History Scene Investigation

1. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862

2. Directions from Headquarters: • In small teams, you will be working for the History Scene Investigation (H.S.I.) department to analyze primary sources and images from a History Mystery that took place in Minnesota in 1862. Record your team’s findings from each of the files to piece together the stories that shaped this historic event. • There are nine files filled with primary sources from various perspectives for your team to analyze. We will go through the first briefing file to begin together. • You and your teammates will have only a few minutes with each primary source file. Work together to answer the questions and be ready to move on to the next file.

3. Group Roles • Writer this person fills out the packet • Organizer this person is the only one that touches the file envelope they have to keep things in order and put them back in the correct order. • Communicators these people read the documents out loud and keep the conversation going.

4. H.S.I. Mission Briefing Drawing- 1862 by W.H. Childs

5. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 Continue your investigation with files 1 - 8

6. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #1

7. File #1: Witness- Andrew Myrick Dear Brothers — The Lower Indians have been playing the devil in general. They had two secret councils at which they resolved not to pay [back] a dollar of their credits, established a soldiers lodge of one hundred warriors to execute the plan.... We [storeowners] all determined not [to] give [the Dakota] any more credit hoping to starve them into a change of sentiment.... I am at a loss [the Dakota owe me money] and so doing have given out no credits since last Sunday and at present deem it best not to give away any more for a week or ten days hoping it will produce a reaction. They will get very hungry and possibly if the officials are not engaged in it they may change their sentiments and favor paying [back] their credits ... I wish you could come up and suggest to Forbes to come and help straighten out the snarl the Indians have got us in. I have not talked with them yet seeming it best to let them get hungry first hoping they might retract and become decent again. –Andrew Myrick ( http://www.usdakotawar.org/history/andrew-myrick#.dpuf_)

8. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #2

9. File #2: Painting “Battle of New Ulm” Alexander Schwendinger, The Battle of New Ulm, 1891

10. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #3

11. File #3: Witness- Snana During the outbreak, when some of the Indians got killed, they began to kill some of the captives. At such times I always hid my dear captive white girl…I thought to myself that if they would kill my girl they would have to kill me first. Though I had two of my own children at that time with me, I thought of this girl just as much as as of the others….Once [when Mary was in danger], I dug a hole inside my tent and put some poles across, and then spread my blanket over and sat on top of them, as if nothing unusual had happened. But who do you suppose were inside the hole? My dear captive girl, Mary Schwandt, and my own two little children. -Snana

12. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #4

13. File #4: Witness- Mary Schwandt Story 1:While in Little Crow’s village I saw some of my father’s cattle and many of our household goods in the hands of the Indians. I now knew that my family had been plundered, and I believe murdered. I was very very wretched, and cared not how soon I too was killed. –Mary Schwandt --------------------------------- Story 2:An old woman called Wam-nu-ka-win….took compassion on me and bought me of the Indian who claimed me, giving a pony for me. She gave me to her daughter, whose Indian name was Snana, but the whites called her Maggie….Maggie and her mother were both very kind to me, and Maggie could not have treated me more tenderly if I had been her daughter. Often and often she preserved me from danger, and sometimes I think, she saved my life. Many a time….she and her mother hid me, pilling blankets and buffalo robes upon me until I would be nearly smothered, and then they would tell everybody that I had left them….But Maggie never relaxed her watchful care over me….-Mary Schwandt

14. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #5

15. File #5: Witness- Lorenzo Towaŋiteton Lawrence We waited expectantly till daylight. Then we looked around and saw a house some distance off. So I went to see who was there. When I got close I saw that the door stood open. Then I saw where some one had been at work hewing a log with a broadax, and he had been shot while he was at work… Seeing these dead bodies moved my heart very much. I looked around and found a stable, and I took the bodies and buried them as well as I could. Then I went to the door of the house and wrote on a piece of paper: “I am Lorenzo Lawrence. I am fleeing from the Indians with some White women and children, and my own wife and children. We are going down in boats, and when we come here we found the dead bodies of a man and boy, and I buried them near the house under the mound of dirt. I have ten captive woman and children that I am fleeing with, and I write this so any one who comes can tell who was here.” -Lorenzo Lawrence, or Towaŋiteton

16. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #6

17. File #6: Photograph of Refugees Taken August 21, 1862 at Upper Sioux Agency

18. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #7

19. File #7: Witness- Bishop Henry Whipple Whipple’s letter published in The Saint Paul Press, December 4, 1862 Four years ago the Sioux sold the government about eight hundred thousand acres of land, being a part of their reservation. The plea for this sale was the need of more funds to aid them in civilization…Of ninety six thousand dollars due to the Lower Sioux, they have never received a cent. …Of the large balance due the Upper Sioux, neither the agents nor the Indians knew when or where it was to be paid. For two years the Indians have demanded to know what had become of their money, and again and again have threatened revenge unless they were satisfied….Early this last spring the traders informed the Indians that the next payment would only be half of the usual amount…. LETTER to THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, March 6, 1862 The sad condition of the Indians of this State…compels me to address you on their behalf.  I ask only justice for a wronged and neglected race.  I write the more cheerfully because I believe that the intentions of the Government have always been kind; but they have been thwarted by dishonest servants, ill-conceived plans, and defective instructions. Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes about H. Whipple "He came here the other day and talked with me about the rascality of this Indian business until I felt it down to my boots." “If we get through this [civil] war, and I live, this Indian system shall be reformed.”

20. History Scene Investigation Case: Minnesota 1862 File #8

21. File #8: Witness- President Abraham Lincoln Executive Mansion Washington, December 6th, 1862 Brigadier General H.H. Sibley, St. Paul, Minnesota, Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the Military Commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following named, towit [Names of 38 out of 303 Dakota that had been tried by Sibley.] The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence.~President Abraham Lincoln