Guerra de Dakota de 1862
Guerra de Dakota de 1862
Impacto en la Frontera de la Guerra Civil Americana y la Guerra de Dakota de 1862
Véase también, sobre este tema, la información acerca de la construcción de la frontera entre Canadá y Estados Unidos a través de las tierras indígenas, y sobre la Guerra Civil Americana.
Keywords: Dakota War, Civil War, draft dodging, crimping, desertion, smuggling, refugees, fear, Indigenous territory
In the 1860s, the American Civil War and the Dakota War provided sobering reminders of the ineffectiveness of federal border controls. The border succeeded in creating havens that defectors, draft dodgers, smugglers, refugees, soldiers, and Confederate raiders all exploited. It contributed little to the ways Britain maintained its neutrality and actively reduced the ways the United States could exercise power. Even federal employees ignored the border when possible. In such an environment, the border provided neither government with the ability to shape violence or handle the resulting fallout.
Just as troubling, the wars underscored just how much Indigenous territorial boundaries still mattered. After the Dakotas’ defeat in 1862, many relocated north. Crossing the international line offered a viable means of avoiding violence with American settlers and soldiers, but it required entering territory claimed by the Métis, Oceti Sakowin (Sioux), Cree, Ojibwe, and British. That the Dakota needed to construct multiple diplomatic agreements in order to remain north of the line provided a reminder to the ways the Canada–US border still operated as partial fiction. The Civil War provided no more reassurance. Soldiers who fled onto Indigenous lands disappeared, and communities located near Indigenous nations attempted to skirt their recruitment quotas on the grounds that they might need to fight frontier wars at any moment. For all the thousands of soldiers both countries invested into policing the edges of their territories, the continent’s geopolitical environment continued to bear little resemblance to the clean lines federal diplomats had set out to create.
Despite frequent setbacks in direct approaches to policing, both governments found success exerting power in indirect ways. American soldiers, for example, funded kidnappers to enter British territory, showcasing both the visceral and psychological ways that it could extend power across national lines. For the Dakota, even those living two hundred kilometers into the interior of British North America, the specter of American power loomed large years after the conflict. Indigenous communities continued to skip over and ignore boundary (p.36) stones. Fear, however, lingered and shaped behavior decades later in ways border guards never could.
The Civil War In April 1861 Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, beginning a Civil War that would consume the United States for the next four years. From the outset, the war put Britain in an uncomfortable position. On an ideological level, British North Americans hoped that the Civil War, while unfortunate, would end slavery. At the same time, a southern victory, although ideologically abhorrent, held practical value for Britain. If the South remained independent, British North America might hold the balance of power on the continent.1
By the end of 1861, British hopes had faded. The North showed little interest in abolishing slavery, and British military experts worried that if the war ended quickly, Union soldiers might turn north and march into Canada. With only a 4,300 regular troops, 10,000 inconsistently trained volunteers, and a deficit of naval vessels on the Great Lakes caused by the United States’ violation of the Rush-Bagot agreement, Britain stood little chance on land. If war broke out, British forces in the interior could only hope to stall against a Union army that had swelled to 700,000 men and hope that the British navy could force a peace.2
In response to the dilemma created by the Civil War, Queen Victoria declared Britain’s neutrality in May of 1861. The declaration, combined with colonial laws passed subsequently, banned the enlistment of British subjects in the foreign war and prohibited British merchants from contributing weapons, ammunition, and coal to the belligerents. These laws, however, left open other avenues for profit. British subjects remained free to sell food and medicine to both sides. Britain’s desire for profit prevented its full divestment from American commerce.3 Even if it had not, British neutrality depended on its ability to control economic and military movements across its borders. It had failed in that respect in 1812 and again in 1837. By the 1860s, it had years of experience putting out diplomatic fires, but had shown little capacity for rooting out the underlying problems.
