Shakopee III
By the time Little Six became chief in 1860, almost all bands of Dakota who had ceded their lands to the U.S. in the Treaties of 1851 and 1858 had moved to reservations bordering the upper Minnesota River.
[2] Red Middle Voice ("Hocokayaduta") gained support among disaffected members of Shakopee's band who were unhappy with living conditions on the reservation.
He broke from his brother's band and led his supporters to the north side of Rice Creek, some distance above the mouth of the Redwood River, where they established their own village.
[1][4] On August 17, 1862, four young Mdewakanton hunters from Rice Creek village killed five Anglo-American settlers in present-day Acton, Minnesota.
They returned to Rice Creek village that evening and told Cut Nose and Red Middle Voice, who were supportive of an uprising to drive settlers out of the region.
Little Crow then ordered an attack on the Lower Sioux Agency the next morning, setting into motion the five-week Dakota War of 1862.
[4] Historian Gary Clayton Anderson writes that it is difficult to identify which warriors committed murders on the first day, but concludes that Cut Nose and Little Six were both involved, based on survivor narratives from Justina Boelter and Samuel Brown.
[4] In his narrative of the war, Sam Brown described the capture of his family by Little Six, Cut Nose, Dowanniye and others near their home, which was about eight miles east of the Upper Sioux Agency.
His mother stood up in the wagon, waved her shawl, and shouted loudly in Dakota that "she was a Sisseton – a relative of Wanataan, Scarlet Plume, Sweetcorn, Ah-kee-pah [Akipa] and the friend of Standing Buffalo, that she had come down this way for protection and hoped to get it.
Brown recalled that Little Six had taunted his brother-in-law and their wagon driver with a song about killing men who made him angry:[6]Shakopee or Little Six, who was also on horseback, would now and then galop [sic] ahead and then suddenly turn and with a whoop and a yell dash toward us and cock his gun and eye us fiercely.
[6]On the evening of August 19, Little Crow called a council in which he argued in favor of an all-out attack on Fort Ridgely, a move which Little Six supported.
[4] At noon on August 20, 350 to 450 Dakota men left the camp which had been set up near Little Crow's village, and headed toward Fort Ridgely.
In response, an artillerist from the 5th Minnesota Infantry Regiment and a refugee from the Lower Sioux Agency aimed two howitzers at the northeast corner and fired.
He faced opposition from other band chiefs, including Little Six, who advocated heading south instead to collect plunder they had left behind at Little Crow's village and at New Ulm, which had been abandoned.
Hundreds of their followers settled near Fort Garry (present day Winnipeg), at the mouth of Assiniboine River, beyond the jurisdiction of the U.S. military.
[10] Back in Minnesota, a new mounted battalion was raised under Major Edwin A. C. Hatch, a newly commissioned officer with no military experience.
On General Henry Hastings Sibley's suggestion, the battalion was sent to the town of Pembina to guard against a possible incursion by the Dakota Sioux who had taken refuge in the Red River Colony.
[10] On December 15, Hatch sent twenty troops to St. Joseph, an old British trading post forty miles west of Pembina where a group of Sioux were encamped.
[11] On November 18, 1864, General Henry Hastings Sibley issued an order for a military commission to conduct the trials of Little Six and Medicine Bottle at Fort Snelling.
The trials had been delayed because most of Sibley's commissioned officers had either been assigned to frontier military posts, or were detached for General Alfred Sully's expedition.
[11] The commission also reasoned that Little Six and Medicine Bottle did not need to be returned to British soil, because the actions of Hatch and his men in instigating their capture had not been authorized by General John Pope.
Sibley forwarded the findings of the commission to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, and stated that the two were "chiefs of two of the bands most deeply implicated" in the Dakota War of 1862.
He also asserted that they both led "not only in instigating their people to attack the whites, but in personal participation in the indiscriminate butchery of men, women and children."
In March, General Holt reviewed the transcript of the proceedings and strongly recommended to President Abraham Lincoln that he approve both executions.
On October 2, the Right Reverend Thomas Grace, the Roman Catholic bishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota, wrote to President Andrew Johnson opposing the execution of Little Six and Medicine Bottle, "in consideration of the treacherous manner in which they were brought within the jurisdiction" of the United States.
On October 10, Harlan sent the letter back to the president and recommended suspending the sentences, on the basis that he had been unable to get information about the case from the Department of War.
[11] Minnesota Governor Stephen Miller then wrote to President Johnson appealing on behalf of the victims of the 1862 conflict that they consider the cases carefully.
"[3] Historian Micheal Clodfelter writes, "Though the cinematic speech never occurred, this final hanging did mark a melodramatic end to Santee Minnesota.
According to Dakota researcher and filmmaker Sheldon Wolfchild, Shakopee's body was preserved in a wooden whiskey barrel and sent to Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where it was used by Professor Joseph Pancoast for his lessons in human anatomy.
[12] In 1867, the Minnesota Legislature approved $1,000 to be paid for the services and expenses of John H. McKenzie and Onisime Giguere in the capture of Little Six and Medicine Bottle.
