CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE DAKOTA WAR

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Abstract

The essay is interested in coming up of a good highlight that will effectively show the causes and effects of the Dakota war. The effects will be classified in terms of long term and short term effects of the Dakota war. The causes will range from political, cultural and economic reasons and the effects will also be analyzed in terms of political, cultural and economic effects.

Introduction

The Dakota war is also known as the Sioux uprising. This was a war between the Dakota Indians and the United States that started in the year 1862 the month of August (Keenan, 2002). The war ended with the mass execution of 36 men (Dakota) in what is remembered as the Indian massacre. In other several historical records of the Sioux uprising published by settlers, the writers referred to the Dakota Indians with adverse adjectives. A large number of the settlers viewed the Dakota Indians as substandard people who were not worth regard. The settlers did not take responsibility for resulting in the Sioux uprising. When historians started to write about the Dakota Conflict of 1862, they too placed the fault totally on the Indians without regard for the aspect the settlers performed in resulting in the war. This paper will show without biased all the known causes of the Dakota conflict.

Causes of the Dakota war

One factor cannot be pinpointed by scholars to have been the cause of the Dakota war. There were immediate and long term causes of the war while some were implicit and others articulated. One long term cause of the Dakota War that the both the settlers and the Dakota agree on was the late payment of annuity. The settlers did not live on the reservation but they knew that the government was late to deliver payment of annuity to the Dakota. The settlers however to not stress the strain this caused to the Dakota. The settlers claimed that the delayed annuity payments made the Dakota Indians angry because they were not able to buy supplies. June 1862 was the scheduled arrival date for the annuity payment as was planned by the government. Due to setbacks in the government the month of June and July passed without the approval of payment by the government. This delay in payment occurred because Congress slowly appropriated the money and the United States Treasury department delayed the deal for a month while it discussed whether to pay the Dakota Indians in paper money or gold.

This started to create tension in the reservation due to the hard time in getting money to buy food. Rumor started to spread that the payment would never come due to scarcity of Gold due to the ongoing civil war. Some of the Dakota Indians started thinking about war but peace prevailed because the Indians who believed in peace were more and they convinced those advocating for war to be peaceful because harvest time was not far (Henig, 1976).

Another factor that caused the war was the unhealthy relationship between the Indian agents and traders and the Dakota Indians. The traders took advantage of the Indians who did not know the price of the fur they sold. The traders would actually acquire the fur at half the value of the fur but the traders made no effort to correct this pricing and inform the Indians of the real value of the fur. The traders also allowed the Dakota Indians to get food supplies on credit and the Indians were to pay when the annuity payment was made by the government. The traders would then come with books showing the money owed. The Indians kept no records because they could not read and write and made payment as told by the traders. The traders were the beneficiaries of this trade that took advantage of the illiteracy of the Dakota Indians. The Indian agent only catered for their interests and thus when the harvest was destroyed in 1861, the Dakota Indians really needed the annuity money to buy food due to the ongoing starvation. The Dakota Indians grew desperate and they started weighing options to attack their white neighbors. Attacking at this time took advantage of the small number of men in their neighbors because the young men were fighting in the civil war.

The Dakota now weighed chasing the settlers away from their land. Before this could happen, four settlers were killed by Dakota Indian men who had no idea their actions would cause the war that came to be. The incitement amongst themselves started as a joke that led to the killing of the settlers. After this killing the Dakota knew that there would be retribution from the white settlers and that the annuity payment would be stopped. The only act that remain was to drive the settlers off their cultural land (Carley, 1976). Thus the war came to be.

The war could have been stopped had the settlers understood the cultural aspects of the Dakota Indians but they always viewed them as inferior. By understanding their culture, the settlers would understand their mindset. The Dakota were unwilling to make change in their lifestyle but tried to live like their ancestors. The Dakota Indians believed in a communal society. The war would have been prevented if the Dakota Indians would have been convincingly advised and taught to adapt the culture of farming so that they could rely on themselves and avoid starvation and dependence of annuity payment. Cultural misunderstanding seem to be the main cause of the war.

Effects of the Dakota war

The end of war left dead 500 Americans and 60 Dakota Indians. This number rose with the mass execution of 36 Dakota Indians. The Dakota bands surrendered (Kunnen-Jones, 2002). The land was greatly affected by the war leaving towns being burned and other various trails of destruction. The war led to the capture of Dakota Indians by the soldiers and they were imprisoned in prisons across Minnesota (Clodfelter, 1998). The Indians faced trial and this led to the biggest mass hanging in the history.

After the war the treaty signed in 1951 between the Dakota and the United States of America was dissolved. The treaty was for the purchase of Land from the Dakota Indians using cash and continued annuity payment. The Dakota Indians were not to receive any more annuity. The Dakota Indians were expelled from Minnesota to South Dakota and Nebraska. The government, through the congress, abolished the Dakota Reservations. The settlers who fled the war did not return to their farms after the war subsided.

References

Carley, K. (1976). The Sioux Uprising of 1862. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Clodfelter, M. (1998). The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862-1865. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Henig, G. S. (1976). Minnesota History. In A Neglected Cause of the Sioux Uprising (pp. 108-109).

Keenan, J. (2002). The Great Sioux Uprising: Rebellion on the Plains, August – September 1862. Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

Kunnen-Jones, M. (2002). Anniversary Volume Gives New Voice To Pioneer Accounts of Sioux Uprising. University of Cincinnati.