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TIM POST: This is a special time of year for Ed Red Owl. As summer blends with fall, he often thinks of history-- the history of his family, the Dakota people, war. It's a complicated road full of sharp curves and dead ends. When he arrives in 1862, there's a moment of clarity.

ED RED OWL: I think of the conditions that they must have had in August of 1862. The crops were not doing well. The agents had failed to provide what they had committed to provide to the people. It didn't happen. And I view it as an act of desperation.

TIM POST: The remnants of war are still evident in the Minnesota River Valley. There are battlefield markers, monuments, a few buildings. Kathleen Backer lives in New Ulm. She's related by marriage to settlers killed in the war. Despite the war's impact on her family tree, she's not bitter.

KATHLEEN BACKER: This was devastating to a family. This was devastating to humanity. And there were broken hearts and broken families on both sides.

TIM POST: After the war, it was easier for the settlers to recover. They had the public and the government on their side. The enduring heartache of 1862 is with the Dakota. Some still avoid Mankato. The memories of the hangings are too fresh. Ed Red Owl lives in Sisseton, South Dakota. He still feels the emotion left by the snap of the ropes.

ED RED OWL: We've never really come out of that grief and mourning. We are yet afflicted with that. We seem to be a mourning people at times.

[FLUTE TUNE]

TIM POST: The Civil War battlefields were bloody in the summer of 1862. Minnesotans were shocked by the number of soldiers killed. But problems were building in their own state.

The Dakota reservation was a place of unhappiness and unrest. The Indians lived along the Minnesota River. The reservation went from New Ulm to the South Dakota border. In the summer of 1862, the Dakota were hungry. Dan Fjeld of the Minnesota Historical Society says their crops had failed the previous fall.

DAN FJELD: There is a potato blight, and there's infestation of bugs. Because of what's going on here, the Dakota don't get out on the fall hunt. Then in the winter of '61-'62, a terrible winter, terrible winter. Heavy snows, everybody snowed in and people are starving.

TIM POST: Fjeld stands near a stone warehouse that survived the war. It was stocked with food in 1862, but the government refused to hand it out. In an earlier treaty, the government promised to support the tribe with food and yearly payments.

But in 1862, the government money was late. Indian agent Thomas Galbraith was a stickler for policy. The food and the money were always distributed together. He held to that in 1862 with disastrous results.

DAN FJELD: Thomas Galbraith really dropped the ball. And he drug his feet. He should have distributed the food. There was Dakota starving out here.

TIM POST: Tensions built through the summer. At one point, hundreds of Dakota began carrying off food from a storehouse. They were stopped by soldiers armed with cannon. There was a meeting between the government, Indians, and traders. One of the traders was Andrew Myrick. Fjeld says the meeting broke down when Myrick made one of the most infamous comments in Minnesota history. To set the stage, Fjeld says first an Indian spoke.

DAN FJELD: "This is our reservation and yet you go out and you cut our grass for your animals. You cut down our trees for your building and for your fire. You shoot our game, which we have very little of anyway. It's ours. You leave it alone."

And Andrew Myrick says, "Well then, if you want it, then you eat your grass. And we won't trade with you." The interpreter, he doesn't want to say it. They don't want to say it. He's forced to say it.

And it's said that a hush just falls over the entire Dakota just for an instant. And it's dead quiet. And a yell erupts from out of the Dakota people. Some described it almost as a battle cry.

TIM POST: Myrick's "let them eat grass" remark was dehumanizing and implied Indians were like horses or cattle. Soon after, the killing began. On August 17, a Dakota hunting party killed several settlers about 40 miles north of the reservation. This strike sparked intense debate on the reservation. Many Indians favored war to clear the Minnesota River Valley of settlers.

[FLUTE TUNE]

Elmer Weston is 81 years old. He lives on the Flandreau Indian Reservation in eastern South Dakota. As a young boy, he can remember his grandfather and others talking about what they saw in 1862. Weston says on August 18, an Indian covered his shotgun with a blanket and walked into a store located on the reservation.

ELMER WESTON: He said, I want to show you people how to do things. He walked by this clerk sitting at the table writing something. When he went by there, he pulled the trigger and he shot him. That was the first white man they killed there.

