Spirit Lake Massacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Spirit Lake Massacre was a minor uprising by renegade members of the Wahpekute Sioux, in protest of the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. Led by local chieftain Inkpaduta (Scarlet Point), a group of 14 Sioux attacked Spirit Lake, a settlement in the northwestern territory of Iowa near the Minnesota border. The settlement was comprised of settlers from Milford, Massachusetts. The Sioux proceeded to kill between 35 or 40 settlers from March 8-9, 1857. Although initially thought to have been committed by outlaws, the massacre would be the first of a series of incidents leading up to the Sioux uprising in eastern Minnesota only five years later. The former site of the Spirit Lake settlement is now occupied Camp Foster, a YMCA youth summer camp, where several legends and ghost stories stemming from the incident still exist.

The massacre was later depicted in the silent film With Sitting Bull at the Spirit Lake Massacre in 1927.

[edit] References

Keenan, Jerry. Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, ABC-CLIO, Inc.: California, 1997.

[edit] Further reading

Carley, Kenneth. The Sioux Uprising of 1862. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1976.
Meyer, Roy W. History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.
Sharp, Abbie Gardner. History of the Spirit Lake Massacre. Des Moines: Iowa Printing, 1892.