THE FOOL SOLDIERS: A Tale of the Dakota Uprising of 1862 - Softcover

RYDRYCH, W. J.

9781976758942: THE FOOL SOLDIERS: A Tale of the Dakota Uprising of 1862

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1976758947 ISBN 13: 9781976758942

Publisher: Independently published, 2018

During August of 1862, while the Civil War was raging and the frontier states had been stripped of most of their manpower, the M'dewakanton band of the Dakota branch of the Western Sioux Nation left their Lower Sioux reservation on the Minnesota River in southern Minnesota and rose in rebellion. Hundreds of settlers were killed, and sizable towns, such as the German settlement of New Ulm, and army bases such as Fort Ridgely, were besieged. Included was an attack on the small settlement at Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota early in the uprising; an attack in which three white women and eight children were taken captive. While little reported in history books, overshadowed by the Civil War and the more glamorous conflicts to occur later on the western prairies, this was the largest Indian uprising in American history, and one of the few times army forts and sizable towns were ever attacked or besieged. This story recounts how a group of teenage youths of the Lakota (aka Teton) , a branch of the Western Sioux Nation that had migrated to the western prairies long before, reacted to the stories of the Dakota uprising in Minnesota. A story of a 'quixotic' adventure in an attempt to rescue the white captives taken in the attack on Lake Shetek; an action that led to their being given the name 'fool soldiers' or 'crazy band.. An action that left them shorn of most of their possessions and ostracized by many.

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