the scene depicted on this page, the execution of thirty-eight
on December 26, 1862, used to fascinate me when, as a boy in
Minnesota, I would visit the Blue Earth County Historical Museum.
Apart from its macabre appeal, the picture impressed me because it
the most famous event in the history of my hometown** (easily
in significance the death there of an obscure ex-Vice
Colfax-- who died
changing trains on his way back from the Black Hills). The
trials which condemned over three hundred participants in the 1862
Conflict, stands as the largest mass execution in American history.
the unpopular intervention of President Lincoln saved 265 other Dakota
from the fate met by the less fortunate thirty-eight. The mass
was the concluding scene in the opening chapter of a story of
conflict that would not end until the Seventh Cavalry completed its
at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. (CONT-->)