Mad in Pursuit Notebook
Capturing History: from Tragedy to Souvenir
I decided to update my inventory of Native American photos. Among the romantic Edward Curtis gravures were pages from an old carte-de-visite photo album—a humble scrap of a thing. The top photo was a woman and two children, who didn't look at all Native American.
What the heck?
But there on the second page was a photo of "Little Crow," dressed like a Euro-American dignitary. The rest of the photos were miscellaneous landscapes.
Looked like I was going to have to read the tiny script of the handwritten labels.
On the front said, "Bought in St. Paul, Aug. 12, 1863." The Civil War raged, but far from St. Paul, Minnesota.
👉 I dug out my magnifying glasses to read the inscription under the family photo.
Mrs. Eastlick, taken prisoner by the Santee Sioux (aka Dakotas) 1862. The boy took care of the babe for 10 days. Carried it 50 miles and lived on berries & roots.
👉 At the bottom of the page was a faint pencil note in Jim's hand: "Sioux Revolt, Aug. 1862."
👉 The label under Little Crow's portrait said, "A Sioux Chief and Leader of the Indian Massacre of 1862 in Minnesota."
I quickly learned that the "Dakota War of 1862" was a thing. Wikipedia was all over it.
After the Louisiana Purchase, as settlers moved into Santee Sioux territory, tribal leaders like Little Crow went to Washington and negotiated treaties. The Sioux ceded their ancestral land to the settlers in exchange for federal support on reservations, where hunting turned out to be poor.
No surprise, corrupt local officials held up payments and food distribution. The Sioux were starving.
In August 1862, a band of Sioux in southwestern Minnesota rose up.
The 1862 conflict, now known as the Dakota War of 1862, marked the start of an ongoing confrontation until the Wounded Knee battle in South Dakota on 29 December 1890, when over 300 Sioux were killed by U.S. soldiers. [ Massachusetts Historical Society, Photographs of Native Americans].
👉 Mrs. Eastlick was indeed captured, after her husband and several children were killed. Her little boy did indeed carry the baby through the wilderness to safety. She became a minor celebrity in the uprising lore [1], then wrote her own memoir [2].
👉 Little Crow. Through intermediaries, he tried to make the tribe's case to the authorities (see the published letter below). Finally defeated, a fugitive, he was eventually spotted by a settler near Hutchinson, Minnesota, and shot dead. His body was scalped, mutilated, and publicly displayed. The Minnesota legislature later awarded the shooter a $500 bounty for killing Little Crow and $75 for the scalp. [4]
👉 The photographer. The owner of these photos bought them from Whitney's Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota. Who was this Whitney that got photos of both the leader of the revolt and the survivors?
I discovered that Joel Emmons Whitney was one of those intrepid pioneer photographers who documented history as it unfolded in 1860s Minnesota [3]. Photography was a fairly new eyewitness to the world. Massive cameras with multiple lenses and coated glass-plate negatives made mass-market images possible, even before newspapers could print them.
The conflict between natives and newcomers was a major turning point in Minnesota history. Whitney preserved their faces. A mere five weeks after Little Crow was killed, our anonymous buyer wanted souvenirs and bought these photos. And they were precious enough to be preserved, owner to owner to owner, for more than 160 years—eight generations.
I discovered this fragment of history on 4th of July weekend, when my Facebook feed was filled with patriotism and the wisdom of our Founding Fathers.
But I had just received a strong message from the Yankee north of the1860s. We Americans were still operating from the mindset of colonialists. We had purchased "Louisianna" from the French, fair and square, right? So, why shouldn't an expansionist government and their local minions mistreat the indigenous people in acts of heedless genocide? Why shouldn't settlers think the land was theirs to farm, kept safe by a trustworthy government?
I was rattled. It's not like I was unaware of history. But handling this fragmentary piece of evidence—images from the Big Story of 1862 Minnesota, enjoying continuing notoriety in 1863 St. Paul—made it more visceral.
What did we learn? Have we progressed at all?
Notes
[1] "Lavina Eastlick Tells of the 1862 Sioux Massacre at Lake Shetek, Minnesota (Fanny Kelly ep. 11)" read aloud on YouTube
[2] "Thrilling incidents of the Indian War of 1862: being a personal narrative of the outrages and horrors witnessed" by Lavina Eastlick and Ross A. Irish. Goodreads
[3] Joel Emmons Whitney, The Autry's Collection Online.
[4] Little Crow's full story is told in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
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