"Coming to Terms With the Past: The Dakota Conflict of 1862"
Below is an essay written and published by historian, Bryce O. Stenzel, in his book, Mankato Milestones. It was originally released in 2002, for the Mankato Sesquicentennial celebration, and is available through Minnesota Heritage Publishing.
The execution of the thirty-eight Dakota warriors at Mankato, [Minnesota], on December 26, 1862, remains the largest mass-execution in American history. Not surprisingly, there have been a wide range of strong opinions and emotional expressions, both on how the event should be remembered, as well as how the location of the execution site should be marked. Immediately after the event, those who wrote the histories of the Conflict described the Indians, who were involved, as "blood-thirsty savages." Consequently, they deserved punishment for "massacring" innocent, white settlers on the frontier. Little attention was given to the underlying causes of the war, such as treaty violations by the government agents sent to protect the Indians, or encroachement by settlers on Indian lands. More recently, efforts have been made to tell the story from the Native American perspective to the point that earlier efforts to commemorate the struggle have been ridiculed and discarded.
The most notable of these attempts to revise history in favor of the Dakota side involved the removal and banishment of the original granite marker that was erected in 1912. On its surface was inscribed in raised letters: "HERE WERE HANGED 38 SIOUX INDIANS, DECEMBER 26, 1862." Critics of the monument argued that the memorial should be removed because it gave no details about the hanging or the events that led up to it. Even worse, the revisionists claimed the marker was blatently racist, on account of the fact that the word "Sioux" was used (a nickname originally given to this group of Indians by French explorers who had borrowed it from the Ojibway Indians they first encountered. The Dakota (Sioux) and Ojibway (Chippewa) had been bitter enemies centuries before the French explorers came to Minnesota. Not surprisingly, the Ojibway called their enemies by an insulting name. Translated, the name meant, "snake").
Those that advocated removal of the memorial marker won the battle. The stone marker, weighing several tons, was taken down and put into storage. In 1987, as part of the "Year of Reconciliation," a new plaque was erected by the Minnesota Historical Society, detailing the the background of the U.S.-Dakota War, the hanging at Mankato and its aftermath. Two new memorials were erected to the memory of the Dakota warriors, the Winter Warrior and the Buffalo. In September 1997, Reconciliation Park was established.
Despite these efforts, there were those determined to destroy the old marker as a way to vent their rage and frustration against past discrimination toward Native Americans. Over the years numerous threats have been made to throw the marker into the river [Minnesota River], grind it up to be used as road fill, pour red paint all over it, etc. Such attitudes have forced less militant individuals to "hide" the marker as a means to keep it from being destroyed. Their purpose in doing so was to ensure that if, at some future date, some agency or organization decided to give the marker a place to be properly displayed as a representation of another time and point of view; they would be able to do so.
It should be pointed out that contrary to popular belief, those who erected the marker in 1912 (the fiftieth anniversary of the hanging) did not intend to insult or humiliate Native Americans. In his dedication address, Judge Lorin Cray (himself a Civil War veteran) admitted there had been some opposition to the erection of the monument at Front and Main Streets, and that he could not refrain from answering the criticism. Cray said, "This marker was not so placed to flaunt before the public that we hanged the Indians. It was erected in an entirely different spirit, to perpetuate the immediate history of the region, permitting handing down the history to the generations to come in a correct manner." Editor John C. Wise, of the Mankato Daily Review, echoed this same sentiment when he remarked that he had no patience for those that indulged in criticism of the marker. He argued that every stranger who landed in Mankato asked to see the location of the hanging. Even President William Howard Taft did so when he visited Mankato. In Wise's view, the monument marked a site and carried neither praise nor blame.
Anna Wiecking, author of: As We Once Were:Stories about the Settlement and Life of Blue Earth County from 1850 to the Early 1900's, summed it up when she said, "Historians, officials of historical societies and other citizens take the view that the monument marks a very important national historic event, and that we need to profit from history, not try to reject or cover it up." Only when the charade of hiding the marker from short-sided destruction has ended and it is allowed to be displayed in its proper historical context, along with proper explanation regarding its controversial inscription will the citizens of Mankato truly come to terms with their past. In doing so, Native Americans and whites will finally [be able to] reconcile their differences.
This essay was written in 2002. Unfortunately, the essay's central message of reconcilaition through objective historical interpretation has gone largely unheeded. It may now be too late to reverse the trend; because those hell-bent on eliminating an alleged symbol of their ancestors oppression, as well as those apologists who assisted them in the name of 'political correctness' have had their way. It is likely that the controversial, granite marker has been sold to or been given over to a minority faction of the Native American community for destruction. In an article published in the May 14, 2006 edition of The Free Press, Mankato city officials all but admitted to doing just that. The revelation came as a result of student inquiry, as part of a history class assignment, led by Minnesota State Professor, Dr. Melodie Andrews. Besides providing an update on the marker's likely fate, the article was revealing in other ways. Below are two direct quotes which illustrate the ongoing historical debate:
' "My personal feelings are that it would stay buried and that people should leave well enough alone." '--Vernell Wabasha, former member of the State Indian Affairs Commission (she claims to know the location of ' "that derogatory rock." ')
' "You certainly don't learn anything if you bury things and try to forget them." '--Melodie Andrews, Professor of History at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
As a historian, I agree with Dr. Andrews' assessement of the controversy. Not only does one not learn anything by burying the past; such ignorance is dangerous in a democratic society. Imagine if the Nazis had been allowed to destroy the evidence of their crimes against humanity; namely the concentration camps (as they tried to do in some areas when it was clear that Germany was losing the war). No one but survivors of the Holocaust would have ever been able to prove what uspeakable horrors were done to them. Once they had died, as many already have, there would be no visual record of the autrocities. Those that deny the Holocaust ever happened would be even more convincing than they already are. The fact that a number of the Nazi death camps have been preserved was done precisely for the same reason that the granite marker should have been kept by some responsible public agency--to serve as a reminder of how one generation remembered a key event in the life of a previous one; and in doing so, linked both generations to our own. Those who deny the past are doomed to repeat it. That is probably the most chilling consequence of this failure to come to terms with the past.
--Bryce O. Stenzel
