Taoyateduta (Little Crow) at Kaposia, 1851.
Taoyateduta led the Dakota bands that went to war in 1862 after
years of seeing their people suffer poverty and starvation, the
direct result of the government's failure to live up to its treaty
obligations, and of dishonest traders who exploited the situation
and cheated the Dakotas out of treaty payments. |
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Dakota chiefs in Washington, 1858:
By the time this photograph
was taken, a series of treaties, accomplished through promises, bribes
and threats, had systemically reduced Dakota land holdings in their
own homeland to a thin strip of land alongside the Minnesota River. |
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House of Chaska:
Federal acculturation policies
in practice. The government had a long held belief that the way
to "Americanize" the Dakota people was to make them become farmers.
individual property owners; the intent was to undermine the life
of the tribe. Despite frequent failure of the government to provide
aid promised for the transition, many Dakotas made successes of
their farms. |
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Yellow Medicine mission:
White refugees of 1862 conflict.
500 whites lost their lives in the conflict; the Dakota dead were never
counted. |
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Circular Cloud:
A Dakota man imprisoned at Fort Snelling,
1862. For their part in the conflict, 38 Dakota men were hanged
in the largest mass execution in American history. The hanging,
carried out on a special gallows especially made for the execution,
took place the day after Christmas, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.
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"Little Crow's Savages":
Dakota refugees in Canada (British
possessions), ca. 1862. Many Dakotas fled to Canada during and after
the conflict, remembering British promises to protect them after Dakotas
aided them in their fight against the French years before. All other
Dakotas found themselves exiled from Minnesota, their homeland for
hundreds of years. The price of remaining was their lives: The state
government offered a bounty for Dakota scalps. |
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"Confirmation of Sioux":
Bishop Whipple at Fort
Snelling prison camp, 1862
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