Saturday, June 16, 2007
Combining History and Fiction to Create Historical Fiction
By
Steven Merrill Ulmen
Mankato, Minnesota, my hometown, bears the historical distinction of being the site of the largest legally sanctioned mass execution in the history of the United States. This execution was the climax of events surrounding and including what has become known as the Great Sioux Uprising, or alternatively, the Great Sioux Massacre of 1862.
In 1862, during the heart of the Civil War years, the United States government pulled soldiers from the ranks of Minnesota Infantry Divisions and pressed them to fight for the Union cause. For “Mister Lincoln’s War” the army shipped many Minnesotans, including descendents of my family, to the South, where they fought and died over the issue of slavery. Against this historical setting, the Great Sioux Uprising in all its fury occurred in August of that year.
The reasons for the uprising and massacre were numerous and complex. Briefly, the discontentment over broken treaty promises among the Dakotah Sioux tribes of the Yellow Medicine and Redwood Reservations, also called the Upper and Lower Sioux agencies, which were located on the prairie along the Minnesota River in southwestern Minnesota, caused unrest.
Dakota People
Through treaties, such as the Treaty of Traverse de Sioux and others, the Dakotah Sioux agreed to relinquish their hunting lands to white settlement and to move onto these reservations. The federal government promised them reparations for their land, and generous stipends to support them in comfort. However, when it came time to make payments and provide food and supplies, the government reneged on their end of the bargain. The Sioux ended up degenerating into drunkenness, starvation, and the scourges of the white man’s diseases. It was their natural inclination as warriors to destroy their enemy through war. In their eyes, the enemy was white settlers and homesteaders, who moved onto the hunting grounds that once belonged to the Dakotah Sioux.
The Civil War fueled this hostility. Historians tell us that the southerners and even the British supplied the Sioux tribes with guns, ammunition, and supplies on the premise that the South would fare better in the war if the Sioux created a diversion and went on the warpath deep in the heart of Union territory. A Sioux chieftain by the name of Little Crow advanced to the forefront amongst the Sioux tribes and became the acknowledged war leader. The time was ripe, the Indians were disgruntled, and like a match to tinder, the Great Sioux Uprising and Massacre occurred over the entire western and southern borders of the State of Minnesota during August of 1862. Figures show that the Sioux brutally killed, scalped, and mutilated 800 to 1000 white settlers. The Sioux took comely women and young girls as hostages-- they raped and killed many of them at the Sioux encampment. The Great Sioux Massacre and Uprising in Minnesota made Custer’s Last Stand at Little Big Horn some fourteen years later look like a Boy Scout picnic by comparison. But until now, few people appreciate this fact, because this story has not been widely publicized but rather has been downplayed.
The state of Minnesota responded. Alexander Ramsey, second governor of the state, appointed Henry Hastings Sibley, a statesman and the first governor of Minnesota, to the rank of colonel in the state militia. Further, he placed him in charge of recruiting volunteer soldiers to battle the Sioux and to orchestrate an all-out counterattack against the warring tribes. As the result, battles were fought at New Ulm, Fort Ridgely, Birch Coolie, and Wood Lake before the Sioux warriors were defeated and the hostages rescued at a place which came to be known as Camp Release. Less than 90 days after the Great Sioux Uprising occurred, the war was over.
It fell to Colonel Sibley, now promoted to Brigadier General Sibley of the Federal Union Army, to round up the perpetrators of the uprising and try them before a military commission. This process began at Camp Release and concluded at Fort Lincoln, an encampment outside of Mankato, MN where the Army held renegade Sioux held as prisoners of war. In all, the army sentenced over 300 warriors and mixed bloods to death by hanging. President Lincoln himself reduced this number to thirty-eight, and these Indians were publicly executed at the mass hanging at Mankato on December 26, 1862.
Hanging of Dakota Sioux
I obtained all of the above information from two books. The Life and Times of Henry Hastings Sibley, L.L.D., by Nathanial West, D.D., Pioneer Press Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1889, and Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars 1861-1865 published pursuant to an act of the Minnesota Legislature in 1889. Both of these source books provide a wealth of information. The second book includes the names of enlistees in the Indian war, their rank, and in many cases, their age, their date of discharge, their date of death in battle, and the result of their injuries sustained in battle. Official correspondence of historical figures, most notably, Henry Hastings Sibley, is also included in these chronicles, and as they are all in the public domain, they are available for use in writing The Revenge of Little Crow.
Little Crow
Little Crow
From this historical background, I created the historical fiction The Revenge of Little Crow. The story evolves around a colorful old fictional character, Toby Ryker, who has inhabited my imagination for the last 30 years. I have written two other stories around this character in his later years of life. In 1862, Toby Ryker was 42 years old. I took the liberty of appointing him the chief scout for the Sixth Minnesota Regiment—he was under the historical character Colonel Crooks, and later, under the command of historical figure Colonel Sibley. I created several secondary fictional characters to interact with real-life historical characters throughout the story line. These characters include Faye Knutson, the 300-pound Swedish whore of Toby Ryker, who is a disarming piece of work in her own right. Sergeant Aloysius Bodine, so named because I like the sound of it, was a cook and friend and confidant of Ryker’s. Toby’s fictional parents, Oliver and Fawn Ryker, also play a small but integral role in the story line, as Oliver was a Hudson’s Bay fur trader and Fawn was an Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indian whom Oliver bought to be his bride. This makes Ryker a mix-blood, and is the basis of a major conflict within the story line. Half Indian and half white, he can identify with both sides of this horrible war, and is forced to struggle with his emotions throughout the story line. Add to these fictional characters a young lad of ten years named, David Stewart, whose parents and family were killed in the massacre, and who also plays a role as a protagonist adult in the Toby Ryker stories. Added to this line up is Deputy U.S. Marshal John McQuiston, whose family was killed in the uprising. McQuiston, even though he is a victim of the war, is also a real nincompoop who becomes an unsympathetic antagonist character. In the first of the series of Toby Ryker stories, he also appears as an antagonist until Ryker gets fed up with him and kills him.
Combining the historical with the fictional is the realm of the writer’s art, and to the extent that the writer succeeds in this task, the story takes on a life all of its own with dynamic characters, both prominent and secondary, who intermingle with each other and who actually tell the story of The Revenge of Little Crow. As the author, I am but the conduit – the person who commits the story to paper on behalf of these characters. Hopefully, The Revenge of Little Crow presents a balanced view of the interests of both Native Americans and the white Minnesotans in this sad chapter of Minnesota history. To the extent that it accomplishes this, I, as the author, have achieved my goal.
The Revenge of Little Crow is available both as an Ebook download and as a print-on-demand book at Lulu.com, and can be found on the main page of the website stevenulmen.com by click through on the book cover thumbnail. The book is also soon be available through such online bookstores as Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
