His Red Nation: The Tale of Little Crow

Execution of the Thirty-Eight Sioux Indians by John C. Wise for the Library of Congress, 1863

By Dakota Goodhouse

Taoyate Duta, His Red Nation was born the winter that Little Beaver’s cabin burned down (1810), in the Dakota village of Kaposia, Not Encumbered With Much Baggage (St. Paul, MN), where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers converge. His Red Nation was so named by his father, a prominent Mdewakanton Dakota chief by the name of Cetan Wakhuwan Mani, Hawk Hunting Walks. Due to a mistranslation, and probably because of His Red Nation’s status as son to Hawk Hunting Walks, His Red Nation is more commonly recognized as Little Crow.

His Red Nation will forever be associated with the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict, but the conflict was only the latest of terrible events. To understand the conflict and its consequences, one must examine the precarious circumstances in which the Eastern Dakota found themselves.

The Santee Dakota, or Eastern Sioux, had actively traded with the French and English since about 1640. The English pushed west of what was considered then the Northwest Territory, or present-day Ohio. Colonel Robert Dickson, a British trade agent at the turn of 1800, became good friends with the Santee. His Red Nation was still a toddler when the War of 1812 broke out. Dickson recruited hundreds of Chippewa and Dakota and led them into Ohio to fight against Americans. Hawk Hunting Walks, was among those who fought for the English.

After the War of 1812, England and the United States signed the Treat of Ghent, ending warfare between the two countries. The treaty also gave control of Minnesota to the United States. The Santee would now have to deal with an unforgiving country they had initially fought against. Hawk Hunting Walks was honored with several gifts and accommodations from Colonel Dickson, but Hawk Hunting Walks refused them and was said to have kicked them, saying, “Now after we have fought for you, endured many hardships, lost some of our people, and awakened the vengeance of a powerful nation, our neighbours, you make a peace for yourselves, and leave us to get such terms as we can. You no longer need our services, and offer us these goods as a compensation for having deserted us. But, no—we will not take them; we hold them and yourselves in equal contempt.”

Traditional warfare between the Santee and Chippewa resumed, regardless of the fact that they briefly fought alongside each other in the War of 1812. In 1823, Colonel Leavenworth led the Missouri Legion in a campaign against the Arikara on the Missouri River. About 750 Dakota and Lakota warriors fought for the United States under Leavenworth against an age-old foe in the first USled military campaign against a Plains Indian tribe. It was a crushing defeat for the Arikara, who abandoned their earthlodge villages and fled west. Their fields of corn, squash, and beans were plucked clean by the Dakota and Lakota who recalled the year as “The Winter Corn was Taken.”

Charles King Bird painted Hawk Hunting Walks’ image on a visit to President James Monroe in 1824. Monroe congratulated the Sioux for their participation in breaking the Arikara out west; this, as sentiment grew in Washington that Indians should all be moved west of the Mississippi River. Hawk Hunting Walks returned to Minnesota, perhaps a little wary, and signed the Treaty of Prairie Du Chien of 1825 under the watchful eye of General William Clark, former captain of the Corps of Discovery. The treaty formalized tribal territories and sought to end generations of intertribal conflict.

In 1830 General Clark brought several bands of Sioux together to sign another Treaty of Prairie Du Chien, which ceded three large tracts of land to the United States for westward expansion into Minnesota. It was a treaty that the Dakota were hard-pressed to keep.

The Sioux—Dakota and Lakota—had other concerns throughout the 1830s and 1840s. There was warfare with the Crow, Arikara, Pawnee, and Shoshone west of the Missouri River, and continuing warfare with the Chippewa up north. Smallpox took the lives of thousands of Indians across the Plains. A massive star fall is remembered in nearly all winter counts. In 1846 Hawk Hunting Walks had a gun mishap in which he accidentally shot himself and died.

Chieftanship of the Mdewakanton Dakota, whom Hawk Hunting Walks led, was in dispute. Hawk Hunting Walks had children with three wives. His Red Nation’s mother was a Wahpekute Dakota, and so his brothers from his father’s other wives conspired to keep the chieftanship within the Mdewakanton. All of Hawk Hunting Walks’ sons met at a tribal get-together. His Red Nation’s brothers attempted to assassinate him; at the last moment, however, a young man knocked the gun with his hatchet causing the bullet to strike His Red Nation in the arm, breaking it—it was never set properly and healed crookedly, leaving an awful scar. The conspiring brothers were condemned to death and His Red Nation became the chief.

As a boy, His Red Nation engaged in sham fights to learn stealth and leadership. To gain a victory in a sham fight, a mock war party had to take the village by surprise, or it wasn’t a victory at all. When he was ten, His Red Nation took his village by surprise when he crept into it unseen with the aid of his dog. A few years later, a friend of his fell through the ice and His Red Nation risked his own life to save him with a line. He fell through the ice as well, but managed to save his friend. His Red Nation became known in his youth as a trusty messenger and a great hunter.

A Dakota camp is invaded by Sully’s brigade during the Dakota Wars at the Battle of White Stone Hill, Dakota Territory, Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 31, 1863.

