Geopolitical Crossroads Part 1

Crossroads:
The 1862 Great Sioux Uprising and its geopolitical implications for today

A two part series by Joseph E. Fallon

Part 1
Lincoln's template for the dispossession of American Indians

One of the first Indian treaties to be broken by the United States was a colonial treaty with the Wea tribe. In 1751, "the Wea and the Piankashaw signed a treaty with the British and accepted an alliance with the Pennsylvania colony." With the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Wea allied themselves with the British. It was a fateful decision. As the war ended, the Wea wrote to London. "In endeavoring to assist you, it seems we have wrought our own destruction."

By a series of new treaties with the new republic, the Wea were forced further and further West. The process of dispossessing the Wea took seventy years. In 1862, Lincoln created a template to expediate dispossession of American Indians in months instead of decades.

For Lincoln, the Civil War was the instrument he needed to achieve his two key objectives: consolidation of political power in his presidency and implementation of Henry Clay's "American System." An economic policy of corporate welfare for Northern banks, railroads, manufacturers, and mining interests, it was dubbed the "Era of Good Stealings."

Under Lincoln, official corruption reached levels then unprecedented in the history of the United States. On March 4, 1865, Lincoln's Attorney General, Edward Bates, wrote, "The demoralizing effect of this civil war is plainly visible in every department of life. The abuse of official powers and the thirst for dishonest gain are now so common that they cease to shock."

After Lincoln's death, the War and Navy departments hired a special investigator, Henry S. Olcott, to examine the extent of corruption. In his 1878 finding, entitled the "Carnival of Fraud," Olcott wrote: "It is my deliber¬ate conviction, based upon the inspection of many bureaus, and the examination of...thousands of witnesses, in every walk of life, that at least twenty, if not twenty-five, percent of the entire expenditures of the government during the Rebellion, were tainted with fraud." Years later, historian Fred Shannon estimated fraud in army contracts was 50 percent.

One focus of official corruption was the dispossession of American Indians of their lands. Lincoln's principle tool was the Homestead Act, which he signed into law on May 20, 1862. It offered incentives for settlers to claim 160 acres of land in Western states and territories. "In Minnesota, the law had an immediate effect. According to historian William Watts Folwell, 'in the three-year period from 1863 to 1865 inclusive, 9,529 homestead entries for 1,237,722.13 acres were made in Minnesota.' Extending that view, Folwell reports that 'between May 20, 1862, and June 30, 1880, there were made in Minnesota 62,379 entries of 7,346,038.96 acres.'"

The Act was the embodiment of corruption. "Logging companies, ranching operations, mining concerns, and railroad conglomerates bribed federal agents to get what they wanted; or paid people to claim lands that they then handed over to the syndicates. These scams were astonishingly effective: of the 500 million acres of public land that Department of the Interior's General Land Office gave away between 1862 and 1904, only about 80 million went to those for whom it was intended. Well-capitalized organizations and nefarious speculators snatched up the other 420 million, which they stripped for its timber, grass, or minerals before moving on to their next spoil."

But it accomplished the job. For Lincoln, Indians were "a foreign people that would need to be removed through purchase or conquest."

In the months that proceeded The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 in Minnesota, Lincoln had been warned by reformers and investigators that the conditions to which Indians were being subjected would provoke a crisis. When the war did erupt, Lincoln declared it was not due to his policies but rather was part of a Confederate conspiracy.

Lincoln's policy to remove Indians from their lands evolved from his ad hoc response first to the starvation of Indians of Minnesota then to the ensuing Great Sioux Uprising, also known as the United States-Dakota War. It was a six week war fought within the context of the larger Civil War.

In the Summer of 1862, as a result of crop failures, the Indians in Minnesota were starving. Lincoln turned a natural disaster into a man-made tragedy. At first, he refused to pay the Santee Sioux of Minnesota $1.5 million in gold owed them under the terms of the 1851 treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, and the three treaties of 1858. Indians needed the gold to buy food from the Indian Bureau.

At the same time, Lincoln's Indian Bureau refused to supply the starving Indians the food stockpiled for them in accordance with the terms of the treaties. In The Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, 1862; Jacob Nix's Eyewitness History, the author wrote "The merchant at the agencies refused to grant the Indians credit which had heretofore always been extended willingly...living conditions of the Indians became desperate. Eyewitnesses later assured us that many small Indian children literally died of starvation..."

In a verbal confrontation with Andrew J. Myrick of the Indian Bureau, Little Crow, a leader of the Dakotas, who negotiated and signed the 1851 and 1858 treaties issued a warning. "We have waited a long time. The money is ours, but we cannot get it. We have no food, but there are these stores, filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry, they help themselves.'"

To which Myrick replied, "So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry, let them eat grass." In the subsequent war, Myrick was one of the first whom the Indians killed. They stuffed his mouth full of grass.

