In Minnesota, after five weeks of trial proceedings centered around actions taken during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, more than 300 Dakota men are found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and are sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. One of the Native Americans was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in a mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of Minnesotans.
The Dakota were found guilty of joining in the so-called “Minnesota Uprising,” which was actually part of the wider Indian wars occurring throughout the West during the second half of the 19th century. For nearly half a century, Anglo settlers invaded the Dakota territory in the Minnesota Valley, and government pressure gradually forced the Native peoples to relocate to smaller reservations along the Minnesota River.
At the reservations, the Dakota were badly mistreated by corrupt federal Indian agents and contractors; during July 1862, the agents pushed the Native Americans to the brink of starvation by refusing to distribute stores of food because they had not yet received their customary kickback payments. The contractors callously ignored the Dakota’s pleas for help.
Outraged and at the limits of their endurance, the Dakota struck back, killing Anglo settlers and taking women as hostages. The initial efforts of the U.S. Army to stop the warriors failed, and in a battle at Birch Coulee, Dakota killed 13 American soldiers and wounded another 47 soldiers. However, on September 23, a force under the leadership of General Henry H. Sibley finally defeated the main body of Dakota warriors at Wood Lake, recovering many of the hostages and forcing most of the Native Americans to surrender.
The subsequent trials of the prisoners gave little attention to the injustices the Native Americans had suffered on the reservations and largely catered to the popular desire for revenge. Nor were the proceedings fairly administered. According to Carol Chomsky, associate professor of the University of Minnesota Law School, "The evidence was sparse, the tribunal was biased, the defendants were unrepresented in unfamiliar proceedings conducted in a foreign language, and authority for convening the tribunal was lacking."
However, President Lincoln’s commutation of the majority of the death sentences clearly reflected his understanding that the Minnesota Uprising had been rooted in a long history of Anglo abuse of the Dakota.
