surveys are available online and on our website. your thoughts are important to us, so please take a couple minutes to fill one out. i am introducing today scott w. berg, the author of "38 nooses: lincoln, little crow, and the beginning of the the frontier's end." it's the story of the summer of 1862 with the dakota wars and minnesota. a war that was very significant in the country but was virtually invisible because of the civil war going on and occupying our

presidents and were generals time. it also was involved with the largest scale execution in u.s. history. our author, scott berg, is a native minnesota and. the location of the defense in this book. he teaches creative writing at george mason university, is a contributor to "the washington post," and is the author of a prayer book about washington, d.c. called "the story of pierre charles l'enfant the visionary who designed washington, d.c.." it is on sale in our book attend. space berg will be signing in the authors area down here after the presentation. i have to talk about the book for me. i volunteered to be assigned a book to read, and when i saw that it was a very scholarly with lots of references book on

history, on a not particularly a history buff and not a civil war buff, yet from page 1i was completely mesmerized pity that this is an incredible story that more people should know about. it is not a proud time in the united states history. and i learned so much. our author has taken -- i don't know how he has done his research because it's not like you can hear videotapes or see the film of some of the little crow the indian chief, the dakota chief who is very much a central character of this book of lincoln and his involvement in the indian wars which basically he didn't want to be involved because the civil war was going on in the teaching his attention. so anyway, that he makes every one of the characters in this book vibrant, alive. you cared about them coming you care what happens to them and

it's a very disturbing moment in our history. you draw your own moral conclusions and reading the book and it's not -- it's not a good time for america. but if any -- don't be scared of reading this piece of scholarly history because it reads like the most exciting novel and i loved reading it and i love introducing scott berg. >> thank you for those kind words and all of you for being here on this overcast day. at george mason where i teach wheelan e-book festival that's not concurrent for this one that's called fall for the book and it's held in september. we are growing fast. this book festival is growing fast. there is a book festival on the mall as you know every fall. it's a wonderful area for this. what i enjoy it is that since we are such an author-rich area and

they do such a good job carving out their own niche so it's wonderful to be here to see the letter authors that are here and to see the mix of authors and this great set up that you have here you can drop into a tent and then dropping to another and listened. thank you come all of the organizers and to jo ellen. what i want to do is this is a story that when i grew 11 minnesota, as jo ellen mentioned, we've got to the area of years ago and i've been teaching at george mason almost all that time. and when i grew up in minnesota, this thing called the dakota war was part of our history, but in my high school and my elementary school and junior high we didn't cover it. if we did we covered it for a day and i don't remember it being covered come in yet as soon as i started doing a lot of writing history books and for the "washington post" about history and for other ve news about history, in the back of my

head i had this memory of this key thing called the dakota war it has to do with all of the scandinavian to sort of settle their and the minnesota vikings and the twins and a certain kind of progressive politics. but this event, the dakota war occurs in 1862, it occurs when the state is only -- is a frontier, northwestern frontier state, very much the frontier. chicago was considered the edge of the world for many people in the east and this is well beyond that. frontier story and the state is only 4-years-old at the time and there is all of the little political sword of american nations that go into making the state. but the story of the dakota war is the true origin but it's not just a local story. one of these efforts in this book is really to understand that this was a national story and i will be sort of getting

the flavor and a second. i want to be efficient with my time because i know there is a lot else to see so what i want to do is give you a flavor of the book by reading a very short excerpt and then talk about a couple things that jo ellen mentioned, i want to talk about the basic events and sort of frame it for you and then i do want to talk about a few of the central characters, the sort of kaleidoscope of people involved in this and ultimately the way they are remarkably connected so what i want to do first before i even talk about these events is read from just the introduction, this will take about ten minutes and then it doesn't start with a dakota war engines that almost 100 years earlier than the civil war to a farm in kentucky which was not a state yet then in 1786 that a connection to a very famous american family.