The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 began August 18th, was fought along a 200 mile front, and ended in the defeat of the Indians. On September 26,th they surrendered to General Sibley. "More than 25% of the thousands who surrendered to Sibley would be dead before the end of 1863."

In the course of the war, an estimated 800 white men, women, and children had been massacred; 270 others had been taken hostage, mostly women and children, and 100 Indian warriors had been killed in battle, separate from the Indians who had died of starvation.

In his Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862, Lincoln lied. He declared, "The Indian tribes upon our frontiers have, during the past year, manifested a spirit of insubordination, and at several points, have engaged in open hostilities against the white settlements in their vicinity...In the months of August last the Sioux Indians, in Minnesota, attacked the settlements in their vicinity with extreme ferocity, killing, indiscriminately, men, women, and children. This attack was wholly unexpected, and, therefore, no means of defense had been provided."

After the Indians surrendered, their plight got worse. "Lincoln sanctioned military missions designed to destroy as many Indians as possible in the region, and he acquiescence in sizable land grabs in Minnesota."

Lincoln ordered the public hanging of 38 Indians; the largest mass execution in American history. The executions are often portrayed as an act of clemency by Lincoln since of the 2,000 Indians captured, 303 had been sentenced to death. However, each of those 303 prisoners had been denied a fair hearing. They had no defense counsel and much of the "evidence" was hearsay. Some trials lasted five minutes. "In a space of little more than one month, the military tribunal had tried 392 accused prisoners and sentenced 303 of them to death." Encyclopedia of American Indian Civil Rights states "...at its peak the commission heard 40 cases per day." An observer to the trials was Reverend John P. Williamson. A Presbyterian minister, known as "John, the Beloved of the Sioux Nation," he "noted that the trials took less time than the state courts required to try a single murder defendant."

In her article, "The United States-Dakota War Trials: A Study of Military Injustice,"(1990) Carol Chomsky, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota, wrote of the irregularities and illegalities of these trials. "The Dakota were tried, not in a state or federal criminal court, but before a military commission. They were convicted, not for the crime of murder, but for killings committed in warfare. The official review was conducted, not by an appellate court, but by the President of the United States...The commander who ordered the commission trials likely did not have the authority under prevailing statutes to convene the tribunal, and it is questionable whether a military commission had any lawful authority to try the Dakota. More important, the commission tried the Dakota for the wrong crimes. Based on the historical and legal views prevailing in 1862 and the years that followed, the Dakota were a sovereign nation at war with the United States, and the men who fought the war were entitled to be treated as legitimate belligerents. The Dakota, therefore, should have been tried only on charges that they violated the customary rules of warfare, not for the civilian crimes of murder, rape, and robbery. Judged by those standards, few of the convictions are supportable. President Lincoln's commutation of all but thirty-eight death sentences may have been an effort to correct the trial verdicts to reflect the proper standard of responsibility, but the flaws in the proceedings make even his judgments questionable."

Political calculations, foreign and domestic, motivated Lincoln's decision not to hang all 303 Indians. He feared such a mass execution would provide a pretext for the British and French governments to recognize the Confederacy.

Yet, he had to satisfy the demands of Minnesotans for justice or revenge. Lincoln crafted a compromise. First, he had 38 Indians hanged. Second, he had the 265 Indians whose death sentences he commuted imprisoned for three years in Davenport, Iowa, where nearly half died. Third, he had the families of those prisoners incarcerated at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Fourth, he expelled all Indians from Minnesota. Fifth, he gave $2 million to the Minnesota State treasury. Officially, this was compensation for the losses Minnesotans incurred in the war. Unofficially, it was a bribe to insure the continued support of the State of Minnesota for his war against the South.

Over the next months, Lincoln executed congressional legislation to seize more Indian lands and begin the removal of Indians from Minnesota. The rest of the Sioux were exiled to Crow Creek, South Dakota, and the Santee reservation in Nebraska.

In his March 27, 1863 speech to a delegation of Indians who had journeyed to the White House in the aftermath of the Great Sioux Uprising of the previous year, Lincoln told the Indians, "We make treaties with you, and will try to observe them..."

In his Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1863, Lincoln boasted "The measures provided at your last session for the removal of certain Indian tribes have been carried into effect. Sundry treaties have been negotiated which will, in due time, be submitted for the constitutional action of the Senate. They contain stipulations for extinguishing the possessory rights of the Indians to large and valuable tracts of land."

The Winnebago had not participated in the Great Sioux Uprising, but on August 23, 1864, Lincoln signed an order auctioning off the lands guaranteed them by treaty. "In pursuance of law, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby declare and make known that public sales will be held...[at] the Land Office at St. Peter [Minnesota] for the dispersal of the Public lands comprised in the late reserve for the Winnebago Indians."

