The Minnesota Valley Historical Society (MVHS) was formed in 1895 under the leadership of Charles D. Gilfillan to determine and mark sites significant to the US–Dakota War of 1862 in Redwood and Renville counties. MVHS was largely Gilfillan’s project. He founded it, was its principal leader during its most active period, and personally funded significant portions of its work. After his death in 1902, MVHS became much less active, and the group dissolved in 1915.
Before Gilfillan founded MVHS, the Minnesota state legislature had appointed him to a commission in charge of erecting a monument to commemorate the Battle of Birch Coulee—a project completed in 1894 in Morton, Minnesota. MVHS was Gilfillan’s effort to extend this work of creating public markers of the US–Dakota War. More specifically, as reported by the New Ulm Review, MVHS sought to mark “the early battle grounds and camping places” that represented Dakota attacks on the Lower Sioux Agency and settler-colonists in the surrounding area, with an emphasis on attacks made on August 18, 1862.
The choice to focus on these specific events is explained in Sketches Historical and Descriptive of the Monuments and Tablets Erected by the Minnesota Valley Historical Society in Renville and Redwood Counties, Minnesota, published by MVHS in 1902. MVHS argued that historians consistently overlooked the US–Dakota War due to its concurrence with the US Civil War. Citing the loss of settler-colonist lives (estimated at over 600 over the course of the six-week-long war) and the value of property damage, MVHS claimed the US–Dakota War was “the most formidable and important Indian War in American history.”
MVHS carried out the majority of its plans in 1898. In a short period of time, it erected approximately twelve granite historical markers. Six of them pertained to the Dakota attack on the Lower Sioux Agency on August 18, 1862: a small monument marking the grave of J. W. Lynde, who was among the first settler-colonists killed; three markers of the locations of trading houses where the attack began; a monument to US soldiers killed at Redwood Ferry; and a marker of the supposed location of the frame house of Taoyateduta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow), dated August 18, 1862. An additional marker at the Lower Sioux Agency identified the location where Henry Sibley’s military commission conducted trials of accused Dakota prisoners.*
Four markers on the battlefield of Birch Coulee identified the locations of specific moments during the battle. A lone marker in Redwood County was installed near the Minnesota River at the location of Camp Pope, from which Sibley launched part of the Punitive Expeditions against the Dakota in the summer of 1863.
The largest and most famous MVHS monument, erected in 1899, is known as the “Faithful Indians” or “Loyal Indians” monument and stands fifty-two feet tall near the Birch Coulee State Monument. A virtue is inscribed on each of the four sides of the plinth: “Humanity,” “Patriotism,” “Fidelity,” and “Courage.” MVHS’s 1902 publication explains the monument was made “to honor the services of those Indians who have been of eminent service to the whites” during the US–Dakota War. MVHS applied strict criteria to determine which Dakota individuals had been “truly loyal to the whites throughout the entire period of the outbreak,” which excluded mixed-race and/or métis individuals and required them to have saved the life of at least one settler-colonist. Only six individuals were chosen to have their names inscribed, and a significant portion of MVHS’s 1902 publication is dedicated to biographies of the inscribed and analyzing the definition of “truly loyal.”
The interpretation that MVHS offered in its 1902 publication and memorialized through its historical markers and monuments presented an incomplete view of the US–Dakota War. Since MVHS aimed to honor the settler-colonist victims of the war, it omitted informative context, including the series of events leading to the war, widespread Dakota opposition, and limited Dakota participation. It also overlooked the noncombatant Native Americans targeted by the concentration camp at Fort Snelling and the Punitive Expeditions, which aimed to expel all remaining Dakota and Ho-Chunk people from Minnesota after the war.
*Editor’s note: The MVHS marker mischaracterized the trials organized by Sibley in 1862 as a “Court Martial”; more precisely, the proceedings were convened by a military commission. For debates surrounding the trials’ legitimacy, as well as Sibley’s authority to convene them, see Chomsky, Haymond, and Herbert, cited in the bibliography below.