To the surprise of few, Britain’s attempted neutrality quickly ran into problems. In November of 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the Union’s San Jacinto stopped the British ship Trent on its way from Havana to England and arrested Confederate envoys John Slidell and James Mason. The capture violated British sovereignty and put Britain in an awkward diplomatic position. It had no interest in fighting the United States, but neither would it let the United States board its ships. Britain sent 14,436 soldiers with artillery support and military supplies to North America. Canada called up its militia. The increase in forces provided Britain with a stronger foothold on the continent, but fell well short (p.37) of the 150,000 soldiers that British military experts estimated would be needed to defend its North American territory. The Union, in no condition to begin an unnecessary war with Britain, backed down and turned over the two prisoners.4
In the aftermath of the Trent affair, Britain and the United States enacted policies designed to discourage Confederate soldiers from using British North America as a staging ground and British citizens from seeking enlistment south of the line. The plan relied on large numbers of soldiers. Britain built and repaired forts along the border and hoped that direct approaches to control would suffice. In practice, policing the border required fewer men than active warfare, but continued to exceed the capacity of the British and American personnel.5
The Union’s attempt to control the transit of goods fared no better. The South lacked the manufacturing industry necessary to produce enough arms, rails, cloth, pig iron, and shoes necessary for supply its war effort. Facing shortages, it turned to smugglers to make up the difference. For all the strategic importance that rested on controlling maritime trade, Union blockade attempts sputtered. Goods from Britain, Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, Nassau, and even from the North entered the South.6 Historian Stephen R. Wise estimates that blockade-runners supplied the Confederacy with 60 percent of its weapons and three-fourths of its gunpowder.7 Female smugglers and foreigners, in particular, found success. Union soldiers showed reluctance to search women and often refused to prosecute British smugglers out of fear of diplomatic reprisals. The Confederacy’s lifeline remained open. Both Britain and the United States had failed to curb smuggling during times of peace and found it an even more daunting task in times of war.8
The problem stemmed from the approach, not simply the execution. In 1864 N. Sargent, the American commissioner of customs, toured the customshouses located along the eastern portion of Canada–US border and along the Atlantic seaboard. Despite the heavy concentration of customs posts in the area he toured, Sargent expressed dismay at what he saw. The thousands of bays, rivers, inlets, and islands on the coast of Maine created ample opportunity for smugglers from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to bring cargo uncontested into the United States. In Maine, the border was an “imaginary one, running through a wild country, sparsely settled in some places, and with no inhabitants in others, for hundreds of miles.”9
Sargent commended the customs officers in Maine for their tenacity and skill. Unless they received more people and faster boats, however, he believed smuggling would remain easy and profitable. Both the presence and absence of people created difficulties for border enforcement. Along the Quebec-Vermont border, Sargent noted that thick forests inhibited the movement of customs officers, while dense settlement on adjoining parts of the border made it difficult for federal personnel to separate local from international traffic. Smugglers (p.38) exploited the noticeable gaps in enforcement. In a wartime environment, failing to prevent smuggling was more than a missed opportunity to secure revenue. It often put guns and bullets in the hands of enemies.10
Breaking the social bonds that connected communities provided an alternative way to control movement. So long as borderland communities prioritized their own economic success and their social connections with their neighbors, neutrality would remain difficult to police. To address these challenges, the US State Department created a passport system in 1861 designed to create economic and social distance by adding annoyance and delay to transnational travel. Confusion marred the plan from its outset. Although Congress had claimed the exclusive right to issue passports since 1856, mayors of Canadian towns issued their own certifications of nationality as substitutes for passports, hoping to provide a less intrusive means of identification. This alternate system made Canadian bureaucrats wealthy, while creating a creating a market for counterfeit papers.11
In the end, the passport system ignited public resentment better than it contained Confederate operatives. Canadian newspapers panned the idea of a national passport system as both impractical and disastrous. Toronto’s Globe and Mail argued that “on so extensive a frontier as that between the United States and Canada, thirty thousand men would be needed to carry out a passport system with efficiency.”12 The paper stated that even in Europe, which had relatively short borders, many countries had already abandoned passports as “utterly inoperative to prevent the transit of political conspirators.”13 It further complained that the passport system added two and a half dollars to travel costs between the two countries and created long delays at major railway hubs. Pressed by the logistics of policing such an extensive border and by the tepid Canadian response, the United States rescinded its passport order on March 8, 1865.14
The failure of military patrols, blockades, and passports created a disheartening environment. The countries’ inability to control even their own soldiers and agents only made matters worse. By 1865 approximately 508,000 men deserted the Union army, out of an estimated two million enlisted men.15 In New York, deserters simply walked across the border to escape service. By 1865, an estimated fifteen thousand soldiers had made the united Canadas their temporary home.16
