Execution of the thirty-eight Sioux Indians, at Mankato, Minnesota

Source: Execution of the thirty-eight Sioux Indians, at Mankato, Minnesota, December, 26. Milwaukee : Milwaukee Litho. & Engr. Co., c1883 June 12.
Mankato Minnesota, ca. 1883. 
Milwaukee: Milwaukee Litho. & Engr. Co., June 12. 
Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003672892/.

Date: December, 26, 1862

Text/Transcription:

Framed by four layers of onlookers, including ordinary people and U.S. soldiers, thirty-eight Isanti (Santee Sioux) soldiers stand on the podium with nooses around their necks, awaiting execution for their participation in the Dakota Wars (August-September 1862), one of several military campaigns against Indigenous populations during the Civil War and Reconstruction. 
More than three hundred Isanti were sentenced to die, but President Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentence of all but the thirty eight men pictured here. Collectively, they were part of the approximately two thousand Isanti soldiers and their families who were marched across the territory and incarcerated in Minnesota, many at Fort Snelling. The event marked the largest mass execution in U.S. history. This commemorative print, commissioned by local newspaper publisher John C. Wise, marked the twentieth anniversary of the execution.