What do you think?
Rate this book
Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862
December 26, 1862. On the day after Christmas, in Mankato, Minnesota, thirty-eight Indians were hanged on the order of President Lincoln. This event stands today as the greatest mass execution in the history of the United States. In Over The Earth I Come, Duane Schultz brilliantly retells one of America's most violent and bloody events--the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862.
307 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1992
5 people are currently reading
348 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
September 3, 2022
“The Indians signed the treaty and went home, expecting to receive their money and goods soon. They waited an entire year. It took nine months for the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty and three months to assemble the goods and ship them west. When the provisions finally arrived, the Indians found them inferior. Many of the items were worthless to a hungry people. They had no need of beads, ribbons, castanets, handkerchiefs, and bolts of silk, no matter how colorful they might be. As an additional insult, the cash payment was not made. The Indians were told that they would have to wait another twelve months. They did not understand the explanation that the annuity was to be paid out of interest on investments that had not yet matured. Although the government was slow in honoring its treaty commitments, it acted swiftly to take the Indians’ land…”
- Duane Schultz, Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862
The Dakota Uprising of 1862 was one of the most brutal events of the American Indian Wars. If you’ve studied this roughly 250-year period – bounded by the 1637 massacre of Pequots in Mystic, and the 1890 massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee – that’s saying something pretty bleak. Enveloping almost the entire bottom third of Minnesota, this devastating event killed between 300 and 1,000 settlers (the estimates vary wildly), including men, women, and children. Some 150 Dakota died immediately, with many hundreds more rounded up and shipped away, where they fell by the score of malnutrition and disease.
Despite this gruesome toll, the Uprising is surprisingly unknown outside of Minnesota. In part, this is probably due to timing, occurring in the midst of the Civil War. Whatever the reason, it has never entered the popular consciousness in the same manner as George Armstrong Custer or Sand Creek.
For those interested in a solid, professional, and relatively concise overview, Duane Schultz’s Over the Earth I Come is not a bad place to start. It is probably the best overall book I’ve come across on the subject, though as I noted above, this is not an overcrowded field.
***
The curtain raises in the summer of 1862, with the Dakota living on a reduced strip of reservation along the Minnesota River, the result of a series of treaties that had come with many promises: of money, food, farm aid. Like so many governmental guarantees, this one turned out to be worth little. Because of the lateness of annuities, the Dakota were literally starving. They were also burdened by ridiculous debts incurred by dint of unscrupulous agents who made cheating Indians an artform.
This pitiable condition elicited little sympathy. Legend tells of a trader named Andrew Myrick, who thoughtfully said of the Indians: “Let them eat grass or their own dung.” Later, after the Dakota had revolted, Myrick was supposedly found dead with grass stuffed into his mouth. This purported bit of cosmic justice is – like much else about the Uprising – almost impossible to verify.
In any event, when Over the Earth I Come begins, the situation resembled a drought-ridden forest, tinder dry, just waiting for the spark.
The spark came in August, near a place called Acton Township, when four young Dakota warriors – all in their twenties; all hemmed in by circumstance – murdered five whites on a dare. Knowing the precipitousness of what they’d done, they raced back to Little Crow, their overburdened chief.
***
Schultz presents this tale of duplicity, savagery, and revenge in a strictly narrative fashion, complete with dialogue re-created from primary sources of uncertain veracity. Like the good storyteller that he is, Schultz has a nice eye for characters. The central figure of this drama is Little Crow himself, opaque, vacillating, caught up in something beyond his control. Trying to balance both sides of the divide, living in a house but rejecting Christianity, wearing shirts and trousers but keeping his hair long, Little Crow found himself struggling to serve two masters. Faced with a split between war and peace factions, Little Crow chose war, apparently in an attempt to maintain his own power.
Little Crow is the most memorable figure, but Schultz works hard on every page to bring humanity to this spectacle. He finds people worth following, and then traces their arcs with bold strokes.
***
The setup to Over the Earth I Come is pretty brief, signaling an eagerness on Schultz’s part to get to the blood-and-thunder. By page thirty we’re at the Acton murders. Then, with Little Crow’s blessing, the Dakota unleash fury on the unsuspecting settlements and agencies of the Minnesota River Valley. There is no getting around the brutality, with noncombatants slaughtered wholesale.
One thing that stands out is the intimacy of the violence. By this point, the Dakota and the settlers in the area of the Lower Sioux Agency were on a first-name basis with each other. They were neighbors; in some cases, even friends. With the rising blood-tide, some relationships were forgotten, while others saved lives. Schultz does a lot by simply letting things unfold, without any distracting flourishes. He focuses on the most visceral experiences: the deaths, the escapes, the captures.
And make no mistake, Schultz is quite interested in the visceral experience, in the gory and the macabre:
This excerpt is not exceptional. The bulk of this book is taken up with slaughter and battle. Schultz covers the initial attack on the Lower Sioux Agency; the ambush at Redwood Ferry; the slaying of escaping settlers; the battle of New Ulm and Birch Coulee; and the siege of Fort Ridgely.
American movies are infamous for their wildly inaccurate depictions of the Indian Wars, which often feature endless waves of painted riders attacking small numbers of white soldiers. The reality is that Native Americans were mostly outnumbered, and almost never assaulted fortified positions. During the Uprising, though, they not only went after a fort, but an entire town.
***
Amazingly, the Dakota achieved a pretty stunning tactical victory, at least in the short term. Sheer demographics assured they could not ultimately win, but their surge emptied outlying farms and villages, and reached the attention of President Abraham Lincoln. The exigencies of the Civil War meant that Lincoln could not provide much help, sending General John Pope – fresh off his all-time ass-kicking at Second Bull Run – to lend what assistance he could. Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey had to rely on slow-moving Henry Sibley, who only emerged victorious when some of his hungry soldiers, foraging for food, prematurely tripped a Sioux ambush, an accidental win that propelled Sibley to the governorship.
With the Dakota having a rare numerical advantage, it fell to a small number of determined settlers, militiamen, and soldiers, to stem the onslaught. Despite their successes, the Dakota were hampered by Little Crow’s oft-prevaricating leadership. One wonders what might have happened with Pontiac, Tecumseh, or Red Cloud at the helm. Might Fort Ridgely – at one point garrisoned by just twenty-nine men – have fallen? Might Lincoln have been forced to take drastic measures – such as turning to the Army of the Tennessee – thereby altering the course of the Civil War? It’s interesting to ponder.
