Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Sunday, June 27, 2004
Atoning for Henry Sibley's sins
It was a long time ago, and for most of us, it would seem to have little to do with our lives today.
For others, particularly those who, this weekend, find themselves honored guests in their ancestral home, it has everything to do with their lives today.
It has taken nearly 153 years for all of the people who have laid claim to this land to begin to make peace among ourselves. "Otakuye Hdihunipi" — The Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming, which began Saturday and continues through today on the shore of Lake Winona — is a long overdue acknowledgment that the history of the past century and a half looks much different to us of European descent than it does to the sons and daughters of the Dakota.
In 1851, Henry Sibley obtained title to most of southern Minnesota from the chiefs of the Dakota people. The treaties of 1851 are less negotiated land purchases than the imposition of terms by a conquering people — the terms of which left the Dakota on the brink of starvation 10 years later, creating the desperation that led to the 1862 uprising and their subsequent exile.
History is written by the winning side, and the truth is, we haven't done too well by the people we've chosen to call American Indian when we told the story of the land we choose to call America. Most of us were taught about Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to plant corn and in return getting invited to Thanksgiving dinner. The next we hear about Indians, they're fighting Custer and, other than Tonto and a few team mascots, that was about all most white people knew or cared about the fate of Native American people.
It wasn't an empty country those first Europeans came to, but the objections of the people already living here were no match for the diseases, technology and social organization the colonizers brought with them. Individually, they may only have been German or Norwegian farmers, but like Caesar, they came, they saw, they conquered.
There's no "Minnesota Nice" to be found in the relationship between the Dakota and the European-Americans who arrived with the expressed intention of taking possession of the land. It was an American general, John Pope, who, in 1862, wrote to Sibley, "It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux … Destroy everything belonging to them and force them out to the plains ... They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made." Sibley responded by seeking the death penalty against nearly 400 Dakota accused of involvement in the 1862 Dakota uprising — 303 were condemned to death, and on Dec. 26, 1862, 38 Dakota were hanged at Mankato — the largest mass execution ever conducted in the United States.
Truth can be ugly. Truth-telling is often difficult, often unpleasant. But if we can't — won't — face up to and come to terms with our past, how can we admit to the sins of our present and avoid repeating them in the future.
Fundamentally, it's not the Dakota with whom we need to make peace — it is with our ancestors, with our children and with ourselves.
By Jerome Christenson on behalf of the Winona Daily News editorial board, which also includes publisher Rusty Cunningham, editor Chris Steinbach and circulation manager Teresa Klinger. To comment, call 453-3522 or send e-mail to letters@winonadailynews.com.
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