In 1851, after years of preparation, the untimely death of his father, and an attempt on his life, His Red Nation received his first test in American bureaucracy at the Treaty of Traverse De Sioux in which the southern half of Minnesota was ceded to the United States, and the Treaty of Mendota, in which permanent agencies were established for the Dakota in Minnesota. The Dakota were to receive payments for their land cession and food supplements while they adjusted to a sedentary lifestyle.

His Red Nation tried his best to placate the settlers and new Minnesota government by adopting the white man’s clothes. He also converted to Christianity and became an Episcopalian. His Red Nation even took up farming. In his best efforts to ensure peace in his homeland, which had become an island in the middle of non-Native settlement, His Red Nation went east to visit with President James Buchanan in 1860 to remind him that the Dakota fought for the United States under Leavenworth and had willingly signed and followed treaty stipulation.

The United States had other concerns: the Civil War.

By 1862, the Civil War was drawing on all the resources of the states from able men to fields of crops. The Indian agents and traders were suddenly faced with little supervision in their work and as the saying goes, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Indian agents in Minnesota were selling their wards’ food, supplies, and seed when it was supposed to have been distributed according to treaty. Meanwhile, a combination of drought, disease, and infestation nearly put an end to the growing season leaving little to harvest. The Dakota began to starve while warehouses stood full. The situation became desperate and in bad times the only choices left are bad choices.

His Red Nation could not reassure his people, ease their anxiety, or feed them, and his ability to restrain his people weakened.

On August 4, 1862, a desperate and hungry party of Dakota men broke into the food warehouse at the Lower Agency on the Minnesota River. The Indian Agent, Thomas Galbraith, ordered the soldiers under his command not to fire and immediately called for a council with His Red Nation and his people. At this hastily called council, His Red Nation reminded Galbraith that the Dakota were owed money to buy food and supplies and warned the agent that “when men are hungry, they help themselves.” A representative of the traders, Andrew Myrick, smartly retorted, “So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.”

With hunger abated for the moment, the Dakota returned home. A few days later, August, 17, five Dakota men were returning from an unsuccessful hunt and goaded one another to steal from a farmer on their return home. The theft turned into a gunfight which left five settlers dead. The hunters returned home and told of their exploit which rattled the Dakota community. Some were for turning in the five hunters, others were for outright war. His Red Nation was for keeping the peace but he was still their chief, and when an overwhelming number of his people wanted to fight, he reluctantly prepared for war.

His Red Nation led the war party to Myrick's house. They killed Myrick and then stuffed his mouth with grass for his cutting words. His Red Nation led them on a campaign along the Minnesota River with victories at New Ulm, which they burned to the ground, but only a month into their campaign against the settlers and soldiers, His Red Nation took a severe defeat in the Battle of Wood Lake, September 23. The defeat was such that His Red Nation broke for Canada. Men who fought under his leadership in a war he did not want to fight either fled for Canada as well, or journeyed west to Dakota Territory to live among their Teton relatives.

The Dakota who surrendered after the Battle of Wood Lake were taken to Mankato, Minnesota. There, 303 Dakota men were convicted of murder and rape. The trials for many lasted five minutes or less. No one explained the proceedings, nor were any Dakota men represented. President Abraham Lincoln personally reviewed each case and commuted the death sentence of 264 of the Dakota men, and ordered thirty-nine to hang in the largest mass execution in US history on December 26, 1862. On January 1, 1863, just one week later, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

The following summer, His Red Nation decided to risk a return to Minnesota with his seventeen-year-old son, Wowinape, Haven or Sanctuary but often translated as Place Of Refuge. His Red Nation and Haven decided to stop in a farmer’s field to gather raspberries. The farmer, Nathan Lamson, and his son engaged His Red Nation and Haven, mortally wounding His Red Nation. His Red Nation shot and wounded Lamson. His Red Nation told his son to run, even as Lamson’s son ran to get help.

Lamson’s son ran about twelve miles to Hutchinson, Minnesota, and returned with a posse. At first the posse didn’t recognize that the dead Dakota man was His Red Nation, but as realization dawned on them that they had the body of “Little Crow,” they mutilated his body and brought it back to Hutchinson where they dragged it down Main Street. The citizens placed firecrackers in the dead man’s ears and allowed their dogs to chew on the body, which was tossed in an alley where refuse was typically discarded.

Haven ran to Spirit Lake, Dakota Territory. He was captured around Fort Totten, tried, and sentenced to hang. Haven was sent to prison in Davenport, Iowa. There, he converted to Christianity and took the name Thomas Wakeman. He was pardoned in 1865, after the Civil War, and settled in Dakota Territory.

In 1971, His Red Nation’s remains were returned to Jesse Wakeman, Haven’s son, for internment.

Dakota Goodhouse is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Goodhouse is a theologian by education and a public historian by trade. His published works include Chapter 4 of “The Year The Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts At The Smithsonian” and articles in the First People’s Theology Journal, Vols. 2 & 8.