Chief Little Crow: The End of a War

Near this spot on July third, eighteen sixty-three, a farmer named Nathan Lamson and his son Chauncey shot and killed Taoyateduta, known to Americans as Chief Little Crow. He had been the reluctant leader of the Dakota in the United States-Dakota War of eighteen sixty-two, the largest armed conflict between the United States government and a Native nation in Minnesota history. Little Crow had initially counseled against war, telling his people that the Americans were as numerous as the leaves of the trees.

But after annuity payments were withheld and Dakota families faced starvation, he led the uprising. After the war ended he fled to Canada, then quietly returned to Minnesota. He was picking raspberries when he was shot.

Nathan Lamson collected a five hundred dollar bounty. Little Crow's skull and scalp were displayed publicly in Saint Paul for years. A marker erected in nineteen twenty-nine acknowledges this ground as the place where a war's last chapter closed.