Redefining the U.S.

-Dakota War of 1862:

The Dakota Genocide

Amelia Benware
Mr. Bourboun
HIST 220: History of North Dakota
10 December 2023
 Introduction
The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 took place in the greater Minnesota River Valley. The war

was mainly between the United States and the Dakota people; however, many Indigenous

Nations, beyond the Dakota people, were affected and targeted. On August 17, 2012, the U.S.-

Dakota War of 1862 was acknowledged as a genocide by the state of Minnesota and Governor

Mark Dayton declared it the “Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation”.1 During the war, as

tactics of genocide; the United States withheld annuity payments which deprived the Dakota

people access to food leading to starvation, and a commander named John Pope was given far

too much power for someone who believed “… to put a final stop to Indian troubles by

exterminating or ruining all Indians engaged in the late outbreak’”.2 Alongside the starvation and

aggressive offensive, the United States held military trials for captive Dakota men and sent many

innocent Dakota people to a concentration camp known as Fort Snelling. Furthermore, with the

1863 Dakota Removal Act, the United States broke the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie which

acknowledged the Black Hills home of the Sioux nation. The United States’ failure to continue to

acknowledge Sioux ownership of the Black Hills has allowed the effects of the genocide to be

experienced today as the Indigenous population faces displacement and loss of cultural identity.

The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 should be represented as a genocide, not simply a war, to help

identify and prevent future genocides occurring during wars.

What is Genocide?

From the direct killings of Dakota people to starvation and captivity, the United States

fought the Indigenous nation with inhumane tactics, many of which fit into the categories set out

by the UN Convention in 1948. Genocide was originally coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer, and
1
“US-Dakota War of 1862,” College of Liberal Arts Holocaust and Genocide Studies, n.d.,
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/us-dakota-war-1862
2
Michael Burns, “The Civil War on the Northern Plains: John Pope’s Military Policies against the Sioux in the
Department of the Northwest, 1862-65.” Great Plains Quarterly 38, no.1 (2018): 84,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44684863?seq=6
survivor of the Nazi Germany perpetrated Holocaust, Raphael Lemkin, in 1994. The term

‘genocide’ is only applied to the worst cases of systematic annihilation of a group of people

based on race, ethnicity, location, etc. 3 In his article titled “Genocide”, Lemkin wrote:

Genocide is the crime of destroying national, racial, or religious groups. The problem
now arises as to whether it is a crime of only national importance, or a crime in which
international society as should be vitally interested. Many reasons speak for the second
alternative. It would be impractical to treat genocide as a national crime, since by its very
nature it is committed by the state or by powerful groups which have the backing of the
state. A state would never prosecute a crime instigated or backed by itself.4
Because the United States played a major role in the U.S-Dakota War of 1862 the war is

remembered as a war, not a genocide of Indigenous populations such as the Dakota and the

Sioux. However, most applicable to the events of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, the United

Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines

genocide as

…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a nation,
ethical, racial, or religious group, as such: (1) Killing members of the group; (2) Causing
serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) Deliberately inflicting on the
group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part…5
The white settlers that made up the population of the United States, were historically understood

to be defending themselves from Indigenous attacks. However, those attacks were a direct result

of the genocide that began long before it was acknowledged because of the war.

Late Annuity Payments Resulting in Starvation

Late annuity payments are not typically viewed as a tactic of genocide, however, during

the Dakota War of 1862, they served to starve the Dakota people and instigate the war. For the

3
Amelia Benware, “Government Supported Off-Reservation Boarding Schools: A Tactic of Warfare in
Genocide” (ANTHRO 297M: Disease, Famine, and Warfare Essay, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst,
MA, 2023)
4
Raphael Lemkin, “Genocide”. The American Scholar, vol. 15, no. 2 (1946): 228,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41204789
5
UN (United Nations) General Assembly. 1948. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 9
December 1948—Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Third session. A/RES/3/260. Available at
http://un-documents.net/a3r260.htm
Indigenous nations annuity meant income. Tribes would trade their land in return for credit to be

used on food and clothing from “Government-approved traders”.6 The annuity system forced the

