Abuse Of Power

In 1862, the Dakota Indians 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. The Minnesota uprising in 1862, also known as the Dakota War, was a conflict between the Dakota Sioux and the United States. The battle was driven by broken treaties, starvation, and desperation. For almost fifty years, Anglo settlers encroached on Dakota territory in the Minnesota Valley, while government pressure steadily pushed Native peoples to move to smaller reservations along the Minnesota River. On the reservations, the Dakota faced severe mistreatment by corrupt federal Indian agents and contractors. By July 1862, the agents had brought the Native Americans to the verge of starvation by withholding food supplies until they received their usual kickbacks. Meanwhile, the contractors heartlessly dismissed the Dakota’s desperate pleas for assistance.

The Dakota Indians were outraged by the corruption, and very quickly found themselves at the limits of their endurance. So finally, they struck back, killing Anglo settlers and taking women as hostages. The United States Army’s first attempts to stop the Dakota warriors were unsuccessful, with the battle at Birch Coulee resulting in the deaths of 13 American soldiers and injuries to 47 more. But on September 23rd, General Henry H Sibley led a force that defeated the main Dakota warriors at Wood Lake, freeing many hostages and compelling most of the Native Americans to surrender.

The subsequent trials of the prisoners barely acknowledged the injustices Native Americans had endured on the reservations. Instead, they focused on satisfying the widespread call for revenge. The proceedings were unfair, with Carol Chomsky, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, noting that the evidence was weak, the tribunal was biased, the defendants lacked representation, the process was unfamiliar and conducted in a foreign language, and the tribunal itself lacked proper authority.

In Minnesota, after five weeks of trials addressing the events of the United States-Dakota War of 1862, over 300 Dakota men were convicted of assaulting and killing Anglo settlers and sentenced to death by hanging. President Abraham Lincoln later commuted all but 39 of these sentences. While one Dakota man was granted a last-minute reprieve, the remaining 38 were executed simultaneously on December 26, in front of a large crowd of Minnesotans. President Lincoln’s decision to commute most of the death sentences was a reflection on his recognition that the Minnesota Uprising stemmed from a long history of Anglo mistreatment of the Dakota people. He couldn’t allow 300 men to be hung based on a lie.