American Exceptionalism and Genocide

Year of the Dakota Series.

American Exceptionalism and Genocide

by Richard J. Hilber

     Recent history tracks fairly well what happens to those who participate in genocide, not in all cases though.  Historically, the destruction in the 16th Century of French Protestant (Huguenot) villages and villagers is just a footnote in the history of religious persecution.  The same of the continent wide genocide of aboriginal persons of the New World (1492 to present day Mexico).  It is said that Adolph Hitler admired the thoroughness of the United States government in the extermination of indigenous tribes (see unexpurgated versions of Mein Kempf by Adolph Hitler). 

     For those who care to see excavation of burial trenches in the aftermath of Balkan wars of the 1990s, there are scant news photographs.  It's unseemly afterall, these rank exposures of atrocities meant to remain buried and secret.  Any comfort that Americans might take that genocide would not and could not happen in this country is really what is at issue here in this writing.  One of the primary tenants of the religion which is American Exceptionalism is that we are a good and kindly nation of civilized persons. The argument is that we Americans are God's chosen people and therefore Manifest Desting even in its unseemly details is ordered by the Creator God.  Scary and an atrocious defamation of those of us who find the Creator God incapable of such machinations.

     Here in Minnesota this year, we are marking the one hundred fiftieth year since the Dakota War of 1862.  An insurrection among reservation Dakota peoples faced with starvation and betrayal by the United States Government.  Those rounded up in the aftermath of the insurrection for prosecution, execution, and removal from the State of Minnesota included even bands not participant in the insurrection and as well members of the bands who resisted inclusion as hostiles and helped White settlers escape to safety.  What resulted was a war of invasion into Dakota Territory into undeeded lands of the Lakota and Dakota peoples and subsequent genocide ordered by Governor Alexander Ramsey and Major General John Pope of the United States Army.  The primary event of genocide would occur in September 1863 in an area of nearby James River Valley in Dakota Territory, what is misnamed the Battle of White Stone Hill (not a battle really but rather a free fire killing zone on villagers at a rendezvous on the order of My Lai in Viet Nam in 1968).

     The United States and the States of Minnesota and North Dakota have covered up official acts of genocide for now on one hundred fifty years. Why is the trench of corpse remains not as of yet excavated? The White Stone Hill battleground is not yet still. The case for American exceptionalism is not yet dead. How can we fault a civilized Germany for condoning and participating in the genocide of Jews, Gypsys, Poles, and others? We as a nation do not have the clean hands to prosecute Serbian leaders and generals that we think we have (which is why in part we need an effective United Nations and international tribunals to try war criminals)!


     We Americans have no body count of those slain in the environs of White Stone Hill, Dakota Territory, September 1863. The military leader responsible for the slayings does not report the number of dead and dying in the ravine in which they were found the morning after the carnage on September 3, 1863. We have the general’s own report though of other related statistics and fair minded estimates (admittedly estimates). In so much as this general, General Alfred Sully, exaggerated his military exploits we supposedly would not mock him. After all, we all have to justify our positions of power and influence with our superiors.

     The problem for General Sully is that his superior, Major John Pope, late of the Army of the Potomac, had ordered the killing and destruction which by modern parlance constitutes genocide. So had the governor of the State of Minnesota, Governor Alexander Ramsey. The adjutant general of the State of Minnesota earlier in 1863 had published a bounty for each scalp brought in for redemption of any person of the tribes then found in Minnesota, twenty-five dollars at first with a larger bounty for a scalp supplied by one not in military pursuit of the primitives. Perhaps that concession was to prevent unjust enrichment for soldiers who received soldier’s pay, as they should only receive a slight reward for doing their duty and having the proof of it to supply. No questions asked about how the scalper had come by the scalp either (as in an atrocity in killing a woman, a child, a non-belligerent even, or what would otherwise be murder even if the killing of a belligerent formerly).

     The historical record available to lay persons such as myself includes General Sully’s own report to his superior officer. I did not know what to make of the numbers used in this report, but I have my reasons for making sense of them nevertheless. I do not want those who argue for American exceptionalism or for the depravities of Manifest Destiny to ever have sway in my country again. There will be those who say of me that I dwelt on the past and morbidly and for a disloyal purpose of impugning reputations of war heroes.  I'd say not, rather a purpose impugning an ignoble purpose in killing off native American primitives on federal land without the State of Minnesota and in land as of yet not conceded the federal government (the Yanktonais bands had made concessions of land way south on either side of the James River in an 1858 Treaty but had retained lands to the north in Dakota Territory which was just coming into being with Minnesota statehood in 1858).

     For starters, the general reports he had taken captives before the killing started as his superior indicated he should do. The number of possible hostiles among the one hundred twenty persons he captured was as low as twenty soldiers as the old chief expected he'd be considered a friendly and lacked the warriors to defend his tribe. The ratio of warrior soldiers in a healthy warlike band would suggest a higher number of warriors, as high as one to four. This will be important. Why? Because historians who venture a number of slain in the genocide at White Stone Hill settle on two hundred fifty persons (using the ratio than of about sixty warrior soldiers who died in the ravine with the elders, the pregnant, the women, the infirm, and the children). I hope for General Sully’s soul that there were sixty actual hostiles, and not just defenders of their kinfolk in that ravine. A military leader after all certainly deserves his defense if accused of atrocities in executing a just war (which begs the question of whether there was in fact a just war being conducted on non-belligerent tribes or even if belligerent in their homeland and on their hunting grounds).

     As I continue this analysis, I am quite sure that there were no hostiles present whatsoever in that ravine at White Stone Hill. We know according to the general’s report that some two hundred mounted soldiers accosted his Metis scout, one named Framboise, at the approach of Sully’s army. We know that these two hundred were alive the next day as the same force encountered and killed four of the general’s mounted troopers sent out to scour the area for possible hostiles that could hamper the general’s return back down to the Missouri River Valley. So far we have accounted for three hundred and twenty Lakota and Dakota persons of the rendezvous encampment at White Stone Hill (120 prisoners and 200 mounted warriors).

     Let’s say that the rendezvous villagers numbered the two hundred fifty slain additionally for a total of five hundred seventy persons. How much in foodstuffs would such a population need to survive for the one hundred eighty days of winter on the Missouri Coteau? Specious insight here is not helpful. Working backwards from the general’s own report of much dried buffalo meat he destroyed during the immediate days after the carnage, conservatively he reports over four hundred thousand pounds were destroyed. If all we have are five hundred seventy persons to feed, that would be about four pounds of meat per person per day (400,000 pounds divided by 570 persons by 180 days equals roughly 3.9 pounds of dried buffalo meat per person per day).

     Assuming of course that even though dried and prepared, the meat would have to be supplemented by other kills due to degradation of the supply over time. Most modern Americans would gag at eating four pounds of meat a day.  However, given the fact that the plains Indians were almost near dependent on the buffalo, it is more likely that the calculus is wrong. I believe the rendezvous was a rendezvous of Lakota and Dakota persons numbering twelve hundred persons with adequate food supplies for one hundred eighty days at two pounds per person (able body hunters eating more calories to bring in fresh kills through deepening snow being a factor in how few calories a woman or child could expect to consume).

     What other evidence supports my conclusion. The general reports he destroyed three hundred lodges at White Stone Hill encampment. Using the ratio soldiers (able bodied defenders) to other persons of four to one, the number of persons who lived in those destroyed lodges would be twelve hundred persons. Where does this leave the calculus of those killed in the genocidal attack on the village?

     The gross numbers are as follows: one hundred twenty prisoners (120) plus two hundred mounted soldiers reportedly threatening the general’s withdrawal from the Coteau (200) plus eight hundred eighty other persons (880) equals twelve hundred total persons in those lodges. The lodges however were likely to be tipi style lodges made out of buffalo hides and with lodge poles from the James River bottoms or perhaps the Missouri River bottoms. If one assumes that an extended family occupying a tipi is likely to be greater than four persons given the need for shelter out on the Great Plains and human warmth, the error if any here is that the lodge count should be much greater.

     We do know that the general in the waning twilight called it a day. Reports of friendly fire deaths increased as his troopers moved down the ravine into a crossfire from troopers on the other side. Supposedly, able bodied warriors and women without children made it out of the ravine in the cover of the dark. We also know that the travois left abandoned on the surrounding plains about White Stone Hill suggest an earlier exodus of persons from the encampment. Is it possible that some families would have decamped to some extent and fled before the arrival of the general’s main force which had to march some ten miles to disrupt decampment then in progress in time to destroy the persons there?

     I believe those least motivated to trust in the civilized conduct of invading troopers would be the eastern Dakota people as have been said to have encamped at White Stone Hill with Great Plains Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota bands. Their families had been decimated and relatives marched off on a death march from Fort Release to Fort Snelling and captured innocent soldiers prosecuted in drum head trials with some five hundred sentenced to death (assuming of course that some of those convicted were in fact criminals in conduct). These relatives included bands like the Sissiston and Wahpeton who had in large measure objected to the Mdewaketon and Wahpecute insurrection and even aided the settlers in seeking refuge from capture by the hostiles under Little Crow and Cut Nose.

     Back in December 1862, Abraham Lincoln after review of the 498 individual trial transcripts and 303 convictions, settled on about thirty nine or forty whose criminality had been sufficienty asserted (not proven) to warrant death by hanging during the extremities of the national crisis which was the Civil War. Using Lincoln’s calculus, that would be about one in twelve deserved the death penalty and for reasons other than actual proof of guilt (as a lawyer like Lincoln could easily assume should happen here given the volatility on the frontier from insurrections of tribal band members). Interestingly, decimating the war prisoners in retribution is almost ritualistic killing (here 40 of 498 is 1 in 12, while 40 of 303 is 1 in 8).

Does Lincoln's calculus aid us in understanding what hostiles might have been included among the Dakota at White Stone Hill in September 1863? It may have been the plan of the encampment that those eastern Dakota in flight from Minnesota's scalp hunters were being hosted in this encampment at White Stone Hill. Makes sense that some of these refugees included at least some actual hostiles. If so, were these guests encouraged and helped to make their escape first as the likely target of the military expedition now bent on execution of a mandate against those same Dakota refugees from retaliation back in Minnesota? I think it likely although it gives the benefit of a doubt that Sully and Sibley and Pope actually cared that actually fugitives from justice were being pursued. The orders to kill indigenous tribes was to safeguard the frontier from a repeat of the 1862 Minnesota Uprising. But here in Dakota Territory, the land was not as yet by treaty yielded by the tribes that lived and hunted there, and so "uprising" seems to be the wrong nomenclature.

     Using that Lincoln ratio (of one purported murder/rapist per twelve Dakota prisoners placed on drum head trial, about one to two hundred soldier warrior and possible other persons took flight from the encampment to safeguard the host bands from any violence that may result from harboring fugitives. Some might say that I attribute to the Lakota and Dakota leaders a nobility of spirit, both host leaders and guest leaders thinking for their own people. Lacking any other meaningful ratio, I conservatively estimate that one thousand non-fugitives were at this rendezvous encampment leaving eight hundred eighty persons in that ravine (120 prisoners taken before the onslaught according to the general's report). We know from the military report that some persons fled in the dark in the confusion created by troopers' crossfire.

     I believe that an honest seach for the bones of these victims of genocide should be officially conducted by the federal government and respective States.  The results I predict will neighbor in the area of seven hundred victims of genocide.  On my prejudice for honorable conduct on the part of the non-fugitives, one fourth hopefully were warrior soldiers who stayed to defend their women, children, and elders and if short of one fourth, then survivors crawled off into the brush to hopefully live and die another day.

Author’s Note. The numbers above are derived from the military report of General Alfred Sully except for the reports of the results of the drum head trials conducted by General Henry Hastings Sibley in 1862 and the thirty eight Dakota hung at Mankato, December 1862. See historical report on the Battle of Whitestone Hill written by George Kingsbury in History of Dakota Territory vol 1 pt 1 (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915), pgs. 289-290 and the same which contains General Alfred Sully’s actual words found at pgs. 293-294 of the same.