***
The trouble with Over the Earth I Come is its rickety sourcing. Schultz includes “chapter notes” that provide the sources for the direct quotes. It is literally the least an author can do while still claiming to have written a creditable history.
Birthed in blood, passions, and recriminations, the Uprising requires a discussion of the primary sources. Much of what is accepted at face value – such as the Myrick story above – is actually unverifiable. A bit of apocrypha turned into gospel; a rumor transformed into first-person testimony.
The lack of an expanded endnotes is most noticeable with regard to the allegations made against the Dakota. For example, in the blockquote above, Schultz states that multiple children were nailed to doors. This is something that jumps out at me for a couple of reasons. First, it seems like a physically difficult task to accomplish. Second, having read about atrocities from antiquity to today, the crucifixion of children is an archetypal outrage often used for propaganda purposes. If you are going to make this charge, then you need to have the evidence.
Having reviewed the transcripts of the post-Uprising military commissions, I can say that I am wary about a lot of the assertions that Schultz makes. Many of the most vivid allegations are never corroborated by witnesses.
***
Schultz does not hesitate to lay blame on the government officials and traders who created the conditions precedent for all that followed. Still, there is a viewpoint imbalance, with about 200 pages dedicated to Indian depredations, and only some twenty pages devoted to the sufferings of the Dakota.
Regardless of the imbalance, I never sensed any intent to demonize the Dakota, or to heroize the whites. By the end of Over the Earth I Come, he has convincingly presented a tragedy in which no good deed went unpunished. By way of example, Schultz tells us of Chaska who – at great risk to himself – saved a white woman by pretending she was his captive. For Chaska’s efforts, a noose was placed around his neck and he was hanged until dead, the result of a clerical error.
To his credit, Schultz duly covers the Uprising’s aftermath, with the Dakota sent to a reservation in present-day South Dakota seemingly chosen for its barrenness. They made part of the journey in freight cars, the guilty and innocent alike, and ended up at a place called Crow Creek, where 300 of the Mdewakanton Dakota died over the course of a single summer.
***
Minnesota is still alive with the ghosts of the Uprising. If you go to Fort Snelling – beautifully preserved – you will see where the Dakota were bunched into proto-concentration camps, before being sent upriver. You can find historical markers all over the place: a marble slab at Acton, where it all began, almost by accident; a pillar near Montevideo, where captives were freed at a place called Camp Release; a metal column in New Ulm, with a frieze of the battle. Fort Ridgely has become a state park, though there is not much left of the unwalled stronghold. At the Lower Sioux Agency – run by the Lower Sioux Community – you will find differing perspectives of how it all played out. If you are ambitious, you can hit most of these spots in a single weekend. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife.
And if you head to Mankato, a bustling college community with a Frank Capra-Norman Rockwell downtown, you will come to Reconciliation Park. It was here – 160 years ago – that thirty-eight Sioux warriors were hanged in the country’s largest mass execution. The ghastliness of the spectacle is not appreciably mitigated by the knowledge that President Lincoln had commuted 265 others who had been convicted in kangaroo-court military commissions. The hangings proved a fittingly awful capstone to an overlooked calamity, an act of self-righteous vengeance that could have been avoided from the start by the fulfilment of a promise.
- Duane Schultz, Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862
The Dakota Uprising of 1862 was one of the most brutal events of the American Indian Wars. If you’ve studied this roughly 250-year period – bounded by the 1637 massacre of Pequots in Mystic, and the 1890 massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee – that’s saying something pretty bleak. Enveloping almost the entire bottom third of Minnesota, this devastating event killed between 300 and 1,000 settlers (the estimates vary wildly), including men, women, and children. Some 150 Dakota died immediately, with many hundreds more rounded up and shipped away, where they fell by the score of malnutrition and disease.
Despite this gruesome toll, the Uprising is surprisingly unknown outside of Minnesota. In part, this is probably due to timing, occurring in the midst of the Civil War. Whatever the reason, it has never entered the popular consciousness in the same manner as George Armstrong Custer or Sand Creek.
For those interested in a solid, professional, and relatively concise overview, Duane Schultz’s Over the Earth I Come is not a bad place to start. It is probably the best overall book I’ve come across on the subject, though as I noted above, this is not an overcrowded field.
***
The curtain raises in the summer of 1862, with the Dakota living on a reduced strip of reservation along the Minnesota River, the result of a series of treaties that had come with many promises: of money, food, farm aid. Like so many governmental guarantees, this one turned out to be worth little. Because of the lateness of annuities, the Dakota were literally starving. They were also burdened by ridiculous debts incurred by dint of unscrupulous agents who made cheating Indians an artform.
This pitiable condition elicited little sympathy. Legend tells of a trader named Andrew Myrick, who thoughtfully said of the Indians: “Let them eat grass or their own dung.” Later, after the Dakota had revolted, Myrick was supposedly found dead with grass stuffed into his mouth. This purported bit of cosmic justice is – like much else about the Uprising – almost impossible to verify.
In any event, when Over the Earth I Come begins, the situation resembled a drought-ridden forest, tinder dry, just waiting for the spark.
The spark came in August, near a place called Acton Township, when four young Dakota warriors – all in their twenties; all hemmed in by circumstance – murdered five whites on a dare. Knowing the precipitousness of what they’d done, they raced back to Little Crow, their overburdened chief.
***
Schultz presents this tale of duplicity, savagery, and revenge in a strictly narrative fashion, complete with dialogue re-created from primary sources of uncertain veracity. Like the good storyteller that he is, Schultz has a nice eye for characters. The central figure of this drama is Little Crow himself, opaque, vacillating, caught up in something beyond his control. Trying to balance both sides of the divide, living in a house but rejecting Christianity, wearing shirts and trousers but keeping his hair long, Little Crow found himself struggling to serve two masters. Faced with a split between war and peace factions, Little Crow chose war, apparently in an attempt to maintain his own power.
Little Crow is the most memorable figure, but Schultz works hard on every page to bring humanity to this spectacle. He finds people worth following, and then traces their arcs with bold strokes.
***
The setup to Over the Earth I Come is pretty brief, signaling an eagerness on Schultz’s part to get to the blood-and-thunder. By page thirty we’re at the Acton murders. Then, with Little Crow’s blessing, the Dakota unleash fury on the unsuspecting settlements and agencies of the Minnesota River Valley. There is no getting around the brutality, with noncombatants slaughtered wholesale.
