be hung by the neck until he is dead.”
At the end of the week, the first five or six of twenty-odd such days to come, sixteen trials had been completed, including those for the other five men seized with Chaska on the 26th. All but Chaska were tried for rape or for murders in the settlements. Ten were sentenced to death; six were returned to the friendly camp, which was now surrounded by soldiers and artillery. In the meantime, Pope was writing to Sibley, outlining the next step in his plan.
The horrible massacres of women and children and the outrageous abuse of female prisoners, still alive, call for punishment beyond human power to inflict. There will be no peace in this region by virtue of treaties and Indian faith. It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign lasting the whole of next year. Destroy everything belonging to them and force them out to the plains, un-less, as I suggest, you can capture them. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.
A day or two before Chaska’s trial, Henry Halleck had written to Pope from Washington with the news that “Colonel Henry H. Sibley is made a brigadier-general for his judicious fight at Yellow Medicine. He should be kept in command of that column and every assistance possible sent to him.” The timing of Halleck’s message is revealing. Earlier that week, Pope had requested that two of his friends from former commands be promoted to brigadier generalships and sent to Minnesota. As sensible as Halleck’s elevation of Sibley seemed, it also seems to have been an executive rebuff to Pope, a message that he would have to work within the confines of the existing command and not try so hard to create his own chain of military patronage. Pope took more than a week to pass on this important news to Sibley, who now became an arm of the executive branch, answerable to President Lincoln rather than to Governor Ramsey. No longer would Sibley be a Minnesotan acting for Minnesotans; now he was an agent of the Union army. With the fighting in Minnesota all but over, the distinction might have seemed academic, but Sibley’s promotion would soon come to have enormous consequences.
On October 1, Sarah Wakefield and her children were put on a wagon with the rest of the captives and sent south along the government road with an armed escort, following the same path the fleeing settlers had followed on the morning of August 18, forty-three days earlier. On October 2, after passing George Gleason’s grave and crossing over the Minnesota River via the Lower Agency ferry, she arrived at Fort Ridgely, where she was finally able to bathe, don clean clothes, and sleep on a mattress. The next morning, she heard James call out “There is my father!” and turned to see John walking in her direction.
“There was my husband I had mourned as dead, now living—coming toward me,” she wrote. “I was happy then, and felt that I would have died then willingly, and said, ‘Thy will not mine be done,’ for I knew my children had a protector now.”
Sarah’s focus on her children’s well-being in her report of this moment, rather than on her own, was hardly uncommon for a woman of the frontier era, but given the events of her life up to this point and the events to come, her choice of words may be telling. In fact, if her sentiments were accurate as reported—and there is no reason to believe they were not—this may have been the happiest moment of the rest of her married life.
On September 24, when he turned away from Camp Release to ride for the Dakota Territory, Little Crow had been part of a thousand-person train made up of members of all four Eastern Dakota bands, more than half of them Mdewakantons. But as many as seven hundred Dakotas abandoned him before he even left the state, some scattering into the West and some turning back to take advantage of the flag of truce General Sibley had offered. A few smaller parties, including that of Cut Nose, had been captured by a detachment of Sibley’s soldiers. By the time he was ready to leave the state, then, Little Crow was left with two or three hundred followers, no more than a hundred of them able warriors. And among those, only a few dozen were Mdewakantons loyal to him, including four of Little Crow’s wives, a few half brothers and brothers-in-law, a son-in-law, and Wowinape, his son.
During a few days’ halt among the Wahpetons at Lac Qui Parle, Little Crow tried to speed things along by announcing that the main force of Sibley’s army was close behind his party and bent on the annihilation of all Dakotas. His traveling party next moved some twenty miles north, to Big Stone Lake and the village of Standing Buffalo, the most powerful and influential man in the Upper Agency bands. Here he learned about the note that Sibley’s mixed-blood scouts had sent to Standing Buffalo offering peace in exchange for Little Crow’s capture or corpse. In council with Little Crow and the wartime tiyotipi, Standing Buffalo now stood firm: he would not detain Little Crow’s party, but neither would he allow them passage through his territory as they moved west, nor would he join with him, supply him, or offer his voice in support. Fierce debate broke out among the Upper Agency Dakota and made for a tense visit. Little Crow’s fabrication that Sibley’s main force was close behind him had caused some of the Upper Agency Dakota to flee out of the state, but most of the Sissetons and Wahpetons stood with their leader, who now ordered a separate move to the northern reaches of the Dakota Territory. Standing Buffalo, who understood that he was trapped between bad choices and might never see his own village again, unless as a captive, now offered the hardest public rebuke to Little Crow since the war began.
“You have already made much trouble for my people,” he told Little Crow. “Go to Canada or where you please, but go away from me and off the lands of my people.”
So Little Crow went away, without resistance or support from the Upper Dakota, his mind on the hard dry plains. In a way, setting foot out of Minnesota completed his life’s circle. In his early twenties he had left his home village of Kaposia, much to the disappointment of his father. He had first moved to a Wahpekute village and married a chief’s daughter before leaving her for unknown reasons and traveling to join the Wahpetons on Lac Qui Parle. Here he befriended the missionary Thomas S. Williamson and his family and first indulged his keen curiosity about white culture, attending the mission school for a short time and learning some writing and arithmetic. Here he also married another daughter of another chief, then, in succession, her three sisters. During the summers he traveled westward, riding with his friend Jack Frazer and other powerful young men, trading whiskey and hunting buffalo, playing cards and befriending white traders. Then had come the news from Kaposia that his father was dead.
Now Little Crow and his own son, along with a few hundred companions and a small group of captives, would puncture the malleable membrane that existed between the prairie and the plains. Behind him he left a staggering legacy. In a century in which tens of thousands of Indians had died and would die at the hands of white soldiers and frontier settlers, while tens of thousands more succumbed to epidemic diseases, the Dakota War was one of the very few encounters between whites and Indians that had not ended in a complete rout of the latter. Operating during a slice of time when white warfare hung between ages-old chivalric ideals and the brutal realities of “total war,” the Dakota had killed 93 white soldiers and between 400 and 600 white civilians while suffering only a few dozen fatalities of their own. In the aftermath of the war, those numbers would shift again as hundreds of Dakotas who had taken little or no part in the fighting found themselves starved and destitute, struggling to keep their families together and dying of disease and maltreatment, but at this moment the people of Minnesota were girding for Indian attacks the following spring and wondering just how long Little Crow’s War might truly last.
The best evidence argues that Little Crow consistently resisted the killing of women and children, however frequent his bluster to the contrary. And any white opponent entering his camp at nearly any moment during the past six weeks would surely have been surprised to witness Little Crow grappling with the wartime tiyotipi and making concessions to the members of the peace party. But no matter: for all the white world knew, the “incarnate demon,” as the missionary Gideon Pond called him, was now escaping into the West, where he might continue to haunt their most cherished dreams.