British soldiers deserted their posts in the opposite direction to enlist with the Union or Confederate armies, which paid higher wages and bounties for enlistment.17 Federal bounties of $100 to $300 and local bounties of as much as $1,000 offered soldiers the equivalent of several years of pay as a laborer.18 Prospective soldiers could cross the border to collect bounties and then flee back to Canada to avoid military service, a process that could be repeated multiple times. Police Sergeant George Blanke summarized the problem in the (p.39) spring of 1863. Blanke lamented that a large number of deserters had arrived in Victoria from Puget Sound, “most of them are deserters from the American Army . . . some of them were originally deserters from the English Service.”19 Desertion of any kind risked incarceration and possible execution. Deserting from both the British and American armed forces added an additional layer of risk that only the most reckless took. Still, these kinds of decisions made quick money for those who successfully navigated national jurisdictions.20
For Indigenous soldiers who chose to desert, nearby reservations and Indigenous communities created additional places to seek asylum. While this kind of movement did not put these deserters outside of the territory claimed by the American government, it often put them outside its practical reach. Colonial maps recorded borders agreed upon by European diplomats, but these served as only a portion of the many borders that mattered to everyday life. Despite having an employee follow a “half breed” deserter for more than one hundred and fifty miles along the Snake River, the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau in Minnesota failed to capture him after he took “up his quarters among the Indians.”21 The Bureau came up short again in their attempt to find John Ayers, a deserter who they believed had fled to an Ojibwe (Chippewa) community near Sunrise, Minnesota.22
Recruitment efforts faced the same bevy of challenges that retention did, creating a dual drain on the Union’s war effort. In an effort to hit recruitment targets, the Union turned to crimpers (recruitment agents) to try to expand their potential pool of applicants. The system encouraged all kinds of graft. Crimpers enlisted men they knew carried diseases, gathered recruits from British territory in violation of its neutrality, and kidnapped both British and Indigenous men to force them into service. Crimpers in Minnesota rounded up wagonloads of Ojibwe, intoxicated them, and attempted to sell them as substitutes until the Provost Marshal General’s office intervened.23 For all the problems, the possibility of recruiting willing soldiers from British soil offered a welcome relief to the northern enlistment system. The system only succeeded in getting 3 percent of those it drafted to serve, the remainder either deserting, paying commutations, or gaining suspicious exemptions.24
Far reaching recruitment efforts restructured life outside of the United States. Two-thirds of the young men from the Elgin Settlement, Canada West, left their homes after the Union opened military service to African American men. By the war’s end 2,500 African American volunteers from British North America crossed the line to serve, believing they had a personal stake in the conflict being fought south of the border.25 The breadth of transnational life remained hard to ignore. A reward pamphlet for deserters in the second Congressional district of Minnesota noted that from June to August 1864 more than 259 men failed to report to headquarters after being drafted; 28 of these men had a Canadian (p.40) birthplace. This indicated the ways that nationality spilled across borders and the opportunities the border offered for escape.26
The proximity of Indigenous nations put pressure on nearby settler communities, amplifying the impact of the Canada–US border. The Beaver Bay community in northern Minnesota, for example, complained that the draft being held in Lake County would ruin their community. Many of the men who the Deputy Marshall had included in the draft pool had already left for Canada creating an unfair burden on those who remained. With the majority of able-body men drafted or absent, members of the community feared that the women of their community “could not protect herself and home against the Indians.”27
The petitions by the Beaver Bay community for draft relief highlighted two important boundaries that shaped their experiences: the Canada–US border and American-Ojibwe boundary. The former border provided an asylum from the draft that drained the labor force of Beaver Bay as eligible men crossed the line. While colonial maps did not reflect Ojibwe power, the fear expressed by the Beaver Bay community reflected the presence of alternative territorial systems and boundaries. Residents of Beaver Bay lived not only within the Canada–US borderlands but, as their high emotions suggested, within Ojibwe borderlands as well.28
Like the deserters who crossed national lines and the crimpers who looked beyond them for recruits, the men tasked with policing the border paid little respect for the boundaries. In 1863, Union soldiers crossed the border in pursuit of Ebenezer Tyler, a deserter from the Union army who had fled Wolfe Island in Canada West. The soldiers succeeded in capturing Tyler and dragging him back into the United States, although pressure from the British government forced Tyler’s release. More often the United States and Britain reprimanded their soldiers for abducting deserters, but they rarely repatriated the accused. Illegal abductions resulted in apologies but few changes in policy.29
The Civil War exposed the limitations of border control, but also emphasized what was at stake. The Trent affair, transnational crimping, and illegal operations of law enforcement personnel exacerbated an already tense diplomatic situation. Local violations across the border threatened to spark national outrage and push the two countries closer to a conflict neither had any interest in. This possibility became more disturbing by the middle of the war when the Confederacy began a more open policy of violating British neutrality in the hopes of fostering a conflict between Britain and the northern states.30 Confederate sympathizers, for example, built ammunition, grenades, and a cannon at a foundry in Guelph, Canada West. They hoped to smuggle the canon in a crate marked “potatoes” onto Lake Michigan, where they intended to use it to free Confederate prisoners on Johnson’s Island. The plan failed, but it demonstrated the creativity smugglers and militants used to exploit the boundary line.31