TIM POST: Among the many casualties that day was the trader Andrew Myrick. He was found with grass stuffed in his mouth.

[FLUTE TUNE]

The war spread quickly. The main fighting was in the Minnesota River Valley, but extended south to Iowa and west to the Dakotas. Major battle sites included New Ulm, Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee, and Wood Lake. The war lasted five weeks. US troops finally broke the Dakota offense. It was a bloody end to years of turbulent relations.

Dakota spiritual leader Gary Cavendar says one of the great lessons of 1862 is a simple one.

GARY CAVENDAR: We should learn that when you make a deal, you're making a deal. And hold to those deals, holds to those issues that you made in that deal. That no matter if the man carries a rifle or a bow and arrow, you're on equal terms, because you both have something that the other one wants.

TIM POST: The Dakota signed several treaties with the government in the years leading up to the war. They were basically land for money swaps. But the Indians lost faith in the government after it reneged on promises. Six years before the war, a government farming supervisor on the Dakota reservation wrote of the resentment.

FARM SUPERVISOR: It cannot be wondered at that the Indians are dissatisfied and constantly complaining. They often go as far as to accuse the government of stealing their monies. Nay, they have at times asserted the same thing of the president and all the officials under him.

TIM POST: Indians were not the only ones to condemn government treatment of the Dakota and other tribes. In 1867, Congress set up something called the Indian Peace Commission. Among its members was the famous Civil War General William Sherman. In its report to the president, the commission said the federal government had treated Indians unjustly. It was especially critical of the bureaucrats who controlled treaty payments.

COMMISSION: That there are many bad men connected with the service cannot be denied. The records are abundant to show that gents have pocketed the funds appropriated by the government and driven the Indians to starvation. It cannot be doubted that Indian wars have originated from this cause. The Sioux War in Minnesota is supposed to have been produced in this way.

TIM POST: But in Minnesota, after the war, there was no sympathetic ear for the Indians. There was no acknowledgment of the role that broken treaties and corrupt bureaucrats played in the war. When the fighting ended, the worst was still ahead for the Dakota. They lost the war and would soon lose their nation.

[STIRRING MUSIC]

The German settlement of New Ulm was the center of resistance against the Dakota in 1862. These days, the glockenspiel in downtown New Ulm attracts a crowd of tourists to its noon concert. Many of the tourists will also visit battle sites from the 1862 war.

The Dakota attacked New Ulm twice-- on August 19 and the 23. Darla Gephard works with the Brown County Historical Society. Gephard says Charles Flandrau was in charge of the city's defense. Standing on a downtown sidewalk, Gephard describes a key moment.

DARLA GEPHARD: If you look kitty-corner across the street, from the barricades was the Kiesling Blacksmith Shop. And the Dakota, by this time, were inside that blacksmith shop. And Flandrau said if we don't make a stand, they are going to come out of the blacksmith shop, go over the barricades, and they're going to take the town.

So they did get a group of men that finally went over the barricades themselves and flushed the Dakota out of the blacksmith shop and burned it to the ground. And he said that was a turning point in the battle. It was the first time that they felt that they were not on the defense.

TIM POST: Joining the residents of New Ulm were hundreds of settlers fleeing the Dakota assault. Free-roaming bands of Indians broke off from the main war army to attack farms and travelers. Settlers were killed in places with names like Acton, Milford, and Slaughter Slough.

There's never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, but estimates range from 300 to 800. Historian Don Heinrich Tolzmann says the Dakota War killed more civilians than any other war until the attacks of September 11.

Alan Woolworth studied the 1862 war for more than 40 years. He was curator for the Minnesota Historical Society. He says the settler killings are still controversial.

ALAN WOOLWORTH: This is a very sore point with my Dakota friends. We simply don't discuss it. The whole conflict was a tragedy. No one won it.

The Dakota Indians lost everything. Their society, their world was destroyed. They were scattered. And many, many hundreds and thousands of white settlers fled. And many of them had very bitter memories of this event.

