On the bright Sunday morning of August 17, 1862, four Sioux
warriors emerged from the Big Woods northwest of St. Paul,
Minnesota, on their way home from an unsuccessful hunt. When they
came upon the homestead of Robinson Jones, a white man who ran a
post office and general store and offered lodging for travelers,
the Indians opened fire on the settlers, killing almost all of
them. Soon bands of Sioux were rampaging across southwestern
Minnesota, attacking farms and trading posts and murdering
everywhere they wentósplitting the skulls of men; clubbing
children to death; raping daughters and wives before disemboweling
them; cutting off hands, breasts, and genitals; and looting
whatever could be taken before setting fire to what remained.
Perhaps as many as two thousand settlers were brutally massacred,
although the number has never been firmly established. Once the
uprising was suppressed, 303 Sioux warriors were sentenced to
death. The people of Minnesota called for their immediate
execution, a sentiment that matched the national mood. Abraham
Lincoln suspected that most of those convicted were marginal
players in the rebellion and that the worst culprits had escaped,
and he carefully reviewed each case before selecting the 39ólater
reduced to 38ómen to hang whom he believed to be guilty of the
worst crimes. The remainder were committed to life in prison. "I
could not hang men for votes," he later explained. On December 26
the 38 were simultaneously hanged on a gallows construction
especially for them. The Sioux Uprising of 1862, also known as the
Dakota War, sounded the first shots of a war that continued for
another 28 years, culminating in the massacre of Indian women and
children at Wounded Knee in 1890. Lincoln's death at the hands of
John Wilkes Booth ended his intention to reform the government's
Indian policy, and both political parties continued to use the
system to reward their supporters, a practice that largely
continues to this day.
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