The Dakota war becomes inevitable
"If the Indian people are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung"
1860 - 1869
"If the Indian people are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung"
INDIAN HISTORY 1870 - 1879
INDIAN HISTORY Return to INDIAN 1700 - 1999 INDEX
Residential schools are mandated for the systemic attempt at
cultural, religious and developmental genocide of Native children
1860
Settlers began invading the Nez Perce lands that were established in treaty of 1855. The settlers began tearing down Indian fences, taking over their pastures and farms and driving the owners from their lands.
Later, on the annual buffalo hunt, the White Horse Plains Metis visited the Dakota Sioux village of 1,500 warriors to make peace. The Dakota Sioux had sent a peace party to the Metis camp requesting a conference. Following peace, the Dakota Sioux performed the Buffalo Head Dance. In the evening the young single girls, in white deer skin, profusely ornamented with porcupine quills and beads, danced and sung much to the enjoyment of the young Metis hunters, who made many presents, to the evident pleasure of the young girls. The final day of the peace conference is devoted to horse racing and exchange of horses.
The Hudson Bay Company at this time classified the aborigines as five distinct tribes or races namely Esquimaux, Chipewyan (Montagnais of the north), Algonquian, Assiniboine and Blackfoot.
The Esquimaux or Wiaskimow meaning raw meat eaters are now called Inuit and are more recently arrived of aboriginal peoples.
The Chipewyan or Montagnais of the North called themselves Dene or Tenee meaning men, they also are more recently arrived, relatively speaking and who only a few years ago are all north of English River but are now on the banks of the Saskatchewan River.
The Algonquian has three major subdivisions; the Maskeygoos (Muskeg) who call themselves Ininiw, the Cree (Kinistinow) who call themselves Iyiniw and the Saulteaux (Ojibwa) who call themselves Anishinabay. All names like the Dene means man or more correctly just The People.
The Assiniboine is believed by the Hudson Bay Company to be an off shoot of the Dakota Sioux. This belief is based on the Cree calling them Pwatak and the Assiniboine Assini-pwaak means Stone Sioux or Dakota Sioux of the Mountains.
The Blackfoot has four subdivisions, the Blackfoot, Piedsganes, and Men of Blood and Skrcis. The Gros-Ventre has recently moved to the Upper Missouri where the are now located. The Sarcis belong to the Chipewyan by dialect and Native tradition fixed a time not long ago when a quarrel between two chiefs caused the separation.
A flock of Passenger Pigeon estimated to be 300 miles long flew over Niagara and by 1902 they are extinct.
March 1: The Dakota Sioux, three Chiefs and eighty braves left the Dakotas and met the Saulteaux and entered into a peace treaty at Fort Garry with the Saginosh (English) Governor McTavish, James McKay, William Hallett, Rowand and others. They had representatives from the Ojibwa, Yankton (Sioux) and Sistous. The last time they were in Red River was in 1845 when one of their members is shot dead. The Saulteaux (Ojibwa) stated the Metis are their friends and when the Dakota Sioux see them on their own they kill them. Do not come here with smooth words on your lips and deceit in your heart for the Great Spirit hears us. The White Horse Plains Metis at this time did not entry into the peace treaty fearing the Dakota Sioux are masking treachery.
1861
A Dog Feast is performed this year at Red River with an objective of making medicine and initiating novices into the medical profession. The celebration goes on for two or three days and the novices must fast for ten days before the ceremony.
1862
Manitoulin Island Treaty, Lake Huron, Ontario is signed by the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and Ottawa. Manitoulin means the home of the spirit.
The Prairie Dakota Sioux are presently classified as the Yankton and Tenton. The Santee of the Woodland Dakota Sioux are of four divisions, the Mdawakanton, Wahpeton, Wahpekute and Sisseton. They are forced into a narrow strip of territory along the Minnesota River. Big Eagle reported "that many white men often abused the Indians and treated them unkindly. Some white men abused the Indian women in a certain way and disgraced them, and surely there is no excuse for that." More than 150,000 white settlers are pushing into Santee Country and "all these things made many Indians dislike the whites." There are about 6,000 Dakota living on limited reserves along the Minnesota River. They were hemmed in by white settlers. A crop failure in 1861 left little food.
