Honoring the Women ride
Donation protected
My name is James Hallum and I live on the Santee Sioux Indian reservation in Nebraska. I want to tell you a story and about our upcoming ride and of the Isanyati, Live by the Knife or Santee Dakota Indians.
This story is about the exile our people, The Dakota who were forced into a war with the US government called the Minnesota Uprising of 1862 in the US history books, This all started or was caused by broken promises, treaties by the US government, shady dealings and for the want of the land by the people of Minnesota and the US government . These dealings caused undue hardships on our people from starvation to atrocities on our people within our own reservations. This was a short lived war with many casualties on both sides.
After the uprising the people fled to the four directions and have never been together as a people since. Then there was the trauma inflicted upon the people from first seeing 38 of our warriors publicly executed or hung by the neck in Mankato, Minnesota on December 26th, 1862. This was the day after Christmas. This hanging was ordered by President Lincoln . Then the ones who had surrendered with promises of leniency being punished. First to go were our able bodied men being imprisoned at a prison in Davenport, IA. Lastly it came to the
women or grandmothers being exiled from our traditional homelands that being Minnesota to a far off place called Crow Creek, SD. While there having to endure horrible atrocities and conditions.
While being transported to Crow Creek by riverboat they the women were chained two by two in slaveship conditions. Over 1300 on a riverboat with room only to stand .Having to eat rancid pork and hardtack or hard bread which caused sickenesses and deaths and the only water being from the Missouri river. There are many who are buried along the river. Many decided to end it all by jumping into the river to escape the conditions and drowned.
Some of these atrocities or crimes while at Crow Creek are to me unmentionable but must be told. One is being raped by the US soldiers stationed there to guard them, this being encouraged by the commander to dehumanize the people with no age limits on the women and later rape from the surrounding area white men. Then having to watch as their children died from either starving to death from the lack of food or due to sicknesses from the conditions and elements. Inadequate shelter, clothing, rotten food and no doctors all contributed to these deaths with over 300 children dying during the first six months there.
The women had to turn to doing the unmentionable
later in order to feed their children, from digging through horse manure to find grain to make soup to later selling their own bodies in trying to keep the children alive.
I am an enrolled member of the Santee tribe. I have worked within the schools, with the children and have witnessed first hand the devastating effects of historical and intergenerational trauma. I see it in the people and the children in the schools and want to help. I too suffer from the effects and became a alcoholic at an early age but have been in recovery for many years and can relate first hand these effects.
As a people we help each other as best we can and our group wants to help. To us the horse is medicine and we use them to help heal. This is the fourth and final year of our ride. We started this ride to honor our grandmothers from back then. For doing what they had to to keep the children alive. This is history that was and still is unknown to a lot of the Dakota and the US public as it is the hidden and no seen in the US history books. The people never spoke of it due to the trauma it affected on them.
This is part of the story of the Santee Dakota trail of tears, from the mass hanging of 38 of our warriors at Mankato, Minnesota on December 26th, 1862 to their arrival June 1st 1863 at Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota. The decendants of these survivors now live there at Crow Creek, also on the Santee Sioux Indian reservation in Nebraska, Sioux City Iowa and the Flandreau Santee Sioux Indian reservation in Flandreau, South Dakota and some have drifted back to other reservations in other states.
We the Sacred Horse Society of the Santee, Yankton, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Sissitown and the Omaha Nations are having our fourth final memorial ride to Honor the Women. We committed ourselves to doing four rides to bring about healing to the people. The number four also has a spiritual significance to us.
We will be leaving the Santee reservation Nebraska May 25th at 8:00 am and will once again ride horseback to the Crow Creek Indian reservation. This is a178 miles and we plan on riding for six days and camping out at different locations and to get there at a nearby location on the 30th and have a day of rest and an inipi or sweat lodge ceremony on the 31st.
On the 1st of June we are planning to ride in and have an honoring for the women who endured back then and also for the over 300 children who perished under those harsh conditions. We also want to honor the women and girls alive today for still being the backbones of the nation, for keeping the people together and holding on to our way of life and traditions as best they can in todays society. We will also be having a Wokiksuya or thank you ceremony.