on a bright afternoon in 1786 when his family would be shattered in the course of his newborn country fervor altered, lincoln was 15-years-old. lincoln lived on the frontier in the far western portion of virginia in a region called kentucky most likely meaning the land of tomorrow or place of meadows. they were pioneers and like all pioneers in the ohio river valley in the late 18th century they were lucky just to be alive. four years earlier the lincoln family had crossed through the cumberland gap following a trail blazed by daniel boon and they were assisting their father as he enclosed a cornfield working to carve out an ever larger pocket of civilization on a parcel of land beside long run a branch of a branch of the new ha yo river east of the settlement

of louisville. as they helped position the fence in shot sounded. their father tumbled to the unknown and out of the woods emerged two or three indians. mordecai picked up his father's rifle and barked at josiah to move as fast as he could to the station 15 minutes distant to sound the alarm. they ran and reached the cabin his father had built just as he heard his other brother cry out. he turned to see thomas grasped by the here and trousers being carried towards the tree line. he required only analysts look and perhaps not even that to know the indians didn't intend to kill him the intended to take him. he leveled his gun and an end in late afternoon sun and a half moon pendant dangling against the chest of his brothers after. the teenagers ana was

remarkable, that one luck was with him. the indian went down. his companions vanished. thomas was not hurt. many years leader thomas's son, abraham comer risen higher in the world than any member of the lincoln plan could never have dared imagine what call this story the legend more strongly than all others in printed upon my mind and memory. abraham lincoln namesake of his murdered grandfather would never say much about his own early years in kentucky and embarrassed into a lifetime of silence by his family's shiftless less than the poverty come in yet this story of his grandfather killed by indians was told often enough in enough detail but indians longtime partner collecting books worth of reminiscences of the late president was able to record no fewer than six versions from four different colors all second and third hand accounts tracing back to thomas or mordecai.

like so many pieces of frontier color, the tale of death and the attempted abduction was the story of the westward expansion. tightly intertwined with breathless assumptions about the savagery of indians and the march of civilization. from abraham lincoln was nothing less than a back log of the posturing that helped push him towards the highest office in the land. being left and orphan at the age of six years in poverty in the new country, he wrote in 1848 during his single term as the united states representative from he became a whole the uneducated man, which i suppose is the reason why i know so little of my family history. had mordecai not shot selective replica thomas would have been carried off into the void, and thomas and mordecai's killings the indians emerged from their. they pop out of the trees and tucked within undifferentiated violence of nature to whose

embrace the return. they are without face, forum, a history or agenda. no part of the story told of the future president by his father and his uncle appears to have addressed why these particular indians would have killed his grandfather and made off with thomas. but in reality the encounter wasn't sudden or one-sided or on account will kentucky was still contested territory. the frontier fringe with a border. even by the free-for-all standards of the frontier settlement, kentucky didn't really belong to anyone. the men attempting to make off with thomas lincoln or most likely shawnees occupied the land on the ohio river near where cincinnati would rise when the 18th century they called it

our country, the shawnee is were the sons of the young the tecumseh, frontline combatants in the war renowned among white and other indian tribes for their fearlessness, of that ability, result in physical hollis. for many years - all these had been on the move shifting westward from river to river desk they chose retrenchment and survival for a final desperate stand that might mark the end of their independence. during the quarter century before and during the american revolution they fought to keep the british and then the americans east of the ohio river against odds that grew by the decade that by the lethal combination of epidemic disease carried by their opponents. the shawnees viewed themselves as a people fighting less for land or on your ban for freedom, a prize for which they fought in rootless ways burning cabins with settlers inside defiling dead bodies and preferring attack by ambush whenever

possible hitting hard and backing off in a cycle designed to create maximum fear and disruption while minimizing losses. additional knees were not bloodthirsty pitted on the contrary they could demonstrate years of the exchange to trade relationships and personal friendships to prove their amicable effort guarded approach. but those times were passed. in the 1780's a series of murders and the provisions by the white militia devastated several villages and enraged many of the shawnees responded to the loss of a young son or daughter by an old code, one that involves taking a white child in kind and raising it as they're known. this, in all likelihood, was thomas lincoln's intended fate. before 1860, and in his election of the presidency come abraham lincoln's life intersected defense on the indian frontier so seldom just twice in fact

