page_title: Lake Shetek State Park
section_title: Lake Shetek Massacre
hierarchical_section_title: Lake Shetek State Park / Cultural history / Lake Shetek Massacre
caption_attribution_description: English: Koch Cabin, built by settlers Andreas and Christina Koch in 1859 on the northeast shore of Lake Shetek, Murray County, Minnesota, USA. Andreas and 14 others were killed in an attack during the Dakota War of 1862. The cabin has been moved from its original site into Lake Shetek State Park, onto the site of the contemporaneous Duley Cabin.
context_page_description: Lake Shetek State Park is a state park of Minnesota, United States, on Lake Shetek, which is the largest lake in southwestern Minnesota and the headwaters of the Des Moines River. It is most popular for water recreation and camping. However the park also contains historical resources related to the Dakota War of 1862, including an original log cabin and a monument to 15 white settlers killed there and at nearby Slaughter Slough on August 20, 1862.
  The park and lake were developed by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Two districts of park structures built in the National Park Service rustic style are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_section_description: By 1862 about half a dozen families had formed a small settlement along the eastern shore of Lake Shetek, totaling perhaps 40 adults and children.  At least four cabins were located within the current park boundaries, at the time the very edge of the frontier.  The growing Euro-American population, however, was making it increasingly difficult for the native Dakota people to pursue their traditional lifestyle.  Resettlement on reservations, treaty violations by the United States, and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota.
  On August 20, 1862, two bands of Dakota led by Lean Grizzly Bear and White Lodge swept through the settlement, killing two men while letting the others flee.  The settlers gathered at the southernmost cabin, where the leader of a third band, Old Pawn, offered them escape if they left behind their belongings for the other Dakota to loot.  The whites headed east but the angry Dakota soon appeared and fired on the group.  John Eastlick shot and killed Lean Grizzly Bear, and the settlers took cover in a slough.  The Dakota fired into the slough over several hours, killing John Eastlick and others and wounding many more.  Old Pawn promised safety to the women and children, but violence erupted again as they emerged from the slough and several were killed while others were taken captive.
  Ultimately 15 settlers from six families were killed.  21 settlers lived through the attack at the slough and made their way across the prairie to safety.  Three women and eight or nine children were captured and taken west.  That November the surviving eight captives were ransomed from White Lodge's band by a group of young pacifist Lakota and eventually reunited with their families.
  Two months after the attack a military burial detail interred the victims in a temporary mass grave near the slough.  A year later the remains were reburied closer to the lake, where they still lie.  White settlers largely abandoned the war zone for the next four decades.  In 1905 and again in 1921 the Minnesota Legislature earmarked money for a monument on the site, but Murray County officials did not take action.  Finally, with the backing of state senator Louis P. Johnson, a government-funded monument was erected over the gravesite.  The 25-foot-tall (7.6 m) granite pillar was dedicated on August 3, 1925.  Since the monument was surrounded by private property, four years later Johnson initiated legislation that declared a 10-acre (4.0 ha) state park around the site.
  In the following decades the original Koch family home was used as a vacation cabin on the grounds of the Tepeeotah Resort, before being donated to the county in 1960.  It was moved into the state park in 1962 on the site of the Duley Cabin.  For the centennial of the massacre that year, 1,500 people were in attendance.  High winds knocked over some flagpoles, injuring an Eastlick descendant.  A state park official deadpanned in a report to the director, "Eastlick blood was again spilled at Lake Shetek."
caption: The restored and relocated 1859 Koch Cabin
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