August: The Dakota Sioux complained that the Government is behind in their annual payments and starvation is pending. William Forbes, post trader, told the Dakota Sioux that they are not men. This wide spread belief had been nurtured and circulated by many clergymen of earlier times. At this time Louis Robert, a post trader, stands accused of defrauding the Dakota Sioux of their money. After a long string of broken American promises the final insult is delivered by an Indian Agent Andrew Myrick to the Dakota Sioux Chief of the Mdawakanton, Taoyateduta (Little Crow), 'so far as I am concerned, if your people are hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung." Little Crow was the son of Little Crow and his grandfather was Little Thunder.
August 18: The infamous Andrew Myrick lay dead in front of the trading post his mouth stuffed full of grass. The Indians said Myrick is now eating grass himself. The Santee killed twenty men and captured ten women and children. Forty-seven people with assistance of their Santee friends fled across the river to Fort Ridgely. John Marsh led a troop of forty-five soldiers against the Santee. Only twenty-four escaped back to the safety of their fort. The Santee opened the war with raids on trading posts and settlements like Ulm along the Minnesota and Sank Rivers. Two thousand Americans died and more than three hundred women and children are captured within forty-eight hours. Included is a detachment of 23 infantry out of Fort Ridgely. The Dakota Sioux had concentrated their efforts mainly along the Minnesota River Valley about two hundred miles long.
August: Alexander Ramsey the Governor of Minnesota appoints Henry H. Sibley of the American Fur Company Eagle Chief of the Minnesota Regiment. He led his men up the Minnesota River northward into Santee Country. Long Trader Sibley of the American Fur Company stands accused by the Santee of stealing $145,000 of their treaty money. Indian Agent Alexander Ramsey would not accept the Santee account records indicating under payment but preferred to accept Sibley account records of over payment. Governor Ramsey instructions are "the Dakota Sioux Indians must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the State."
August 18: The Ojibwa of Gull Lake arrested several white people and talked of attacking Major L.C. Walker. The Major fled Crow Wing and met troops from Fort Ripley, returned and arrested the chief of Gull Lake. Major Walker fearing a major uprising committed suicide on his way to Saint Cloud. Meanwhile the Ojibwa of Leech Lake had risen and arrested all whites but two, seven in number and brought them down to Gull Lake where they are released.
August: At Mankato an ingenious American hoisted a British flag and he is the sole white man to escape being killed because the Dakota Sioux considered the Canadians kinder and therefore spared his life.
August 20: Little Crow led an assault on Fort Ridgely where many settlers had taken refuge. Three howitzers killed more than 100 Natives before Little Crow called off the siege.
August 23: Another group of Santee stormed the village of New Ulm and after three days of fighting with heavy casualties on both sides a third of the town is destroyed. The next day New Elm is abandoned. General Henry Hastings Sibley the American Fur Company man reached Fort Ridgely with an additional 1,500 troops.
September 2: Hasting sent out a burial party of 135 men and twenty wagon thirteen miles to Birch Coulee. Little Crow’s warrior’s attack the detachment and the troops held out for thirty on hours before a relief force arrived from the Fort. Twenty-three soldiers are dead and no one recorded the Indian causalities. A stagecoach traveling from Saint Paul to Red River is reported attacked by the Dakota Sioux. The American passengers are killed and scalped. Fort Abercrombie is attacked but did not fall. The Canadians abandoned Georgetown and all goods and provisions are transported back to Red River but their steamboat had to be abandoned. Many fleeing American settlers left poisoned cakes so that the starving savages should arrive to plunder might devour them and die.
September 12: Two white men burned the house of Ojibwa Hole in the Day.
September 23: Seven hundred Santee attacked but are no match for the Americans artillery. They withdrew in defeat with their two hundred prisoners of war, mostly women and children. They also had a considerable number of mixed blood that is known to be white sympathetic.
September: Little Crow negotiated with the other Dakota Sioux leaders to join the war. He could not gain support because of the indiscriminate killing of white settlers on the north side of the Minnesota River. Little Crow is also contemptuous of those who made war on the defenseless settlers but it is too late to turn back. Many of the scattering settlers had sought shelter with the Dakota Sioux friends in the tribes not involved in the war.
September 12: Little Crow gave Long Trader an opportunity to end the war claiming the prisoners of war are being treated kindly.
September 22: The last major battle is lost and by September 26, the Santee stopped fighting and returned 107 white prisoners and 162 mixed blood. Many of the scattering Santee fled to the Dakota Territory or Red River where Little Crow sought refuge. Canada was considered the Grandmothers land north from the Salt Fork of the Red River across the Medicine Line.
