Apart from making some limited attempts to keep the Confederacy from allying with the Native Americans of the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the only Indian matter that drew Lincoln’s attention away from the Civil War was the Minnesota rebellion of Santee Sioux (also known as the Eastern Dakotas) in the summer of 1862. The insurrection began when several starving and hungry Sioux killed several hundred white settlers ostensibly because the government had failed its treaty responsibilities to provide the Natives with annuities and rations. Corruption in the Indian system was the main reason for the Sioux’s plight. Monies earmarked for Indian care had been funneled to Minnesota from its congressmen and ended up in the pockets of Indian agents and contractors. Corruption at the higher levels of the Indian system had worked its way down throughout the entire bureaucratic network.67
Sioux testimony, like that of Wabasha, a Dakota leader, suggested that the war was caused by crooked traders who took advantage of his people. According to Wabasha, the traders first tricked a small faction of his people to sign an agreement in which the Sioux agreed to sell land on the north side of the Minnesota River in exchange for “horses, guns, blankets, and other articles.” As Wabasha continues, “By the result of this paper signed without my consent or knowledge, the traders obtained possession of all the money coming from the sale of land … and also half of our annuity for the year 1862.” Soon after he learned that a war party had been formed by Little Six’s band and fighting had commenced. “I got on my horse and rode up to the store,” Wabasha said, and “I saw that the traders were already killed.”68
The rebellion triggered a full-scale war. The uprising resulted in a terrible tragedy in which hundreds of Indians and whites lost their lives, most of whom were innocent and had not condoned the war.69 This occurred at a precarious time for the Union as the federal forces were in disarray, with General John Pope being defeated at the Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas) and Robert E. Lee about to attack Washington. Rumors circulated that the Minnesota rebellion was a Confederate conspiracy designed to bring the British to the southern cause. It’s no wonder that Lincoln responded by ordering General Rufus Saxton to organize black soldiers, an action that was later formalized in the famous Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The Indian rebels were defeated two months after it started. About fifteen hundred Indian women, children, and old men were among the prisoners. Many of the men were put on trial in front of a military tribunal—the result, 303 warriors were sentenced to death.70
Lincoln reviewed the cases of the 303 accused men. Attempting to moderate the military’s decision and the demands of the Minnesota voter, Lincoln carefully walked the tightrope of public opinion. As he said, “Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak of one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I … [ordered] the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females.” Since only two Indians were guilty of rape, he then decided to distinguish those who participated in “massacres” from those who fought “battles.” On December 26, 38 Indians were hung at Mankato, Minnesota.71
The aftermath of the Minnesota rebellion shaped Lincoln’s Indian policy for the west. First, the western Indians would be treated strictly as a military problem, and the military would be given carte blanche authority to deal with the “wild” Indians of Arizona and Colorado. Secondly, that policy would be one of removal and relocation. In April 1863, 270 Dakota men were moved from Mankato, Minnesota, to a prison camp in Davenport, Iowa, where they were imprisoned for three “gut-wrenching” years. In July of that year the military drove eight to ten thousand Indians out of Minnesota into Dakota Territory, including the scalping and mutilation of insurrectionist leader Little Crow (see Figure 1.1). An 1864 expedition went up the Missouri River as far as Yellowstone with the object of destroying as many Indians as possible. As a concession to the remaining condemned Sioux, instead of execution they would be removed from the state of Minnesota and resettled in the Upper Missouri.72
Figure 1.1 Portrait of Sioux Chief, Little Crow (1824). From Native Americans: An Illustrated History (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, Inc., 1993), p. 327.
And even though most Winnebagos (Ho-Chunk) had not been involved in the 1862 rebellion, they too were forced to relocate to Crow Creek in Dakota Territory. They had to move because the settlers in Minnesota wanted their Winnebago land. Like the Sioux, the removal trip cost many lives, especially of women and children. Once they arrived at Crow Creek they found that they had been forced to trade good land for inferior, sandy soil. Finally, as usual the 1,300 Winnebagos were surrounded by 600 white profiteers and the brutality of military guards.73
The 1863 removal and relocation of the Mescalero Apaches and Navajos to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico took place in the shadow of the Minnesota uprising, and was the result of Lincoln’s wartime militarization of the Indian problem. As the Sioux reservation was opened up to white settlers, it was closed to the Sioux and they were forgotten. Although Lincoln’s humaneness was shown in his clemencies of several Santee Sioux warriors, it was still the largest mass execution in American history in which the guilt of the accused was in doubt. His Minnesota policy, shaped in part by the realities of politics and the pressures of the Civil War, became the template for Indians elsewhere, with Arizona’s Navajos, Mescalero Apaches from west Texas, and Paiutes south of Lake Tahoe being relocated, and Cheyennes and Arapahos in Colorado being massacred at Sand Creek by the military. The army had proposed a similar removal plan for the California Indians where they would be relocated from the mainland to a concentration camp on Catalina Island. Fortunately, Commissioner Dole halted these preparations.74 Lincoln’s last proclamation was also militaristic in that he ordered the execution of any soldier found guilty of smuggling arms to the Indians.75
Earlier in 1858, while debating the status of slavery with Stephen Douglas in the famous Lincoln–Douglas debates for the senate in Illinois, Lincoln argued not for the equality but for the freedom of the “Negro.” The words of Douglas more clearly reflected the public sentiment. He contended that he was opposed to “negro” citizenship in any form, saying that “I believe this Government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians [italics mine], and other inferior races [audience response—‘Good for you; Douglas forever’].”76
A more vengeful attitude was expressed by the citizens of Minnesota in a May 6, 1863 article of the Saint Paul Pioneer. The steamboat Northerner was sent to St. Paul to pick up refugee Dakotas, mostly women and children, who were being sent to Crow Creek in Dakota Territory. Before it could take them aboard it needed to unload a hundred or so emancipated slaves who were brought north to act as mule drivers for the army’s spring expedition against Little Crow and the Dakotas still in rebellion. As the newspaper said: “The Northerner brought up a cargo of 125 niggers and 150 mules on Government account. We doubt very much whether we benefit by the exchange. If we had our choice we would send both niggers and Indians to Massachusetts, and keep the mules here.”77
Lincoln shared the biases of his generation. According to Lincoln the Indians were savages, while the white man was civilized. In spite of the Civil War, Lincoln noted, white men generally shunned war and sought peace, while the “redmen” were disposed to fight and kill one another. Christianity was superior to any Indian religion. They were an inferior, vanishing people who were destined to be pushed aside by white Americans. Like the Minnesota voters who decried slavery in the southern states, he was silent about the degradation and exploitation of America’s Native Americans. Like his protagonist Frémont, he closed his eyes to the plight of the Indian.78
Yet the memory of Lincoln was