Dakota Conflict Trials: 1862

In April 1863, Congress enacted a law providing for the forcible removal from Minnesota of all Sioux. Most of the captured, after suffering through a harsh winter at an encampment near St. Paul, were removed to South Dakota. Convicted prisoners who were reprieved from execution were transported on the steamboat Favorite down the Mississippi to Camp McClellan, near Davenport, Iowa. After President Andrew Johnson ordered the release of the 177 surviving prisoners on March 22, 1866, they were moved to the Santee Reservation near Niobrara, Nebraska.

The acknowledged leader of the Dakota Uprising, Chief Little Crow, was not among the Sioux tried by the military commission. He, along with 150 or so of his followers, fled after the war to present-day North Dakota and Canada. In June 1863, Little Crow returned to Minnesota on a horse-stealing foray. On July 3, Little Crow was shot by a farmer while picking berries with his son in western Minnesota. The farmer received a $500 reward from the state.

The Sioux wars continued for many years. A military expedition carried the fighting into the Dakota Territory in 1863 and 1864. As the frontier moved westward, new fighting erupted. Finally, in 1890 at Wounded Knee, the generation of warfare that began in Minnesota in August of 1862 came to a final and tragic end.