September: The Dakota Sioux killed the Americans in the Gold Country of Idaho but spared Edward Shelly because he is Canadian. At St. Paul, Minnesota ornaments are being made from the bones of killed savages and is being sold at high prices. Ten years later the Dakota Sioux are still living among the Assiniboine in Canada. Lawrence Garneau (1840-1921) and his companions are among those who fled to the Dakota's and on to the Red River settlement.
September: Meanwhile 700 Ojibwa are at Red Lake River and Red River in a spot called the Grand Forks waiting on the United States Commissioner to enter into treaty for lands lying on the Red River as far north as Pembina. Mr. Dole the Commissioner is at St. Cloud and could not proceed because of the Dakota Sioux War. The treaty goods and provisions are at Abercrombie that is controlled by the Dakota Sioux and probably lost. The Ojibwa and Metis running short of provisions intercepted Mr. Kittson and Murry who are transporting the Georgetown goods to Red River. They pillaged the goods for the food as they had been waiting a long time for Mr. Dole. In return they instructed Mr. Kittson in the art of defense against the Dakota Sioux. After the war ended the Americans would make good two thousand-pound's sterling for the loss.
December 26: Mankato, Minnesota, Abrahan Lincoln orders the largest mass execution in American history. Thirty-eight Santee Dakota Sioux are simultaneously hanged because they dared to protect the rights to their lands. Two of the men hanged are not on Lincoln's list and one innocent man hanged had saved a white woman’s life during the raiding. Future generations would consider this campaign as one of the blackest marks on American History. Future composition of 105,000,000 dollars would be offered as composition but rejected as the natives only wanted their sacred Black Hills of Dakota returned. This would happen a century later.
Many of the Dakota Sioux who fled to the North West Territories remained to settle in lands at Oak River, Oak Lake and Bird Trail Creek in present day Manitoba. Others settled at White Cap, Wahpoten and Standing Buffalo in Saskatchewan.
1863
Chief of the Mdawakanton, Taoyateduta (Little Crow), joined the Metis buffalo hunt in the Dakota's to impress on their brothers that the peace treaty is being taken seriously by the Dakota. Minnesota organized Volunteer Scouts to take Dakota Sioux scalps for bounty. How the Americans are to distinguish Dakota hair from other Indian, Metis or European is not recorded. The objective clearly supports the Dakota conclusion that extermination is the objective.
Senator Ramsey of Minnesota met with 2,000 Red Lake Ojibwa to conclude the 1862 treaty that is deferred due to the Sibley War. The settlement would cost ten million dollars. Alexander Ramsey also entered into treaty with the Chippewa (Ojibwa) of Pembina and Turtle Mountain who are descendents of Red Lake. They previously descended from the Lake Superior Ojibwa. No distinction is made between Indian and Metis at this time.
The Nez Perce complained to the Government that settlers were encroaching on their lands and asked for help to enforce the treaty of 1855. The Government response is to issue a new treaty taking away another 3/4 of their treaty lands and forcing them out of Washington, Oregon to Clearwater River in Idaho. Nearly 2/3 of the Nez Perce refused to sign this punitive treaty.
Old Joseph of the Wallowa Valley Nez Perce in Oregon still had not signed treaty when they are forced from their lands into Idaho to make room for the advancing white settlers. Old Joseph is so offended that he tore up the Bible a white missionary had given him to convert him to Christianity. To let the white men know they still claimed the Wallowa Valley he planted poles all around the boundaries of the land where his people lived.
American Indian agent Thomas J. Galbraith wrote, Christianity and its handmaid or daughter, civilization where at war with the customs of the Indians. He deplored with what tenacity these savages cling to their habits and customs.
Some Lemalchis of Kuper Island, B.C. killed a settler and his daughter on Saturna Island. Governor Sir James Douglas assumed the Lemalchis guilty and sent a gunboat to apprehend the Lemalchis. At the Lemalchi village the People refused to surrender and an exchange of fire resulted in a seaman being killed. The gunboat then destroyed the village, casualties are unknown. A large naval force captured the Lemalchis, hanging three of their numbers and basically destroyed this tribe of Peoples.
