The first full-scale biography of Henry Hastings Sibley, congressman, army general, and Minnesota's first governor.

A biography of Helen Hastings Sibley, the daughter of Henry Sibley and a Dakota Indian mother, who spent her childhood with the Brown family in St. Paul where she met her future husband, Sylvester Sawyer, moved to Milwaukee as the wife of a doctor, and died of scarlet fever.

In 1862, four years after Minnesota was ratified as the thirty-second state in the Union, simmering tensions between indigenous Dakota and white settlers culminated in the violent, six-week-long U.S.-Dakota War. Hundreds of lives were lost on both sides, and the war ended with the execution of thirty-eight Dakotas on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota--the largest mass execution in American history. The following April, after suffering a long internment at Fort Snelling, the Dakota and Winnebago peoples were forcefully removed to South Dakota, precipitating the near destruction of the area's native communities while simultaneously laying the foundation for what we know and recognize today as Minnesota. In North Country: The Making of Minnesota, Mary Lethert Wingerd unlocks the complex origins of the state--origins that have often been ignored in favor of legend and a far more benign narrative of immigration, settlement, and cultural exchange. Moving from the earliest years of contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the western Great Lakes region to the era of French and British influence during the fur trade and beyond, Wingerd charts how for two centuries prior to official statehood Native people and Europeans in the region maintained a hesitant, largely cobeneficial relationship. Founded on intermarriage, kinship, and trade between the two parties, this racially hybridized society was a meeting point for cultural and economic exchange until the western expansion of American capitalism and violation of treaties by the U.S. government during the 1850s wore sharply at this tremulous bond, ultimately leading to what Wingerd calls Minnesota's Civil War. A cornerstone text in the chronicle of Minnesota's history, Wingerd's narrative is augmented by more than 170 illustrations chosen and described by Kirsten Delegard in comprehensive captions that depict the fascinating, often haunting representations of the region and its inhabitants over two and a half centuries. North Country is the unflinching account of how the land the Dakota named Mini Sota Makoce became the State of Minnesota and of the people who have called it, at one time or another, home.

This edition of A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity rescues from obscurity a crucially important work about the bitterly contested U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Written by Mary Butler Renville, an Anglo woman, with the assistance of her Dakota husband, John Baptiste Renville, A Thrilling Narrative was printed only once as a book in 1863 and has not been republished since. The work details the Renvilles’ experiences as “captives” among their Dakota kin in the Upper Camp and chronicles the story of the Dakota Peace Party. Their sympathetic portrayal of those who opposed the war in 1862 combats the stereotypical view that most Dakotas supported it and illumines the injustice of their exile from Dakota homelands. From the authors’ unique perspective as an interracial couple, they paint a complex picture of race, gender, and class relations on successive midwestern frontiers. As the state of Minnesota commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Dakota War, this narrative provides fresh insights into the most controversial event in the region’s history. This annotated edition includes groundbreaking historical and literary contexts for the text and a first-time collection of extant Dakota correspondence with authorities during the war.

Born a slave in free territory, Joseph Godfrey died widely reviled for his controversial role in the U.S. Dakota War of 1862. Separated from his mother at age five when his master sold her, Joseph Godfrey was kept in bondage in Minnesota to serve the fur - trade elite. To escape his masters' beatings and abuse, he sought refuge in his tee...

This account focuses on the fur trade experiences of Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-1891), better known as commander of the military forces suppressing the Sioux [Dakota] uprisings of 1862 and 1863, and, in 1858, Minnesota's first governor. Sibley was born in Detroit to a prominent family of New England ancestry but spurned a settled life in that community for a more adventurous career, including a stint as a clerk for John Jacob Astor, and later as the American Fur Company's agent in trading with the Sioux [Dakota]. He began this reminiscence in 1883, at the age of 73, and seems to have added to it as late as 1886. The events he writes about, however, do not extend beyond 1835. Sibley shares his insights about voyageurs, native Americans, and life in military forts and trading settlements, although little of this material relates specifically to Minnesota. There is some commentary on settlements at Mackinac, Milwaukee, St. Peter's (Mendota), and Chicago, as well as the city of Detroit, where cholera reached epidemic proportions in the first half of the nineteenth century. The book also contains eleven letters from Sibley to Ramsay Crooks, agent and eventual president of the American Fur Company.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1857.