Year: 1873

The greatest hanging that ever oc- cured in the United States took place in 1863 in the town of Mankato, Blue Earth county, Minnesota, which is sit uated near the southern border of the State. In the previous year great In dian war had ragged on the frontier, during which over seven hundred whites, mostly women and children, were mas- sacred, and on the defeat of the Indi- ans and end of the war three hundred and three of the savages were tried by court martial for murder and condemned to death. President Lincoln interfered, however, to prevent such a wholesale infiction of the death penalty, and re- spited all but thirty-ei who were hanged together in the presence of a vast crowd which had assembled from all directions to witness the execution,

 A correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial has recently conversed with witnesses of the terrible scene, who gave him full account of the affair. When the death warrant was read to the thirty eight condemned Indians they received their sentence very coolly. Not fully comprehending the import of the instrument at the close of the first paragraph they gave hearty grunt of approval; but as the reading proceeded and they discovered the drift of the document they refrained from further manifestations of appreciation, though they smoked their pipes composedly to the end.

 Nearly all of them maintained stoical demeanor up to the time of their execu- tion except when the caps were placed on their heads. These caps were made long and looked like meal sacks, but being rolled up only covered the fore head, allowing their painted faces to be seen. When they had been adjusted on few of the Indians, so that each could see the undignifed and grotesque effect on the others, they appeared to be exceedingly humiliated and disheart- ened. But they are described as hay ing gone cheerfully to the gallows, some even jostling and crowding the others in their eagerness to be first. As they ascended the scaffold the death song was started, and when they had all got up the noise of their deep, swelling voices was fearfully impressive.

 When the scaffold fell and left the thirty eight bodies dangling in the air, several of the condemned were seen en- deavoring to clasp each others hands. One young fellow managed to get a cigar under his white cap, and smoked 1t to the last. The Indians respited by President Lincoln were taken to an island in the Mississippi near Daven- port, where they were closely confined for year, after which they were trans ferred to barren reservation in an ex- tremely cold region, where they were turned loose to freeze or starve. ?

 The horrible execution at Mankato, the war preceding it, and the conse- quent butchery of the whites, all re- suited from long continued and in- iquitous system of swindling the Indians carried on by the traders and the agents of the Government. The leading chiefs in the disturbance of 1862 did not wish to go to war, but they had been robbed beyond endurance. At one time over four hundred thousand dollars due the Sioux was paid not to them but to a gang of traders on the plea of old in- debtment. They were also induced to sign papers which they could not read, and these papers were used to get money and goods belonging to them. On one occasion a famous chief named Red Iron was locked up in @ guard house by the Indian agents for refusing to sign one of these papers, and this act nearly precipitated an outbreak. At last, having been swindled out of their lands and the money which should have been paid them, and after losing fifteen hundred of their old men, women and children by starvation and exposure, they resolved to go to war after the In dian fashion, sparing neither women nor children.

 The story is shocking one but it is still more shocking to know that this and many others very much like itcould never have been told but for the infa- nous dishonesty which has character ized and still pervades the admins tration of Indian affairs.