Part 9: Sibley chosen to defeat the Dakota

By John Biewen

The man appointed to lead a force to defeat the Dakota was Henry Sibley -- the fur trader who served as Minnesota's first governor from 1858-1860, and who helped orchestrate the treaties of 1851.

"Sibley has no military experience whatsoever, but he does know the Dakota well and he knows what great warriors they are," said Wingerd. "He has the most hodge-podge troops ever, and he doesn't have enough weaponry ... and so he's moving very slowly towards southwestern Minnesota, and of course every step of the way the newspapers are excoriating him."

They called him a snail and a coward, and "the state undertaker," because Sibley's militia showed a knack for arriving after battles were over to help bury the dead.

"They accuse him of not really wanting to go after the Dakota, because he's really too close to them and all his sympathies are with them. So Sibley, with his very thin skin, is beside himself," Wingerd said.

"I think that helps explain the really extraordinarily severe attitude he had toward all the Dakota people following the conflict. I really think it was because he felt he was personally betrayed."

Sibley had seen himself as a friend to the Dakota. He believed they could take up farming and co-exist with white people in Minnesota. But now even some Dakota he knew, men who had started to assimilate, were killing settlers. In his letters, Sibley was bitter.

A great public crime has been committed -- not by wild Indians who did not know better -- but by men who have had advantages, ... intercourse with white men.

In another, he wrote:

Tame the Indian, cultivate him, strive to Christianize him as you will, and the sight of blood will, in an instant, call out the savage, wolfish, devilish instincts in his race.

Years before all this, Sibley had warned that if the federal government kept cheating Indians in treaties, the result would be war. Now that very thing was happening, in his own state, and he himself had convinced them to sign those crooked treaties. But there was no indication Sibley accepted any blame.

"To me it's perfectly plausible that he'd deny to himself that all these things he did really hurt them," Wingerd said. "And if only they would accept the route to civilization and become farmers, they would be fine. If only they'd do it this way, they'd be OK."

By late September, the outbreak had lost much of its steam. The Dakota fighters couldn't recruit reinforcements because most of the Dakota people didn't support them.

In a last battle at Wood Lake, Sibley's 1,600 soldiers defeated the few hundred Dakota who were still fighting. It took all of two hours, and the death toll was just 14 Dakota - including Gwen Westerman's great-great-great grandfather, Mazamani - and seven U.S. soldiers.

Part 10: Payback for the Dakota >>>

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