The date of the June 1st also has historical significance to us as it is the day the Dakota people were first brought to Crow Creek in 1863. These were mostly women and children and to them the start of nightmare that was to last for the next three years. Exiled to a place where there were no resources for the people and the land foreign from the beloved woodlands of Minnesota.
We want to honor those women, our grandmothers for what they did, doing anything to try to keep the children alive under such conditions. Honor them for being mothers. With nothing available but still doing what they had to obtain resources for the children .
The people went through so much trauma back then from bounties placed on their scalps after the war with documentation on this in the Minnesota historical society; 200.00 dollars for a mans scalp, 100.00 for a womans and 50.00 for a childs back then.
Then there are the horror stories of what happened to the people while held at Fort Snelling, Minnesota and Davenport, Iowa. So much trauma with no healing. This is why we are doing this to start this healing.
The ones involved right now are with the Sacred Horse Society, which includes Hazel Hallum Victoria Hallum , Della Flute, Perry Little, Jessica Little, James Sazue, Seth Eastman, John Estes, Gerald Zephier, John Beheler and family, Corby Harrison of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Barry Thompson, Belinda Reincounter, Pat Lamere, Bill Wells, Dennis Eagle Horse and family, Claude Two Elk, Jeshua Estes, Kenny Fourcloud , Wilfrid Keeble and family, Sky Byington, Buck Scouts Enemy, Walt Spirit Eagle, Mike Standing Soldier, Gary Weddell, Noah One Star, Joe and Shane Shields, Roger Head and family, Patty Bordeaux, Pearl Kirkie and family, the Nape Duta Drum group, Phil Ross, Verna Round Head, Alvin Long Crow as well as myself and many many more tribal members from the Santee, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Yankton, Sisseton, Omaha and other tribal nations.
So right now we are at a stage of making this final ride, and thank you ceremony a reality . I really wish we could just do it with our own resources but sometimes the costs can be unsurmountable. So we are asking that if you can find it in your heart to help us make this goal a reality and bring about some healing for the people.
I want to say pidamiya pedo to all that read the story and pray that it gave you some insight on what the people have gone through and also want to say that there are Crow Creeks just like this that happened to the native peoples all across Turtle Island or America.
This story is about the exile our people, The Dakota who were forced into a war with the US government called the Minnesota Uprising of 1862 in the US history books, This all started or was caused by broken promises, treaties by the US government, shady dealings and for the want of the land by the people of Minnesota and the US government . These dealings caused undue hardships on our people from starvation to atrocities on our people within our own reservations. This was a short lived war with many casualties on both sides.
After the uprising the people fled to the four directions and have never been together as a people since. Then there was the trauma inflicted upon the people from first seeing 38 of our warriors publicly executed or hung by the neck in Mankato, Minnesota on December 26th, 1862. This was the day after Christmas. This hanging was ordered by President Lincoln . Then the ones who had surrendered with promises of leniency being punished. First to go were our able bodied men being imprisoned at a prison in Davenport, IA. Lastly it came to the
women or grandmothers being exiled from our traditional homelands that being Minnesota to a far off place called Crow Creek, SD. While there having to endure horrible atrocities and conditions.
While being transported to Crow Creek by riverboat they the women were chained two by two in slaveship conditions. Over 1300 on a riverboat with room only to stand .Having to eat rancid pork and hardtack or hard bread which caused sickenesses and deaths and the only water being from the Missouri river. There are many who are buried along the river. Many decided to end it all by jumping into the river to escape the conditions and drowned.
Some of these atrocities or crimes while at Crow Creek are to me unmentionable but must be told. One is being raped by the US soldiers stationed there to guard them, this being encouraged by the commander to dehumanize the people with no age limits on the women and later rape from the surrounding area white men. Then having to watch as their children died from either starving to death from the lack of food or due to sicknesses from the conditions and elements. Inadequate shelter, clothing, rotten food and no doctors all contributed to these deaths with over 300 children dying during the first six months there.
The women had to turn to doing the unmentionable
later in order to feed their children, from digging through horse manure to find grain to make soup to later selling their own bodies in trying to keep the children alive.
