Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

by S.C. Gwynne

As the war raged in the east, the white frontier exploded into its own nightmare of killing. The outbreaks had their origins in the north in 1862, with an Indian revolt on the prairie plains of Minnesota. That year the Santee Sioux (the eastern Sioux, also known as Dakota) rose up in rebellion from their reservation along the Minnesota River. They killed as many as eight hundred white settlers, the highest civilian wartime toll in U.S. history prior to 9/11. They made another forty thousand into refugees, who fled eastward in full mortal panic. The violence was extreme, almost mindless, spurred in part by the failure of the federal government to deliver annuities and supplies, and in part by the absence of government troops. Unlike the Texans, most of whom came from pioneer stock and understood the atrocities of Indian and especially Comanche warfare, these Minnesotans were simple yeoman farmers. Most were from Europe. Their reaction was hysterical fear, which only became worse when they experienced what the northern settlers had not yet encountered: the calculated rape and torture of female captives.