January: New Mexico, Mangas Cojoradas (Red sleeves) is arrested and killed trying to escape. It is said that his escape was caused by being jabbed by a red hot baynonet and he was shot while running. The Navajo of Arizona and New Mexico an Athapascan tribe were very warlike and usually won their battles against the Europeans. They however were beaten by Colonel Kit Carson who attacked them this year killing most of their sheep and more or less starved them into submission. By 1867 there was 7,300 Navajos being held in prisons.
May 29: Little Crow, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle took their bands into Canada. They arrived Fort Garry and stayed three days. They expressed a desire to remain on friendly terms with the Canadians. They stated their people had suffered much for years. Good faith had not been kept with their people. They had been defrauded of their lands and the advantage is being taken of the rash behavior of their young braves to gain a pretense for extermination of their people. He had been unfairly induced to give up American prisoners in his possession under pretext of effecting an exchange. whereas his friends in the hands of the enemy had been hanged. He asked Governor Dallas to talk to General Sibley to come to terms but if refused they had no alternative to fight a righteous self-defense. Little Crow's request for food is immediately accommodated. His request for ammunition sufficient to hunt is denied. All Canadian property including buildings and steamboat in Dakota Sioux Country is respected and unmolested. Little Crow said the Dakota with full intention of his people did not want to injure any one from Canada in his person or his property and this will continue into the future. During the peace mission the Dakota Sioux ran foot races with the Saulteaux (Ojibwa) to reaffirm the peace treaty with them.
July: The Americans claimed that on July 3, Chief of the Mdawakanton, Taoyateduta (Little Crow), is killed on an alleged horse-stealing expedition out of Red River to Minnesota. Nathan Lamson and his son Chauncey Lamson, refugees at Hutchinson admitted to the shooting of Little Crow. Chauncey Lamson who fired the fatal shot collected a bounty of seventy-five dollars for the scalp. Other sources contend he is shot by squatters who are paid bounties for scalps and the horse stealing story is trumpeted up to support their claim for bounty. Other sources claim his own people shoot him but that account doesn't hold much support.
July 4: Ah-chee-wun and two other Lemalchi, Salish Natives are executed and their village on Kuper Island, British Columbia is destroyed and ended their existence as a tribe.
July: This month General Sibley pushed into North Dakota on a punitive expedition against the scattered Dakota and Santee remnants along with their Teton kinsmen at Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, and Stony Lake. July 26, at Stony Lake that is North East of Driscoll, Sibley massacred an Indian hunting party who had held ground so their families could escape across the Missouri River. The Dakota body count is placed at 120 to 150 depending upon whom you talked with.
August 31: At Whitestone Hill in North Dakota General Sully encountered an unsuspecting Indian camp and his army exterminated 150 to 200 women and children still in their tents. The Dakota reported he killed few men and took no prisoners. He had taken some Yankton on this trip and let them go. Sibley then sent his men out over the country to kill and destroy anything Indian. The St. Paul and Red River Metis scorned his actions as being ineffective. The Red River Metis with Father Pere Andre met with General Sibley in North Dakota in an attempt to stop the indiscriminate massacre. The attempt at peace making is frustrated by the poor conduct of General Sibley's officers. The war continues and a Dakota party entered the Sauk Valley killing a number of squatters. West of St. Cloud there are only deserted or burned houses, emigration had finally stopped.
December 15: Twenty of Hatch's troopers surrounded a small Dakota camp near St. Joseph about 40 miles west of Pembina and slaughtered several Indians.
1864
After two years of killing and plundering on July 28 at Killdeer Mountain that is South East of Watford, North Dakota the 2,200 man army led by Sully attacked a Dakota village massacring 100 to 150 people. The prospectors and miners in Shasta and Tehama Counties in California slaughtered 2,950 Yana People men, women and children within a few days with only 50 escaping bringing these people to extinction as a tribe.
1865
The census of the Ojibwa is as follows:
Lake Superior 4,500
Red Lake & Pembina 2,000
Pillager & Winnibigoshish 1,966
Mississippi 2,050
The people of Benton, Montana claimed that a band of Blood and Peigan took 40 horses. In retaliation they captured and hung three Peigan Indians. It was only later they learned that they had murdered innocent people. To add to the troubles three Blood People are murdered at Benton by drunken white savages. In retaliation the Blood killed ten woodcutters from Benton. The Breton's in retaliation lured 4 bloods to a farm and murdered them. The Bloods destroyed an experimental farm and killed the instructor.
