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12 AND A NEW CIVIL WAR BROKE OUT

--------XII -------AND A NEW CIVIL WAR BROKE OUT The Cause: According to the Mendota the government was to pay the Sioux in western Minnesota the sum of $7°,000 in gold during 1861. By the beginof1862 this debt had not been paid. Meanwhile, famine raged among the Indians and their situation was greatly worsened by the intensely cold winter. Their spokesmen several times dunned the government agents for money but were sent away empty-handed. While the Sioux waited in vain for their money, disturbance arose in their camp. Red Iron, a prominent Sioux chief, had met with Alexander Ramsey, governor of Minnesota, for negotiations which took place at Mankato in October 1861. Red ChiefSpeaks to White ChiefatMankato: Man does not own the earth. What he does not own he cannot selL What no one can sell no one can buy. Your people, White Chief, therefore cannot buy the earth. All objects you can move from one place to another may be bought. A horse, a bow, a buffalo hide you can buy. But the land you cannot pick up and move from one place to another. My people do not own this land and therefore we cannot sell it to your people . We have only granted your people the right to use this ground and live on it. All the gold and silver you might offer us-be it even enough to fill our valleys to the very brim-would not buy from us the beautiful hunting grounds the Great Father gave to our forefathers. We will not give up the graves of our fathers for all the money in the world. My people have been forced to let your people use this land. Your chiefs have given us paper with written promises of sufficient gold to sustain our lives. We have waited for many moons in our camps but this gold has not arrived . We are still waiting. Your people are rich, my people are poor. Your people have fine buildings, 106 AND A NEW CIVIL WAR BROKE OUT 107 my people live in poor wigwams. Your fires are warm, our fires are not able to keep out the cold. The white children are strong and well fed, our children are weak and starved. Your people have food in great plenty, my people are sick from hunger. Your storehouses are filled, my people have no storehouses. Deer and elk will soon be gone, the fish in our lakes disappear. Soon the snow will fall over the ground and hunting will be over. Soon ice will cover the waters and we will not be able to catch the fish. How then will my people live? We cannot survive in this country without food. Without food we shall perish . As deer in the forest and fish in the lakes diminish and disappear, so our people will disappear and die. We have surrendered our hunting grounds and our fathers' graves. Soon there will be no place in this land where we can bury our dead. We have no land left for our graves. Your people have taken our land and will not give space even for our dead bodies. Our Great Father will see his children die in the land he has given them to possess. We win only leave our bones, to whiten aboveground. When our bones have turned to dust there will be nothing more left ofour people. Your people alone will possess that beautiful land our Great Father once gave his children. Thus spake Red Chiefto White Chiefat Mankato. The Start: On August 18, 1862, there arrived for the government agent at Fort Ridgely the $70,000 in gold which was overdue the Sioux tribes ofwestern Minnesota. It was exactly one day too late. The day before, the Indians had begun to exact their claim in settlers' blood. -1IT BBGAN on Sunday, August 17, on Sven Danjelssons homestead near Acton in Meeker County. Sven had staked out his claim of160 acres close to a small reedy lake a mile from Acton, and even before his marriage he had built a log cabin and cleared a few acres. After their wedding the previous autumn, Sven and Ragnhild had moved to the claim and lived there during the winter. In the spring they had done their first sowing and planting, and their first crops were now ready to be harvested. Danjd Andreasson and his son Olof, who was three years younger than [18.222.200.143] Project MUSE (2024-04...