Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heart

by Rhoda R. Gilman

Congressman, governor, military leader, and senior statesman—no person played a longer, more influential, or more varied role in the shaping of Minnesota than Henry Hastings Sibley (1811–91). Yet Sibley's history reveals universal tensions about the duality of the nineteenth century frontiersman who is at once an accommodating trade partner of the Indian/European/Métis worlds and the conquering government official of the ever-expanding West. Rhoda Gilman has spent over thirty years examining Sibley—through hints and fragments of stories that Sibley himself left in articles, an unfinished autobiography, and scores of family letters—and uncovers in this perceptive and balanced biography the complexities of a man who embodied these clashing extremes.

Gilman sets the controversial but altogether human Sibley against the tapestry of trade, politics, frontier expansion, and intercultural relations in the Upper Mississippi valley, and reminds us that throughout his life Sibley was poised to become a national figure but always chose to remain in the place he loved and had helped to name "Minnesota."

Genres: History, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2004

Reviews

[Thomas Isern · Rating 4 out of 5]

A laudable biography. Not everything I would have hoped for, but a fair likeness overall.

By a fair likeness, I mean that Gilman accounts for, but does not attempt to reconcile, the contradictions in Sibley's beliefs and actions. He has been praised and blamed for his leadership during the Dakota War. His patterns of action earlier as an Indian trader are similarly ambivalent. Gilman works through Sibley's involvements through long stretches which may not be of higher reader interest, but which are the price to pay for fair treatment of his subject. I am impressed by certain late sections of the book detailing Sibley's advocacy for the Sisseton and Wahpeton and his treament by historical memory.

I expected more on the violent events of 1862-63. Gilman really gives us nothing new here. I sense almost a revulsion, or perhaps just a reluctance, to foreground these events. However, Gilman's full biography causes me to look at these two years with somewhat different lenses.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's a very good source for anything you ever wanted to know about Sibley. In this text, he is neither good nor bad. He was simply a man of his time period.

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delighted to have several suspicions of mine about the man confirmed, and a 21st century history is always way more linear and cause-focused than a 19th, and far less aloof than an early 20th.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable book. Very well researched. Learned more about Minnesota history, as well as Henry Sibley.