So much for hope. In her Letters From an American of December 26, Heather Cox Richardson tells a horrifying history I for one had never heard before, but not being American, it does not surprise me that it is not something Americans do not want to be known.
My problem with Ms Cox-Richardson’s story is that it is presented totally factually, without judgment of any kind, and without remorse. No feelings are expressed, and I cannot forgive her for that.
The following story is disturbing, and shocking. As much as it is it needs to be known, it may cause nightmares to some. Please proceed with caution… (Italics added by me.)
One hundred and sixty years ago, on December 26, 1862, in the largest mass execution in American history, the U.S. government hanged 38 Santee men for their actions in Minnesota’s so-called Dakota War.
The struggle did not involve all of the Santees, but rather those driven to war in August 1862 after the U.S. government, financially strapped by the Civil War, did not appropriate the money necessary to pay for the food promised to the Santees by treaty. Nine years before, in 1851, settlers had poured into the territory demanding land to farm, and the government had forced the Santees onto a reservation too small to feed their people. The government promised the Santees provisions to make up for the loss of their economic base not as a one-time payment but as a fifty-year contract. Then, when Minnesota became a state in 1858, its leaders took even more Santee land.
But by summer 1862, the Civil War had drained the Treasury, and so-called Indian appropriations fell behind.
Starving and unable to provide for themselves on the small reservation onto which they had been corralled, some Santees demanded the provisions for which they had exchanged their lands. At least one of the agents who had contracted to provide that food had some on hand but refused to hand it over until he had been paid. Furious, young Santee men considered their agreement broken and attacked the settlers who had built homes on the land the Santees had ceded.
On August 17, four young Santee men killed five settlers, and violence escalated. By September, both Minnesota militia and U.S. Army regiments were battling the Santees, and the struggles would leave more than 600 settlers, at least 100 to 300 Santees, and more than a hundred soldiers dead before the last of the Santee warriors surrendered to the military at the end of the month. Another 300 Santees—at least—would die from conditions of their imprisonment after the war or from exposure as they fled the state.
That is just the beginning. It gets worse… https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-26-2022
i do not understand how anyone in this day and age cannot be frightened and thoroughly grossed out by what happened. She seems to imply that because something good came of it — the Rules of War as established by the Hague Convention — that these actions should not be condemned by all Americans, and by all humans. I do not understand!
How you feel is up to you.
Ideas From Outside the Boxes 