(p.41) Although the Confederates and their sympathizers engaged in a variety of operations, including inciting Indigenous resistance to disrupt union communication and supply lines, the most spectacular event occurred at St. Albans, Vermont.32 On October 19, 1864, twenty Confederates supporters led by Bennett Young seized the town of St. Albans, robbed three banks, killed one person, set a number of buildings on fire, and fled with $200,000 back across the line. An American posse pursued and overtook the robbers on British soil. The local militia intervened, took the prisoners and some of the money into custody, and reprimanded the American posse for operating across the international boundary.33
What would become of these men remained up for debate. The American government pressed for the raider’s extradition, without luck. Bennett and his men justified their actions as wartime activities outside of the extradition system and found sympathy with Charles-Joseph Coursol, the presiding magistrate. Coursol claimed that the warrants for the men’s arrest had not been properly issued and set them free with $84,000 of their spoils. The prisoners escaped to Montreal, and Coursol was suspended amidst accusations that he had accepted stolen money from the prisoners in exchange for their freedom.34
In response to Coursol’s bungling of the situation, John Dix, a Union general, ordered his troops to capture the St. Albans raiders wherever they disappeared to. If that meant crossing the border and ignoring British neutrality, so be it. The approach had precedence in the way both countries had responded to the Caroline affair in 1837–1840 and in international law. Border crossings could occur if in hot pursuit of the enemy, but precedence did not ensure peaceful relations. Dix’s policy threatened to exacerbate an already incendiary issue and forced Lincoln to intervene on December 17, 1864. Lincoln demanded that American troops crossing the border receive authorization from Washington before proceeding. A war with Britain would open new fronts and could breathe life back into the South’s military efforts. Lincoln’s policy kept the border crossing options open, but aimed to place the decision in the hands of the president alone rather than leaving it to an errant general.35
At the same moment, Britain worked to relieve tensions along the border. It recaptured the St. Albans raiders and, when it failed to secure convictions, the Canadian government paid over $30,000 in bank notes and $39,000 in gold to compensate the American banks for losses due to improper handling. Britain also passed a new neutrality act to help ease tensions over the debacle and established a Western Frontier Constabulary force to coordinate border patrols. Under the new act, Britain could fine and expel foreign nationals it suspected of using the united Canadas as a base to launch hostile actions against friendly nations. The United States used Britain’s failure during the St. Albans raid as a precursor to abrogate their reciprocity agreement, but the two countries never (p.42) came as close to warfare as they had been during the Trent affair. War weariness and an acceptance of the practical limitations of border control overcame the possibility of conflict between the two nations.36
By the Civil War’s end, the Union and Confederacy had suffered approximately 750,000 casualties, with thousands more permanently injured.37 Indigenous and African American communities suffered alongside American settlers as the war took its deadly toll. The Wisconsin Oneida, for example, enlisted over one hundred volunteers in the 14th Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment from a reservation of 1,100 residents. Well over a third of those soldiers never returned home. African American communities suffered likewise. Two-thirds of the young men at Buxton, Canada West, left to enlist in the Union army between 1863 and 1865, undercutting the basis of the community for the duration of the war. The border helped shape which communities took part in the violence and to what extent that violence later made its way back home. Death and suffering, however, did not confine themselves within national borders.38
The Dakota War As civil war focused the Union’s attention on the South, it exacerbated long-standing problems with Indigenous nations. Although the Dakota had ceded parts of Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas to the United States throughout the early nineteenth century, they found themselves in an untenable situation by the 1860s. The US government refused to pay the Dakota the annuities it had promised and located the promised mills, physicians, and schools close to a hundred miles from the Sisseton. Traders soon stopped supplying goods on credit, exacerbating an already dire situation.39 Andrew J. Myrick, a Minnesotan trader who refused to extend credit, noted: “If they are hungry, let them eat grass.”40 Starvation resulted. Settlers, lumbermen, and traders violated treaty agreements, fueling the animosity. The Dakota believed that the American government, which could not even honor its most basic treaty provisions, was falling apart.41
Amidst tension and suffering, individual skirmishes risked widespread violence. Robert Goodvoice (Wahpeton Dakota) has noted that the violence in Minnesota began when four young Dakota men cut through a farmer’s field on their way back from hunting deer. The men got into a skirmish with the farmer, who struck one of them with his broom. The man, humiliated and goaded on by his friends, shot the farmer and killed his family. The men’s actions divided the Dakota. One side called for war. The other, led by Tarasota, argued that the Dakota should avoid fighting a foolish war with the Wasitiu (white men). If warfare happened, Dakota children and elderly would suffer and American soldiers would cut the Dakota off from necessary supplies. Tarasota’s pleas failed.42
