Dakota 38

Abraham Lincoln as the Puppetmaster of Death (of starvation, war, and executions)
Ledger Art by Travis Blackbird

by Prairie Rose Seminole

Remember the #Dakota38, hanged in Mankato, MN on Dec 26, 1862, under the orders of President Abraham Lincoln. It is the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

The hanging of 38 Dakota came at the culmination of the Dakota War, which started because of a treaty broken by Congress. 

The Dakota people were being starved to death.

“Let then eat grass or their own dung,” Andrew Myrick, a trader & store owner who withheld their rations.

Andrew Myrick was among the first to die. He was found with grass in his mouth.

The accused were subjected to sham trials held in English (a language foreign to them), and they had no legal representation. They were also not allowed to discuss the broken treaty, or treaty law. Many were innocent. They were hanged anyway, on a custom made scaffold, in front of a cheering mob.

Dakota women & children were forced to watch the hanging. One Dakota infant was reportedly snatched from the arms of a mother and killed on sight.

Around 1,700 Dakota, mostly women and children, were held as prisoners at Fort Snelling. Disease & death were rampant.

Chief Little Crow, a leader during the Dakota War, was later assassinated. His remains were mutilated by townspeople & displayed. They stuffed firecrackers in his nose & ears and lit them. Local doctors eventually took his body parts to study.

Two more Dakota leaders, Shakopee (Little Six) and Medicine Bottle, were later captured and executed.

After the hanging of the Dakota 38, the Dakota people were exiled from their stolen homelands in Minnesota. Banned from entering, unable to return to MN. The governor put a bounty on their scalps. The Dakota people were separated and sent to prison camps in other states where the women were raped by soldiers.

Following the U.S-Dakota War of 1862, the United States government hanged 38 Dakota men on December 26 in Mankato. It was the largest mass execution in United States history. A US military commission, tainted by racism and in violation of due process, hastily convicted two of the Dakota men of rape and all of them of murder in trials that lasted as little as five minutes. President Lincoln approved their executions. Here are the names and faces of some of the men known as the Dakota 38.

All things being ready, the first tap was given, when the poor wretches made such frantic efforts to grasp each other's hands, that it was agony to behold them. Each one shouted out his name, that his comrades might know he was there.  - From New York Times article, The Indian Executions

Buildup to War

Father Goiffon

In 1861, Joseph Goiffon, a missionary at Pembina, wrote that a Dakota runner passed through the area on his way to the western plains with a war summons in preparation for a conflict with the Americans.

- From Assassination of Hole-in-the-Day, by Anton Treuer

In the above-quoted book, Professor Treuer tells how there were concurrent uprisings, but their methods were different.  Where the Dakota decided to fight back due the injustices against them, the Ojibwe tried an overall more peaceful path.  The result for each was that the Dakota had loss of life in the fighting, and the biggest mass execution in U.S. history, while the Ojibwe experienced no loss of life and received some concessions from US Government that they were after.

The Returns from Pembina

President Cleveland once asked Bishop Whipple what would be the effect of making the Indians voters. Then Bishop Whipple told him that it had been tried, and after listening to the story, President Cleveland gave up the idea....

1876 was a very contested
election in general... 

 

In Dakota territorial days a law was passed allowing Indians wearing civilized dress to vote. In the following election, when both sides were claiming the victory, some one said: "Wait until you hear from Pembina." In Pembina lived a large number of the Pembina tribe of Indians, and there also dwelt the local political boss, "Jud" La Moure, famed for his sealskin overcoat and his qualities as a political fighter. When the returns came in from Pembina, it was found that the members of the tribe had all been put into hickory shirts and trousers on election day, between sunrise and sunset, and after exercising the inalienable rights of citizenship, at the dictation of the local boss, they returned again to their blankets, having decided the territorial election.

