Around the time Meta Chestnutt was born in 1863, several early stories of the so-called "Indian wars" made their way east, horrifying many American citizens. In Minnesota during the summer of 1862, hungry and desperate Dakota Sioux Indians, frustrated by callous treatment from the U.S. government, killed hundreds of white settlers. Governor Alexander Ramsey quickly summoned the state militia. But before the fighting came to an end that year perhaps a thousand on each side had been killed. In the aftermath, U.S. military courts issued a death sentence to 303 Indians. President Lincoln insisted on a review of the legal proceedings in each case, and finally issued a pardon to most of the condemned. Still, when the army hanged thirty-eight men on December 26, 1862 at Mankato, Minnesota, it was the largest mass execution in American history. Sporadic warfare between the two sides spilled over into Dakota Territory to the west and dragged on during the years that followed.[1]
Note
[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:437-447; Robert Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, rev. ed. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 76-81; Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 133-34. For a map detailing the Sioux wars from 1862 to 1868, see Utley, 119.
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