Inkpaduta and the Road to Spirit Lake

This marker remembers Inkpaduta, a Wahpekute Dakota leader, and the events that began near here at Smithland. During the savage winter of eighteen fifty six and eighteen fifty seven, one of the worst in a century, settlers at Smithland disarmed Inkpaduta's hungry band and forced them out of a camp near the Missouri River. The dispossessed group traveled north up the frozen valleys toward the Okoboji and Spirit lakes.

In early March of eighteen fifty seven, over several days, they killed more than thirty settlers and took four women captive, among them a young woman named Abbie Gardner. It became known as the Spirit Lake Massacre, the last large clash between settlers and Native people in Iowa. Gardner survived months of captivity, was ransomed, and spent the rest of her life preserving the memory of the site she had lost.