TIM POST: Woolworth offers one explanation for the attacks on settlers. The Dakota were doing what they had always done in war-- kill or capture everyone in their path. The question of whether the settlers were the victims or the cause of the war is still debated.

ANGELA CAVENDAR WILSON: In 1862, there really were no innocent white settlers in Minnesota.

TIM POST: Angela Cavendar Wilson teaches history at Arizona State University, but she grew up in the Minnesota River Valley. Her home is steeped in Dakota tradition. She admits her views are controversial. She says whether they knew it or not, settlers were part of a government policy to drive Indians from their lands.

ANGELA CAVENDAR WILSON: When whites came to Minnesota, they came either knowing, believing, hoping that the Dakota would be exterminated or forcibly removed.

TIM POST: Most descendants of settler families disagree. They say German immigrants had no knowledge of government Indian politics. Many settlers had Dakota friends. Mary Blank says her great grandfather often played with Indian children before the war.

MARY BLANK: I really believe that if my great grandfather and his parents had not befriended the Native Americans, I wouldn't be here speaking about it.

TIM POST: Many Dakota rescued white settlers. The most famous, John Other Day, led more than 60 settlers to safety. Still, the death toll was high. When he was an old man, Christ Spelbrink wrote an account of the war. Mary Blank reads a portion of her great grandfather's story.

MARY BLANK: "Floriau Hartman was working in the field when his wife came through the cornfield to bring him some refreshments, when she saw, to her horror, her husband shot down and two Indians a short distance away. She ran to him and tried to drag him into the nearby cornfield, which she was unable to do, and so had to leave him to his terrible fate."

TIM POST: Most of the settlers were killed on the first day of the war, August 18. Several hundred more were captured and held by the Dakota until the war ended in late September. The killings triggered an avalanche of bad press for the Indians.

Most newspapers demanded all Dakota be executed or removed from the state. But some of those closest to the war were not so vengeful-- Christ Spelbrink for one. Once again, Mary blank reads from her great grandfather's writing.

MARY BLANK: "Had the Indians been treated as agreed, honest and upright, this bloody day in Minnesota's history would have been avoided. But as it was, the Indians never had a square deal."

TIM POST: After the war, the surviving settlers had a hard time, especially orphaned children. Brown County historian Darla Gephard says damage payments were made, but little trickled down to the orphans.

DARLA GEPHARD: They knew that their parents, who were killed in the Dakota war, had owned a farm. That farm was gone when they came of age. And if you look at our tax rolls after 1862, you see tax forfeiture sales all over the place.

[VIOLIN MUSIC]

TIM POST: Time softened the jagged edges of war for most of the settlers. Minnie Buce Carrigan was a little girl when she was captured and held for six weeks by the Dakota. 40 years after the attack, she wrote about the war and the friends she lost. Any bitterness was replaced with a longing for the scenes and the images of childhood.

MINNIE BUCE CARRIGAN: The creek near our home, where the lovely white cherry blossoms were so thick that they looked like a white sheet. Little Pauline and Minnie Kitzman, my sister Augusta and I often brought our aprons-full home to make garlands out of them. Years after, when I used to see the white cherry blossoms, I used to wish that I could go back and cover the graves of my little friends with the flowers they love so well.

[VIOLIN MUSIC]

TIM POST: It was much harder for the Dakota to forget and forgive. Spurred on by public anger over the settler killings, the government hanged 38 Indians in late December. Most historians now believe the convictions were based on flimsy evidence. They say innocent people were hanged.

In 1863, Congress threw out all treaties with the Dakota. Money promised the Indians instead paid the settlers war claims. All Dakota land was confiscated. And in the crowning blow, the Dakota were expelled from the state. Those Indians who had fought and those who had not were treated the same. For good measure, the Winnebagos were also kicked out, even though they played no part in the hostilities.

ANGELA CAVENDAR WILSON: 1862 is very real to us as Dakota people today.

TIM POST: Historian Angela Cavendar Wilson.

ANGELA CAVENDAR WILSON: The problems that we have in our contemporary communities are a direct consequence of losing our homeland, and it needs to be addressed.