The Santa Fe's Buffalo Jones claimed there remained only 15 million bison down from over 50 million before the arrival of the Europeans. This year alone over 1 million buffalo are slaughtered.
October 25: Fort Sully, South Dakota the Sans Arcs a division of the Hunkpapa and Teton Dakots Sioux made peace with the Americans.
1866 July 13: The American Army built Fort Pkil Kearny between the forks of the Little Piney and Big Piney creek in Montana against the orders of the land owners. A guerrilla war of resistance is conducted ending in the battle of the hundred slain in December. Crazy Horse, Hump and Little Wolf command the confederation of the Dakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho. The blue coats are commanded by William J. Fetterman. The blue coats lost 81 men and the Indian contingent lost over 200 men.
A volcano at Mount Hood, Oregon erupted this year.
December 21: Crazy Horse (Tashunca Uitco (1849-1877) fought the Fetterman Fight with Red Cloud against the construction of the Bozeman Trail near Fort Kearney (near Banner, Wyoming).
1867
The British North American Act is designed to protect, civilize and assimilate native people into a British and French belief and value system. It hoped for a rapid elimination of any Indian or French special status.
Captain Grant Marsh of the steamer Stockade reported they were held up for over a day as a vast herd of buffalo crossed the upper Missouri River in front of the riverboat.
The Canadian Government through its Churches would formalize one of the most shameful processes in history. Their repressive Residential School System is imposed on the aboriginal peoples for the next one hundred years. It would eventually be judged as a systemic attempt at cultural, religious and development genocide. Native children by law would be forced from a family environment and placed into brutalizing residential schools called prisons by most inmates. The primary objective of these reform schools is to condition the children by whatever stern means necessary to forget their savage Indian religion. The intent is to replace the Indian beliefs and values for the more enlightened European culture as interpreted by the churches. The Oblate order would become one of the primary instruments to impose this revised form of inquisition that would include physical, mental and sexual abuse over the next one hundred years. The stated objective is to 'once and for all' break their heathen spirit.
March 19: White Earth, Minnesota is established March 19, 1867 to move all Ojibwa to this internment camp. Many visited the area but few resided there.
August 2: Crazy Horse (Tashunca Uitco (1849-1877) fought the Wagon Box Fight with Red Cloud against the construction of the Bozeman Trail near Fort Kearney (near Banner, Wyoming).
1868
The American Indian Affairs Department estimates the cost to kill one Indian is about one million dollars. It is decided that the elimination of their food supply would be much cheaper.
Some consider this year as the final demise of the California Peoples Nation. After years of persecution by the whites, disease and finally the Great Earth Quake, this year was considered as an omen. Many felt the land was cursed and they could no longer live among the greedy white men. Many fled east to join the Apache or the Coyote confederation. This does not imply that California was depopulated but only reduced in numbers.
Father Alphonse Gaste walked more than twelve hundred kilometers during spring thaw in freezing water in search of the Inuit. For seven months he lived in a tent without fire. A shaman called him number one, meaning that he is physically superior among men. Gaste is nearly half-dead after his ordeal and he took two years to recover.
The American Government pulled out of Montana leaving Fort Phil Kearny and Fort Reno conceding defeat of the two-year war to Red Cloud. In November, Red Cloud came to Fort Laramie to make peace through treaty.
The Red Lake and Pembina Ojibwa cultivated 225 acres, built 25 log houses, harvested 5,000 bushel's corn and 2,000 bushels' potatoes this season.
George Gordon during the Red River buffalo hunt gathered a band that would become the Little Touchwood Hills Cree. His band is composed of Scottish Half Breeds, Plains Cree, Civilized Swampies, some Saulteaux and a few French Metis. Some members are of the Rabbit Skin band who are closely associated with the Metis and Swampy employees of the Hudson Bay Company than any other band. This Little Touchwood Hills band lived next to the Muscowequan Saulteaux band.
1869
The Indian Enfranchisement Act piloted by H. Langevin for the John MacDonald Government shifted long term assimilation into long term enfranchisement to shift Indian Council powers to a Government centralized power base. It also included the power to remove duly elected bad Council members whom they considered unqualified or unfit. Langevin deceived the people when he said the intent is to give Indians Municipal Government.
General Sherman is quoted as saying, every buffalo dead is an Indian dead, and this is not surprising given the American Government genocide policy.
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