Dakota Trials Essay

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The Trials
The captured Dakota were being charged with “participation in the murders, outrages, and robberies…particularly in the battles at the Fort, New Ulm, Birch Coulee, and Wood Lake” (Oehler, pg. 206). The ensuing trials were conducted with an arraignment and a confession of being at one of the battles. The Dakota had believed the confession would make them prisoners of war – not guilty of murder. Once the commission became acquainted with the details of the various battles, a connection to a particular battle would find the defendant guilty. There were as many as forty cases tried in a day. O 206 The commission felt these ‘trials’ were just as ‘these battles were not ordinary….they were directed against villages defended by civilians, hastily and indifferently armed…besides, the code of the Indians, which takes life for life, justified it”. Most critics of the trials and the Dakota being sentenced to die asserted, “were condemned on general principles, without any specific charges proved” Oheler pg 207 . According to historian Gustav Niebuhr in, Lincoln’s Bishop: A President, a Priest and the Fate of 300 Dakota Sioux Warriors, writes that the commission used a half-breed named Godfrey [native name - Otakle], born to African American and
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He agreed with Colonel Sibley that the Dakota found guilty should be executed immediately. Pope instructed Sibley with, “It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux [Dakota]. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts.” (oehler 207). However, due to the vast number of prisoners, 400 in irons, and 100 sentenced to hang by October 21, hangings had not taken place quickly. By early November, the Commission tried three hundred and ninety-two prisoners with three hundred and six to be hung. General Pope sent a list of the condemned to President Lincoln for authority to hang them

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