Dakotas into debt with the traders because the money from their land was not enough to fully

support them. Meaning that, especially during the winter of 1861-1862, the Dakota people were

forced to rely solely on the traders for more credit. 7 Led by Andrew Myrick, a trader with the

Lower Sioux Agency, the traders refused to extend credit to Dakota leaders claiming they were

in debt.8 In an 1862 letter to his brothers, Myrick wrote, “They had two secret councils at which

they resolved not to pay a dollar of their credits, established a soldiers lodge of one hundred

warriors to execute the plan… we all determined not [to] give any more credit hoping to starve

them into a change of sentiment…”. 9 Myrick believed that the traders could force the Dakota

people into submission by denying them access to food. Genocide occurs when one population

believes themselves superior to another and aims for domination through annihilation. In this

case, Myrick was a believer that white settlers, and traders, were superior to the Dakota people,

and the only way to get the Dakotas to submit and “…become decent again”10 was to hold their

food so they had no choice but to comply to avoid further starvation. Myrick’s actions should be

acknowledged as a tactic of carrying out genocide because his method of denying credit forced

the submission of a targeted group of people and in countless deaths among the Indigenous

population. Grouping this systematic starvation of the Dakota people with the rest of the war

efforts will allow similar acts to go unnoticed when genocide occurs.

Major General John Pope’s Offensive

6
“Annuity Museum - Annuities for American Indians,” Accessed December 10, 2023,
https://www.immediateannuities.com/annuitymuseum/annuitiesforamericanindians/
7
Jacob Bourboun, “The U.S.- Dakota War 1862,” History 220: History of North Dakota (class lecture,
University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, October 2, 2023).
8
“Andrew Myrick”, The US-Dakota War of 1862, last modified August 23, 2012.
https://www.usdakotawar.org/history/andrew-myrick.
9
“Andrew Myrick”
10
“Andrew Myrick”
 After Indigenous-led attacks in Minnesota, that prompted the Dakota War of 1862, the

United States pushed an aggressive offensive with the destruction of the Indigenous population

as the goal. On September 6, 1862, the United States War Department:

Ordered, That the Department of the Northwest, including the States of Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, the Territories of Nebraska, and Dacotah, with the troops raising and to be
raised in that department, be, and they are hereby, placed under the command of Major
General John Pope…11
The Department of the Northwest was a “makeshift Union Army of Virginia”12 led by Major

General John Pope who believed that genocide was the only way to victory. Pope, who was

permitted to “employ whatever force may be necessary…”.13 In a journal article titled “The Civil

War on the Northern Plains: John Pope's Military Policies against the Sioux in the Department of the

Northwest, 1862-65” author Michael Burns wrote about Pope’s objectives. Burns wrote:

extermination was the ultimate force necessary to end the hostilities. Thinking the Sioux
attacks called for ‘punishment beyond human power to inflict’, Pope called for the
complete destruction of the Sioux... ‘I think’ he wrote to Sibley, ‘as we have the men and
the means now we had best put a final stop to Indian troubles by exterminating or ruining
all Indians engaged in the late outbreak’.14
Like Andrew Myrick, Pope believed the ‘problem’ could only be solved through total

domination and destruction. Pope’s offensive, while fitting both Lemkin’s and the UN

Convention’s definitions of genocide, is seen as a war effort because it was a response to the

Indigenous attacks on white settlers. However, Pope targeted all Indigenous nations not just the

Sioux and this paired with Myrick’s methods of starvation is enough to classify the war as

genocide.

The Dakota Trials

11
American History Central, “General Orders, No. 128 (U.S. War Department)”, September 7, 1862.
https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/general-orders-no-128-u-s-war-department/
12
Burns, “The Civil War”, 82
13
Burns, “The Civil War”, 82
14
Burns, “The Civil War”, 84
The Dakota Trials were war-crime trials that culminated in the largest mass execution in United

States history, 15 fitting directly into Article 1 of the UN Convention’s definition of genocide.

