INSCRIPTION:

In honor of Amos Owen, Norman Crooks and Hereditary Chief Ernest Wabasha for their lasting efforts towards reconciliation among all people.

Grandfather, I come to you this day in my humble way to offer my prayers for the thirty-eight Dakota who perished in Mankato in the year of 1862.

To the West, I pray to the Horse Nation, and to the North, I pray to the Elk People.

To the East, I pray to the Buffalo Nation, and to the South, the Spirit People.

To the Heavens, I pray to the Great Spirit and to the Spotted Eagle.

And Below, I pray to Mother Earth to help us in this time of reconciliation.

Grandfather, I offer these prayers in my humble way.

To all my relations.

—Amos Owen

Reconciliation Park Founders: Hereditary Chief Ernest Vernell Wabasha • Mankato Mayor Stanley Christ • Louis G. "Bud" Lawrence, Co-chairman • James H. Buckley, Sr., Co-chairman • Jim Petersen • Bruce and Sheryl Dowlin • Perry Wood • Jeffrey Kagermeier, A.I.A. • Tomas M. Miller, Sculptor. (dedicated) September 21, 1997

INSCRIPTION:

In honor of Amos Owen, Norman Crooks and Hereditary Chief Ernest Wabasha for their lasting efforts towards reconciliation among all people.

Grandfather, I come to you this day in my humble way to offer my prayers for the thirty-eight Dakota who perished in Mankato in the year of 1862.

To the West, I pray to the Horse Nation, and to the North, I pray to the Elk People.

To the East, I pray to the Buffalo Nation, and to the South, the Spirit People.

To the Heavens, I pray to the Great Spirit and to the Spotted Eagle.

And Below, I pray to Mother Earth to help us in this time of reconciliation.

Grandfather, I offer these prayers in my humble way.

To all my relations.

—Amos Owen

Reconciliation Park Founders: Hereditary Chief Ernest Vernell Wabasha • Mankato Mayor Stanley Christ • Louis G. "Bud" Lawrence, Co-chairman • James H. Buckley, Sr., Co-chairman • Jim Petersen • Bruce and Sheryl Dowlin • Perry Wood • Jeffrey Kagermeier, A.I.A. • Tomas M. Miller, Sculptor. (dedicated) September 21, 1997

An artist's depiction of the public execution of 38 Dakota hanged by the US military on Dec. 26, 1862 for alleged war crimes. It is the largest mass execution in US history. Most historians now believe that many of those executed were innocent of the charges against them.

-Artist: J. Thullen, 1884. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society.

The site of the execution of the 38 Dakota warriors on Dec. 26, 1862 in Mankato took place at what is now 100 East Main Street, the location of the Blue Earth County Library. In 1987, Governor Rudy Perpich proclaimed the year 1987 to be the Year of Reconciliation, a statewide attempt to foster healing and education between non-Dakota and Dakota people.

To commemorate the Year of Reconciliation, the statue "Winter Warrior" was unveiled on Dec. 26, 1987 near the site. The statue weighs two tons and stands six feet tall. It was carved by Tom Miller. The statue is located to the left in this photo.

Dakota Memorial Inscription:

"The last act of the Minnesota Dakota (Sioux) War took place here in Mankato on December 26, 1862 when thirty-eight Dakota Indians died in a mass execution on this site.

The Dakota War was a culmination of years of friction between Dakota and whites as settlement pushed into Indian hunting grounds. Government agents and missionaries hoped the Dakota could be taught to live as farmers and worship as Christians but Chief Big Eagle said many years later, "It seemed too sudden to make a change . . . If the Indians had tried to make the whites live like them, the whites would have resisted and it was the same with many Indians." The Minnesota uprising was one of the nation's most costly Indian wars, both in lives lost and property destroyed. It resulted in the near depletion of the frontier and the exile of the Dakota from Minnesota.

At the war's conclusion several hundred Indians were tried by a five man territory commission and on November 5, 1862, 303 were sentenced to death. Henry B. Whipple, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota met with President Abraham Lincoln on behalf of the Indians. After listening to the bishop and personally reviewing the trial records, Lincoln commuted the death sentence for all but thirty-eight prisoners.

At 10 am on December 26, 1862, the condemned men, chanting the Dakota death song, marched in single file to a scaffold guarded by 1,400 troops in full battle dress. A crowd of citizens were on hand to witness the largest mass execution in United States history.

The first memorial reconciliation ceremony, sponsored by the Native Americans and Mankato community, was held on this site November 5, 1978, in an endeavor to move forward together as one people striving for social change and equality through education and understanding."

Closeup of Winter Warrior Statue

Winter Warrior statue, 100 East Main Street, Mankato, Minnesota

Inscription on the Winter Warrior Statue

The First Mahkato Memorial Wacipi

INSCRIPTION:

This memorial is to honor those Dakota who created the First Mahkato Wacipi in 1972.

The Wacipi is to remember the thirty-eight Dakota executed in Mankato in 1862 and to create a spirit of reconciliation between the people of Mankato and the Dakota people.

The following Dakota people with members of the Mankato YMCA planned the first Wacipi:

Amos & Ione Owen • Wallace & Gertrude Wells, Sr. • David Larsen, Sr. • Norman & Edith Crooks • Amos & Rosemma Crooks • Hereditary Chief Ernest & Vernell Wabasha.

Co-founders: Bud Lawrence and Jim Buckley, Sr.

"I'd like to share that with the rest of the world. Maybe we can come upon something where we can all live as brothers." —Amos Owen

Site of the Mahkato Memorial Wacipi, held annually to remember and honor the Dakota 38