The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 & the Concentration Camp
The story of the U.S.-Dakota War begins with the 1851 Treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux, in which the Dakota were to cede a great portion of present-day Minnesota to the United States in exchange for goods and monetary payment. However, the Dakota did not receive much of the promised money because it either wasn’t sent, or because it was stolen by means of corruption.
Furthermore, Dakota land was limited to a narrow reservation along the Minnesota River that by the 1860s was already being reduced in size, depleted of natural resources, and broken of natural systems. Annuities often were not paid because the federal government was deeply concentrated on the Civil War, which caused the Dakota to suffer from starvation and terrible living conditions. The tipping point for the Dakota, though, was when a government-endorsed trader named Andrew Myrick infamously remarked that the Dakota could “eat grass or their own dung” if they were hungry. Shortly after this remark, a small group of Dakota men attacked a family of white settlers, and prompted the Dakota to hold a war council.
Chief Little Crow reluctantly agreed that he could lead the Dakota into war, despite the fact that it would likely not be won. Over the course of approximately one month, several hundred white settlers, several dozen United States soldiers, and an unknown amount of Dakota (estimated at 150) were killed. The war came to an end with the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men in the town of Mankato on December 26, 1862, after 264 had been pardoned by President Abraham Lincoln and marched to a prison camp in Iowa.
The remaining Dakota who surrendered – mostly the elderly, women, and their children – were forcibly marched to a winter internment camp at Fort Snelling before being exiled from Minnesota in 1863. (ADD THE OTHER THINGS TO THIS)
Video courtesy of Uptake Media - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYT9CO4OMv4