The first revolt recorded by photographers was in 1862. At that time, the Santee Sioux were confined to a small strip of land along the Minnesota River. Emotions ran high as settlers hunted Indian game, insects destroyed crops, and the agency storehouse, full of foodstuffs, was ordered to close. Adding fuel to the fire, traders, seeking to divert into their own pockets the annuities which were supposed to be paid to Indians as part of treaty agreements, refused to extend credit for provisions, trusting only ready cash. (In reality the government often owed the Indians the money to which they were entitled, so that they were unable to pay.) In August, Little Crow, a peace advocate and former delegate to Washington DC (plate 2.10), led his starving people in the famous Sioux revolt, killing as many as 8P0 whites and taking 400 captives. Military forces under General Sibley later overpowered the Sioux, and took more than 2,000 prisoners. A military commission sentenced 303 Indians to death. President Lincoln reprieved all but thirty-eight, who were hanged on December 26, at Mankato, Minnesota (plate 3.2).
In the meantime. Little Crow and Medicine Bottle escaped with their bands to Canada, where they hoped to enlist British help. In July 1863, while picking raspberries with his son. Little Crow was killed by bounty hunters. Later that year. Medicine Bottle was captured, drugged and smuggled back across the border tied to a dogsled. He was sentenced and hanged with Shakopee, another Indian, an event recorded by an unknown photographer.®
Most of the Images relating to the uprising were taken by Joel Emmons Whitney. He recorded the missionaries with the Sioux before the revolt (plate 3.3), and when the Indian prisoners were brought to Fort Snelllng, near his St Paul studio, he made portraits (plates 3.4-3.6). He also photographed the Sioux, under guard and awaiting trial outside a log-cabin 'courtroom' (plate 3.7).
Adrian J. Ebell, a member of the Rev. Stephen Riggs's escape party, took a photograph of the group of fleeing missionaries and settlers on August 21, 1862. This is the only known image taken during the uprising.’
No photographs were taken of the mass hanging, although Whitney did publish a drawing (plate 3.2). That winter, the Indians who were judged innocent awaited removal to Dakota Territory in a stockade near Fort Snelling. Benjamin Franklin Upton, also of St Paul, recorded their crowded tipis (plate 3.8).
World History
