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"I am happy to inform you that, in spite both of blandishments and threats, used in profusion by the agents of the government of the United States, the Indian nations within the confederacy have remained firm in their loyalty and steadfast in the observance of their treaty engagements with this government."
(The above Extract from JEFF DAVIS'S last Message will serve to explain the News from Minnesota.)

The
violent images in this cartoon reflect the Dakota War (or Great Sioux
Uprising) of August-September 1862, and, combined with the caption,
implicate the Confederacy for having such brutal allies. Here, the
ferocious Indians are Confederate agents who attack and prepare to scalp
and kill men, women, and children on the Minnesota frontier. As is
usually the case with cartoons featuring American Indians, the reality
was less one-sided and more complex.In 1851, the Dakota Sioux signed
a treaty ceding most of their territory in Minnesota, about 28 million
acres, to the United
States government. In return, the Indians were granted annual
payments of $280,000 over fifty years, and a 20- by 70-mile
reservation. In 1858, a new treaty ceded half of the reservation
to the federal government in exchange for increased annuity
payments. The treaties caused dissention within the tribes,
undermined the authority of the chiefs, and allowed licensed traders to
gouge the Indians with overpriced goods, while granting the Indians no
legal recourse to rectify the situation. Forced into a state of
dependence, about 7000 Dakota Sioux from four tribes lived on the small tract of land in southern Minnesota.
Year after year, a significant portion of the annuities ended up in the pockets of
federal Indian agents and traders. In the summer of 1862, the federal government was late making its
annuity payments to the Dakota Sioux, who were in desperate need of
supplies. At a meeting in Redwood, Minnesota, on August 15 between
representatives of the two southernmost tribes (the Mdewakantons and
Wahpekutes), the federal Indian agent, and the traders, the
latter refused to distribute goods on credit. Said one trader,
"If they are hungry, let them eat grass." Traders with
the two northernmost tribes, however, agreed to allocate the supplies on
credit, and these tribes did not participate in the subsequent
violence. Unknown to all parties in Minnesota, the long-delayed
annuities were finally on their way.
The Indian retaliation began on August 17, when a band of braves
killed a group of five settlers. Over the next few days, hundreds
of settlers were killed, towns burned, and thousands became refugees
fleeing the carnage. On August 26, Governor Alexander Ramsey
authorized Colonel Henry Sibley to put down the uprising. (Both men were former Indian agents who had
collected large claims from previous annuities.)
The
Indians continued their successful offensive through early September
until momentum shifted in mid-month to the state militia. The
decisive battle took place on September 23 at Wood Lake, where the
Dakota suffered heavy casualties and were forced to retreat.
Meanwhile, northern tribes allied with the state militia captured and
released nearly 300 soldiers and settlers taken prisoner by the southern
tribes. Surrounded, hungry, and dispirited, the southern Dakota
surrendered.
On September 28, Colonel Sibley hastily named a military commission
to try the Dakota for murder and related crimes. During the first
day, 16 trials were held, resulting in ten convictions carrying a death
sentence and six acquittals. Continuing through November 3, the
military tribunal conducted a total of 393 cases, convicting and
sentencing 303 to death. Since participation in the uprising was
considered evidence of murder, admission of firing guns quickly resulted
in guilty verdicts. Two mob attacks on the convicted Indians while
they were in transit to prison were unsuccessful.
After aides sifted through the evidence, President
Abraham Lincoln allowed the execution of 38 of the Indians, who were
hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, the largest mass execution
in American history. In April 1863, Congress passed a law for the
removal of the Sioux remaining in Minnesota to a reservation in South
Dakota. The other Indian prisoners were transferred to Iowa, and
in 1866, President Andrew Johnson pardoned the 177 survivors, who were
sent to a reservation in Nebraska. Hostilities between the Sioux
and the American military continued over the decades until the
Indians' final defeat at Wounded Knee in 1890.
Although those involved in the Dakota uprising
were not allied with the Confederacy (as the cartoon falsely indicates),
20,000 American Indians did fight in the American
Civil War: 11-12,000 for
the Confederacy and 8-9,000 for the Union. They served in
various capacities and engaged in numerous battles. The
highest-ranking Indian in the Civil War was Brigadier General Stan
Waite, Confederate commander of the Indian Brigades in the
Trans-Mississippi West. The Civil War ruined the economy of the
five Indian nations of the South--Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw,
and Seminole--and devastated the tribes in the western Indian
Territory. Nor did the end of the war bring rewards for service to
the Union cause, but rather an intensified effort to place them on
reservations, which sparked a series of bloody wars over the next two
decades.
Robert C. Kennedy
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