Lincoln's peace was the peace of the grave. In Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics (1978), David A. Nichols wrote, "...the Lincoln administration adopted the expedient policy of concentration. Given war priorities, this plan to consolidate Indian tribes merged with militarism...In 1865, the first negative evidence was the condition of the tribes. In Dakota, the remnants of the Santee Sioux and Winnebagos continued to suffer. In New Mexico, the Navajos and Apaches still lived under the disastrous care of General Carleton. Colorado had been the scene of a war of near extermination. In other localities, the killing and looting of Indians through the corrupt Indian System continued unarrested. Conditions were best symbolized by the situation in the Indian Territory [Oklahoma]. In early 1865, the formerly proud tribes of that region were destitute. In March, Congress debated $750,000 appropriation to alleviate their misery. Senator Doolittle told the Senate that Cherokee women and children were near starvation...The need was immediate...They will starve to death."

In 1878, General Philip Sheridan wrote: "We took away their country and their means of support...broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them and it was for this and against this they made war. Could anyone expect less?"

From the Great Sioux Uprising in 1862 to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, which ended the last major armed resistance by Indians, Lincoln's template for dispossession continued.

Under the Dawes Act of 1887, known as the Great Allotment Act, tribal lands were broken up into individual Indian plots. "Surplus" tribal land was sold to non-Indians. Indians could not sell the plots of land allotted to them as legal title to the land was held by the U.S. government.

According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, "The land allotted to individuals included desert or near-desert lands unsuitable for farming...Tribes were also often underpaid for the land allotments, and when individuals did not accept the government requirements, their allotments were sold to non-Native individuals, causing American Indian communities to lose vast acreage of their tribal lands." The National Park Service states Indians lost 90 million acres of tribal lands.

For a century, Lincoln's template for dispossession ebbed and flowed. In response to the findings of the 1928 Meriam Report on the harmful consequences of the Dawes Act, the Indian Reorganization Act of June 18, 1934 was enacted by the FDR Administration. It restored "to tribal ownership the remaining surplus lands of any Indian reservation heretofore opened, or authorized to be opened, to sale, or any other form of disposal by Presidential proclamation, or by any of the public-land laws of the United States...The Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to acquire through purchase, relinquishment, gift, exchange, or assignment, any interest in lands, water rights or surface rights to lands, within or without existing reservations, including trust or otherwise restricted allotments whether the allottee be living or deceased, for the purpose of providing lands for Indians. Returned lands could not be sold or taxed. Section 16, recognized tribal councils right "to negotiate with the Federal, State, and local Governments."

The flow returned in the 1950s-1960s when policy was reversed. To assimilate Indians into American society as individuals, the U.S. government legally terminated the federal trust relationship with certain tribes. This ended federal services and resources available to those tribes. The first tribe to be terminated of services was the Peoria Confederacy which included the Wea; one of the first tribes to have their treaty broken in the aftermath of the American Revolution. History had come full circle.

In the 1960s-1970s, the ebb returned. Laws were enacted according more powers to tribal councils and reaffirming federal recognition of tribal sovereignty.

A key event was passage of The Tribal Self-Governance Act of 1994. It states: "Congress has reviewed the results of the Tribal Self-Governance Demonstration Project and finds that --
(A) transferring control to tribal governments, upon tribal request, over funding and decision making for Federal programs, services, functions, and activities intended to benefit Indians is an effective way to implement the Federal policy of government-to-
government relations with Indian tribes; and
(B) transferring control to tribal governments, upon tribal request, over funding and decision making for Federal programs, services, functions, and activities strengthens the Federal policy of Indian self-determination."

Washington now officially recognizes "574 Native American tribes and Alaska Native entities." However, 400 other tribal entities in the United States are not recognized. Those that are recognized possess sovereignty within their territories over tribal members, but exercise no authority over non-tribal members on their lands who instead are subject to state and/or federal law. This conflicts with the legal definition of sovereignty which "refers to the supreme authority a state possesses within its territorial boundaries, coupled with its independence from external control. It signifies that a state's legitimacy and power derive from its own legal system, without requiring outside validation. A sovereign state holds ultimate power over its internal affairs and is not subject to the jurisdiction of other states."

While United States policy toward American Indians improved over the last half century, the fundamental power of Lincoln's template for dispossession, the dominant authority of the federal government over Indian tribes, remains intact – with a qualification.

On January 1, 1978, the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey of Land Management released an official map of judicially established borders of the Indian land areas. These are not the borders of Indian reservations. These borders are "the results of cases before the U.S. Indian Claims Commission or U.S. Court of Claims in which an American Indian tribe proved its original tribal occupancy of a tract within the continental United States." The recognized Indian land areas represent nearly half the territory of "the lower 48" United States.

Whether done as merely a legal exercise or a symbolic act, establishment of Indian land areas has potential to impact the geopolitics of the 21st Century and the borders of the United States and NATO member states, as will be discussed in Part 2.