From:  The Bourbon News (Paris, KY) November 12, 1901

Scientific Find in Kittson County (1892)

Found via Google Books,
aka "the researcher's friend"

The following excerpt highlights a pharmacological discovery by university scientists of an important plant (Northern Senega) in locations in northwest Minnesota, including Kittson County. 

The plant (general species, Senega - sometimes spelled Seneca) was originally identified into modern medicine, in the 18th century by a Scottish physican, whose attention was brought to it by the Seneca tribe in Pennsylvania. The plant had (and continues to have) important properties used in medical products to this day. It is also important in alternative medicine, as demonstrated at this Manitoba website showcasing local herbal remedies - all available to me in my backyard.

Trivia:  Metis (introduced to it by the Ojibwa) have long used Senega/Senega, aka Snakeroot, for it's medicinal properties.

I found it fascinating to run across this medical journal report of the find from 1892 (especially since the natives in our area are mentioned as using it mainly for subsistence purposes, not medicinal as tribes in other areas of the country had...)

THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF PHARMACY.

MARCH, 1892.

NORTHERN SENEGA.

By L. E. Sayre, University of Kansas.

The geographical distribution of senega has been a subject of a good deal of interest to the members of the pharmaceutical profession and the drug trade for a number of years. Chief among the contributors to our present knowledge of the drug in this particular have been Prof. J. M. Maisch and Prof. J. U. Lloyd, as will be seen by glancing over the back numbers of the American Journal of Pharmacy, the Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association, and other pharmaceutical publications.

Reference has been made to senega growing in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but there has not been very definite information given, I believe, as to its collection or the exact district of country from which it is collected in these States. "Northern Senega" has been a current term meaning a variety of senega having certain physical characteristics very unlike the original Polygala Senega. Prof. Lloyd (Proc. Amer. Pharm. Asso., 1881), describing this variety¹ — which he says is derived from the Northwest from the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota—says it is very large and fleshy, sometimes white, again rather dark brown, the knotty crown measuring often from two to three inches in diameter, even of the dried plant. The root just below the knotty head is (when dry) from the size of the little finger to that of the thumb of a man ; six to ten inches in length and generally destitute of keel; not so contorted and branched as the " Southern " senega.

Northern Seneca Root
harvested in Manitoba

L. L. Dyche, Professor of Zoology and Taxidermy, of the University of Kansas, some months ago made an extensive hunting tour in the Northwest, the main point of his operations being in that country lying near the Lake of the Woods. During this hunting expedition he had an excellent opportunity of studying the country, its products and its people. On his return he handed me a root which he thought might be of some interest to me. He said it was collected in very large quantities and seemed to be one of the staples of that country. The natives depending upon its collection as one of the means of subsistence, have made this quite an industry among them. There the squaws and the children dig the root while the " Braves " hunt the valuable fur-producing animals. Prof. Dyche says that he saw at the different trading posts in Marshall and Kittson Counties, in the storehouses, as much as a thousand pounds stacked up in one heap. At a little town, Rocksted, near Thief River Falls, the Indians come in from long tramps of forty miles or more and bring in the fur, skins and this snakeroot. Here they had an immense stock on hand. Since his return, Prof. Dyche has received a letter from a trader at Jadis², Kittson County, stating that he has on hand a thousand pounds bagged up, waiting for a fair market price.

The root referred to is undoubtedly a good sample of senega. In length it varies from 4 to 8 inches; in diameter from 1/16 to 1/2 inch. Surrounding the root is a dark scar-covered head. This head in the case of younger roots is covered with immature pinkish leaf-covered stems. The characteristic keel of Southern senega is rarely present and the contour of the root is much less contorted. The color ranges from the light yellow of young roots to the dark brown of the older ones.

Near the head, prominent annulations are present. These continue with enlarging intervals of space for some distance down the root. Lengthwise the whole root is deeply wrinkled, while frequent warty enlargements occur. The branches are not numerous. In considerable quantities, the odor of gaultheria is quite prominent, as it is also in a cold aqueous infusion. The taste is very acrid.

