Monuments

Little Paul

I want to speak to you now of what is in my own heart. Give me all these white captives. I will deliver them up to their friends. You Dakotas are numerous—you can afford to give these captives to me, and I will go with them to the white people. Then, if you want to fight, when you see the white soldiers coming to fight, fight with them, but don't fight with women and children. Or stop fighting.

So said Little Paul, Paul Mazakutemani, a Christian Dakota to Little Crow and his warriors, a couple thousand of them, plus hundreds of white prisoners. Having suffered some defeat in the month-long Dakota War of 1862, Little Crow had headed up river to the Upper Agency to draft other bands of Dakota warriors into the fight, by force if necessary. He'd determined that the only way to win the war and sweep the area clean of all those homesteaders was to increase his troop strength.

But the men from the Upper Sioux Agency wanted no part of war, nor had they from the beginning. At that moment, when they saw the hundreds of white women and children--and mixed bloods--held captive in such wretched conditions, they were appalled.

“The Americans are a great people,” Little Paul told the warriors from Little Crow’s encampment. “They have much lead, powder, guns, and provisions. Stop fighting, and now gather up all the captives and give them to me. No one who fights with the white people ever becomes rich, or remains two days in one place, but is always fleeing and starving.”

When Little Crow’s people turned around and went back east empty-handed, the Dakota from Upper Sioux painted their bodies and readied themselves for war—not against the whites, but against their fellow Dakota people. For a time, such a horror seemed imminent.

Then Little Paul lined up his warriors in the middle of Little Crow’s camp and made an incredible offer. “I will go over to the white people. If they wish it, they may kill me,” he said. “If they don’t wish to kill me, I shall live. So all of you who do not want to fight with the white people, come over to me. I have now one hundred men. We are going over to the white people. Deliver up to me the captives. And as many of you as don’t wish to fight with the whites, gather yourselves together today and come with me.”

Some bloodied warriors did cross over and join with the farmers from the Upper Sioux Agency, but Little Crow swore to fight on. He told those who sided with Little Paul that, should the whites capture him, they would surely put him in a cage like an animal. He wasn’t wrong. He told them he much preferred death.

Little Paul and his Christian Indians were peacemakers, but they were also pragmatic. After all, they’d long ago thrown in their lot with the very palefaces who’d robbed the Sioux of their land, their heritage, and their culture. They were church members, Christians, who were already "scratching the soil" as if they were women, or so the warriors believed. They'd taken up farming just like the white man directed. To Little Crow and his battle-weary warriors, they were already traitors to their people. For some time already, they’d cut their hair and taken to wearing shirts and pants as if they were white men. 

To the white families who were still alive and not murdered along the Minnesota River in August, 1862, Little Paul’s “Christian Indians” were blessed ministers of peace. No one saved more human beings during the Dakota War than the Christian Indians. 

*

On a hill above the small town of Morton, Minnesota, a pair of monster monuments stand, but you’ll be lucky to find them, should you look. They are not well-marked. On a trip through the country maybe ten years ago, I asked a retired man who was working in the local museum where I might find them. He didn’t appear to know what I was talking about. One of those huge monuments is dedicated to Little Paul and the other “faithful Indians.”

Today, in calling those Indians “faithful,” the monument is painfully politically incorrect to lots of Native people. Some, I'm sure, these days especially, white and Dakota alike would rather have those monuments brought down. They'd rather no one saw them. Placed there in 1899, those two monuments weren’t hard to erect for the children of the white settlers who’d suffered so horribly. But today, their presence likely irritates the children of at least some of the Dakota.

Perhaps no one should talk about what happened so many years ago along the Minnesota River. Maybe the whole story is too full of the sin in every beating heart, no matter what the color of your chest. 

Me?--I wouldn't want those monuments ravaged, but neither am I uncomfortable with their being tucked away beneath some tall hardwoods. "Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing," someone important once said, "so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

I'd like to believe there may be something of relevance in those words.