163 years ago today, the largest mass execution in the U.S. took place. Ordered by Abraham Lincoln.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

There was no due process. No representation, no talk of broken treaties. It was the beginning of exile from the Minnesota area. Most of the bodies were dug up within a day of the hanging, to be used as cadavers, including one stolen by William Mayo, a name you might recognize.

https://ictnews.org/news/traumatic-true-history-full-list-dakota-38/

On the day after Christmas in 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged under order of President Abraham Lincoln. The hangings and convictions of the Dakota 38 resulted from the aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in southwest Minnesota.

In addition to the 38 men hanged the day after Christmas, there were terrible injustices committed against 265 others in the form of military convictions and inhuman injustices to more than 3,000 Dakota people who were held captive, then forced to march west out of Minnesota.

https://www.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/stories/history/aftermath/trials-hanging

As the men took their assigned places on the scaffold, they sang a Dakota song as white muslin coverings were pulled over their faces. Drumbeats signalled the start of the execution. The men grasped each others’ hands. With a single blow from an ax, the rope that held the platform was cut. Capt. William Duley, who had lost several members of his family in the attack on the Lake Shetek settlement, cut the rope. 

This all took place during the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

If you enjoy poetry, this poem about the hangings, 38, by Layli Long Solider is devastating.

[malaise]

1. Never forget

Rec

[LearnedHand]

2. Omg that poem!

I’m a huge believer that art should hurt you. This poem understood the assignment. Thank you for this.

[Clouds Passing]

3. The Dakota 38

[LiberalArkie]

4. Slaves still had value. They were still workers. The people never saw the Native Americans as any thing but

"Dirty Rotten Red***ns". They continued being thought of that until the 1960's when I was a teen in Arkansas. No value at all. At least the "Nigg**s" had value. The "Chin*s" had value. The Indians who had oil property in Oklahoma only had value until they land could be stolen by the local politicians.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. not sure why you would "ironically" use the tone of a racist bigot to say a bunch of slurs but here we are

[wolfie001]

8. He edited the remarks

Mine as well be honest about our history. Just my opinion.

[Polybius]

12. What's "Red***ns?"

Still trying to figure that one out.

[rubbersole]

14. *** equals "ski"

From my NFL fandom days.

[Polybius]

15. Ahh

Thank you.

[wolfie001]

22. Egads no idea

Don't wanna know to be honest. Maybe the Commander's former name? I grew up when all the native Americans in Hollywood movies were white dudes. The whole real, authentic history from 1492 is what tRUMP and rePUKES want to avoid/censor.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. then why not spell it all the way out

[LiberalArkie]

19. Because they describe what they heard instead being sugar coated. I remember when the LBGT's were being slured as"QUEER"

. The LBGT adopted the Q to remove the sting from it.

I remember as a kid being in the county courthouse and a Chinese man who owned the big laundry in the city having water thrown at him because he tried to drink in the "Whites Only" water fountain. The good ol' boys hollering at him to "You ain't no white man, you're just a "chink"

The words have to be remembered otherwise people will forget and the slurs will come back as sports teams etc.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. The OP describes what happened, without sugar coating. And then you added a bunch of slurs -- slurs that are, one could

argue, sugar-coated with asterisks. Why use them?

I remember as a kid being in the county courthouse and a Chinese man who owned the big laundry in the city having water thrown at him because he tried to drink in the "Whites Only" water fountain. The good ol' boys hollering at him to "You ain't no white man, you're just a "chink"

The words have to be remembered otherwise people will forget and the slurs will come back as sports teams etc.

We all know the words. They're still used every day to hurt and oppress. Why do *you* use them?

[AllaN01Bear]

5. trail of tear?

[wolfie001]

7. Lincoln was president. So he was no saint

Overall, a good man but obviously he had his faults (he should have intervened) mostly because of the era he lived in. That's my take for what it's worth. The movie with Daniel Day Lewis was fab.

[niyad]

9. Thank you for this grim reminder.

[mountain grammy]

10. American history..

It's weird as I read the works of an amazing poet, thinking, I learned about the executions long ago, but never an honest history of the executions until this poem.

and then I think about Lincoln, a great leader, an emancipator of slaves, but still a white man and America's first third party president.. and that party? republican.

[Polybius]

11. Never forget that Lincoln was far from perfect

[TygrBright]

13. I have heard white people express bafflement and offense that Native peoples want the Four False Faces removed...

...from ground they consider holy, "especially Lincoln who was such a great Emancipator."

Let us review the Four False Faces:

George Washington: Speculated heavily in Native lands, allied with some Native nations and groups, and practiced brutal retaliation against other Native nations and groups - not just those allied with the British, but any not specifically allied with his military. After the Revolution, as President, he sold Native lands to generate cash to clear the military debts - payments owed to soldiers and financiers. Above all, he supported cultural genocide under the guise of "assimilation" and "assistance' to Natives under treaty - encouraging them to depend on cash annuity payments by treaty, learn to farm the shitty lands allocated to them, and abandon their "barbaric practices" by welcoming missionaries and white culture. While he never formally abrogated any treaties, he allowed them to be broken and effectively become dead letters, whenever political convenience dictated.

Lincoln: See above. Also broke treaties, confiscated Native lands, supported Indian Removal as government policy, and denied redress for U.S. Army atrocities practiced on Native peoples.

Jefferson: Grand architect of many of the cultural genocide practices and policies the U.S. and State governments used to "civilize" the "savages", promoter of Manifest Destiny, and backer of the Lewis and Clark expedition to survey lands for white settler expansion and laid the groundwork for the largest and longest invasion and appropriation of Native lands in American history.

T. Roosevelt: Regarded Native peoples as "inferior" races and referred to the lands stolen by white settlers as having been "the hunting ground of squalid savages". He believed "the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian" and vigorously pursued policies of Native removal and appropriating Native sacred sites to integrate into national parks, monuments, and forests.

To leave the Four False Faces intact is an ongoing insult to Native culture, history and sovereignty. It is as though a monument was placed in the Vatican to honor Nero, Decius, Domitian and Diocletian.

American history is not a two-dimensional tale on a single heroic story arc. It is a living complexity that should be studied, contemplated, learned from, and honored not as a victory but as an ongoing struggle to make our future better than our past.

sadly,
Bright

[Evolve Dammit]

16. Never heard this in any "history" class or otherwise. We have always been a very racist country. And now getting worse

[SergeStorms]

17. Made a donation to NARF after reading this.

Thanks for the reminder of how our Native American brothers and sisters were treated by murderous invaders from Europe.
If only those in power had honored Native American treaties........

[Solly Mack]

20. ...