that this intersection's served as a benchmark. the first was the death of his grandfather. the second occurred in 1832 when lincoln 32 volunteered as a soldier and the black hawk war backend was elected captain of his unit, the first taste of popularity at the polls. the success gave me more pleasure than i have ever had since. the blackhawk war took the lives of 77 whites and least 600 indians many of them women and children who drowned and were killed in a chaotic retreat across the mississippi river. lincoln himself saw no battle but cannot on the corpses of the soldiers and settlers. he never wrote or spoke about these encounters. taking it instead to the satirical jokes about military life, and the tails of his wrestling polis against a more physically gifted opponents in

his company's. lincoln's passing encounter with the reality of the frontier war was cemented once and for all by charles sanford whose biography included a tale of the future presidential launching his men to a fight in order to protect an old and hungry indian who had wandered into their camp. based on a fragmented description collected 34 years after the action, this has become the most famous story of succeeding him with indians trotted out to emphasize his brave the and compassion. during the 1840's and 1850's, the pathways bearing white settlers continue to wind their way west word treaty by treaty, displaced tribe by displaced tribes. by the second year of the civil war one prominent arm of the movement had arrived in the northwest to get not far away from where the mississippi river began in av rall beautiful brand new state called minnesota, the

name derived from the dakota word referring to the clarity of like water. in august of 1862 come as the confederate forces moved by all by myself towards washington, d.c., and lincoln struggled to connect the actions of union armies to the more exigencies of emancipation, he would once more be forced to consider the collision of whites and indians on the frontier. the dakota war first came to the president's desk as one far as the manifestation of the imagined confederate conspiracy and the decision to spare the lives of to under 65 condemned indians while sending 38 others to their deaths on a single scaffold and what still stands as the largest mass execution and the country's history. a conventional narrative of the united states indian conflict paints the civil war as a time of suspension during which the manpower and the industrial wealth of the union had to finish subjugating the south

before the federal government could return its attention to the tribes of the west. but violence between whites and a number of indian nations was very much a part of the historical fabric of the civil war era. by the time of the confederate surrender of lincoln's assassination of 1865, indian wars in the southwest had seen long walk of the navajo and the murder of the friendly cheyenne as well as the opening of extended campaigns of other tribes. before any of these events, however, the dakota uprising and christmas executions of 1862 sparked a sequence of confrontations call of the indian war of the northwest would culminate in such indelible moments as the battle of little bighorn, the flight of chief joseph, the killing of crazy horse and the tragedy of wounded knee.

just as whites discovered after battling the shawnees of ohio and kentucky and of illinois and wisconsin, there was no final clarity to be extracted out of the potent brew of the year, danger, hopelessness, anchor and injustice that boiled over in minnesota in 1862. there is only bravery and cowardice, kindness and hatred, forgiveness and a vengeance. the story full of larger-than-life characters that begins with a pre-dawn meeting on the prairie along the minnesota river where an aging village chieftain is asked to make the most difficult choice. so that is my training device for a story that eventually comes back to visit abraham lincoln. i want to give you a few facts of the dakota war because it is unfamiliar to many people. it was unfamiliar to me growing up in minnesota and tolino in my research here and there but

after i had moved here it sort of fill then. but here are the facts: a series of treaties had pushed the dakota indians about 8 million acres worth of land on to the 10-mile strip of land south of the minnesota river about 40 miles long. and in a century long series of grievance baliles gove reza often does with a very sort of small but tragic incident that happens on a farm in central minnesota when the dakota soldiers are held hunting very unsuccessfully getting into dispute with the farm family and with each other and nobody is sure what happened but in the end five settlers are dead and the dakota indians have stolen their team of horses and they are dashing back to the reservation along the minnesota river. once there, the story explodes

into a war and the book narrates how this happens. a small group of warriors decided that now is the time to push back against. in the six week battle it in stews in august and september and october of 1862. the causes are many and complex. and the book sort of goes through that. these were intense battles that were fought in the streets of the small towns of minnesota and they were fought in the fields and river valleys. the involve the retreat of the 2,000 dakota indians out onto the plains and the dakota, the involve the mastering and the reassignment of the thousands and thousands of soldiers, white soldiers that were slated for the union army. as a story coming out a military story, and lousy piece of the

