History of Minnesota - Civil War Era and Dakota War of 1862

Civil War Era and Dakota War of 1862

Minnesota strongly supported the Union war effort, with about 22,000 Minnesotans serving. The 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was particularly important to the Battle of Gettysburg.

At the same time, the state faced another crisis as the Dakota War of 1862 broke out. The Dakota had signed the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and Treaty of Mendota in 1851 because they were concerned that without money from the United States government, they would starve, due to the loss of habitat of huntable game. They were initially given a strip of land of ten miles (16 km) north and south of the Minnesota River, but they were later forced to sell the northern half of the land. In 1862, crop failures left the Dakota with food shortages, and government money was delayed. After four young Dakota men, searching for food, shot a family of white settlers near Acton, the Dakota leadership decided to continue the attacks in an effort to drive out the settlers. Over a period of several days, Dakota attacks at the Lower Sioux Agency, New Ulm and Hutchinson, as well as in the surrounding farmlands, resulted in the deaths of at least 300 to 400 white settlers and government employees, causing panic in the settlements and provoking counterattacks by state militia and federal forces which spread throughout the Minnesota River Valley and as far away as the Red River Valley. The ensuing battles at Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee, Fort Abercrombie, and Wood Lake punctuated a six-week war, which ended with the trial of 425 Native Americans for their participation in the war. Of this number, 303 men were convicted and sentenced to death.

Episcopal Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple pled to President Abraham Lincoln for clemency, and the death sentences of all but 39 men were reduced to prison terms. On December 26, 1862, 38 men were hanged in the largest mass execution in the United States. Many of the remaining Dakota Native Americans, including non-combatants, were confined in a prison camp at Pike Island over the winter of 1862–1863, where more than 300 died of disease. Survivors were later exiled to the Crow Creek Reservation, then later to a reservation near Niobrara, Nebraska. A small number of Dakota Native Americans managed to return to Minnesota in the 1880s and establish communities near Granite Falls, Morton, Prior Lake, and Red Wing.