The Indians of Iowa

A Closer Look: The Spirit Lake Massacre

A CLOSER LOOK The Spirit Lake Massacre Inkpaduta (1815–1882), a Wahpekute Santee Sioux, was the leader of the renegade band of about fifteen individuals involved in the Spirit Lake Massacre of 1857. He became the leader when his father, Wamdesapa , died in 1848. This small band was a disaffected group of tribal outlaws and castoffs from different Santee groups that the rest of the Wahpekute had rejected. Inkpaduta’s hatred of whites apparently began when his brother and his brother’s family were murdered by the white outlaw Henry Lott. After that, Inkpaduta resisted any white encroachment on lands in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota, although he also demanded annuity payments from treaties that the Wahpekute majority had signed. The winter of 1856–57 was very severe, and both whites and Indians suffered. Most of the Santee had signed the Treaty of 1851 and thus received a bare living from annuities. Inkpaduta’s band did not receive annuities, so they survived by begging and stealing from white settlements. When one of their band was bitten by a settler’s dog, they shot it. An angry white posse surrounded them and forced them to give up their weapons. Unable to hunt, Inkpaduta’s men somehow regained weapons and went on a two-day spree, killing settlers near Spirit Lake on March 8 and 9, 1857. They killed thirtyfive settlers and captured four women. Two of the women died; the other two, Margaret Marble and Abbie Gardner, were ransomed by other Santee and returned to the whites. In 1862, during the Minnesota Uprising of several Santee groups, Inkpaduta helped achieve victory at the battles of Bog Mound and White Stone Hill. The Santee in general took the blame again for the actions of Inkpaduta and his band. Although the uprising was finally put down by U.S. troops, Inkpaduta himself was not captured. Inkpaduta next appeared as one of the few Santee who fought 84 The Spirit Lake Massacre Custer, along with Lakota like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, at the Little Bighorn in 1876. After the Lakota were defeated, Inkpaduta fled north into Canada, never making peace with the whites. Some say he died there, while others say he died on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana in 1882. ...