1862: 38 Sioux
December 26th, 2007 Headsman
On this date in 1862, 38 rebellious Sioux were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
Fully 303 had been condemned to die in drumhead trials after the five-week Dakota War, one of the numerous native conflicts sparked by the march of European settlers across North America.
Abraham Lincoln — in a political risk — commuted all but 39 sentences* adjudged “to have participated in massacres, as distinguished from participation in battles,” essentially defining a special category for what today might be considered “war crimes.”
Lincoln had more pressing business on his hands, to be sure, but seems to have been affected by the plight of the natives that drove them to wage hopeless war on encroaching settlers:
“[Bishop Henry Whipple] came here the other day and talked with me about the rascality of this Indian business until I felt it down to my boots. If we get through this war, and I live, this Indian system shall be reformed!”
Fateful “if” — but politicians say many things, after all, and it was long before Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater that the tribes had been forced out of Minnesota, scattered to wasteland reservations and subsequent clashes with the American army.
On this day, all that doleful future was prefigured in the 38 who hanged together in what is now Mankato’s Reconciliation Park, an event that after a century’s time has become a moment for commemoration.
Two academics’ pages on the Dakota War and its aftermath are here and here.
*One of those was subsequently spared over uncertainty of the evidence against him.
Part of the Themed Set: The Spectacle of Public Hanging in America.
On this day..
- 2019: Wei Wei - 2019
- 1845: John Burnett, failson - 2018
- 2017: Fifteen Sinai Islamic militants - 2017
- 831: St. Euthymius of Sardis, iconophile - 2016
- 1864: James Utz, St. Louis spy - 2015
- 1502: Ramiro d'Orco, discarded by Cesare Borgia - 2014
- 1936: Harry Singer, in the holiday spirit - 2013
- 1942: Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, Darlan's assassin - 2012
- 1872: Du Wenxiu, Panthay rebellion leader - 2011
- 1870: Kumoi Tatsuo - 2010
- Feast Day of St. Stephen - 2009
- 1862: Asa Lewis, Confederate deserter - 2008
- Themed Set: The Spectacle of Public Hanging in America - 2007
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Hanged,History,Martyrs,Mass Executions,Milestones,Minnesota,Murder,Not Executed,Notable Jurisprudence,Notable Participants,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Public Executions,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Soldiers,U.S. Military,USA,War Crimes,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1860s, 1862, abraham lincoln, american indians, dakota war, first peoples, january 26, mankato, native americans, sioux
War Crimes
The United States of America committed more War Crimes against Native Indians than any or possible all governments put together
A once proud people lead by wise men Robbed of thier lands in the name of GREED and when they had the effrontery to protest
Systematically Starved of thier lands then
Starved into submission
Let there be No Doubt Greed will ultimately be mankinds destruction Not a Bomb