(p.43) In the middle of August 1862, Dakota launched a series of attacks throughout southwestern Minnesota. From August 18 to 23, the Dakota, led by Little Crow, killed hundreds of settlers in Minnesota, including Andrew J. Myrick.43 Before they left, Pazeda-yapa and Inkpaduta stuffed Myrick’s mouth with grass.44 Interwoven identities made violence a messy affair. The Dakota had comingled, established friendships, intermarried, and traded with settlers.45 According Walter LaBatte, his great-grandfather Francois, a mixed Dakota/Frenchman, stood outside his store when the violence began saying “ ‘Makte sni, makte sni, damakota do, damakota do’ . . . ‘Don’t kill me, don’t kill me I’m Dakota, I’m a Dakota.’ They shot him, killed him.”46
Many others caught in the middle had more success. Half a dozen Canadians, who had intermarried and lived with the Dakota for two or three decades, remained in an uncomfortable limbo. They retained access to their property and limited amounts of personal freedom, but remained under careful watch until the Dakota could ascertain their loyalties.47 Even settlers who spoke poorly of Indigenous people maintained significant personal connections. George Spencer Jr., for example, believed that Indians possessed only a clouded intellect, loved to wash their hands in the blood of others, were incapable of diplomacy, and served as the connecting link between man and beasts.48 Despite Spencer’s perceptions, which were low even by the standards of his time, he still maintained a decade-long friendship with His Thunder (Wa-kin-yan-or-in). When violence broke out, His Thunder protected Spencer at great personal risk and later helped him escape.49
Early victories bolstered the Dakota’s cause. The Civil War consumed the resources and attention the United States might have otherwise expended to resolve the violence. Minnesota’s military forces remained underfunded and in disarray, and the Dakota pressed their advantage. Spencer estimated that Dakota wagons filled with plunder from their attacks stretched for five miles. These wagon trains flew American flags the Dakota had captured during their attacks as well as Hudson’s Bay Company flags, which the Dakota had acquired years earlier from British diplomats and traders. The flags served as an eerie reminder of the transnational identities of groups like the Dakota and the limits of federal control.50
Success, however, remained fleeting. The Dakota sent messengers to the “Sissetons, Yanctons, Yanktonnais and the Governor of Selkirk Settlement,” hoping to enlist broader support for their attacks but without much luck.51 By late September the American military rebounded, forcing the Dakota into retreat. Goodvoice’s grandparents and Tarasota fled the battle zone with many of the noncombatants.52
Both sides paid heavily for the war. By the end of the violence, the state of Minnesota claimed it had incurred more than $320,000 in expenses.53 The (p.44) human cost far outweighed the financial. By legal historian Carol Chomsky’s estimate, between August 18 and September 26 “77 American soldiers, 29 citizen-soldiers, approximately 358 settlers, and an estimated 29 Dakota soldiers” died as open warfare consumed the region.54 In the aftermath of the war, the US government arrested and tried close to four hundred Dakota for their involvement in the violence. The American military commission convicted 303 Dakota to death in cases that sometimes lasted less than five minutes. In the face of uncertainty, President Abraham Lincoln commuted most of the death sentences to prison terms. Even so, he upheld the military commission’s decision to execute 38 Dakota, leading to what became the largest single execution in American history.55
If executions had a finality, the long-term outcome of the violence remained far less certain. Dakota who had escaped the American military fled in all directions. Parents lost contact with their children. Fearing retaliation, many Dakota moved toward the Canada–US border, often travelling by night to avoid detection. This was not the Dakota’s first experience in this area.56 Oral accounts by Melvin Littlecrow note, for example, that “we were always in this country [Canada]. . . . At one time back in those days there was no border. We hunted all over the place, north of the present day border.”57
Even so, the journey north required substantial perseverance. LaVonne Swenson noted that her relative’s grandmother took seven years to travel on foot from the Lower Sioux (Minnesota) to Sioux Valley (Manitoba), surviving off berries and dried food. During the day they would “dig down into the ground and lay that buffalo robe over the top . . . So when the troops were coming looking for them, they’d look and see nobody and keep going.”58 The lack of border guards meant that for some, it was not until “they met some wagons coming and they had a Canadian flag” that the Dakota knew they no longer needed to hide.59 For those travelling at night, the flags of merchants, rather than boundary stones or soldiers, served as the only visible marker that they had crossed national boundaries.
The Canada–US border was not the only border that the Dakota had to contend with after being forced into retreat. According to Robert Goodvoice, Tachamishota found out about the war while returning from a hunt. He fled with his young sister Goweegaway and his wife, who informed him that the American military “is just killing everything that is in their path.”60 The party followed tracks to the west hoping to reunite with the Tachamishota’s family. The path they followed took them into Teton territory. While there they stumbled onto a large camp and quickly found themselves surrounded by groups of riders the camp sent to capture them. Tachamishota stood under a white cloth and a peace pipe and yelled, “I am a Dakota. I am not an enemy, I am a Dakota, the same as you people.”61
(p.45) Tachamishota learned that the Teton had followed the Dakota’s war with the United States with great interest. The Teton told Tachamishota that they had “men watching this part. We don’t allow nobody to come here. Even the American soldiers, if they come here, we are going to see if we can stop them and if they don’t listen to us, well we will make them listen.”62 As Tachamishota soon learned, regional violence had convinced the Teton to police their own territorial boundaries with more fervor. That put Tachamishota in a dangerous position.