larger fabric of the indian war of the northwest that come to include wounded knee and come to include little big horn, the story would have been taught in textbooks aside from those had it not occurred in the civil war not because this is the second period of the run and it is a period of very close to the time of antietam which is so close by year. this war does matter but it's the story of an entire northwestern settlement of the country and it is also the first spark that leads to the war that so many events were unfamiliar with, crazy horse and sitting bull, their lives and battles and direct outcomes of these events as the bochner rates. crazy horse must be after

michael jackson and after michael jordan and after benjamin franklin when the most recognized names in american history and this is part of that sort of fabric. the dakota war ends with several thousand dakota indians. in that altered form it applies to the in guantanamo bay. that series military commission trials which begins in a fairly familiar format they need to hurry and get off the planes and by the end of the trials they are happening in a day. eight dakota indians shackle that the hinkle are to be tried

all what one said the standards of evidence and the standard of prosecution and the assumption of innocence or guilt strike us today and struck many of the observers as ludicrous and a miscarriage of justice. and in the income of 303 dakota indians are sentenced to die on the same day, december 19th. a scaffold, they begin destruction on the scaffold that can hang 40 men all at once, and the idea here is that they are going to hang authority and then bring up the next 40 and then bring up the next 40, seven and half rounds. with the militia commanders and the enlisted newly sort of promoted union generals don't understand is that the military commission rules have been altered several times even in the first year of the civil war to indicate that all of these

sentences need executive review. that is when he becomes once again engaged. if you grow up in minnesota there is a story because at the end of this, lincoln estates to madrid 65 of the sentences he wasn't coming to them and he doesn't pardon them. he just holds them off for further judgment to enter a 65 of the sentences are state and 39 impleader changed 38 are not held. there is a story in minnesota that lincoln received and is the story that you will find in some of the books and textbooks even in a very, very important biographies of lincoln but lincoln received the records of these trials, and out of his compassion, he's all the way to reduce the number of executions to the smallest possible number. there is no doubt that lincoln was an extremely compassionate

man in addition to all of the other ways that he was an extraordinary president. one of the things this book outlines and becomes very clear when you sit down and read the records that are intended for over the national archives when you sit down and read the records and read the back-and-forth messages it becomes very clear that his attention was engaged to stand for most as a lawyer that whether what feelings he had in his heart for the group of dakota indians that he had never seen any of been there. but if you've read a lot about lamken coming you know the first religion he ever got was bill small. he was a circuit lawyer in the l.a. and it is where much of his view of the world was formed and he was very much a man that viewed is about all the way that a priest would you ever see and that is what he saw on the trial

records and that is a fascinating process that involves the department of interior lawyers and leaned in giving them instructions that involves a careful review of the records. and in this with a wink and a sort of extremely in remarkable moments. some of you may be familiar with the lincoln department. lincoln was killed there overnight for hours holding information in real time. this was the beginning of the real-time. the internet didn't start the real time era, the telegraph did. lincoln is sitting there sending a message a single often he would dictate messages. there is the scene in the book where once these decisions are made, the two entered 65 sentences will be stated, and if 39 later changed to 30 and will remain in place. lincoln himself personally

writes the names, the phonetics spellings of the dakota names, the number on the trial records and the crimes of which they have been accused come he gives that to the secretary that is also an extremely important character in this book would increase its another copy and that is given the telegraph operators to send a west to save these 38. and that moment is extraordinary. lincoln does. 38 hangings take place and he gets into the diaspora of course of the dakota nation. but that's really only the skeleton of the story and the facts from some of the fact are not in dispute, others of the facts are in dispute and there's other ways to tell a story like this. it's been told. you talked about scholarly history. and grabbed the book read that we to you because i'm not a scholarly historian. i do scholarship i don't want to pretend i don't.

my always bleeding in the national archives and the state historical societies and county historical society's, the scholarship happens but my background is in storytelling. my degree in creative writing this is what we call nonfiction narrative and it does attempt to sort of bring together the human stories first of all and very early when i was looking at the story i found that the mix of characters to things happen, the mix of characters vote in the east and out on the frontier was extraordinary. what became clear as i sort of did my research on the biographies of all these people are the stories interconnected and really startling interesting many cases an amazing ways.

