"The Day of Realization"-- Flandreau, SD

River Bend Church, Flandreau, SD

The real climax of the story, what she herself might call the eternal climax of the story, occurs when she travels to Flandreau, South Dakota From a decidedly Christian interpretation of her story, the seemingly impossible reconciliation that happened there was an event that would not have happened without war, but neither would it have happened without both sides—Ms. Gardner and the Santees--wanting to reconcile, or at least, in Christian language, wanting peace in their hearts.

Flandreau, South Dakota, is a small town somewhat less than an hour west of the greatly revered Catlinite quarries at Pipestone, Minnesota. A few white settlers were in the region when, in 1868, 11 years after the massacre, many Santee Sioux families moved north and east from their reservation in Nebraska to claim farmland there, around a bend in the Big Sioux River.

Abbigail Gardner begins her narration of the Flandreau story this way:

On Sunday, September 26, accompanied by C. H. Bennett and wife, and H. L. Moore and wife, a drive of some fifteen miles was made to Flandrau [sic], visiting on this occasion the Indian Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. It seemed as though a miracle had been wrought in this region and the day of realization was at hand. Here at Flandreau the red man and the white man are brought face to face in daily contact, living, as it were, next door neighbors, the Indians commanding the utmost respect of the white residents.

What she says she witnessed in Flandreau is a degree of shalom she had never seen before on the frontier. Something that clearly thrilled her was going on in this small South Dakota town. Understanding her incredulity at the “utmost respect” she witnessed, once again, requires some historical background.

Historians have claimed—as Ms. Gardner does in her memoir—that the Dakota of the Minnesota River reservation were emboldened by Inkpaduta’s crimes and his having escaped punishment. That he and his band roamed free after the slayings meant depredations against settlers showed the white man’s disregard for what the Wahpakutes had done: Inkpaduta’s freedom made more attacks easier. After all, well-defined links existed between the blood shed on the shores of Spirit Lake in 1857, and Lake Chetek and New Ulm in 1862, in the Dakota War The Wahpakutes and the Santees spoke a similar language; they were all Dakota Sioux people.

What Abbie Gardner doesn’t say in her description of the Flandreau visit is that there may have been a handful of Santees at Flandreau who, years earlier, were part of Inkpaduta’s bloody band. In that town, in two churches, she had to know that.

But on Sunday, September 26, 1892, Abbie Gardner Sharp wasn’t the only soul in those churches who had suffered horrors; so had the Santees who were that day sitting in hand-cut benches. She doesn’t mention their suffering, but, again, it’s impossible to believe she didn’t know. It was the Santees, led by their headman Little Crow, who had raided the Lower Sioux Agency at Redwood Falls on August 18, 1862, the frontier town of New Ulm a day later, and Fort Ridgely on the 20th and the 21st. During the Dakota War, the total number of settlers murdered in a one solitary month of raids will never be known; historians estimate between 450 and 800, all of them murdered after the bloody fashion of Abbie’s own family and their neighbors. 

During the Dakota War, hate boiled over into death throughout the Minnesota River valley. When it was over, mass trials, some no more than five minutes long, determined the fate of the more than 400 Dakota warriors accused of atrocities. When tallied, the military tribunal found 303 men guilty of rape and murder, and thereby sentenced to be hanged.

The grave of Little Crow, Flandreau, SD 

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Tomorrow: The Santees' travail after the Dakota War.