War crime trials are typically routine, the most common example being the Nuremberg Trials

after the Holocaust in 1945. The Dakota Trials happened as if they were any other war-crime

trials, convicting those who committed the most heinous acts that were most influential in

carrying out a certain goal, typically genocide. However, these trials were not routine and instead

resulted in the hanging of hundreds of captive unoffending Dakota men. In an article for the

Stanford Law Review, author Carol Chomsky wrote:

The Dakota were tried, not in state or federal criminal court, but before a military
commission. They were convicted, not for the crime of murder, but for killings
committed in warfare. The official review was conducted, not by an appellate court, but
by the President of the United States. Many wars took place between Americans and
members of the Indian nations, but in no others did the United States apply criminal
sanctions to punish those defeated in war.16
The convicted Dakota were tried without just reason, by those who aimed to see the destruction

of the Indigenous nation Applying the UN Convention’s definition of genocide to the Dakota

Trials, the United States inflicted bodily and mental harm on captive Dakota, additionally, the

trials resulted in over a hundred deaths. A paper from the University of Minnesota Law School

detailed just how many Dakotas were killed because of the trials, “Of the 392 men tried, the

Commission convicted 323. Of those convicted the Commission sentenced 303 to be hanged;

only 20 were sentenced to terms of imprisonment.”17 Furthermore, while the Dakota Trials

resulted in the death of over three hundred (300) Dakota men, their wives and children were left

to suffer thus fulfilling Articles 2 and 3 of the UN Convention’s definition of genocide, “ …(2)

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) Deliberately inflicting on

15
Bourboun, “U.S.-Dakota War”
16
Carol Chomsky, “The United States-Dakota War Trials: A Study in Military Injustice,” Stanford Law
Review 43, no. 1 (November 1990): 14. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1230&context=faculty_articles
17
Chomsky, “War Trials,” 28.
the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in

part…”18 Additionally, the same paper from the University of Minnesota Law School shares

excerpts of letters written by the Dakota prisoners. To his father-in-law, one prisoner wrote:

I have not participated in the plunder of their property; and yet today I am set apart for
execution, and must die in a few days, while men who are guilty will remain in prison.
My wife is your daughter, my children are your grandchildren. I leave them all in your
care and under your protection. Do not let them suffer; and when my children are grown
up, let them know that their father died because he followed the advice of his chief, and
without having the blood of a white man to answer for to the Great Spirit.19
Wrongly accused Dakota men were killed because of the biased trials leaving behind families to

deal with the mental harm of losing a loved one as well as the need to support themselves

without a man to fulfill the traditional male/husband roles.

Captivity at Fort Snelling

Fort Snelling is unacknowledged as a concentration camp used to hold unoffending

Dakotas resulting in their death from disease and starvation. Yet, concentration camps are

defined as places where “Prisoners suffer from malnutrition and are highly susceptible to disease,

in large part due to meager food rations, poor sanitary conditions, and the withholding of medical

treatment”,20 all of which innocent Dakotas experienced while at Fort Snelling. Concentration

camps are notorious for the role they play in genocides because of the death that occurs inside

them from starvation, disease, labor, etc. Concentration camps are most often associated with

the Holocaust, the genocide of Jewish people by Nazi Germany, and their role in carrying out

genocide can be applied to the events of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. During the war, Dakotas

were:

18
UN, Prevention
19
Chomsky, “War Trials,” 36.
20
Marc Buggeln, “Concentration Camps,” 2013, DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm146
 …marched as prisoners to Fort Snelling, where they would spend the winter confined
within a wooden stockade. As many as 300 of them would die there. Those who survived
would be exiled to the Crow Creek Reservation in what is now South Dakota.21
Not only were the Dakota people held prisoner in inhumane conditions they were also marched

to the camp, like the death marches during the Holocaust. Additionally, the Dakota prisoners

were attacked by mobs of white settlers who threw rocks and poured boiling water over them.22

Furthermore, Fort Snelling served to remove the Dakota from Minnesota. In North American

Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law the authors quote

Pauline Whitesinger who once said “In our traditional tongue there is no word for relocation. To

relocate is to move away and disappear.” The authors continued, “Certainly it can be, and has

been, imposed as a means of nation-ending forcible assimilation”.23 Land is an integral aspect of

Indigenous identity and removing the Dakota people from the Minnesota River Valley served to

alter their Indigenous identity. This removal has also contributed to modern-day experiences of

the effects of genocide with Indigenous youth seeing an increase in suicide rates because of

losing their sense of belonging and culture.24

The 1863 Dakota Removal Act and the Continuation of Genocide

Lastly, the 1863 Dakota Removal Act was another tactic of carrying out the genocide of

the Dakota people and played a role in allowing the effects of the genocide to be experienced to

this day. “On February 16, 1863, Congress passed an act that ‘abrogated and annulled’ all

treaties with the Dakota people. The act also states that all lands held by the Dakota, and all

21
Nick Woltman, “U.S.-Dakota War’s aftermath a ‘dark moment’ in Fort Snelling history,” Pioneer Press,
May 19, 2022, https://www.twincities.com/2016/06/24/u-s-dakota-wars-aftermath-a-dark-moment-in-fort-snelling-
history/
22
Woltman, “Aftermath.”
23
Laurelyn Whitt and Alan W. Clarke, North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism,
and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 196
24
Lisa M. Wexler and Joseph P. Gone, “Culturally Responsive Suicide Prevention in Indigenous
Communities: Unexamined Assumptions and New Possibilities,” American Journal of Public Health 102, no. 5
(May 2012), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483901/
annuities due to them, were forfeited to the US government”.25 The 1863 Act nulled the Fort

Laramie treaty of 1851 where the United States acknowledged the Black Hills belonged to the

Sioux nation. However, the 1863 Dakota Removal Act forced the Sioux off their land destroying

part of their Indigenous culture and identity. An additional part of the act continued to deprive

the Dakota people of annuity sending them back into the cycle of debt and starvation they

experienced during the winter of 1861-1862. The role the 1863 act played in the genocide has

continued into today as the United States fails to acknowledge the truth of what happened during

the war. Today, protests about the United States memorial Mount Rushmore are occurring

because the memorial rests on sacred land belonging to the Sioux nation. In 2020, former

president Donald Trump aimed to hold a Fourth-of-July celebration at Mount Rushmore. The

Washington Post reported, “Tribal leaders in South Dakota plan to protest President Trump’s

appearance Friday at an elaborate Mount Rushmore fireworks display, arguing that the event

could worsen the state’s coronavirus outbreak and violates Native Americans’ claims to the

Black Hills”.26 Because of the 1863 Dakota Removal Act, the Indigenous claim on the Black

Hills was contested. The Black Hills are sacred, and home to the great Sioux nation, without the

United States honoring the treaties made the Indigenous population continues to experience the

effects of the genocide of 1862.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 should be remembered, nationwide as a

genocide. During those five weeks, death occurred on both sides, countless Indigenous people

were killed because of actions taken by the United States government and troops, deaths which

25
“The US-Dakota War of 1862,” Historic Fort Snelling, https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/us-
dakota-war#:~:text=Removal%20of%20the%20Dakota%20and,forfeited%20to%20the%20US%20government
26
Eilperin, et al. “Rocket’s red glare and protests: Trump’s Mount Rushmore fireworks anger tribes,”
Washington Post, July 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/07/02/mount-rushmore-
protest-sioux-trump/
continue today because of the major loss of culture and identity. There has been statewide

acknowledgment that was occurred was genocide, in Minnesota, but the U.S.-Dakota War of

1862 remains depicted in history simply as a war, concealing the horrors that the Dakota people

and other Indigenous tribes were forced to endure. United States history is taught from one

perspective only depicting one part of the picture, the knowledge of the U.S.-Dakota War of

1862 is no different. The surviving Dakota people cannot heal from this trauma as former

Minnesota governor Mark Dayton aimed to do because as a nation the United States is failing to

acknowledge the severity of what occurred during those five weeks.

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