After a tense first encounter, the Teton provided Tachamishiota, Goweegaway, and his wife with a tent, food, and supplies.63 Despite this assistance, the Dakota travelers remained in a precarious position. The Teton party insisted that Goweegaway marry one of their men and Tachamishota feared that “if we don’t do as they say, they might kill us and they will still take you.”64 Goweegaway married the man, but later escaped and rejoined her brother. After almost three months of searching, they found some of their people. Tachamishota would never see his parents or many of his other family members again.65 He relocated to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in 1876, where he remained until his death.66
Throughout the immediate aftermath of violence, the American army hampered the Dakota’s relocation efforts. Cavalry led by Generals Alfred Sully and Henry Sibley pursued, ambushed, and slaughtered those who remained below the line. Battles at Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, Stony Lake, and Whitestone Hill left 350 Dakota dead and destroyed many of their remaining supplies. Those who remained in Minnesota continued to suffer. Little Crow, a leader in the conflict, went north for a time but returned to Minnesota in June of 1863.67 Little Crow’s move proved ill fated. On July 3, a settler discovered him while he was picking fruit and shot him. The death occurred just in time for the town of Hutchinson to incorporate the desecration of Little Crow’s body into their Fourth of July celebrations.68
The Dakota who relocated to British territory fared better but encountered a different set of challenges and hardships.69 By the winter of 1862, hundreds of Dakota who had escaped capture had relocated to the Red River Settlement in British Territory. The Dakota found themselves short on supplies. They immediately set about strengthening their ties with the British and securing a separate peace with the Red River Métis.70
The Dakota recognized at least two important sets of borders they had crossed, one Indigenous, the other European.71 To secure British support the Dakota relied on the presence of a historical alliance. The Oceti Sakowin (Sioux) had assisted the English during the War of 1812. In return they had received a promise from the British that should they need assistance the British would provide it, and now called upon them to make good on their words. The approach produced only minimal success.72
(p.46) By 1863 Medicine Bottle, Little Six, and close to six hundred Dakota had arrived at the Red River Settlement. Those fleeing violence continued to come. The sudden influx of people stretched the limits of the Métis and put the British government in a tricky position. The presence of the Dakota increased tensions with the United States, and the Red River Settlement lacked a proper police force should any conflict break out.73 Alexander Dallas, the British governor appointed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, considered drastic measures. Governor Dallas feared that he could not provision the Dakota and that they would attack settlers in order to secure enough food for their survival. Lacking a military force, and unable to get either Britain or the Hudson’s Bay Company to supply the necessary funds for troops, he began to consider the possibility of using the American army to remove the Dakota from British territory.74
Previously, Major Edwin A. C. Hatch had offered to let the British command his troops should he be allowed to operate on British soil. The offer created concerns in the middle of the Civil War. Britain already worried about its inability to appear neutral as soldiers from both countries violated each other’s sovereignty while searching for deserters. By March 1864, Dallas relented. He requested that Hatch help expel the Dakota from British lands. By that time, however, Hatch had abandoned the plan for an American intervention. The cold winter and lack of shelter had killed most of Hatch’s horses and rendered many of his troops unfit for duty.75
The Aftermath of the Dakota War Although the Dakota had successfully evaded the American army by relocating north into British territory, their place in the new region remained precarious. In May, Plains Ojibwe killed approximately twenty Dakota in a single raid. The Dakotas’ prolonged stay also put pressure on their relationship with the Cree. Faced with continued conflicts and limited food, the Dakota turned west in search of hunting grounds.76
In the end, fear shaped movement just as clearly as guns and cannons. Around 1875–76, a settler named McKay sought help for his ill wife from the Dakota Medicine Man Hoopayakta. McKay, grateful for the care, relayed information to the Dakota that he had heard in a nearby village. McKay told Hoopayakta that the American government would promise to feed and house the Dakota, but their real goal was to gather all the Dakota in one spot.77 American soldiers would then capture and torture them: “They are going to hang you, they are going to kill most of you, maybe all of you.”78 According to Robert Goodvoice, McKay advised the Dakota to flee north where “you will be safe” in lands where there were lots of lakes, natural resources, and fur bearing animals.79 Dozens of (p.47) families heeded McKay’s advice. They moved north to present-day Portage la Prairie (120km north of the border) where they wintered, drawing on social connections set up by McKay.