One thing that stands out is the intimacy of the violence. By this point, the Dakota and the settlers in the area of the Lower Sioux Agency were on a first-name basis with each other. They were neighbors; in some cases, even friends. With the rising blood-tide, some relationships were forgotten, while others saved lives. Schultz does a lot by simply letting things unfold, without any distracting flourishes. He focuses on the most visceral experiences: the deaths, the escapes, the captures.
And make no mistake, Schultz is quite interested in the visceral experience, in the gory and the macabre:
Shakopee and his braves, along with Red Middle Voice and his band, were particularly brutal. They rode up to Johann Schwandt’s cabin, where the farmer was repairing his roof, and shot him instantly. They tomahawked and slashed to death his wife, his pregnant daughter and her husband, his two sons, and a hired hand. The twelve-year-old son, August, was bludgeoned with a tomahawk and left for dead, but he remained conscious, recording in his mind the horrible deaths of his family. He watched the Indians slice open his sister’s belly, snatch up the fetus, and nail it to a tree… Scores of families met death in similar ways, many of them trapped in houses that were set on fire. Women and girls endured multiple rapes before being stabbed to death. Children were nailed to doors; heads, hands, and feet chopped off; bodies mutilated in the most appalling ways.
This excerpt is not exceptional. The bulk of this book is taken up with slaughter and battle. Schultz covers the initial attack on the Lower Sioux Agency; the ambush at Redwood Ferry; the slaying of escaping settlers; the battle of New Ulm and Birch Coulee; and the siege of Fort Ridgely.
American movies are infamous for their wildly inaccurate depictions of the Indian Wars, which often feature endless waves of painted riders attacking small numbers of white soldiers. The reality is that Native Americans were mostly outnumbered, and almost never assaulted fortified positions. During the Uprising, though, they not only went after a fort, but an entire town.
***
Amazingly, the Dakota achieved a pretty stunning tactical victory, at least in the short term. Sheer demographics assured they could not ultimately win, but their surge emptied outlying farms and villages, and reached the attention of President Abraham Lincoln. The exigencies of the Civil War meant that Lincoln could not provide much help, sending General John Pope – fresh off his all-time ass-kicking at Second Bull Run – to lend what assistance he could. Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey had to rely on slow-moving Henry Sibley, who only emerged victorious when some of his hungry soldiers, foraging for food, prematurely tripped a Sioux ambush, an accidental win that propelled Sibley to the governorship.
With the Dakota having a rare numerical advantage, it fell to a small number of determined settlers, militiamen, and soldiers, to stem the onslaught. Despite their successes, the Dakota were hampered by Little Crow’s oft-prevaricating leadership. One wonders what might have happened with Pontiac, Tecumseh, or Red Cloud at the helm. Might Fort Ridgely – at one point garrisoned by just twenty-nine men – have fallen? Might Lincoln have been forced to take drastic measures – such as turning to the Army of the Tennessee – thereby altering the course of the Civil War? It’s interesting to ponder.
***
The trouble with Over the Earth I Come is its rickety sourcing. Schultz includes “chapter notes” that provide the sources for the direct quotes. It is literally the least an author can do while still claiming to have written a creditable history.
Birthed in blood, passions, and recriminations, the Uprising requires a discussion of the primary sources. Much of what is accepted at face value – such as the Myrick story above – is actually unverifiable. A bit of apocrypha turned into gospel; a rumor transformed into first-person testimony.
The lack of an expanded endnotes is most noticeable with regard to the allegations made against the Dakota. For example, in the blockquote above, Schultz states that multiple children were nailed to doors. This is something that jumps out at me for a couple of reasons. First, it seems like a physically difficult task to accomplish. Second, having read about atrocities from antiquity to today, the crucifixion of children is an archetypal outrage often used for propaganda purposes. If you are going to make this charge, then you need to have the evidence.
Having reviewed the transcripts of the post-Uprising military commissions, I can say that I am wary about a lot of the assertions that Schultz makes. Many of the most vivid allegations are never corroborated by witnesses.
***
Schultz does not hesitate to lay blame on the government officials and traders who created the conditions precedent for all that followed. Still, there is a viewpoint imbalance, with about 200 pages dedicated to Indian depredations, and only some twenty pages devoted to the sufferings of the Dakota.
Regardless of the imbalance, I never sensed any intent to demonize the Dakota, or to heroize the whites. By the end of Over the Earth I Come, he has convincingly presented a tragedy in which no good deed went unpunished. By way of example, Schultz tells us of Chaska who – at great risk to himself – saved a white woman by pretending she was his captive. For Chaska’s efforts, a noose was placed around his neck and he was hanged until dead, the result of a clerical error.
To his credit, Schultz duly covers the Uprising’s aftermath, with the Dakota sent to a reservation in present-day South Dakota seemingly chosen for its barrenness. They made part of the journey in freight cars, the guilty and innocent alike, and ended up at a place called Crow Creek, where 300 of the Mdewakanton Dakota died over the course of a single summer.
***
Minnesota is still alive with the ghosts of the Uprising. If you go to Fort Snelling – beautifully preserved – you will see where the Dakota were bunched into proto-concentration camps, before being sent upriver. You can find historical markers all over the place: a marble slab at Acton, where it all began, almost by accident; a pillar near Montevideo, where captives were freed at a place called Camp Release; a metal column in New Ulm, with a frieze of the battle. Fort Ridgely has become a state park, though there is not much left of the unwalled stronghold. At the Lower Sioux Agency – run by the Lower Sioux Community – you will find differing perspectives of how it all played out. If you are ambitious, you can hit most of these spots in a single weekend. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife.
And if you head to Mankato, a bustling college community with a Frank Capra-Norman Rockwell downtown, you will come to Reconciliation Park. It was here – 160 years ago – that thirty-eight Sioux warriors were hanged in the country’s largest mass execution. The ghastliness of the spectacle is not appreciably mitigated by the knowledge that President Lincoln had commuted 265 others who had been convicted in kangaroo-court military commissions. The hangings proved a fittingly awful capstone to an overlooked calamity, an act of self-righteous vengeance that could have been avoided from the start by the fulfilment of a promise.
September 29, 2025
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord', and the authorities of the United States are, we believe, the chosen instrument to execute that vengeance...The Indian's nature can be no more trusted than the wolf's. Tame him, cultivate him, strive to Christianize him, as you will, and the sight of blood will in an instant call out the savage, wolfish, devilish instincts of the race." pg 258
This was a brutal account of the most violent ethnic uprising in American history. Seeded from the roots corruption, greed, and contempt the Sioux Uprising in western Minnesota in thr summer and fall of 1862. The result of violence sparked by Little Crow against the white settlers stemmed from broken treaties, the routine cheating by the traders, the near-starvation conditions—"let them eat grass" (pg 28), and the missed annuity payment.
