Abraham Lincoln and the American Indians

On December 26, 1862, the Dakota Uprising ended when thirty-eight Dakota men were simultaneously executed at Mankato, Minnesota. They had been convicted of murder and rape in trials that lasted as little as five minutes, and the trials were conducted in a language – English – that most of the accused could not speak. It was and remains the largest mass execution in United States history. However, originally almost seven times as many men were scheduled to die. Military tribunals in Minnesota sentenced a total of 303 prisoners to death and sent the verdicts to Washington for the approval of the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. After almost a month of deliberation, Lincoln acquitted 265 of the prisoners. The new, diminished number enraged many white Minnesotans. Nevertheless, a crowd of thousands gathered around a mass gallows to watch the Dakota men – who spent the moments before the trap fell dancing in their nooses and shouting their names – plunge to their deaths. The day after the hangings, the marshal of the prison went to release Chaska, one of the many men whom Lincoln had acquitted. “I went to the prison to release a man who had been acquitted for saving a woman's life, but when I asked for him, the answer was, ‘He is not here; you hung him yesterday.’ I could not bring back the redskin.”

Cartography · Criminology · Fell · Geography · Political science · Prison · White (mutation) · Yesterday · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Law · Medicine · Psychology

• Earth as Shareholder

  Open Access•Michael J Thate•Journal of Human Values•2026

  Add to list