by Scott W. Berg
A
review
Traditional
history textbooks label President Abraham Lincoln as one of the truly great
heroes of the history of the United States.
He has been labeled “The Great Emancipator” for his Emancipation Proclamation and for his effort in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution
that outlawed slavery.
Clearly
Lincoln played an important role in the defeat of the Confederacy. At one time, there were powerful forces
completely tied to the institution of chattel slavery. Lincoln played a leadership role in
coordinating the immense effort required to remove slave owners from their
positions of power in this country.
Most
people are not aware of the fact that Lincoln also ordered the largest mass
execution in the history of the United States. This was Lincoln’s order to execute 38 members
of the Dakota nation. Scott W. Berg has
done the research to give a comprehensive background to the events surrounding
Lincoln’s order in his book 38 Nooses –
Lincoln, Little Crow, and the beginning
of the frontier’s end.
A long history of genocide
We
might start the background to this story with the colonization of the Western
Hemisphere by European powers. All
European powers effectively stole the land from its original inhabitants. However, the British were a bit different in
their method of colonization.
The
French, Spanish, and Portuguese royalties subjugated the Native Americans, but
had the idea of living with them in the same area. These policies resulted in the fact that
today the nations of Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia have populations whose ancestors
are predominantly Native American.
The
British, on the other hand, always had the goal of complete removal of the
Native population from their colonies.
The United States government continued the policies of the British, and
today only a tiny percentage of the U.S. population is Native American.
Native
Americans saw this trend and understood that the United States government would
be even more aggressive in removing them from their homeland. This is why many Native American nations
supported the British in the so-called American Revolution. The Cherokee were one of the minority of
native nations that supported the revolution against the British.
Then,
in 1830 the U.S. government adopted a law called the Indian Removal Act. This law
meant that the government would attempt to relocate all Native Americans who
lived east of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma. At that time, Oklahoma was called The Indian Territory. This law stated that Native Americans
would own the land in The Indian
Territory “forever.”
The
Indian Removal Act violated a treaty the U.S. government signed with the
Cherokee. The Supreme Court agreed that
removing the Cherokee from their homeland would be a violation of the law. This did not stop the government from driving
the Cherokee out of their homeland and forcing them on a march of hundreds of
miles. Thousands of Cherokee died on
this forced march infamously known as The
Trail of Tears.
The
violation of this treaty with the Cherokee was one of close to 400 treaties the
United States government has admitted that it violated with the first nations
of this part of the world.
Little Crow and the Dakota decide to go to war
Little
Crow (Taoyateduta) was the leader of one of the Dakota nations who resided in
what is today southern Minnesota. Little
Crow had fought with the U.S. armed forces to subjugate the Sac and Fox people,
who were traditional enemies of the Dakota.
When Abraham Lincoln was a soldier in the armed forces, he also fought
in the war against the Sac and Fox.
Little
Crow had signed several treaties with the U.S. government that gave up millions
of acres of land. These treaties allowed
for the development of the Midwest of the United States.
Traditionally
the Dakota lived off of the land in Southern Minnesota and did not need any
assistance in order to survive. However,
when they lost most of their homeland, they needed assistance from the
government in order to have enough food to eat.
The government agreed to give the Dakota an allowance that would enable
them to have the resources to live. Little
Crow agreed to the terms of this treaty.
However,
those who were charged with supplying the Dakota with food preferred to use
those resources for their own profit.
The U.S. government did nothing to rectify this obvious corruption. Little Crow appealed to a trader by the name
of Andrew Myrick with the following words:
“We
have no food, but here are these stores filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some
arrangement by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our
own way to keep ourselves from starving.”
Myrick
responded that as far as he was concerned, the Indians could eat grass or their
own sh--.
At
this point we might consider that treaties are international agreements. When one party violates a treaty, this is an
act of war. When the government refused
to honor their treaty with the Dakota, it was the U.S. government that
effectively went to war.
Little
Crow and the Dakota had difficult decisions to make. They understood that they would eventually be
defeated in a war against the United States.
However, they also knew that their lands would eventually be taken away,
or they would starve to death. They
decided to go to war. They felt it would
be better to die in battle than to wither away from starvation.
Andrew
Myrick would be one of the first to die as a result of the Dakota war. In this war, the Dakota killed about 93 white
soldiers and between 400 and 600 white civilians, while suffering only about a
few dozen fatalities of their own.
One
aspect to this story that Scott Berg did not mention was a military tactic used
by both Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil
War. Both these generals expropriated
foodstuffs from farmers who were loyal to the Confederacy. Any farmer who resisted these expropriations,
could be executed by union soldiers.
This was, in essence, the same strategy that was used by Little Crow and
the Dakota.
General
Ulysses S. Grant, who engaged in similar tactics as Little Crow, became
President of the United States. The U.S.
government would have a completely different response to the actions of Little
Crow and the Dakota.
The Civil War and the Dakota War
All
of this happened in the midst of the Civil War.
Washington received news of the Dakota war at the same time as they
received the news of thousands of deaths at the battle of Antietam. The Union victory at Antietam convinced
President Lincoln that he had the momentum to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.
After
the United States Armed forces captured many of the Dakota, there were military
trials. Clearly the U.S. government had
no intention of giving the Dakota a trial of their peers. No, the same government that violated their
treaty with the Dakota, sat in judgment in trials that had no intention of
being in any way fair. Most of the
Dakota did not speak English and only had a vague idea of what was happening in
their trial. Many trials lasted only ten
minutes. Under these circumstances
military judges declared that 303 Dakota were to be executed.
During
this time the military was charged with protecting the Dakota against lynch
mobs in Minnesota. The military failed
in this effort with respect to a Dakota infant that was snatched from its
mother’s arms. This infant died of its
injuries after it was thrown to the ground.
President
Abraham Lincoln understood that according to the law these executions could
only take place with his consent.
Lincoln and his cabinet members looked at the cases of the 303 the
military ordered to be executed. Lincoln
declared that only 38 of these Dakota would be sent to the gallows. The executions by hanging of these 38 Dakota
represent the largest mass execution in the history of the United States.
Lincoln
argued that his execution orders were not motivated by the lynch mobs of
Minnesota. Scott Berg disagreed with
Lincoln on this point. He argued that
Lincoln’s execution orders were at least in part motivated by his desire to win
electoral votes in Minnesota in the upcoming presidential election.
Little
Crow and many other Dakota avoided capture by the military. Unable to find
refuge
in this country or Canada, Little Crow returned to Minnesota with his son. A farmer shot Little Crow while he was
picking raspberries on land his people called home for centuries. He was scalped, and his scalp sold for
twenty-five dollars, which was the going price for Native American scalps.
The
Dakota who were not executed and held under U.S. military control were sent to
a series of concentration camps. In
these camps they would die of preventable diseases by the hundreds. Many other Native American nations also
shared a similar fate.
Lessons for today
Today
much has changed from the 19th century. Certainly we need to consider that the
genocide against Native Americans has been a central part of the history of the
United States. However, today we have
the opportunity to mount a struggle that would not have been possible in the 19th
century. Today, working people who are
Black, Caucasian, Native American, Latino, as well as immigrant can unite in
one common struggle. We can only succeed
in liberating ourselves if we’re conscious of the turbulent road we all needed
to take in order to live in the present reality.