The Sioux warriors carried out a war of extermination against men, women, pregnant women, old people, and small children: scalpings, shootings, dismemberment, mutilations, rape warfare, eviserations, and being burned alive in homes
The ensuing violence led to federal troop intervention to supress the violence, investigation and military commission, and the trial of 303 Sioux warriors. On Monday, December 22, 1862, President Lincoln issued the executive order of the public hanging of thirty-nine Sioux men "guilty of individual murders and atrocious abuse of their female captives" in Mankato, Minnesota.
The remaining prisoners were imprisoned in Camp McClellan military barracks in Iowa. In 1864, Congress passed a bill nullifying all previous treaties with the Sioux and had all Sioux, Chippewa, and Winnebago (47,000 total Indians) removed from Minnesota into the Dakota Territory.
This was a brutal account of the most violent ethnic uprising in American history. Seeded from the roots corruption, greed, and contempt the Sioux Uprising in western Minnesota in thr summer and fall of 1862. The result of violence sparked by Little Crow against the white settlers stemmed from broken treaties, the routine cheating by the traders, the near-starvation conditions—"let them eat grass" (pg 28), and the missed annuity payment.
The Sioux warriors carried out a war of extermination against men, women, pregnant women, old people, and small children: scalpings, shootings, dismemberment, mutilations, rape warfare, eviserations, and being burned alive in homes
Kill them all and reclaim the land. Kill them all and the Dakotas would recapture the ways of their fathers, the ways in which the Great Spirit intended them to live. Kill them all and the Dakotas would never again be lied to or cheated or see their wives become prostitutes for food and their braves become drunkards. Kill them all and the Dakotas will roam free again. pg 44-5
Over the earth I come,
Over the earth I come,
A soldier I come.
Over the earth I am a ghost.
pg 143
The ensuing violence led to federal troop intervention to supress the violence, investigation and military commission, and the trial of 303 Sioux warriors. On Monday, December 22, 1862, President Lincoln issued the executive order of the public hanging of thirty-nine Sioux men "guilty of individual murders and atrocious abuse of their female captives" in Mankato, Minnesota.
The remaining prisoners were imprisoned in Camp McClellan military barracks in Iowa. In 1864, Congress passed a bill nullifying all previous treaties with the Sioux and had all Sioux, Chippewa, and Winnebago (47,000 total Indians) removed from Minnesota into the Dakota Territory.
From this, a young Teton Sioux warrior from the northern free roaming Sioux was appalled by the pitiful condition of his people, and he listened in silence to to their stories of the coming of the whites had brought sorrow and misery and death. He gazed sadly and with mounting anger at the remnants of a once proud and noble people. The warrior's name was Tatanka Yontanka. The Whites would come to know him as Sitting Bull pg 284Overall this was an engrossing read the entire way through. It was a hardcore war fought over principles that both side back for their best interests. I would recommend this to anyone interested in a conflict overshadowed by the American Civil War. Thanks!
Want to read
May 1, 2013Watching Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder over and over again on iTunes (he insisted on home availability – knew the prairie picture houses could only afford a week of his release), and at last noticing that Malick uses fence-building in exurban developments to evoke frontier forts (and the nervous hubris that parcels the divinely oceanic and Aeolian grasses, and the fear that poisons so many American lives), I thought of the day I saw the officially preserved remnants of the emergency stockade southwestern Minnesota settlers built when the starving Sioux finally rose. We briefly slowed before that fort in the dusk of this Sebaldian day trip – after tours of antique arsenals (killing tools redeemed as samples of our quaint art), of deeply serious displays of farmwife trousseaux. I had to read this book in high school and I should read it again. The US-Dakota War and Minnesota in the Civil War are showing concurrently, at the state’s history center, as they were fought concurrently, one-hundred fifty years ago. The settler fired from his kitchen window; the settler's son was in the South; war everywhere.
December 5, 2023
Living in Minnesota, I’ve heard of the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 and the subsequent mass execution of 38 Dakota Indians in Mankato. I had no idea it had been a full-blown war with the hundreds of settlers killed, and the Mankato hangings were the largest mass execution in US history. This disaster went right to the highest office - President Lincoln had the final say as to which Indians were executed, he stayed death sentences for most of the 303 Indian prisoners, ordering the death of the 38 who survivors’ testimonies stated were the murders and rapists. Then Governor Ramsey stated that the Dakota "be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the State". The Dakota were indeed banished to what is now South Dakota. This was the ugliest chapter in Minnesota history and I’m shocked and disappointed that this isn’t more well known here.
I thought the book was excellent. It was terribly sad, horribly brutal and violent, and often hard to read. The author lays it all out there. It was well-researched, with six pages of chapter notes, a bibliography, and an index. I especially appreciated the way the author told the story from both the Indian and white settler’s side. He did not leave out the gruesome details of the brutal killings and torture of the white settlers – men women, and children alike. Atrocities as bad as any I’ve ever read. He also details the well-known wrongdoings committed to the Indians by traders and the US government. Already pushed in to a narrow reservation along the Minnesota River and subject to broken treaties, bad deals from European traders, and late annuity payments by the US government, the Indians were affected by a harsh winter which caused crop failures and the loss of game. When they asked for help the were told by a governmental trading representative to "eat grass or your own dung". They Dakota were pushed to the brink and after the murder of a white family on a dare which went too far by young Dakotas under Chief Little Crow started the war for the most part as Little Crow was desperate, and he knew that the US Army was stressed and undermanned in Minnesota due to the ongoing US Civil War which was not going well for the North at the time. He knew that this was his chance to wipe out the white settlers in the Minnesota River Valley of western MN and perhaps this would lead to the whites permanently abandoning their occupation of Indian lands for a long time.
Over 38 days, the Dakota warrior led by Little Crow killed over 450 whites and took a couple hundred more as prisoners. The US forts in the area were undermanned and under armed due to the stresses of the war and Minnesota and Washington’s response was slow. Towns such as New Ulm and Hutchinson had to fend for themselves against hundreds of Dakota warriors. Settlers on the prairie were approached by Indians who they recognized personally as they had been friendly to them and who they shared food with only to be murdered and dismembered. Even weeks after the war, the US soldiers who did finally arrive to defeat the Dakota found starving and badly injured settlers laying in houses or wandering around in shock. The eyewitness testimonies recounted are as horrible as in any war book I’ve read.