TIM POST: The Dakota have been a divided nation since 1862. White civilization split the Indians into factions. The government encouraged the Dakota to become farmers, Christians, students. Dakota traditionalists were angered by these new Indians. They might burn their crops, kill their livestock or worse.

John LaBatte has studied the war from all angles. His ancestors were Dakota and French. He says the Indian nation fractured under the weight of the war.

JOHN LABETTE: Not all of the Dakota Indians started that war, and not all of the people who fought in the war committed the worst atrocities. That only a small group made all of the Indians look bad.

TIM POST: Little Crow led warriors into battle. But chiefs like Wabasha, Wacouta, and Traveling Hail opposed war. Many of the chiefs said killing settlers was wrong, but LaBatte says they were ignored.

JOHN LABETTE: Some of the Indians were forced into the war by threat of death if they didn't join. Some of the Indians fled the area. Some of the Indians never were involved. They were out on their Buffalo hunts, but they were blamed for the war.

TIM POST: When the fighting ended, Dakota turned against Dakota. Some volunteered to serve as scouts for the US Army. Most did it to escape exile to one of the new reservations.

Ed Red Owl of Sisseton, South Dakota, says the scouts set up a screen of camps across North and South Dakota. Their job was to shoot any Indian returning to Minnesota. As many as 300 were killed. Red Owl says any scout disobeying the shoot to kill order was subject to military execution.

ED RED OWL: One of the chief scouts here tells the account of encountering his own nephew. And when he saw his nephew coming, he said, "I had tears in my eyes, but yet I had the orders of the United States Army to fulfill. And so before my own eyes, I shot him until he died."

[FLUTE TUNE]

TIM POST: After the war, the Dakota became a transient people. Their new home was wherever the government decided to send them. As one tribal website puts it, the Indians were moved from state to state like a piece of unwanted baggage. First to Fort Snelling, then down the Mississippi River to Davenport, Iowa.

Letters written by the Indian prisoners at Davenport are just now being made public. The Flandreau Dakota are translating the letters. This one describes a disease-ridden prison camp.

PRISONER: "I'm going to tell you about something bad that I know. I grew up on this earth, but now for six months we are suffering greatly. I did not hurt anyone. And now, two of my younger brothers were hung and also two died of common death. I am the last of the brothers living because God had pity on me."

TIM POST: Disease and starvation followed the Indians to their next stop, Crow Creek, South Dakota. Some went south to Nebraska. Others wound up in northeast South Dakota, close to their old homeland. Some ended up in North Dakota and Canada.

[FLUTE TUNE]

Time has not erased the divisions of war for the Dakota. Ed Red Owl says it's a nation split geographically and philosophically since 1862. Consider what some say is the modern day economic savior of Indians-- casino gambling. Before 1862, resources were shared among the Dakota. But today, bands rich on gaming profits refuse to share with those living in poverty.

ED RED OWL: At times, there's instances of generosity of a band for some of their Western cousins in the Dakotas or Montana or Nebraska. But again, it's only a token. There isn't an overwhelming sense of responsibility as it once existed.

TIM POST: He says the feeling also extends down to individuals. He says many Dakota have withdrawn from the world outside their home or reservation. If they try to reach out, they often face discrimination. And there's still evidence everywhere that the winners of history are in charge. Angela Cavendar Wilson says consider how the state honors Alexander Ramsey. He was Minnesota governor in 1862.

ANGELA CAVENDAR WILSON: In Redwood Falls, which is adjacent to the Lower Sioux community, there is a Ramsey Municipal Park. And can you imagine being a resident or a member of the Lower Sioux community, and every day being reminded that Minnesota celebrates the man who called for the extermination of our people.

TIM POST: But there are some Dakota who call this whining. Lee Taylor is a former chairman of the Flandreau Dakota, now working for the Minnesota Historical Society.

LEE TAYLOR: We can't forget what happened in the past. We've got to learn from history. But we have to move on and learn how to get along together, I guess.

TIM POST: That can start with something as simple as recognizing that each life matters. In 1862, 38 Dakota were executed in Mankato. Reporters wrote down their final words. They chanted a simple call for recognition. "I am here." It's a cry that still echoes today. Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio.