Any discussion of the conflict in Minnesota in August and September 1862 is complicated by language, perception, and cultural values. Indeed, even what we call the conflict is contested. When the conflict began, the politi-cians and military leadership in Minnesota called it a war. But when the conflict was over it became known as the Great Sioux Uprising. Most mod-ern scholars use the terms the “Dakota War” or the “U.S.– Dakota War.”
This takes the emphasis off the conflict as an uprising and implies that it was a war between two sovereignties.28
How we categorize the conflict affects how we see the trials. If it was an
“uprising,” then the Indian combatants were not “soldiers” but hooligans or criminals, a well- armed mob randomly causing vio lence and death. An uprising is a criminal act, perpetrated by malcontents who know they are acting illegally. Participants in an uprising are subject to trial and punish-ment. On the other hand, if it was a “war” between two sovereign nations,
27Thaddeus Williams to Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 22, 1862, Lincoln Papers, LC (emphasis added). Williams was a physician in St. Paul. His hysterical letter described numerous atrocities against settlers, including the beheading of prisoners, people nailed to trees, disemboweling of people, and other horrors that in fact had not taken place.
28For example, Minnesota History Center calls the conflict the U.S.– Dakota War.
http:// www . usdakotawar . org / .
then the captured Dakota soldiers should have been “treated as legitimate belligerents.”29 Once defeated, they were prisoners of war and not subject to criminal prosecution, unless they had actually committed war crimes.
None of these terms adequately describe the events of that fall. The vast majority of the Dakota in Minnesota did not take part in the conflict. “The Sioux were at no time united, at no time committed as a nation to the pur-poses of the hostile minority.”30 Most of the Dakota in Minnesota opposed resorting to vio lence on ethical grounds or practical reasons because they understood that a war with the United States was essentially suicidal. By this time, many Dakota had converted to Chris tian ity, adopted Western dress and customs, become farmers, and were unwilling to return to their past lives. Most of the fighting was done by members of the lower Sioux, but “most of the principal chiefs of both the lower and upper Sioux, such as Wabasha, Wacouta, Traveling Hail (who had won the election for speaker), Red Iron, and Standing Buffalo, were opposed to the uprising and either took no part or joined very reluctantly in a few battles, meanwhile giving all the aid they safely could to white victims.”31 Because the Dakota Nation did not authorize the war and most leaders of the Dakota opposed it, it can-not exactly be seen as a war between two sovereignties. Thus, designations such as the Dakota War, or the U.S.– Dakota War might imply much greater support among the Dakota than there actually was.32
Nevertheless, the conflict had all the attributes of war, whether it was de-clared or not, and thus the term “war” seems far more accurate than “up-rising.” On the other hand, because the war involved only the Lower Sioux (and not even most of them) and was emphatically opposed by the Upper Sioux, the postwar response of the United States was clearly illegal and im-moral. After the conflict was over, the military would punish all the Dakota in Minnesota, even those who had protected whites and did not join in the
29Chomsky, “The United States– Dakota War Trials,” p. 15.
30Meyer, History of the Santee Sioux, p. 118.
31Ibid.
32An analogous naming issue can be seen in the “Red Stick War” of 1811, between the
“Red Stick” Creeks and the United States. In that war the Lower Creeks, as well as the Choctaw and Cherokee, were allied with the United States against a separatist group of Creek known as the “Red Sticks.” While earlier historians called this the Creek War, it is more properly called the Red Stick War or the Creek Civil War, recognizing that the Creek themselves were deeply divided in this conflict. For more information on the Red Stick War, see Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars.
Military Conflict on the Minnesota Homefront 133 conflict. This is rightly condemned as punishing the group for actions of a small minority within the group, and more than that, punishing a large group— the Upper Sioux— who had absolutely nothing to do with the war.
Oddly enough, because the United States punished the entire Dakota nation, it seems that the United States in fact recognized the right of the Dakota Nation “to make war.”33 Thus, trying the Dakota soldiers— and hanging thirty- eight of them— clearly violated the accepted law of war.
The army talked about it as a war and behaved accordingly during the war, but then immediately abandoned the law of war and accepted norms for the treatment of prisoners after the war. The events in Minnesota stood in marked contrast to the ongoing Civil War. In Minnesota, neither side fol-lowed accepted rules of be hav ior in a war. The Dakota killed mostly civil-ians and fought only a few engagements with the army. Similarly, as the conflict came to an end, the army rounded up thousands of noncombatants, including those who did not support the vio lence, and destroyed their crops and homes. There were three or four skirmishes between the Dakota war-riors and the U.S. Army, and one decisive military engagement, the Battle of Wood Lake, on September 23, when somewhere between 700 and 1,200 Dakota were forced to retreat from a force led by Col o nel Henry H. Sib-ley.34 While a few hundred soldiers may have died in the war, most of the whites killed were civilians, including a significant number of women and children. These do not seem to be the statistics or the demographics of a traditional war. On the other hand, given the massive use of the army, and battles between combatants, it clearly was a war, and thus the United States was obligated to respond to the events according to existing rules of warfare.
After the war, the army violated almost every acceptable standard of be-hav ior for the treatment of prisoners and civilians. Leaders in Minnesota, including General Pope, General Sibley, and Governor Ramsey, spoke of exterminating the Dakota, and while not actually embarking on a campaign of genocide, they hinted that this was their ultimate goal. Dakota civilians who had nothing to do with the conflict were rounded up, their crops were burned, their housing destroyed, and they were interned in camps that
33Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 583 (1832) (McLean, J., concurring).
34Meyer, History of the Santee Sioux, pp. 115–23; Kenneth Carley, The Sioux Uprising of 1862 (St. Paul, Minn., 1961), pp. 58–59.
were precursors of how the British would treat the Boers in South Africa a half century later.35 Much of the be hav ior of the army after the war can be described only as racist vengeance perpetrated on innocent civilians who had taken no part in the conflict, and some of whom had provided shelter for fleeing white settlers. Meanwhile, in violation of the traditional rules of war, the military tried soldiers (including many who voluntarily surren-dered to the army after the war was over) and, with no semblance of due pro cess or even defense attorneys pres ent, convicted the vast majority of them and sentenced them to death.
Alternatively, it might be more precise to call this Little Crow’s War, after the Dakota chief who led the relatively small minority of the Dakota in their brief war.36 Those Dakota who followed Little Crow (fig. 5) may have seen themselves as citizens of a sovereign nation fighting for their in de pen dence and defending their very existence against callous policies by agents of the U.S. government. They may have believed their actions were justified by desperate circumstances.
What ever the terminology, there is yet one more way to analyze the events. The Dakota who fought against the army were involved in warfare, even if they represented only a minority of the Dakota Nation. Even if the technical rules of international law and conventional declarations of war were not pres ent, the United States should have treated the Dakota soldiers as legitimate belligerents, just as it was treating Confederate soldiers, who fought an undeclared war for a putative nation that no other country in the world recognized as a legitimate sovereign state. The army never tried and hanged captured white Confederate soldiers merely for their participa-tion in the War of the Rebellion. But the army applied diff er ent rules to Indians.
35The British used the term “concentration camp” for the facilities used to intern Afrikaan civilians during the Boer War. The camp at Pike Island, which held about 1,600 Dakota civilians, may in fact have been the world’s first concentration camp. About 300 Dakota in this camp died from disease and malnutrition. Mark Joy, “U.S.–Dakota War of 1862,” in Paul Finkelman and Tim Alan Garrison, eds., Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 2009), 2:804.
36This would mirror the name of a handful of other wars between the United States and vari ous Indian nations, such as Tecumseh’s War (1811–13), Blacks Hawk’s War (1832), Red Cloud’s War (1866–68), Geronimo’s War (1881–86), and the Posey War (1923), the last U.S.– Indian War.
Fig. 5. Little Crow, photographic print, ca. 1862. (Library of Congress Prints and Photo
graphs Division)