The book doesn't finish with the end of the war and the hanging of the Dakota warriors. The author details how the rest of the non-combatant Dakotas were rounded up and brought to basically a concentration camp at Fort Snelling (where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers join) via a miles long wagon train by the military. It was consistently attacked by angry whites. The survivors of this long trip were eventually put on steamboats and then in box cars and shipped to Crow Creek Reservation, regarded as poor land in South Dakota which featured limited agricultural land and little game. The book begins with a detailed narrative of the hangings and ends with this depressing episode.
I’m looking forward to visiting some of the memorials and sites which the events of the book took place, I have been to some of the towns attacked (~50 miles away) and through battle areas but never knew they harbored such a horrific past. I drove right by the Chief Little Crow statue in Hutchinson on work trips to western MN, not knowing its significance in MN history - totally unaware of the lengths he went through to rally his people against the wave of settlement and injustices. This should be required reading in Minnesota schools.
I thought the book was excellent. It was terribly sad, horribly brutal and violent, and often hard to read. The author lays it all out there. It was well-researched, with six pages of chapter notes, a bibliography, and an index. I especially appreciated the way the author told the story from both the Indian and white settler’s side. He did not leave out the gruesome details of the brutal killings and torture of the white settlers – men women, and children alike. Atrocities as bad as any I’ve ever read. He also details the well-known wrongdoings committed to the Indians by traders and the US government. Already pushed in to a narrow reservation along the Minnesota River and subject to broken treaties, bad deals from European traders, and late annuity payments by the US government, the Indians were affected by a harsh winter which caused crop failures and the loss of game. When they asked for help the were told by a governmental trading representative to "eat grass or your own dung". They Dakota were pushed to the brink and after the murder of a white family on a dare which went too far by young Dakotas under Chief Little Crow started the war for the most part as Little Crow was desperate, and he knew that the US Army was stressed and undermanned in Minnesota due to the ongoing US Civil War which was not going well for the North at the time. He knew that this was his chance to wipe out the white settlers in the Minnesota River Valley of western MN and perhaps this would lead to the whites permanently abandoning their occupation of Indian lands for a long time.
Over 38 days, the Dakota warrior led by Little Crow killed over 450 whites and took a couple hundred more as prisoners. The US forts in the area were undermanned and under armed due to the stresses of the war and Minnesota and Washington’s response was slow. Towns such as New Ulm and Hutchinson had to fend for themselves against hundreds of Dakota warriors. Settlers on the prairie were approached by Indians who they recognized personally as they had been friendly to them and who they shared food with only to be murdered and dismembered. Even weeks after the war, the US soldiers who did finally arrive to defeat the Dakota found starving and badly injured settlers laying in houses or wandering around in shock. The eyewitness testimonies recounted are as horrible as in any war book I’ve read.
The book doesn't finish with the end of the war and the hanging of the Dakota warriors. The author details how the rest of the non-combatant Dakotas were rounded up and brought to basically a concentration camp at Fort Snelling (where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers join) via a miles long wagon train by the military. It was consistently attacked by angry whites. The survivors of this long trip were eventually put on steamboats and then in box cars and shipped to Crow Creek Reservation, regarded as poor land in South Dakota which featured limited agricultural land and little game. The book begins with a detailed narrative of the hangings and ends with this depressing episode.
I’m looking forward to visiting some of the memorials and sites which the events of the book took place, I have been to some of the towns attacked (~50 miles away) and through battle areas but never knew they harbored such a horrific past. I drove right by the Chief Little Crow statue in Hutchinson on work trips to western MN, not knowing its significance in MN history - totally unaware of the lengths he went through to rally his people against the wave of settlement and injustices. This should be required reading in Minnesota schools.
December 29, 2012
This work by Schultz is meticulous, but not deep. By its time of publication (1992), we might expect more probing treatment of the Dakota side(s) of the events of 1862. Schulz gives us little cultural context for Dakota actions. For that matter, he tells us little about the white settlers, either. In this book they all live only to fight or die or suffer, and sometimes to make speeches. As I said, given the extant literature, by this time it should be possible to give better treatment to Dakota intentions and meanings. Schultz describes some of the provocations that led the Dakota to war, but only in terms that would make sense to casual white readers. He devotes a great deal of time and space to the ordeals and sufferings of white victims. Most of this stuff likely is true, but we learn neither why the Dakota committed deeds of brutality (there is a history to all that) nor why white settlers were so feckless. The core value of the book, I reckon, is to serve as a gauge of what sort of narrative of the Dakota War would be acceptable to the white buying public in the early 1990s. Scholarship already was beyond this, and it has a fair piece to go still.
May 15, 2017
The book I’m reviewing is called Over the Earth I Come by Duane Schultz. It is a 9th grade book level. This book is unique and it kinda goes all over the place with the stories and the writings about either from people from the attacks that survived or were captured, or from the Minnesotan/US Army. People from the army like Colonel Sibley. Or people that got attacked or were captured like Sarah Wakefield. This book reveals lots of things in the Sioux Uprising until the very end in Mankato on December 26th, 1862.
Since it is non-fiction this book doesn’t have a set theme but one thing that is the main reason all this happened is you have to keep important promises or just keep promises in general. The whole reason that the the Lower Sioux revolted is because the monthly annuity payment, which basically helps the Sioux survive. Like on page 29 “The long overdue annuity payment was finally on its way to Fort Ridgley, a one day trip.”That was about when it was decided by the Lower Sioux to revolt, so since the promise to give supplies, money, and loads of other stuff to survive. It led to over 800 men, women, and children that died. Some very gruesome I might add. If the Upper Sioux or any other tribe that Little Crow went to after he left Minnesota decided to help the Lower Sioux there would more than likely be Fort Ridgely, New Ulm, and maybe even Saint Peter ending up controlled by the Dakota. There would also be many more deaths so Minnesota kinda got lucky when nobody wanted to help Little Crow. Or maybe it wasn’t so much luck and it was just fear of getting wiped out if they revolt with the Lower Sioux. Even though they all got had to go to Fort Snelling, they didn’t know that at the time. This was a very bad time to lose the promise of bringing annuity because at this time we were in the start of the Civil War. So as a result the theme is basically you have to keep promises or they might come back and bite you.
