Captain Jerome Dane, the Minnesota Ninth Regiment Company E and the “Sioux Uprising”
Jerome Dane: 1828-1908
My
brother-in-law recently contacted me after listening to a public radio program
about the Dakota War of 1862 and the mass hanging in Mankato, Minnesota of 38
men from the Dakota tribe, the largest mass execution in American history.
Knowing that I grew up just miles from Mankato, he wondered if I had ever heard
of this tragic event. Oh, yes, I responded. I am very familiar with the Dakota
War and the hangings in Mankato. I had learned about it as a child, when the
war was referred to as the “Sioux Uprising.” But I was more familiar with it
because my second-great-grandfather, Captain Jerome Dane, fought in the war and
commanded one of the units that provided security at the execution. He was an
eyewitness to a sad and ugly piece of history.
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| Captain Jerome Dane--1863 Civil War Photo courtesy of Minnesota Hist. Society |
The Dakota War of 1862 began in August of that year. The government had, as usual, reneged on the terms of treaties signed with the Dakota tribes, pushing them off their lands to make room for settlers and leaving the Dakota desperate and starving. After some young Dakota men were involved in a violent confrontation with some settlers, the Dakota went to war, attacking the mostly European immigrants who were homesteading in southern Minnesota. Over the next few months, somewhere between 400 and 800 settlers were killed, including women and children. The lightly defended forts in the area of the uprising, including Fort Ridgley near New Ulm, received reinforcements from the Minnesota Volunteer infantry units, which had been forming in response to the Civil War. The infantry units eventually defeated the Dakota people, leading to their expulsion from Minnesota and the horrific mass hanging in Mankato on December 26, 1862.
Jerome Dane
was born March 3, 1828 in Genesee, New York. His father died when he was only
seven, and times were difficult for his mother and siblings. When he was a
young man, Jerome and his brothers moved westward in search of a better life.
They first settled in Wisconsin, where Jerome married a young woman from
Wisconsin, Mary Jane Mills, in 1853. Jerome was then 25 years old. At some
point in the later 1850s, Jerome moved his young family to southern Minnesota,
settling in Blue Earth County not far from Mankato, where he took up farming.
Jerome was
also interested in the military life. He had served as a lieutenant in a
militia, so when it was time to begin recruiting Minnesota men to serve in the
Civil War, Jerome volunteered and was commissioned as a Captain in the Minnesota
9th Infantry. Since he lived near Mankato, he was placed in command
of Company E, which was being formed there. When the Dakota War began, this new
unit was close to hand and were sent by to defend the German community of New
Ulm about twenty miles distant.
The town of New Ulm was then the
largest city in that part of Minnesota, with 900 residents. As terrified
settlers fled the Dakota, the town’s population ballooned to nearly 2000. It
was a repeated target of attacks by the native fighters, and over the course of
several weeks nearly 190 structures in the city were burned. The town was
evacuated at least once, but residents returned and came under attack again.
 |
| Attack on New Ulm: 1904 Oil Painting by New Ulm artist Anton Gag |
Judge Charles Flandreau had been
placed in charge of the defense of the area, and he reported that in early
September, “Enough citizens of New Ulm had returned home to form two companies
at that point; Company E of the Ninth Regiment, under Capt. Jerome E. Dane, was
stationed at Crisp's farm, about half way between New Ulm and South Bend.”
