In 1862, President Lincoln had more to contend with than just a Civil War.
In 1845, shortly after their marriage in Illinois, Jonas and Frances "Fanny" Pettijohn began their journey to Lac qui Parle in the Minnesota territory. In 1846 Jonas was appointed an assistant missionary there where he remained for 3 years.
Minnesota became a territory in 1849. White settlers were eager to establish homesteads on the fertile frontier. Pressured by traders and threatened with military force, the indigenous Dakota people were forced to cede nearly all their land in Minnesota and eastern Dakota in the 1851 treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota. At Traverse des Sioux, the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of the Dakota ceded 21 million acres for $1,665,000, or about 7.5 cents an acre. Of that amount, $275,000 was set aside to pay debts claimed by traders and to relocate the Dakota. Another $30,000 was allocated to establish schools and to prepare the new reservation for the Dakota.
The U.S. government kept more than 80 percent of the money ($1,360,000), with only the interest on the amount, at 5 percent for 50 years, paid to the Dakota. The terms of the Mendota treaty with the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of the Dakota were similar, except that those payments were even smaller. The treaties of 1851 also called for setting up reservations on both the north and south sides of the Minnesota River. But the U.S. Senate changed the treaties by eliminating the reservations and leaving the Dakota with no place to live. Congress required the Dakota to approve this change before appropriating desperately needed cash and goods. President Millard Fillmore agreed that the Dakota could live on the land previously set aside for reservations, but only until it was needed for white settlement.
In the winter of 1851-52, Jonas tendered his resignation to the missionary board and on 23 February 1852, Jonas and Fanny left Lac qui Parle for Traverse des Sioux. Jonas built a respectable log house on his claim and acquired about fifty acres. He would farm that land with his wife and four children.
In the summer of 1856, Jonas sold his property and went to Ohio, where he had purchased 80 acres of unimproved land. However, when they got there, they found that things were somewhat different than what they had anticipated. So, in March 1857, they left Ohio and moved to Illinois. Jonas made some effort to get a farm to tend, but failed to find one that suited him and the family eventually moved back to Minnesota.
By 1858 the Dakota had only a small strip of land in Minnesota. Without access to the land upon which they had hunted for generations, they had to rely on treaty payments for their survival. The inadequate money and goods often arrived late. On 11 May 1858, Minnesota was admitted to the Union, becoming the thirty-second state. By then, almost all Indian lands in Minnesota had been ceded or reserved for future settlement. A month later, a group of Dakota traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss their reservation. The Dakota were pressured to cede the lands on the north side of the Minnesota River. They received 30 cents per acre, estimated to be only about 5 percent of the land's value. When the funds were finally distributed in 1860, most of the $266,880 promised went to pay debts claimed by traders.
In the fall of 1859, Jonas was asked to teach the government school at the Red Iron Village. After discussing the subject with his wife and friends, they concluded to go. They reached the village in November. For a year they lived in a rough log house. They next year the government built a good-sized brick house with a cellar and several rooms, one of which was specially designated as a school room. He would teach all that came to be taught.
In 1862, as the U.S. government provided incentives for newcomers to move onto the land through the Homestead Act, hunger was widespread throughout Dakota lands in Minnesota. Since crops had been poor in 1861, the Dakota had little food stored for the "starving winter" of 1861-62. Their reservation supported no game, and increasing settlement off the reservation meant more competition with the settlers hunting for meat. Near starvation, the Dakota had to rely on government food.
Reports about government agents' corrupt treatment of the Dakota were ignored. Factionalism continued among the Dakota, as those who maintained traditional ways saw that only those who had acculturated were reaping government support. Finally, a delayed treaty payment made traders nervous, and many of them cut off credit to Dakota hunters.
Indian Agent Thomas Galbraith refused to distribute food to the Dakota. Little Crow (Taoyateduta) a Mdewakanton Dakota chief went to discuss their plight with Galbraith. He told the agent, "We have waited a long time. The money is ours but we cannot get it. We have no food but here these stores are filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement so we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry, they help themselves." Though Dakota farmers shared food with their relatives throughout the summer of 1862, it was not enough. In late July 1862, some 5,000 Dakota gathered at the Yellow Medicine Agency ready to storm the warehouses. Agents eventually released the storehouse of grain to the hungry Dakota.
Then, on 17 August 1862, four Dakota hunters killed five white settlers at Acton Township, Meeker County. The hunters fled to their village where they begged for protection. Some Dakota seized that moment to declare war to reclaim their homelands from the whites who would not keep their promises. They appealed to Little Crow to lead them. Reluctantly, he agreed. In the early morning hours of 18 August, they went to war.
The Sioux struck first at an Indian agency 57 miles from the Pettijohn home, killing the clerk and raiding the stockrooms. Perhaps a hundred men, women and children had been massacred before the Pettijohns learned of the danger, so slowly did word filter through a frontier-land. Jonas bundled his wife and possessions into an ox cart. The sons, Albert and Bill, drove the family's cow and calf. Soon this frightened party had swelled to 43 persons. Indians ranged on every side of them, looting and burning. "Our defenses," Jonas recalled in his memoirs, "consisted of four guns, one was no good and the other three were single barreled Indian shotguns. But we had no bullets except for the old rifle which wouldn't shoot. It would have been difficult to hold off any Indians."
The refugees traveled night and day. They did not dare to build fires until the third evening, when they killed a two-year-old heifer and boiled it. One day four of the young men chose a different route and struck out on their own. They walked straight into an ambush.
The party reached Fort Ridgley but found the outbuildings afire and the garrison hard pressed to drive off repeated attacks. They bypassed the fort and after nearly a week on the trail finally reached safety.
The war ended with most of the Dakota bands surrendering and by late December of 1862, U.S. soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota. During the conflict, between 500 and 800 Minnesotans were killed or died, only 75 of whom were soldiers. The rest were settlers.
Nearly 400 Dakota men were tried by a military commission, and 303 were sentenced to death. President Lincoln pardoned many, but 38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato on 26 December 1862. It was the largest one-day mass execution in American history. The remaining Dakota were sent to prison in Iowa or to reservations at Crow Creek in what is now South Dakota, and at Santee in the Nebraska Territory.
Little Crow and many of his warriors fled west, avoiding the hangman's noose. By late spring 1863, Little Crow and his followers were camped near the Canada–U.S. border. After having been deprived of its territory in the War, the tribe adopted a mobile existence. Needing horses, Little Crow led a raiding party to steal them from his former land in Minnesota. His people did not want to do this. On the evening of 3 July 1863, Little Crow and son Wowinape were spotted by some settlers and engaged in a brief firefight. Little Crow was mortally wounded, but his son was able to escape. Wowinape was later captured, tried and sentenced to hang. Instead, he was sent to a prison camp in Davenport, Iowa. There he converted to Christianity and took the name Thomas Wakeman. He was pardoned in 1865 and settled in the Dakota Territory, dying of tuberculosis in 1886.
In 1863 the Dakota were forced to give up all their remaining land in Minnesota, and the U.S. government canceled all treaties made with them. The Ojibwe reluctantly ceded most of their remaining land in northwestern Minnesota in treaties of 1863, 1864, and 1867. In 1871 Congress ended the practice of making treaties with Indian nations. However, past treaties remained in place.
Jonas remained in Minnesota until the fall of 1868 when he sold his farm and moved to Kansas. He died there on 20 April 1896 at the age of 82.
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