Native American. These words say it all. The Indians were native, or as described by dictionary definition “a person born in the region indicated, esp. one whose ancestors were also born there, or as distinguished from an invader, colonist, etc.”, to America. So how did they become a minority living on specific areas of land called reservations? It was the same story played out across America - the white men came, saw, wanted, and took. It was no different for the Dakota.
By the early 1800s, the cooperative relationship between whites and the Dakota was coming to an end. The U.S. was pushing west and the Dakota found that white people were more interested in their land than in a partnership with the people who lived on it.
In 1805, Lt. Zebulon Pike persuaded the Dakota to make their first land concession. For 100,000 acres at the mouths of the St. Croix and Minnesota rivers, the Indians were given $200 worth of presents, some liquor, and $2000 from the U.S. Senate.
By treaty in 1837, the Indians forfeited all of their land east of the Mississippi and yet they still believed that there was room for everyone.
Minnesota became a territory in 1849 and thousands of white people came here. With this influx, Alexander Ramsey, the first territorial governor, wanted the Dakota to give up the rich prairie lands of southern Minnesota and in 1851 negotiations began towards a treaty that would be called by historians “a monstrous conspiracy.”
Already deprived of much of their best hunting land and heavily dependent on whites, the Dakota by the 1850s were hungry and poor. Reluctantly, the Dakota gave up 20 million acres of southern Minnesota and 8,000 Indians moved to reservations along both sides of the upper Minnesota River. It was the first time they had been exiled from the woodlands of central Minnesota to the prairie.
The treaties promised money for the cost of removing the Indians to the reservation, education for the Indians, establishment of agencies, and the provision of supplies and annual cash payments but little money ever reached the Dakota. Besides no money, the crops failed in 1861 devastated by cutworm and the winter was long and harsh. The spring and summer of 1862 found starvation on the reservation with little to eat besides roots with game almost nonexistent.
With starvation looming and pressure from government agents and missionaries, many Dakota gave up their traditional ways and adopted the white man's ways. They cut their hair, discarded Indian dress, plowed land, and worshipped the white man's God. This split the Dakota as the policy by government agents was to give food and supplies to Indian farmers, commonly called cut-hairs, and to deny food and supplies to blanket Indians who refused to be like whites.
Many Dakota were bitter toward white traders who repeatedly cheated them out of annual treaty payments by claiming the money for debts they claimed the Indians had incurred at the agency stores. There was also anger with the traders for taking Dakota wives and then abandoning them and any children they had. Some warriors threatened to physically keep traders away when any treaty payment did show up for the Indians.
Barbara Feezor-Stewart, a Dakota woman in a one-year fellowship at Gustavus Adolphus College, stated in an interview that many Indian women committed suicide after being raped by frontier soldiers. “I believe that's one of the reasons the uprising occurred.”
She cited Henry Sibley's own diary account of having trouble keeping his men away from Indian women. Ironically, although depicted as savages, rape was not known among Indians.
The Dakota were not unified on how to respond to the advance of the white settlers. As anger built, Dakota tribal unity disappeared. The few hundred cut-hairs were alienated from the blanket Indians who clung to the hunt and traditional Indian religion. Militant warriors' influence became stronger and the influence of hereditary chiefs weakened.
To the warriors, the time seemed right for war. With the American Civil War being fought at the same time, perhaps a decisive blow could drive the whites from Minnesota and save the Dakota nation. Other Indians, including Little Crow, tried to accommodate the whites and keep peace with them. Little Crown knew it would be impossible to defeat the whites and many other chiefs agreed but they all felt it was their duty to lead the warriors if there was war even if they knew it would fail. The 1862 Sioux Uprising occurred.
A conflict in the early years of the 20th century between whites and the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe had similarities. Again, before settlement by whites could occur near Lake Mille Lacs, the Ojibwe had to be cleared off their traditional homelands. Though government agents forced many to go to the White Earth reservation, some refused, splitting families and becoming "landless people in their own homeland." The Indians who remained were run off by authorities to make room for white development and especially white sporting and recreation interests.
By the mid-1880s the federal government had negotiated treaties with the Minnesota Ojibwe that usurped the Native American's land and nearly extinguished their culture. This time there wasn't a war. In 1911 there were 3,000 Indians at the Leech Lake reservation and 75 who had remained at their ancient village by Mille Lacs Lake. The resisters were forcibly evicted and the village was destroyed without blood shed.
Not long ago I visited the Lower Sioux Agency Interpretive Center near Morton, Minnesota. I had to pass the glitzy, Las Vegas style Indian casino, Jackpot Junction, on my way. I went through the exhibit, listened to the audio tapes and viewed the videos, and browsed through the small gift area. While I was there a bus load of non-Indian tourist
arrived to hear the story of the Native Americans told by the white curator.
When I left the center, I walked north through tall, waving prairie grass smelling sweet in the hot summer breeze. I walked to the spot where Myrick's Trading Post had stood and where Andrew Myrick had been killed in 1862. It was almost 145 years to the day since that attack. The area was grown up in natural grasses. It was quiet and peaceful.
As I stood and reflected, I felt as if I could almost hear the Indian voices silenced so long ago. They came to help me understand how desperately they wanted to keep their homes, culture and native land. They were a people who had been cheated and abused by their lack of knowledge of the white man's way.
The white men who live today are not responsible for the atrocities done to the Indians in the 1800s or early 1900s. The Indians are not the same people either but they still suffer the discrimination of 140 years ago.
Although not directly responsible, aren't the white residents of today in some way to be held accountable? These are not the Indians of 1862 - the Indians of today now use the white man's own law in his courts to defeat him. For the Indians these are sweet victories - for the white men perhaps they will be valuable lessons in human rights.