Another history of the war states, “Company
E under Captain Jerome Dane, was temporarily mounted on horses and stationed at
New Ulm. Later Company F, of the Eighth Regiment, under Captain Leonard Aldrich,
was sent to New Ulm, relieving Captain Dane’s company, which was then stationed
at Crisp’s Farm, half way between New Ulm and South Bend.”
 |
| Settlers escaping the violence 1862 by photographer Adrian J. Ebell |
During his patrols with Company E,
Captain Dane discovered the corpses of settlers killed by the Indians and
helped to rescue and protect survivors. Of course the press was greatly
interested in the war, and wildly lurid stories began to be published, claiming
that people were nailed to fences and mutilated. Captain Dane apparently proved
to be source of colorful—and perhaps exaggerated—copy for eager reporters. As
reported by Gary Clayton Anderson in his book Massacre in Minnesota,
“Captain E. Jerome Dane rescued the
Lake Shetek survivors, including Lavina Eastlick, Smith, Bentley, Everett and
the others on August 26. A month later, as the story regarding the fence
incident escalated in the press, Dane gave his version of it to George W. Doud,
apparently on September 25. One young girl, Doud later reported, ‘was fastened
to the side of a house by driving nails through her feet and her head was
downward.’ Another young ‘lady was found scalped and all her garments were gone
and both of her breasts were cut off.’ Finally a woman ‘soon to be a mother’
had her baby cut from the womb, ‘her offspring had been severed from her and an
owl was deposited in its stead.’”
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| Lavina Eastlick and sons, Lake Shetek survivors protected by Dane's unit--Lavina had been shot three times and beaten; her husband and middle child killed. |
Doud’s lurid details were apparently
based in part on Captain Dane’s supposed eye witness testimony. Other witnesses
call Dane’s testimony into doubt. Burial parties reported the bodies they
buried—who admittedly were not the people Dane saw-- had been shot or stabbed;
no mutilation. Why would Dane have lied? Did he hope to further inflame
sentiment against the Dakota? Or was he merely eager for publicity and so chose
to confirm the crazy stories that already existed? Or did he actually witness
the atrocities as reported by Doud? We will never know for certain.
By December 1862, the captured
Dakota warriors were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. President
Lincoln commuted the sentences of some 200 Dakota, but let the death sentences
of the remaining 38 men stand. Nearly 4,000 people gathered in Mankato to
witness the execution. Several infantry companies, including Captain Dane’s Company
E, were assigned to provide security, to control the angry crowds. Confirmation
of this comes from the National Park Service’s Civil War records, which state:
“ Company "E" organized at Mankato and duty there;
at Lake Crystal, Judson, till April, 1863. Present as guard at hanging of
Indians at Mankato December 26, 1862. Mustered in November 14, 1862. Frontier
post service at Hutchinson, Forest City, Long Lake and Pipe Lake till
September, 1863.”
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| Scaffolds in Mankato surrounded by Infantry Units including Dane's Company E. Artist W. H. Child, original at Library of Congress |
I wonder
what Captain Dane felt when he saw the gigantic gallows in Mankato for the
first time. I hope he felt some pity for the 38 Dakota men when the mechanism
was triggered and they all dropped to their deaths at once. However, fear and anger
ran high among the residents of southern Minnesota who had lost so many
friends, neighbors and family, so I suspect he felt the deaths by hanging and
the expulsion of the Dakota people from the state were justified.
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| Painting of the December 1862 Execution by J. Thullen, courtesy of Minn. Historical Assn. |
As the
Civil War records note, Jerome’s Company E spent the next year providing frontier
post protection in southern Minnesota before they were sent to the front in the
Civil War. Jerome would go on to witness more cruel and violent incidents in
American history before he was able to return home to his farm in 1865.
Sources:
Minnesota In Three
Centuries, 1655-1908: Description And Explorations, By W. Upham. Lucius
Frederick Hubbard, William Pitt Murray, James Heaton Baker. Pg. 377.
Encyclopedia of
Biography of Minnesota, History of Minnesota by Judge Charles E. Flandreau,
1900, transcribed by Mary Kay Krogman. http://genealogytrails.com/minn/history_militia.html
“Union Minnesota Volunteers: 9th Regiment
Minnesota Infantry”. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UMN0009RI
Massacre in Minnesota:
The Dakota War of 1862, the Most Violent Ethnic Conflict in American History, Gary
Clayton Anderson. University of Oklahoma Press. Oct. 17, 2019.
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