While the Civil War raged in the East and South, Dakota Indians in Minnesota erupted violently into action against white settlers, igniting the tragic Dakota War of 1862. Hemmed in on a narrow reservation along the upper Minnesota River, the Dakota (Sioux) were frustrated by broken treaties, angered by dishonest agents and traders, and near starvation because of crop failures and late annuity payments. Led by Little Crow, Dakota warriors attacked...

"Following the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862, the federal government passed legislation exiling all Dakota (whether they had participated in the conflict or not) from Minnesota. Dakota families were relocated to an isolated and drought-plagued reservation in Dakota Territory called Crow Creek, while over three hundred Dakota men were incarcerated at a military prison in Davenport, Iowa. Historians have neglected to tell the important story of the Dakota's...

As war overtakes the frontier, Emma's family farmstead is attacked by Dakota-Sioux warriors; on that same prairie, Oenikika desperately tries to hold on to her calling as a healer and follow the orders of her father, Chief Little Crow. When the war is over and revenge-fueled war trials begin, each young woman is faced with an impossible choice. In a swiftly changing world, both Emma and Oenikika must look deep within and fight for the truth of their...

"Minnesota, 1862: As a woman fleeing from a dark and secret past, Sarah Wakefield leaves Rhode Island quietly and quickly under cover of night for the long journey to Minnesota where she has been advised there is good work to be had. She soon finds a husband who becomes a resident physician for a Sioux town there but the political backdrop of that moment is volatile: white settlers are breaking treaties, Native American land is shrinking, and mass...

The Sioux Uprising of 1862 AKA the Dakota War of 1862. America's most forgotten Indian War. Hundreds of movies have been made about the battles between the troops of the US Army and the warriors of the Plains Indians but none were ever made about this war or these battles. The now bucolic countryside of southwestern Minnesota doesn't seem to be a proper setting for an Indian War. How could anything heroic, or bloody, ever have happened there? Yet...

The Dakota War of 1862 Dacotah as it was spelled then. AKA The Sioux Uprising. America's most forgotten Indian War. Hundreds of movies have been made about the battles between the troops of the US Army and the warriors of the Plains Indians but none were ever made about this war or these battles. The now bucolic countryside of southwestern Minnesota doesn't seem to be a proper setting for an Indian War. How could anything heroic, or bloody, ever have...

"A gravestone inscription leads the author on a search through early Minnesota history, and then U.S. and Civil War history. He discovers that four siblings orphaned by the Dakota War commissioned that inscription in memory of their parents and younger sister, and that their many descendants now live all around him. Those quiet descendants have kept many wonderful family records, and in those letters and photographs he learns that those four brave...

"The New Ulm Battery is a unique organization. Established following attacks on New Ulm in August 1962, it evolved into a community-based group that participates in public celebrations and reenactments. Its story illuminates the aftershocks of the U.S.-Dakota War when the unit was organized following the gift of a howitzer from Cincinnati Turners. In the postwar years it was reorganized by Frank Burg, a veteran of the German army. In those same years--the...

"It was August 1862, and the Civil War was raging, when the Dakota left their Minnesota reservation and rose in what was the largest Indian uprising in American history, and unique in that even sizable towns and army bases were attacked. In the uprising the small settlement at Lake Shetek in Southwestern Minnesota was attacked, and three white women and eight children taken captive. This story is of how a group of teen-aged youths of the Lakota, the...

As war overtakes the frontier, Emma's family farmstead is attacked by Dakota-Sioux warriors; on that same prairie, Oenikika desperately tries to hold on to her calling as a healer and follow the orders of her father, Chief Little Crow. When the war is over and revenge-fueled war trials begin, each young woman is faced with an impossible choice. In a swiftly changing world, both Emma and Oenikika must look deep within and fight for the truth of their...