Captured by the Indians : Reminiscences of Pioneer Life in Minnesota

The brutal bloodletting of over 800 civilians during the Dakota War of 1862 was meant to drive out the white American settlements from Minnesota while the Union was preoccupied with more headline grabbing battles like the Second Battle of Manassas and Antietam. The war took its toll between Mid-August and Late- September 1862 when Little Crow, the leader of the Dakota, surrendered his 269 captives at Camp Release. Minnie Buce Carrigan’s memoirs of living in the Minnesota River Valley are unlike the “Little House on the Prairie” series of children's books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Minnie’s tales of the 6 weeks during her childhood spent as a captive of the Dakota Sioux are in no way a children’s story and probably a reason why so many have never heard the story. Told matter-of-factly with no punches pulled, she spares no details in the harshness and struggles of a captive’s life.