My younger daughter, Tess, started college this fall at Gustavus Adolphus, just north of Mankato, Minnesota. In my mind, Mankato had nothing to distinguish it from other small Midwestern cities. About 100,000 people live in the metropolitan area, some attending Minnesota State University, the summer home until recently of the training camp for the Minnesota Vikings.
Mankato is also the location of Sibley Park, named for Minnesota’s first governor. I generally think nothing of things named for old white guys, having grown up in the South where Robert E Lee is everywhere, having caught Mardi Gras beads along Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans, and while in high school having been given Senator Jesse Helms’ When Free Men Shall Stand, though I never read it.
So a park named after an old governor meant nothing.
I love public radio—The Moth Radio Hour, Snap Judgment, and This American Life are favorites. I recently began downloading episodes to my mp3 player for listening during my morning walks with Harold, my dog. Today, I turned on Little War on the Prairie, an episode from November 23, 2012. John Biewen, who tells the story, grew up in Mankato, ignorant during his youth of the events of the war between the Dakota and European settlers that took place in 1862. The podcast is his story of educating himself, and it worth your time.
The Dakota War ended with a mass hanging of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862. It was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
Currently, on the site of the execution is a public library, across Riverfront Drive from the Minnesota River, upon whose banks the 38 bodies were buried in the sand. During the night, the bodies were dug up for use as medical cadavers, including by William Worral Mayo, whose name adorns Minnesota’s famed Mayo Clinic. Mayo dissected Stands on Clouds, then varnished the skeleton and kept it in his home office for his sons to study.
A less-than-two-mile walk along the river from the execution site brings current visitors to Sibley Park. Henry H. Sibley, first governor, was picked by his successor as colonel of the state militia, with the charge of suppressing a Dakota uprising. After leading in multiple battles and capturing more than 1000 Dakota, Sibley appointed the military commission that condemned 303 Dakota men to be hanged. Only the personal evaluations of the cases by President Lincoln reduced the number to 38. A week before the hangings, Sibley wrote the Assistant Secretary of the Interior,
[I]t should be borne in mind that the Military Commission appointed by me were instructed only to satisfy themselves of the voluntary participation of the individual on trial, in the murders or massacres committed, either by voluntary participation of the individual on trial, in the murders or massacres committed, either by his voluntary concession or by other evidence and then to proceed no further. The degree of guilt was not one of the objects to be attained, and indeed it would have been impossible to devote as much time in eliciting details in each of so many hundred cases, as would have been required while the expedition was in the field. Every man who was condemned was sufficiently proven to be a voluntary participant, and no doubt exists in my mind that at least seven-eighths of those sentenced to be hung have been guilty of the most flagrant outrages and many of them concerned in the violation of white women and the murder of children. (Source [here.])
To a Native American, seeing Sibley Park must be similar to an African American driving by Lee Circle. (See [here] and [here.]) The turmoil resulting from the removal of multiple Civil War monuments continues to roil the South as I write this. Similarly, most monuments to the Dakota War memorialize the white soldiers and settlers. (See [here.]). At the end of the Dakota Wars, all Dakota were banished from Minnesota. Few remain to object to a park named for a former enemy.
But a few Dakota have returned. In the current times of intense anger, they are guides to our better selves. Across the road from the public library—the massacre site—Reconciliation Park opened in 1997, with a theme developed by the Dakota of Forgive Everyone Everything.
But forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.
The philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I first encountered the quotation on a display as I entered Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich, Germany.