I personally like this book because of all the historical writings and notes from people who were alive during that time. It does jump around a lot though so sometimes its kinda confusing but even with that it's still a good non-fiction book. People who would definitely not like this book are people who don’t like hearing about gore or people dying in general. If it's that way for you just quit reading this because there is some of that. On the contrary people that would like this book are people like non-fiction books for one thing and also just likes history because this is a very big (and forgotten) part of US history. It's the biggest war in Minnesota and it is still a big part of our history today. Or maybe specifically places by reservations like Redwood Falls, Granite Falls, and all those lakes up north. Places like Leech Lake, Lake Winnibigoshish, Red Lake, and Big Stone Lake. Like I said before this is a big part of our history and we should all at least hear about it.
Since it is non-fiction this book doesn’t have a set theme but one thing that is the main reason all this happened is you have to keep important promises or just keep promises in general. The whole reason that the the Lower Sioux revolted is because the monthly annuity payment, which basically helps the Sioux survive. Like on page 29 “The long overdue annuity payment was finally on its way to Fort Ridgley, a one day trip.”That was about when it was decided by the Lower Sioux to revolt, so since the promise to give supplies, money, and loads of other stuff to survive. It led to over 800 men, women, and children that died. Some very gruesome I might add. If the Upper Sioux or any other tribe that Little Crow went to after he left Minnesota decided to help the Lower Sioux there would more than likely be Fort Ridgely, New Ulm, and maybe even Saint Peter ending up controlled by the Dakota. There would also be many more deaths so Minnesota kinda got lucky when nobody wanted to help Little Crow. Or maybe it wasn’t so much luck and it was just fear of getting wiped out if they revolt with the Lower Sioux. Even though they all got had to go to Fort Snelling, they didn’t know that at the time. This was a very bad time to lose the promise of bringing annuity because at this time we were in the start of the Civil War. So as a result the theme is basically you have to keep promises or they might come back and bite you.
I personally like this book because of all the historical writings and notes from people who were alive during that time. It does jump around a lot though so sometimes its kinda confusing but even with that it's still a good non-fiction book. People who would definitely not like this book are people who don’t like hearing about gore or people dying in general. If it's that way for you just quit reading this because there is some of that. On the contrary people that would like this book are people like non-fiction books for one thing and also just likes history because this is a very big (and forgotten) part of US history. It's the biggest war in Minnesota and it is still a big part of our history today. Or maybe specifically places by reservations like Redwood Falls, Granite Falls, and all those lakes up north. Places like Leech Lake, Lake Winnibigoshish, Red Lake, and Big Stone Lake. Like I said before this is a big part of our history and we should all at least hear about it.
September 12, 2018
At one level, it was a seriously hard book to read! Not the style, though. Duane Schultz, courtesy professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, writer of three college textbooks, and prolific author, knows how to write and capture the reader's attention. What made this 324 page paperback, "Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862" so hard was the rottenness of many, and the profuse brutalities of multitudes! But Schultz doesn't give out gratuitous accounts of violence, rather he has crafted a well written dossier that chronicles those dark days, but also uncovers the glimmers of bright light that shone through in surprising places.
One of the aspects that impressed me was how Schultz shows not only the lead-up to the uprising, but fairly recounts the good, the bad and the ugly on all sides. The conflicted Little Crow; the foot-dragging Henry Sibley; the heroism of scores of Native Americans and settlers; the blood-lust, rapine and savagery of Sioux warriors; the dishonesty of White merchants, Indian agents and Government officials; as well as the hasty injustices of the trials and deportation at the end. I appreciated the author's honesty, while I cringed at the tale's horrors and hatefulness. And if a reader wonders is the manuscript historical and documented, there is a plethora of chapter notes with citations, and well-stocked bibliography at the end.
Even though the volume was first published in 1992, it is a must-read for Americans of all stripes and ethnicities! It is a dark piece of our history that gives thoughtful background to deep-seated presuppositions, prejudices and premises. And it is a sobering aspect of our heritage that can help to inform our present perceptions and encourage empathetic actions. I strongly recommend this book!
One of the aspects that impressed me was how Schultz shows not only the lead-up to the uprising, but fairly recounts the good, the bad and the ugly on all sides. The conflicted Little Crow; the foot-dragging Henry Sibley; the heroism of scores of Native Americans and settlers; the blood-lust, rapine and savagery of Sioux warriors; the dishonesty of White merchants, Indian agents and Government officials; as well as the hasty injustices of the trials and deportation at the end. I appreciated the author's honesty, while I cringed at the tale's horrors and hatefulness. And if a reader wonders is the manuscript historical and documented, there is a plethora of chapter notes with citations, and well-stocked bibliography at the end.
Even though the volume was first published in 1992, it is a must-read for Americans of all stripes and ethnicities! It is a dark piece of our history that gives thoughtful background to deep-seated presuppositions, prejudices and premises. And it is a sobering aspect of our heritage that can help to inform our present perceptions and encourage empathetic actions. I strongly recommend this book!
August 18, 2018
I probably would have rated this higher, but the author stated that the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux took place on the Blue Earth River. Every Minnesota School kid knows, or should know, that took place on the Minnesota River. In the Minnesota River Valley – where the rest of the action of this book takes place. So having missed that major and very important fact very early in the book, it kinda discredited the rest of it for me. Also, although written in 1992, the author choses to use the word “Sioux” instead of “Dakota,” which is pretty offensive. This book also tended to focus on the sensational part of the conflict; although it did a pretty good job in showing the wrongs committed on both sides. The author also discussed why the Dakota used such violence to kill the settlers (so the victim would be handicapped in the next life; should they meet again, the victim couldn’t take revenge) – but based on the whole Traverse des Sioux thing, I’m not sure I trust the information. “38 Nooses” and “Dakota Dawn” are better choices on this conflict.
Read
October 23, 2021A difficult book to read as this was a violent uprising which was suppressed by the US Army during the Civil War with equally violent methods. It's an uprising that should be part of all recountings of the many "Indian Wars" that were fought by white America as the it committed a genocidal war to eliminate Native peoples and to seize as much of their land as possible through lies, bribery, broken treaties, massacres and wholesale remove from Native people's original homeland.
Because the author relied a great deal on the writings of the white survivors of this uprising, the reader is presented with a very distorted accounting of the uprising.
The saddest(most ironic) part was the repression of the Sioux was done with union troops that were diverted from the battles in the Civil War... and that President Abraham Lincoln signed off on the largest mass hanging in US history -- 32 members of the Souix nation -- some of whom were very likely not involved in the actual uprising.