Once spring arrived, the group traveled north to Prince Albert in present-day central Saskatchewan. They did so on foot, a journey of roughly 700 kilometers, with children as young as four in their party. McKay later introduced the Dakota to his relatives in Prince Albert, ensuring that they had initial support while rebuilding their lives.80 Economic factors, fear of continued violence with the United States, and networks of personal relationships motivated both the timing and path of their relocation. By the end of the journey from Minnesota to Prince Albert, the Dakota had travelled close to 1,500 km—equivalent to crossing through France, Germany, Austria, and Hungary in a transit between Paris and Budapest. Many of the Dakota who relocated to Prince Albert would not make a return trip home.81
Despite traveling so deep into British territory, the Dakota never shook their fears of American retribution. They worried that the American army would cross into Canada and “carry them all to the States there to punish their former misdeeds.”82 Dakota oral histories noted at least four occasions when Wasitu men and women operating on behalf of the American government tried to kill the Dakota. The attempts came by poisoning bread or by tampering with goods like underwear that the Wasitu passed off as charity. Those who fell prey to the trap suffered from a wide variety of ailments including itching, hemorrhagic fevers, foaming at the mouth, and other signs of poisoning.83 Dakota preacher Masawakeean, who lived in the United States, supported these assertions, declaring that the American government had paid men and women to “kill off all the Dakotas around Prince Albert. They would get so many thousands of dollars for doing that. That is why these people came over here and poisoned them.”84 Cree and Blood communities echoed similar concerns about poisoned food.85
The Dakota complained to the police about their fears of American intervention, but the people who had supplied them with the dangerous goods left behind few traces. Whether the suffering experienced by the Dakota was the direct result of American machinations or simply a correlation between outbreaks of disease and genuine acts of charity is hard to determine. Regardless, these worries shaped the lives of the Dakota living north of the line in tangible ways. Many refused to accept goods from white settlers and the Dakota remained in fear of American military forays, poisonings, interference, and transnational kidnappings for decades.86
Fears of American interference also manifested in subtler ways. According to David Pasche, his great grandfather Pazeda-yapa had helped stuff Andrew Myrick’s mouth with grass. Although Pazeda-yapa evaded American attempts to drag him back to the United States throughout his life, he failed in his death.87 (p.48) Pasche, drawing on stories from his aunties and grandmother, noted that “when he [Pazeda-yapa] died the U.S. government came during the night and paid one of our family members here to show them where his grave was . . . and they dug his grave out in the middle of the night” and took his body to New York to display in a museum.88 As late as 2012 Pasche was still attempting to locate Pazeda-yapa’s remains for repartition, hoping this would help his present-day community “come back together some day” and live harmoniously.89 For Pasche, historic conflicts did not exist in a distant past. They served as continuous impediments to the present-day well-being of his community.
American military sources confirm some, but not all, of the ways the American army influenced Dakota lives from afar. Following the violence, Major Hatch attempted to get the rations supplied by Britain to the Dakotas limited or annulled. He also hired auxiliaries to kidnap Little Six and Medicine Bottle. The move risked an international conflict, but not as seriously as the movements of the army would have. The US government declared its innocence in the matter, stating it had not authorized Major Hatch’s action. The United States had no qualms, however, benefiting from the kidnapping. It convicted the two chiefs for murder and sentenced them to death in November 1865.90
Dakota histories of the events confirm many of the basic details found in settler accounts, while providing a far greater context for the event’s long-term impact.91 Robert Goodvoice noted that after the battles of 1862 a Wasitiu (white man) came to the Dakota camp in Manitoba looking for Eeotokta. Eeotokta, though suspicious of the man’s motives, agreed to go on the journey with his brother-in law Tatayjusnomonee. The white man provided Eeotokta and Tatayjusnomonee with food and whisky, and they quickly fell asleep. While unconscious, white men bundled the Dakota in blankets, loaded them onto a toboggan, and “shipped them to New York under the influence of liquor and chloroform” in exchange for a $500 reward for each of them.92
These captures and deaths were not forgotten. Goodvoice recalled that Tataytunkowee, Tatayjusnomonee’s wife, frequently spoke of her husband’s kidnapping until her death in 1922.93 Dakota who believed they had a bounty on their head stayed protected and out of sight. Red Top, for example, ensured that while he “was asleep there [was] somebody sitting beside him awake. And they had two vicious dogs. They watch him day and night.”94 Fear of foreign interference did not end with death. When Red Top died of natural causes near Macdowell, Saskatchewan, his family buried him and leveled the grave site so that his body could not be dug up.
As accounts by Goodvoice and others suggested, the United States continued to influence Dakota lives decades after they had left the territorial boundaries of the country. The United States sent Dakota speakers to Canada to offer the communities north of the border land, houses, teachers, and an absence of (p.49) retribution should they return.95 According to Goodvoice’s grandfather, only Wasoosomacanow took up the American offer after he had been whipped by members of his community for violating hunting norms.96
Despite the depth of prevailing fears, many Dakota also stayed behind. Even the Dakota who remained in Minnesota, however, generally chose to remain within the border’s shadow. They posted regular sentries at night and stayed within a few miles of the border so that they could cross at a moment’s notice. Living south of the border, however, had long-term consequences. The Dakota who remained in the United States feared engaging in wage labor opportunities or seeking medical attention in Wasitu communities along the border because they could find themselves working for a white man who “will report them or he might give them away.”97 Settler families searched for Dakota to get revenge, reinforcing Dakota concerns about their safety.98
In at least a handful of cases, families who had crossed into Canada later reconstructed lives south of the line. Ta Sina Suspe Becawin’s family learned of the violence while gathering pipestone. Seeing plumes of smoke and gathering news of the Dakota’s defeat from those fleeing the violence, her family headed for Canada. They took Ta Sina Suspe Becawin, no older than twelve, with them. In the 1890s, as a middle-aged woman, Ta Sina Suspe Becawin returned to Minnesota where she married Joseph Amos (Hototona). The coupled lived at Sisseton, South Dakota, until Hotonona’s illness prompted him to go back to Minnesota.99 Ta Sina Suspe Becawin was not alone. While Inyangmani Hoksida (Running Walker Boy, John Roberts) and Tiwacktag-win Provincial lost relatives during the violence and fled across the line, both chose to return to the United States. After the war, Provincial relocated near Turtle Mountain, in Dakota Territory where she was married around 1877. Like many others, she was careful to stay near the international line.100
For those who made their way to Canada, the border continued to hang over their heads. In the early 1870s the Dominion Government offered hundreds of Dakota a permanent reserve. Relocating the Dakota to a reserve appealed to the Canadian government because it increased Canadian control, ended the uncertainty over the Dakota’s future, allowed for assimilation, and relieved tensions.101 The Canadian offer came with two sets of stipulations. First, William Sprague, Indian commissioner in the North-West Territories, emphasized that Canada offered to set aside the land as a sign of good faith rather than as an obligation on the government’s part. Sprague viewed the Dakota as pseudo-immigrants. Second, the Canadian offer would not apply to Sioux currently living in the United States who wished to join those who had already made the trek north. He believed that if white immigrants could apply for land, it seemed disingenuous to bar Indigenous ones. Still, the Canadian government did not consider the Dakota to be treaty Indians and gave them no annuities.102
(p.50) White Cap and Standing Buffalo’s son argued on behalf of the Dakota that they were in fact British Indians. To both men, being British meant two things: a connection to the territory claimed by the Canadian government, and a reference to the historical alliance that the Dakota had with the British.103 In the eyes of Canadian agents, however, the Dakota remained ambiguously American Indians for decades to come. The annual reports of the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada emphasized the Dakota’s historical ties to the United States and their uncertain place in Canada. Reference to the Dakota’s American origin appeared in the annual reports decades after they had received a Canadian reserve. The annual report in 1911, for example, included a note that the Dakota “came to the Dominion of Canada after the Minnesota massacre, and who refused to return to the United States.”104 By this point the children of the original Dakota migrants, many of whom had been born in Canada, had reached adulthood.
The ongoing references to the Dakota’s American origin served two purposes. It allowed Canadian agents to compare their country favorably with the United States, as a refuge from American aggression. It also showed Canada’s reluctance to allow wards of the United States to be integrated into Canada. Canada gave them land to defuse a tense situation, but it did not see the Dakota as immigrants who could change their national allegiances through relocation or naturalization. Instead, the Dakota remained American Indians living permanently abroad. The Dakota carried the stigma of their American origin and their unusual legal status—as nontreaty Indians in possession of reserve—into the twentieth century.105
Violence throughout the 1860s shaped British and American conceptions of their shared border and the practical policies they attempted to implement. Blockade runners demonstrated the inability of both countries to control transnational commerce, while draft dodgers emphasized the fluidity with which people moved. In both cases, violations of the border had immediate consequences within a wartime environment. British enlisters and smugglers undermined Britain’s claims to neutrality, while blockade runners and draft dodgers impeded the Union’s ability to fight the Confederacy. Crimpers and overzealous soldiers created diplomatic incidents of their own as their pursued their duties on both sides of the line.
While unsanctioned and illicit mobility provided uncomfortable reminders of the limits of federal power, this mobility also indicated the growing significance of international borders in North America by the 1860s. Illicit movements across a border only made sense if the border divided policies, peoples, and markets. The unevenness of this process rewarded movement. As Ebenezer (p.51) Tyler’s case suggests, the border never operated as a complete barrier. Instead it increased the difficulty, effort, and risk associated with certain kinds of movements, but left other types relatively untouched. Law enforcement officers and military personnel failed to control how this process played out in practice, often finding the border inhibited their own movements more than those of the people they chased.
At the same moment that the Civil War made the dilemmas of international borders inescapable, the Dakota War of 1862 demonstrated the dangers of taking a narrow viewpoint on territorial divisions. In the 1860s, the United States shared borders with Britain and Mexico, but it also maintained borders with hundreds of Indigenous communities. Although it often conceptualized its boundaries with Indigenous nations as internal or domestic, treaty agreements governed these divisions and set clear expectations for both parties. Failing to abide by the terms of these agreements risked war for the same reasons that a failure to honor treaty agreements with European powers did. Overlapping territorial claims created a difficult, complex, and variable environment. In this context officers of the state attempted to achieve what they saw as justice, even if it meant violating their own borders to do so.