so it is to have my cake and eat it, too to try to watch these sizeable seismic activities with many people and places and watch that happen concurrently affects my understanding of the event. i want to tell you briefly about the four major character whose stories you will see intertwined in "38 nooses." the first is the village chief that we were talking about in a little crow. a little crow is an amazing character because he doesn't fit any of the cultural stereotypes or historical stereotypes' of any native americans or any other race for that matter. there is a pre-introduction introduction that needs to explain we are not talking about to feed lakota.

a hollywood and just all kinds of other people have sort of confused that when we talk about the indian war in the u.s., we are talking about the horse riding buffalo hunting planes and having vast territory roaming native americans who existed. these are the what code the -- the lakota. they live just to the east in wisconsin and minnesota, wisconsin first and then most of minnesota. but the year and having minnesota a and we don't think buffalo hunting or the plains and having. we think river well in, living

in log houses. when you think of the lakota indian you think of a canoe for the dakota indians and so this is a little crow. a little crow is a leader among them and he very much as his foot in the two worlds and his entire life even as a young man he hunted with white fur traders and the trade them. they would hunt buffalo for the summer and sell whiskey and play cards and they would visit the indian villages. little crow had wives over the course of his life and about six different dakota and lakota villages. he lived in a teepee but maxtor was the brick house the government provided money for. he used it for meetings and he slapped every night in his tepee. he wore a white collared shirt which was the emblem in 1862 but

he never cut his hair. he went to episcopal church services but never took baptism. he was the bearer of the medicine of the dakota which indicated that he was a spiritual leader. f healer and a man in touch with histories related to the afterlife. fascinating by the wide world, twice in his life he'd gotten on trains with white politicians and to washington, d.c. and he had argued, discussed, made deals with presidents and secretaries of state. there is no dakota in the end who has seen more of the world in this momentum and will grow. little crow is olver at this time and is no longer in the leadership position. this young ann curry had a strong band of the lakota warrior needs of leased a spokesman and they go to little crow, and he very reluctantly agrees to lead them in this war

understanding very well because of what he's seen on the tide of the numbers and the tide of armaments in the hands would never allow them a final victory. and so his last statement he says we will lead you and he will leave you and he will buy with you. so we follow little crow. another character, and he is one of the most fascinating, another who becomes very important in the book is a woman named sarah wheat field. she's the wife of one of the doctors at the indian agencies. a government position best. she's taking captive. she's a fascinating character. we know about her. we know about a little crow. a lot of people didn't leave any records behind. we know about little crow because he had done all these things and he had been

interviewed and had his own words published in newspapers and translated form. sarah was a doctor's wife out on the prairie not a lot historical record of one man living on the prairie at this time either. why do we know about her so much? because she wrote a cat to the narrative with all of this is done, out come the activity narrative's and they will return safe. at george mason have a couple colleagues in the department of study folklore in the 19th century american writing that maintained in a very persuasive argument that the indian captivity narrative is america's only truly indigenous form of narrative. and the argument holds up. the remarkably common over centuries of the stories there is a wonderful book by the way you can do will or amazon or whatever, women's and in captivity narrative and it has a bunch including sara wakefield,

which is also published in separate addition that they are similar because they are almost always either edited tobacco written or ghostwritten by a member of the clergy and they all follow the same formula and they are very religious documents. the captivity is a test visited upon them by god. their deliverance from the captivity is a gift and the lessons to be learned from their captivity are various kinds of religious lessons. sarah weak field rights when she's done and the reason that hers today is the single most studied captivity - and 99% of the captivity's whoever co-wrote them. hers is called six weeks in the tepee and one reason it is widely studied is because it is unlike any of those other

initiatives. she isn't writing it to talk about the grace of god or to talk about a trial, she's not writing to sort of put civilization and savagery back in the proper relationship or in the proper relationship. she is ready to defend herself against accusations that she was an indian lover who had come to love only side with her captives but who had actually kept herself safe by sleeping with one of her captors whether this is true or not, highly doubtful. but she was a branded wollman wed was over, and her memoir appeals to us in the 21st century because we live in a memoir rich culture. we have plenty being read from here from the politics and grows there is an entire section, conceptual and more, celebrity

