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In 1862, when the north and south were locked in Civil War, Minnesota felt the fury of an even more fundamental internal conflict. The Santees, an eastern branch of the Sioux Nation, having endured ten years of traumatic change on the upper Minnesota River, launched the first great attack in the Indian wars. Eleven years earlier the tribe had sold 24 million acres of hunting ground for a lump sum of $1,665,000 and the promise of future cash annuities. The Santee's culture was not only disrupted, the Sioux gradually found themselves dependent on trade goods, which made them easy prey for the white merchants. .
The merchant would give them credit and collect directly from the government. .
The Indians saw little of the annuities for which they had sold their birthright. .
Their anger finally reached the flash point when, following a winter of near starvation, the annual payment failed to arrive on time. .
Bursting from their reservation, they killed more than 450 settlers in the region before they were defeated by a hastily assembled group of raw recruits led by Colonel Henry Sibley. Later the killing of the white settlers was described as "the most fearful Indian massacre in history. Four weeks after the rampage began, 2,000 Indian men, women and children surrendered, 392 prisoners were quickly tried and .
307 sentenced to death. Sibley favored execution at once. But Bishop .
Whipple of Minnesota went to Washington to plead for clemency. After a long appraisal President Lincoln commuted most of the sentences except for the proven rapists and murderers. On the day after Christmas .
1862, 38 Sioux warriors were brought to a specially built gallows and hanged at the same time. Three of the leaders of the massacre had gotten away. .
Shakopee and Medicine Bottle had escaped to Canada, they were kidnapped back into the U.S. and were duly executed. Little Crow went to North .
Dakota and returned to Minnesota the following summer and was shot by a farmer while picking berries.