I am an enrolled member of the Santee tribe. I have worked within the schools, with the children and have witnessed first hand the devastating effects of historical and intergenerational trauma. I see it in the people and the children in the schools and want to help. I too suffer from the effects and became a alcoholic at an early age but have been in recovery for many years and can relate first hand these effects.
As a people we help each other as best we can and our group wants to help. To us the horse is medicine and we use them to help heal. This is the fourth and final year of our ride. We started this ride to honor our grandmothers from back then. For doing what they had to to keep the children alive. This is history that was and still is unknown to a lot of the Dakota and the US public as it is the hidden and no seen in the US history books. The people never spoke of it due to the trauma it affected on them.
This is part of the story of the Santee Dakota trail of tears, from the mass hanging of 38 of our warriors at Mankato, Minnesota on December 26th, 1862 to their arrival June 1st 1863 at Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota. The decendants of these survivors now live there at Crow Creek, also on the Santee Sioux Indian reservation in Nebraska, Sioux City Iowa and the Flandreau Santee Sioux Indian reservation in Flandreau, South Dakota and some have drifted back to other reservations in other states.
We the Sacred Horse Society of the Santee, Yankton, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Sissitown and the Omaha Nations are having our fourth final memorial ride to Honor the Women. We committed ourselves to doing four rides to bring about healing to the people. The number four also has a spiritual significance to us.
We will be leaving the Santee reservation Nebraska May 25th at 8:00 am and will once again ride horseback to the Crow Creek Indian reservation. This is a178 miles and we plan on riding for six days and camping out at different locations and to get there at a nearby location on the 30th and have a day of rest and an inipi or sweat lodge ceremony on the 31st.
On the 1st of June we are planning to ride in and have an honoring for the women who endured back then and also for the over 300 children who perished under those harsh conditions. We also want to honor the women and girls alive today for still being the backbones of the nation, for keeping the people together and holding on to our way of life and traditions as best they can in todays society. We will also be having a Wokiksuya or thank you ceremony.
The date of the June 1st also has historical significance to us as it is the day the Dakota people were first brought to Crow Creek in 1863. These were mostly women and children and to them the start of nightmare that was to last for the next three years. Exiled to a place where there were no resources for the people and the land foreign from the beloved woodlands of Minnesota.
We want to honor those women, our grandmothers for what they did, doing anything to try to keep the children alive under such conditions. Honor them for being mothers. With nothing available but still doing what they had to obtain resources for the children .
The people went through so much trauma back then from bounties placed on their scalps after the war with documentation on this in the Minnesota historical society; 200.00 dollars for a mans scalp, 100.00 for a womans and 50.00 for a childs back then.
Then there are the horror stories of what happened to the people while held at Fort Snelling, Minnesota and Davenport, Iowa. So much trauma with no healing. This is why we are doing this to start this healing.
The ones involved right now are with the Sacred Horse Society, which includes Hazel Hallum Victoria Hallum , Della Flute, Perry Little, Jessica Little, James Sazue, Seth Eastman, John Estes, Gerald Zephier, John Beheler and family, Corby Harrison of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Barry Thompson, Belinda Reincounter, Pat Lamere, Bill Wells, Dennis Eagle Horse and family, Claude Two Elk, Jeshua Estes, Kenny Fourcloud , Wilfrid Keeble and family, Sky Byington, Buck Scouts Enemy, Walt Spirit Eagle, Mike Standing Soldier, Gary Weddell, Noah One Star, Joe and Shane Shields, Roger Head and family, Patty Bordeaux, Pearl Kirkie and family, the Nape Duta Drum group, Phil Ross, Verna Round Head, Alvin Long Crow as well as myself and many many more tribal members from the Santee, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Yankton, Sisseton, Omaha and other tribal nations.
So right now we are at a stage of making this final ride, and thank you ceremony a reality . I really wish we could just do it with our own resources but sometimes the costs can be unsurmountable. So we are asking that if you can find it in your heart to help us make this goal a reality and bring about some healing for the people.
I want to say pidamiya pedo to all that read the story and pray that it gave you some insight on what the people have gone through and also want to say that there are Crow Creeks just like this that happened to the native peoples all across Turtle Island or America.
Organiser
Jimmy Hallum
Organiser
Niobrara, NE