Because the author relied a great deal on the writings of the white survivors of this uprising, the reader is presented with a very distorted accounting of the uprising.
The saddest(most ironic) part was the repression of the Sioux was done with union troops that were diverted from the battles in the Civil War... and that President Abraham Lincoln signed off on the largest mass hanging in US history -- 32 members of the Souix nation -- some of whom were very likely not involved in the actual uprising.
March 27, 2019
Over the pages I read!
It's not often that I audibly gasp while reading a book, but some of the stories here are so damn horrific that I just couldn't help it.
The Sioux Uprising was a short but sadly overlooked event in American history. The war kicked off in fiery blaze of violence, then quickly limped along to a sad but inevitable end. However, had a couple of battles gone the Sioux's way, or had a few tribes joined in to support them, the country could look like a vastly different place right now.
There are so many amazing tales of survival that the book ends up reading like a novel. Particularly of interest is the portrayal of Little Crow, who is handled with an even-handed take. Neither villain or hero, he is a man who reluctantly lead his people into a war he never believed in.
Fascinating and tragic, this is one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read.
It's not often that I audibly gasp while reading a book, but some of the stories here are so damn horrific that I just couldn't help it.
The Sioux Uprising was a short but sadly overlooked event in American history. The war kicked off in fiery blaze of violence, then quickly limped along to a sad but inevitable end. However, had a couple of battles gone the Sioux's way, or had a few tribes joined in to support them, the country could look like a vastly different place right now.
There are so many amazing tales of survival that the book ends up reading like a novel. Particularly of interest is the portrayal of Little Crow, who is handled with an even-handed take. Neither villain or hero, he is a man who reluctantly lead his people into a war he never believed in.
Fascinating and tragic, this is one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read.
November 16, 2019
Like most people of my generation, growing up I learned very little about the history of my state and almost nothing about the native people who called this part of the country home. I am sure I was an adult before I even heard of the 1862 Sioux uprising and the public hanging of 39 Indians who were convicted of crimes against the white settlers in the area. This book tells a detailed story of the events of that tragic time when the westward expansion of the country brought an end to the life the natives had known. One sees there were atrocities against innocent people, whites and Indians and the book offers not excuses, but explanations how this came to be when the two cultures collided.
November 2, 2021
I had never heard about this piece if history until I dug farther into my own family geneology and found that my 2nd great grandparents lived in New Ulm during this time. My 2nd great grandmother's 1st husband was killed at the beginning of the uprising. Since I've gotten more info I've read a lot about the history. Although this book has a lot of brutality and violence I felt that it read more like a novel. Not dry. It kept my interest. I tried to keep an open mind about the promises not kept to the Native Americans of that area. I as also tried to imagine what it was like being a German like my ancestors living there in 1862.
I do recommend this book to people like me who want to know more about the people and why this happened in the first place
I do recommend this book to people like me who want to know more about the people and why this happened in the first place
August 12, 2025
As a Minnesotan with German roots to New Ulm it was difficult to put this book down but also difficult to continue reading at times. Over The Earth I Come provides a detailed account of the Sioux uprising and is a must read for any Minnesotan and American. An event shadowed by the civil war but changing the corse of history for American Indians. It is evident during parts of the retelling that most sources on the war are those of white settlers and historians and few accounts are given to the Sioux perspective with exception of little crow. Over The Earth I Come details why my German family refused to speak of the Minnesota native Americans as well as the legalities of stealing Sioux land. Read set your own caution as there were so grotesque descriptions.
August 21, 2022
I could not put this book down. I have lived in Minnesota for over 30 years, 1.5 hours from Mankato & I’ve been to Fort Snelling multiple times and I did not know this history! Great book. The author did a great job explaining the injustices done to the Indians and what started the uprising. The descriptions of the killings of the settlers was hard to read and once again how terrible the US government was to the Indians and how they punished all of the Indians afterwards - basically killing all of them - never distinguishing between those that killed and were responsible for the uprising vs those who saved and protected the settlers. Terrible and heart wrenching.
December 14, 2025
I enjoyed this book and learned much. I had genuinely no idea about a single one of the specifics of these events. The story is constructed especially well, setting up the context and tension. I do think many of the specific facts of the committed atrocities against the white settlers could have shortened… there were 100 pages of heavily descriptive passages of the “uprising” but then resulting consequences on the native community was reduced to a couple chapters. I think it certainly spoke to how abhorrently the Sioux were treated both before and after the events of the book but maybe brushed over the opportunity to highlight Sioux perspectives too much for my taste.
September 10, 2018
This is the second book I've read about the Dakota War of 1862 (aka Great Sioux Uprising) in preparation for a Road Scholar trip to the area around Pipestone, MN. This one was much more detailed and many of the details were gory in the extreme. It was a war started on an egg stealing dare by a few Native Americans, but after decades of mistreatment and lies from the U.S. government, Little Crow and a few other chiefs thought they had nothing to lose by expanding to all out war. Much suffering and heartbreak on both sides.
July 9, 2021
Took awhile for me to get into this bookclub selection. I'm intimidated by 300 page non-fiction books. Once I got aways into it and felt confident I would finish it, I relaxed and became much more interested in it. The cliff hanger at the end made me want to go on a search for a book about the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Passed through Mankato while reading it and visited Reconciliation Park. (I'm hoping Reba will give out Eagle feathers to those of us who finished the book.)
February 12, 2018
I’ve lived in Mankato for most of my life. I’m fascinated by any regions history. So although the Sioux Indian Wars in southern Minnesota during the American
Civil War may not have rated much acclaim elsewhere, it’s a pretty big deal here. This book does the best job of reporting the events fairly from both sides, and concisely. It reads like a good fiction novel, but it is true history.
Civil War may not have rated much acclaim elsewhere, it’s a pretty big deal here. This book does the best job of reporting the events fairly from both sides, and concisely. It reads like a good fiction novel, but it is true history.
April 13, 2023
Although I was aware of the Sioux Uprising, I did not know much about it and so this book served as my introduction to this major event in Minnesota history. I would have liked to see more memories from the Sioux survivors, but overall I felt the author did a fair job of showing how there were honorable and dishonorable men on all sides of the conflict.
May 21, 2023
Fascinating, gruesome, and historical account of the events leading up to the great Sioux uprising in 1862. There were atrocities committed by all involved: white traders and settlers alike, Dakotas (Sioux), and US government agents. There were also kindnesses shown by both white settlers and Dakota people. Reading this book will show how wonderful and how horrible people can be to one another.
