Length3h 31m
About this audiobook
Every morning in July 1862, a Dakota woman walked past the empty flour barrels behind the agency warehouse on the Minnesota River and turned her head to look, as though they might have filled overnight. They never did. The annuities the United States owed her people for the land they had ceded in 1851 had been due in June. They were not lost. The pork and flour sat crated in St. Paul and the money sat counted in a ledger, while the government poured everything it had into the Civil War.
In mid-August four young Dakota men killed five settlers at Acton, and within a day the war had begun. For six weeks it burned across the valley: the attack on the Lower Agency, two assaults on Fort Ridgely, the street fighting at New Ulm, Birch Coulee, Wood Lake. Hundreds of settlers were killed. By late September the Dakota who had fought under Taoyateduta, the leader the Americans called Little Crow, were beaten.
A military commission sentenced 303 men to death, some after trials that lasted minutes. Lincoln reduced the list to thirty-nine, one man was reprieved, and on December 26, 1862, thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged together at Mankato, the largest mass execution in American history. Little Crow was shot the next summer while picking berries, and most of the Dakota left in Minnesota were sent into exile at Crow Creek. And the annuity gold? It had reached Fort Ridgely on August 18, the day after the killings at Acton.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length3 hrs 31 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 18, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1: The River and the Paper
2Chapter 2: Acton
3Chapter 3: The Agencies Burn
4Chapter 4: Fort Ridgely, First Attack
5Chapter 5: New Ulm
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 6: Birch Coulee
7Chapter 7: Wood Lake
8Chapter 8: The Trials
9Chapter 9: The Hanging
10Chapter 10: Exile
11Chapter 11: Little Crow's Road
12Chapter 12: The Earth Is Weeping
13About the Author
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