Setting the Stage for the Single Most Difficult Truth of Minnesota’s Role in Genocide.

 Year of the Dakota Series.

Setting the Stage for the Single Most Difficult Truth of Minnesota’s Role in Genocide

by Richard J. Hilber, J.D.

In the history of Minnesota Territory and its precursors, the Wisconsin Territory, and the old Northwest Territory, there was the slow westward expansion of European occupancy of what formerly were areas inhabited by only aboriginal peoples. This expansion was at first slight and incidental to the fur trade as European traders came into the area and brought goods to trade with Indians and over time with metis (hereafter referenced as a people as Metis) who did the trapping and skinning.

When the United States decided to exert territorial authority in these trade years, it was to push out Canadian or British traders and trade companies to the benefit of the American fur trade. Land purchased for the siting of Fort St. Anthony at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers did not represent in any way a surrender of the Indian people then or even later with the establishment of the fort, which after its establishment was renamed Fort Snelling after the U.S. Army officer who had spearheaded its completion, Josiah Snelling.

American traders wanted to exploit the Indian and Metis trappers and traders and not have to compete with foreign influence. So long as the Metis sent pelts south to American traders they were a welcome and already existent means to an ends as the Metis spoke the languages of the Indian peoples and knew how to bring in the furs. With the extension of credit many of the Indians and Metis became debtors to American traders who in turn were debtors to Eastern investors and fur trade company owners.

Clearly the Indians knew the European settlement was moving toward their hunting grounds. Game became at times scarce and hunting parties had to go much farther afield, including the Great Plains for the buffalo hunt. This led to the American exploitation of the Sioux Indians.

Eastern missionaries also came to convert the Indians and to civilize them. The nominally Catholic Metis peoples for the most part resisted the Protestant missionary proselytizing while the Sioux when faced with starvation would adapt to white culture including religion and agriculture. The Indians though were also wary of settlers and former fur traders taking Indian land for farming and especially wary of the taking of trees. Both forestry and agriculture meant game suffered loss of habitat. Often the peace treaties preserved Indian rights to fish and to hunt the lands that were sold. This right of course had its limits as white settlers had to tolerate Indians taking fish and game and being in proximity to white settlers.

Another development is that the creditors of the Indians and Metis stood in the offing at treaty negotiation time but especially at time of distribution of payments to Indians so that the debts would be settled first with the remainder (which was either non-existant or slight) soon lost to the Indians who were short of foodstuffs with the exhaustion of the game.

The fur traders, such as Henry Hastings Sibley, who saw the end of a way of life in the 1840s and 1850s who had the capacity became speculators in land for resale to settlers. The pressure of settlement led to calls for settlement of the Indian problem by resettlement of Indians on reservations away from white settlement areas. But always the whites encroached on the land reserved for the Indians. Desperation due to loss of customary hunting life style and incipient starvation led to Indian conduct by some individuals that showed the deep hurt the Indian people had suffered in dealings with the American government.

By 1862 the Dakota War started with Indian warriors seeking to drive the settlers back from their Indian lands as land payments from the governmenthad long been delayed and unequal to the task of alleviating the starvation and poverty the Indian tribes were suffering. While racism had been minimal in fur trading days, the white settlers in large numbers called for removal or, even worse, extermination of the Indians as savages, or even less than human. Missionary attempts to convert savages into converts were considered foolhardy by many and with success came regret because the success that was possible would prove misguided in conception and execution.

The new State of Minnesota had not only to provide Union troops for the Civil War, it also had to raise brigades to pursue the Sioux. The arrestees included Indians who were not participants or even sympathizers with the Indian warriors who had started the war. Eventually, by Christmas 1862, President Lincoln had reviewed the cases and provided that only a limited number of Indians should be hung for evidence sufficient to convict them of atrocities such as murder and rape of the innocent. Among those convicted was Cut Nose who had led the Indian soldiers. Not present was Chief Little Crow. Little Crow was hunted for months thereafter. Eventually, he was shot and killed by a farmer who did not know whom he was shooting other than that he was shooting an Indian. The body of Little Crow was desecrated by whites in the aftermath. The enmity between the races was fixed except for those who by the grace of God rose above the enmity and chose God and his way forward encapsulated in his message of escape from cycles of violence and revenge, oppression and rebellion, which characterize the sad history of our common humanity.

The Author. Sunday, June 17, 2012.

Revised slightly, Friday, July 27, 2012. RJH.