Monuments that talk to each other

Part Two

We have waited a long time. The money is ours, but we cannot get it. We have no food, but here are these stores, filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangements by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry they help themselves.

— Tshe-ton Wa-ka-Wa (Little Crow)

(quoted in Bury My Heart in Wounded Knee

A monument on the Crow Creek Reservation commemorates the hardships and deaths resulting from what Dee Brow calls Little Crow’s War.”

IN MEMORY OF THE DAKOTA

WHOSE LIVES WERE TAKEN

AT FORT THOMPSON IN 1863.

THESE WERE THE INNOCENT

EXILED FROM MINNESOTA, WHO

SUFFERED HARDSHIP AND SICKNESS AT THIS CAMP.

THE STONE THAT STANDS

HERE, REMINDS US OF THE

LAND FROM WHICH YOU CAME

MAY WE ALL WALK WITH THE GREAT SPIRIT

IN PRAYER

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You might remember from my last newsletter, that I came across a monument commemorating the 1852 Yankton treaty on my bike ride in 2018. That monument, I believe was installed by the Federal Government. This monument is on a different reservation, and it was not produced by the Federal government. It was installed by a group of Native veterans. I thought the Yankton monument gloated a bit. This strikes a much more somber and respectful tone. Here’s a very abbreviated story, which I gleaned from some websites and the fantastic book by Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. To be honest, the websites I found were mostly sourced to the Brown book, so I’m not mentioning them here.

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Little Crow had checked all the White Man’s boxes. He wore the White Man’s clothes, he went to the White Man’s church, he even signed the treaties that reduced Santee Sioux land to a strip around the Minnesota River. As part of those treaties, his people were due annuities on a regular basis. White traders took advantage of those annuities, trading on credit between payments. The Agency would essentially garnish money owed to the traders, so they would get paid first, with whatever might be left going to the Santee.

In July, 1862, with the US embroiled in the Civil War, the money didn’t come.

The Santee Sioux were hungry. The government agent, Thomas Galbraith had access to a warehouse full of food. He was not ready to share it. There was a stand-off. One of Galbraith’s military men convinced Galbraith to stand down. His name was Timothy Sheehan. Galbraith agreed to distribute some food, and promised to open up another warehouse for provisions 30 miles away at the Lower Agency.

Unfortunately, Timothy Sheehan wasn’t there. In his place was a mob of white traders, who insisted on refusing. One of them was a man named Andrew Myrick. Myrick was the anti-Sheehan: the instigator, the demagogue with a way with words: “So far as I am concerned if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.”

Would things have turned out better if Andrew Myrick’s had kept his mouth shut? The sense I get from Dee Brown’s telling is that things were held in a delicate balance. Lots of Santee—especially the youngest of the young adults— were eager for a fight. But Dee Brown points out that there were close ties among some of the Santee and some of the White traders. In the battles that ensued, some warriors made an effort to warn their White friends ahead of time.

Some thought that the feds were preoccupied with the Civil War. There would be no better time to reclaim their land.

But what lit the fire was a group of angry young men who killed some settlers and stole some horses. That forced Little Crow’s hand. War at that point became inevitable, so Little Crow became the reluctant leader of the battles to come. Andrew Myrick died with grass in his mouth.

And when the war ended, there were hangings—39 of them, the largest mass execution in US history. When the hangings ended, there were imprisonments. After the prisons, there were forced relocations.

Brown says 1300 Santee Sioux were moved from Minnesota to the Crow Creek Reservation where this monument now stands. “[L]ess than a thousand survived the first winter.” That was in 1863, eleven years after the signing of the Yankton treaty that was memorialized about 140 miles away—a three or four-day bike ride.