A framed
sketch of
the scene depicted on this page, the execution of thirty-eight
Sioux
on December 26, 1862, used to fascinate me when, as a boy in
Mankato,
Minnesota, I would visit the Blue Earth County Historical Museum.
Apart from its macabre appeal, the picture impressed me because it
captured
the most famous event in the history of my hometown** (easily
surpassing
in significance the death there of an obscure ex-Vice
President--Schuyler
Colfax-- who died
while
changing trains on his way back from the Black Hills). The
hanging,
following
trials which condemned over three hundred participants in the 1862
Dakota
Conflict, stands as the largest mass execution in American history.
Only
the unpopular intervention of President Lincoln saved 265 other Dakota
from the fate met by the less fortunate thirty-eight. The mass
hanging
was the concluding scene in the opening chapter of a story of
American-Sioux
conflict that would not end until the Seventh Cavalry completed its
massacre
at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. (CONT-->) |