Under the microscope the wood is found to be cylindrical, and the ingrowth of the inner bark on one side which produces the keel of the Southern variety is not apparent in a majority of cases. The wood is whitish, ligneous and occupies about y of the diameter of the root.

A sample of the drug was handed to Mr. McClung, one of the senior students, for the estimation of the polygalic acid. He used Quevenne's process, and obtained of the pure acid 35 per cent. Methyl salicylate was abundant, as shown by the ferric chloride test.

It would seem from the above that this specimen handed to me by Prof. Dyche represented a good sample of senega; its quality, equal to the average root of the market.

I have planted some of the roots, which seem to be full of vigor, and hope to be able at some future time to classify the plant.

¹ — Northern senega, collected in the northwest United States, is considerably larger than the usual variety (western senega), and darker in colour; it is less contorted and shows the keel less distinctly, but it has a very acrid taste, and is undoubtedly a good senega. It is said to be derived from Poly gala Senega, var. latifolia.

² - Jadis (named for Mr. Jadis, Kittson County Auditor) eventually was renamed Roseau - Kittson county included the western portion of what is now Roseau County until 1894 - From Kittson County History.

The Other Side of the Ledger

I discovered this film on the National Film Board of Canada website today, which I was not aware of before. I think it has a lot to say, things that needed to be said, and I want to share them with my readers. Some of the white traders the indigenous peoples worked with, knew the natives were being exploited and refused to participate. Others knew it was wrong but just looked the other way. But far too many knowingly and willingly participated, using dishonest and immoral business practices with them.

It is described as a documentary about...

The Hudson's Bay Company's 300th anniversary celebration was no occasion for joy among the people whose lives were tied to the trading stores. This film, narrated by George Manuel, president of the National Indian Brotherhood, presents the view of spokesmen for Canadian Indian and Métis groups. There is a sharp contrast between the official celebrations, with Queen Elizabeth II among the guests, and what Indians have to say about their lot in the Company's operations.

It was one of the first NFB films made by a [Canadian] First Nations filmmaker. George Manuel, then president of the National Indian Brotherhood, narrated the film; he presents the views of spokesmen from First Nations and Métis groups, including Métis historian and activist Howard Adams. They discuss the unscrupulous economic control the Hudson’s Bay Company held over First Nations and Métis peoples.

Major Hatch: Pembina & the Indian Wars

I started this post to be about Major E. A. C. Hatch¹ (sometimes referred to as Edward Hatch, or Edwin Hatch...) But a much more interesting story emerged about the bigger picture.

What is the bigger picture? I'll tell you. It's about a young Minnesota frontier just opening up to settlement, and citizenry panicking due to rumours, skirmishes, and some actual attacks from native populations. It's about how a bad situation became worse through panic, misunderstandings/miscommunication, and violence - horrific violence on both sides. A lot of what happened was caused by stresses (starvation/famine) brought about by over-hunting of the buffalo and loss of land due to white settlement. The resulting uprising was sadly inevitable.

It was 1863, and the uprisings of 1862 were still very fresh on peoples' minds.

Convinced now that static garrisons and even patrolling soldiers were not sufficient to protect the frontier, civilian authorities took a series of measures to boost the defense of the line of settlement. On July 4, 1863, Adjutant-General Oscar Malmors issued a general order for the establishment of a mounted corps of "volunteer scouts," consisting of experienced hunters and trappers, to patrol the Big Woods from Sauk Center to the northern edge of Sibley County. The scouts were to serve a two-month tour of duty and provide their own arms, equipment, and provisions. In return, the volunteers were to be paid two dollars a day each, with a greater incentive of twenty-five dollars offered for the scalp of each hostile Sioux Indian collected. The general order did not bother to explain the process by which any particular scalp could demonstrate the degree of "hostility" or even the tribal identity of the Indian from whom it was taken.