December 30, 2017
An incredible historical account of the 1862 Sioux uprising. Having grown up in Mankato, and being familiar with most of the places central to the conflict, it has changed my perception of the area in so many ways.
January 4, 2018
An essential reference for me when I was writing the 3-book historical fiction series Dakota Moons, set during the Dakota War of 1862.
August 24, 2018
A very good book about the great Sioux uprising of 1862 in southern Minnesota. If you like 𝖧𝗂𝗌𝗍𝗈𝗋𝗒 this a must.
September 4, 2022
So much for "Minnesota nice".
Read
December 4, 2023It’s a start to learning about the history but a less biased version would be great
January 23, 2024
Read in History in High School. Important and eye-opening. "Should be required reading for every Minnesotan" - My Dad
May 4, 2025
Really enjoyed this. Sheds light on an often overlooked event
July 9, 2025
This book is gripping, raw, important. You won’t be able to put this down
July 14, 2023
The Dakota War of 1862 was a brief conflict between the Dakota people of Minnesota and settlers. Lasting only five weeks, the conflict had a profound impact on not only the Dakota, but Native Americans across the state. The conflict can be viewed as one of the genocidal efforts to forcibly remove the Dakota from Minnesota, which also included the internment of hundreds of women, children, and elderly on Pike Island below Fort Snelling.
The Dakota tribes from 1830s to 1850s agreed to a series of treaties that exchanged Dakota land for money and food. The US government also passes a number of policies encouraging settlement along the western frontier, including the creation of the state of Minnesota.
Eventually, the Civil War meant the US government had fallen seriously behind on its payments and delivery of food, leaving the Dakota on the verge of starvation. This, combined with an influx of American settlers, meant the Dakota had no way of feeding themselves. The situation would come to a head in the summer of 1862 when the Dakota Sioux had enough.
In "Over the Earth I Come," greed begets atrocity, which begets indiscriminate vengeance...and the innocents are the ones to suffer. A sad but all-too-common occurrence in human affairs. "Whole families were burned alive in their farmhouses. Children were nailed to barn doors, girls raped by a dozen braves and hacked to pieces, babies dismembered in front of their horrified mothers. More than 260 women and children, whites and mixed bloods, were dragged off to a brutal captivity that lasted forty days."(P.5) Eventually with the help of the American military the Dakota surrendered, releasing nearly 300 captives. More than 300 men were sentenced to death, for crimes ranging from rape to murder. The defendants were not allowed legal representation and the trials themselves were brief, with some lasting less than five minutes.
President Abraham Lincoln personally reviewed the convictions of the Dakota men. Proponents and opponents of execution alike lobbied Lincoln on behalf of the settlers and the Dakota. In the end, Lincoln commuted all but 39 sentences, deciding only the Dakota involved in civilian massacres should be executed. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hung in Mankato, an event which remains the largest single execution in American history.
This is not a boring academic book, replete with scholarly footnotes and author commentary; neither is there an author's introduction or acknowledgments or any indication of whether he holds an academic position anywhere. The book is, however, a well-written narrative of the events, based on documented sources. It is a dark piece of our history that gives thoughtful background to deep-seated presuppositions, prejudices and premises. And it is a sobering aspect of our heritage that can help to inform our present perceptions and encourage empathetic actions. I strongly recommend this book!
The Dakota tribes from 1830s to 1850s agreed to a series of treaties that exchanged Dakota land for money and food. The US government also passes a number of policies encouraging settlement along the western frontier, including the creation of the state of Minnesota.
Eventually, the Civil War meant the US government had fallen seriously behind on its payments and delivery of food, leaving the Dakota on the verge of starvation. This, combined with an influx of American settlers, meant the Dakota had no way of feeding themselves. The situation would come to a head in the summer of 1862 when the Dakota Sioux had enough.
In "Over the Earth I Come," greed begets atrocity, which begets indiscriminate vengeance...and the innocents are the ones to suffer. A sad but all-too-common occurrence in human affairs. "Whole families were burned alive in their farmhouses. Children were nailed to barn doors, girls raped by a dozen braves and hacked to pieces, babies dismembered in front of their horrified mothers. More than 260 women and children, whites and mixed bloods, were dragged off to a brutal captivity that lasted forty days."(P.5) Eventually with the help of the American military the Dakota surrendered, releasing nearly 300 captives. More than 300 men were sentenced to death, for crimes ranging from rape to murder. The defendants were not allowed legal representation and the trials themselves were brief, with some lasting less than five minutes.
President Abraham Lincoln personally reviewed the convictions of the Dakota men. Proponents and opponents of execution alike lobbied Lincoln on behalf of the settlers and the Dakota. In the end, Lincoln commuted all but 39 sentences, deciding only the Dakota involved in civilian massacres should be executed. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hung in Mankato, an event which remains the largest single execution in American history.
This is not a boring academic book, replete with scholarly footnotes and author commentary; neither is there an author's introduction or acknowledgments or any indication of whether he holds an academic position anywhere. The book is, however, a well-written narrative of the events, based on documented sources. It is a dark piece of our history that gives thoughtful background to deep-seated presuppositions, prejudices and premises. And it is a sobering aspect of our heritage that can help to inform our present perceptions and encourage empathetic actions. I strongly recommend this book!
December 20, 2012
An interesting and easy read that slots the events of the largest mass execution in US history into the context of Minnesota white settlement and the US Civil War.
I think the book would have been more interesting and complete with more accounts from the Dakota people who participated in or lived through the time of the Great Sioux Uprising, as the primary sources quoted were often whites or the leaders of the different tribes, like Little Crow. I also thought that a little bit more attention paid to the timeline of the Homestead Act and how that and other political machinations (besides the US Civil War) would have been pretty interesting. I also thought that the portrait of Henry Sibley was an interesting contrast to the one presented here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio... and that a more complete examination of his history and motivations would be pretty interesting.
I think the book would have been more interesting and complete with more accounts from the Dakota people who participated in or lived through the time of the Great Sioux Uprising, as the primary sources quoted were often whites or the leaders of the different tribes, like Little Crow. I also thought that a little bit more attention paid to the timeline of the Homestead Act and how that and other political machinations (besides the US Civil War) would have been pretty interesting. I also thought that the portrait of Henry Sibley was an interesting contrast to the one presented here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio... and that a more complete examination of his history and motivations would be pretty interesting.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews