Dakota in exile The untold stories of captives in the aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota war

In this superbly researched and expertly written account of suffering inflicted on the Dakota after their uprising in Minnesota during 1862, Clemmons (Illinois State) keys into the experiences of Robert Hopkins, whom history caught in a stupendous double bind. As a Dakota, he was hated by many immigrant European Americans, who stereotyped all Dakota as savage scum worthy of extermination. As a Christian convert and preacher, most of his own people ridiculed Hopkins. Clemmons writes with passion, precision, and a wonderful eye for personal detail that takes readers to the scene. In excerpts from letters by Hopkins and others as well as contemporary newspaper accounts, immigrants seethe with a drive for vengeance against the Dakota, herding them into prisons where many starved and became mortally ill from several diseases as well as lack of heat in winter. On reservations that were little more than open-air concentration camps, Dakota slowly starved on "cottonwood soup"--"a large tank of cottonwood boards … filled with water, flour, and a small piece of pork.… Dakota families received one ladle of this 'thin gruel' every other day. … By all accounts, the soup was inedible and 'had a very offensive odor.'" Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Bruce Elliott Johansen, emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha (emeritus)

In Conflicted Mission, Clemmons (history, Illinois State Univ.) began her chronicle of the Minnesota frontier in 1835 with the arrival of missionaries who endeavored to "save" the Dakota. While living and working with the Dakota into the early 1860s, the missionaries documented how the mistreatment of Native peoples set the stage for the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. The author's latest work focuses on the U.S.-Dakota War and its catastrophic consequences to the Dakota, including the mass execution of 38 Dakota men in Mankato, MN, in 1862. Many of the men who were spared the gallows by President Abraham Lincoln were imprisoned for several years at Iowa's Camp Kearney while their families were dispersed to the Crow Creek Reservation. In 1866, the men were released and allowed to reunite with their families at a reservation in the Nebraska Territory. The Dakota were unable to return to their homelands since Minnesota had banned them from its boundaries. VERDICT Both works by Clemmons are recommended to anyone interested in the history of the Midwest as they tell of the maltreatment that led to the removal process endured by the Dakota, a group whose horrific experiences were overshadowed by the U.S. Civil War.-John R. Burch, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.