To bolster the enlisted scouts and the number of dead Indians a reward of seventy-five dollars was offered to any person not in military service who could produce "satisfactory proof" of the killing of a hostile Sioux warrior. This inducement to "independent scouts" was increased to two hundred dollars a head on September 22. This open season on "hostile Indians" enjoyed little success. In more than three months, bounty was paid for only five scalps. The volunteer scouts were mustered out of service on September 20.

To supplement the forces protecting Minnesota, a gaggle of high-powered state leaders, including Senator Henry Rice and Senator Morton Wilkinson, convinced the secretary of war to authorize, on June 12, the formation of a battalion of two infantry and two cavalry companies (the two infantry companies were quickly converted to cavalry.) Recruited in Minnesota and supported by Chippewa auxiliaries, the battalion was to be independent of both Pope's and Sibley's command. Placed in charge of the maverick outfit was Major Edwin A. C. Hatch, a resident of Minnesota since 1843 and a former agent to the Blackfeet Sioux; however, he lacked military experience.

Pope and Sibley were both outraged at this seeming usurpation of their military authority and control. Pope protested to both Halleck and Stanton, particularly about the part of the plan calling for Chippewa auxiliaries. In a letter to Stanton he claimed that "Hatch is but an instrument of Rice." Sibley felt that the raising of the independent battalion was a direct slap at his competence and capability. In his diary entry for July 8 he wrote, "Learned of the order granting authority to Major Hatch to raise two companies of infantry and two of cavalry to serve against the Indians during the existence of this war. The whole thing I regard as a miserable scheme got up by Rice and others, who hate General Pope and do not love me and who wish to annoy and humiliate us both. I have a contempt for the whole humbug inventor and all."

Sibley's and Pope's protestations did lead to a narrowing of the autonomy of "Hatch's Battalion," and it was placed under Sibley's command. At Sibley's suggestion the battalion was posted to the north at what later became the town of Pembina, primarily to guard against possible incursion by those Sante who had fled across the Canadian border after the 1862 uprising and also as a form of exile to this stepchild military formation. A northward march of four hundred miles from October 5 to November 13, during which many of the battalion's oxen and mules perished, brought it to its posting as winter began its usual early siege of the northern woods. High winds, deep snow, and freezing temperatures plagued Hatch's men on the march and as they constructed their cantonment. The mercury fell to forty degrees below zerio as 1863 ended, and on the first day of the new year it fell to sixty degrees below.

The abominable weather and the requirements of construction did not prevent Hatch from aggressive patrolling. For all its efforts, however, the battalion fought only one engagement with hostile Indians. News of a party of Sioux encamped near the old British trading post of St. Joseph, forty miles west of Pembina, sent a dismounted detachment of twenty out on the trail to the trading post on December 15. After a forced march, the white platoon located and closed in, undetected, around the sleeping Indian camp at 3:00AM. As the Indians awakened and began to emerge from their tepees, Hatch's men commenced firing. The fight was completely one-sided. Six Sioux were killed even before they were able to return fire, and the rest fled. Two or three soldiers were slightly wounded.

Aside from that incident, Hatch's Battalion passed a largely uneventful, if arduous winter at Pembina. From that post on the Red River in the northeast corner of Dakota seventy miles below Fort Garry, Hatch devoted much of his military activities to luring hungry and haggard Sioux refugees away from Canada. Ninety-one Sioux did recross the Canadian border during the winter to surrender themselves to the garrison. Among the Indians hoodwinked into captivity by agents of the coattail-riding crony of Senator Rice were Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, both of whom were subsequently hanged.

At the end of the long, hard winter, during which three-quarters of the post's stock died of starvation and cold, the battalion was transferred to Fort Abercrombie to garrison that post and patrol the Red River Valley...The battalion claimed a total of 28 Indians killed and 300 taken prisoner. Although hardly the elite strike force that could deal a mortal blow to whatever hostile Indians remained on the Minnesota frontier, Hatch's Battalion did perform a useful defensive and patrolling mission for the northern half of the state and saved the government the trouble and expense of detaching troops for that purpose from the battlefronts of the Civil War. (From The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862-1865 by Michael Clodfelter)
_______________________

...The independent Battalion of Minnesota Volunteers, raised and commanded by Major E.A.C. Hatch, having been ordered to report to me for assignment to duty, was dispatched on 10th of October to Pembina, to hold in check the hostile Sioux who had retreated for safety into Her Majesty's coterminous possessions, where they could not be followed by our troops, as I had received stringent ordered from General Halleck, through department headquarters, in no case to cross the boundary line with a military force. About ninety Sioux men, women, and children came across the boundary and surrendered to Major Hatch, commanding at Pembina. The battalion, with one section of mountain howitzers of Third Minnesota mixed battery, went into winter quarters at Pembina, and remained until about the 1st of May of the present year, when I ordered Major Hatch with his command to relieve the detachments of the Eighth Regiment Minnesota Volunteers at Fort Abercrombie, and at the stations of Pomme de Terre and Alexandria, that regiment having been designated as part of the expeditionary force to join Brigadier-General Sully on the Missouri. The other three sections of the mixed gun and howitzer battery (Third Minnesota) were stationed respectively at Forts Ridgely, Snelling, and Ripley. (From Report of Operations against Indians in the District of Minnesota, written by Brigadier-General Henry H. Sibley, U.S. Army, commanding District of Minnesota, including operations from October 1, 1863 to October 1, 1864; contained in The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, published by Government Printing Office 1893)
_______________________

Letters to S. D. Dept. of History, from Col. Samuel J. Brown dated Feb. 28 and March 5, 1921: in the latter he says: "My father's "letters to me [from Ft. Pembina] as well as his communications to Gen. Sibley are on file in the library of the Minnesota Historical Society." In one of those letters dated March 23, 1864, Gen. Sibley says to Gen. Pope: "Major J. R. Brown, special military agent, arrived some days ago at Fort Abercrombie from Pembina, having in charge ninety men, women, and children of the Sioux tribe, who surrendered themselves to Major Hatch at Ft. Pembina during the winter. There were originally twenty-one men, 31 women and 39 children, but one man died suddenly on the way. I have ordered all the prisoners to Fort Snelling under guard; and as among the men there are several who were deeply engaged in the outrages perpetrated on this frontier in 1862, I propose, with your sanction, to try the men by a military commission Among these captives are two half brothers and the four wives of the defunct chief, Little Crow." (Rebellion Records, Series I, vol. 34, part 2, pp. 712-13; pp. 539-40 give facts and plans of the government which show the importance of Major Brown's services at Pembina as a judicious negotiator and friend of the Indians. "Minnesota In Three Centuries," vol. III. pp. 422-3—Major Hatch.)

Major Brown came into Dakota Territory in 1863 in General Sibley's army that pursued the Sioux Indians guilty of the Minnesota Massacre of 1862. He was "Chief of Scouts and Chief Guide," in command of a large number of Indian scouts (Dakotas).6 In October, 1863, he was sent "by the Government (with Father Andre) to make peace with the Minnesota Sioux who fled to the North after the Outbreak of 1862,"7 his headquarters' being at Pembina, North Dakota. (From South Dakota Historical Collections)
_______________________

E.A.C. Hatch had Civilian experience prior to his military experience, working with the native populations - "In 1856, the year following the Stevens treaty with the Blackfoot nation, E. A. C. Hatch was a pointed agent to these tribes..." (From Bancroft Works, Volume 31, History Of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, 1845-1889, Hubert H. Bancroft, 1890. The History Company, Publishers, San Francisco) Also, in 1863, he helped broker the "Treaty with the Chippewa of the Mississippi and the Pillager and Lake Winniobigoshish Bands."


An interesting piece of trivia about the 1862 uprising is that E.A.C. Hatch was the one to break the news: "The first news of the event, the massacre in the Minnesota Valley, which touched off the flame, reached Stearns county on the evening of August 20th in a letter from E.A.C. Hatch, at Fort Ridgley, addressed to Superintendent Thompson of St. Cloud..." (From One Hundred Years Jacob's Prairie)

¹ - Hatch has been mentioned in this blog before, when I quoted an article in an anniversary edition of a local newspaper. However, that version was most definitely from a particular point of view.

Profile: Ezra Woodruff

Ezra Woodruff was the first post surgeon at the new Fort Pembina, arriving in May 1870 as the post officially opened, with the first post commander, Captain Lloyd Wheaton.

An interesting piece of trivia about Dr. Woodruff, that links his time here with our own time, is that he began a process that took over 150 years to complete, that began nearly 200 years ago - repatriating indigenous remains...




At the time he served, there were only about 150 post surgeons in the entire country.

Other known Fort Pembina Surgeons during its existence were: Captain Rudolph G. Ebert, Captain Harry O. Perley

[Source: Medical & Surgical Directory of the United States (1886)]

BORDERTOWNS: Epilogue

EPILOGUE


Charley Brown was sheriff of the Pembina area, Dakota Territory from 1875 until his death in 1884.

The hangings by the Fort Pembina military took place in the vicinity of what is now Lancaster, Minnesota.

Approximately three years after the disappearance of Pete, S. C. Cady visited the Vaughn homestead. After discussing the rumor as to the location of the Indian body, Vaughn and he searched for and found the corpse. Due to decomposition, the body could not be positively identified.

Manitoulin, the Collingwood boat that transported the McLaren family to Duluth, sank near Collingwood, Ontario, on May 20, 1882, with the loss of 25 lives.

In the early 1950's a shallow trench was dug just north of the present Pembina, ND schoolyard, for the purpose of planting a shelter-belt. Parts of two uniformed bodies were found and an argument ensued as to whether or not there were two complete bodies. It was decided to re-bury the remains in the public park in Pembina. A marker was placed there stating: "An unknown soldier from Hatch's Battalion."

Hatch's Battalion arrived in Pembina in November of 1863 and left on May 5, 1864, on the steamboat International, bound for Fort Abercrombie. There seem to be no existing records of any death or burial of his men while stationed in Pembina. All bodies interred at the Fort Pembina Cemetery during the fort's existence (1870-1895) were moved to Fort Lincoln when the fort was closed; thence again to a final resting place at the greasy-grass, the Custer Battlefield in Montana.

This leads to conjecture that the men were probably listed as deserters at Fort Pembina, but in actuality were murder victims.

C.W.

Old Crossing Mural

Click on the image above to see easier-to-read larger version...

I have written of it before - the Treaty of Old Crossing. The painting above is in reference to that treaty.

First Farmers

In 1832, Anglican missionary William Cockran tried to convert Red River Natives to Christianity and a life of farming. The plan failed. Cockran concluded that Natives were ill-suited for farming. Today, archeological investigations have proved the Anglican missionary to have been wrong.

What they were wrong about was assuming (not for the first time, nor the last) that the aboriginal populations, since they were not currently farming, had never farmed. They were wrong...

Several thousand years before the arrival of European immigrants, many Native nations in North America had developed sophisticated farming methods. Four centuries before Europeans settled beside the Red River, Native people were agricultural pioneers in the valley.

The skills of these early farmers are attested to by recent archeological evidence...

The Native farmers...developed a strain of corn that could mature in the typical 100-day growing season near the present-day Canadian border with the United States Midwest. The adaptation of corn to the long-day, short-season environment of the Red River Valley - from the plant's original short-day, long-season climate in Central America - testifies to the selective plant breeding skills of these first farmers.

So what happened to the farming skills of the natives? Why didn't early European explorers observe farming being practiced by the natives they encountered?

500 years ago, during the so-called Little Ice Age, summers became much shorter and cooler. With this climatic change, the pendulum swung back to hunting, fishing and food-gathering as the primary ways to survive. The skills of agriculture fell into disuse and were virtually forgotten.

From Red River - First Farmers