memoir. those are all the things. she was a celebrity when this was done partly in the infamous celebrity. and she confesses to all kinds of thoughts that were shocking for people in 1860 and that she would have to kill her children, thoughts that perhaps the dakota were the wrong party, and she confesses to discuss with the actions of the soldiers coming after her. they moved very slowly. she confesses to all of these things to make the point about what she didn't do. i did all these things but the one thing you say that i do that i've done which is a fall in love with my captor and become his wife i did not do that. so you have a fascinating psychological study that doesn't feel like it is covered over with this 19th century bertino it feels very rall that she is also an amazing observer and her

narrative as well as serving these contradictive psychological purposes is a remarkable six weeks that 300 women and children in quoting her own, captive for six weeks with a 5-year-old and a one-year-old the remarkable story of that captivity. and all involved. the third major character and sentimental favorite of mine is the right reverend benjamin who is the first episcopal bishop of minnesota and like little crow and sarah wakefield he doesn't fit the mold and becomes a fascinating character. the reason he doesn't fit the mold is to become a bishop of 1862 is quite the position that got you a wonderful house and a whole lot of influence. it got you meetings and trips and money if you were honest,

and i think many were, that money was then redistributed but either way a lot of money came through if you were in the episcopal bishop and you have all kinds of influence. most bishops lived in - houses and church leaders of many kind live in nice houses and big cities. he becomes the bishop of minnesota two years before these events and he decides to live on the prairie and his proudest achievement is the amount of labels that he put in on his one man carriage behind his horse and he would go all over the diocese will be and thousands and thousands of miles. minnesota of 1862 is much colder than in 2013 even though they just had snowe won a fifth or whatever still it was much colder in 1862. five months of basically deep

freeze and enormous snow drifts and get in the middle of janaria in minnesota, if you lived in authority person farming village out on the prairie of minnesota, it wasn't that unusual with 5:00 in the morning that you walk on the door -- not on the door and there was the bishop of minnesota. it wasn't as usual at 9:00 in the evening you hear a knock on the door and there was the bishop. most of them were involved in the effort to try to keep the episcopal church unified involved in an effort to reform the indian system to yet he was a zealous reformers and an activist. he was a traveller, and in the

midst of all of the action of the dakota of war come he asks korea receives an audience with abraham lincoln. his first cousin. the generally and chief he had firsthand easy regular access to the president. that meeting with whipple come he was very tall, had white flowing hair, didn't look like a bishop either. the meeting with the lincoln and whipple when he sits in front of abraham lincoln and exports him to do something about the corruption in the indian system. and finally lisalyn the other characters who want to revisit abraham lincoln.

as i described closely before what interests me about lincoln and i will wrap this, what is interesting about lincoln he act as a point of connection. how he acts as a grand central sort of station for all the concerns of so many americans obviously especially those in the union. abraham lincoln asks -- unsury, benjamin, the reverend whipple asks for and receives an audience partly because his cousin as henry. but what is amazing about lincoln and the recent release movie helps us see some of this is what is amazing about langdon is when you read the correspondence to him, you understand that everyone involved in the evenings like this, everyone involved in the civil war review with lincoln as

a personal root of communication. what i mean by that? not just langdon in the 19th century if we lived in the 19th century some of you may know this. any of us could have gone to the white house for an audience with the president. we may not have been granted an audience depending on the day and on a scheduled hearing it but several times a week, you could line up on the ground floor of the white house, talk to one of his secretaries, say this is my concern may i speak with the president a and many times you would get in. it's not just the ability to visit the president is the ability to write to the president and feel somehow the president abraham lincoln personally would do something about your concerns. who writes to the president after, she feels that she has been wrong. she feels that she has been branded. she feels that in justice and she starts writing a series of letters to the president and

what is remarkable is that she essentially rights to the president saying clear my name, please, sir. but it is remarkable is not that she does this in the expectation that will happen because lincoln didn't issue a proclamation clearing, lyndon didn't issue a proclamation clearing her name. but what is remarkable is that so many people wrote so many letters. they are all over the archives and in the lincoln peepers and everywhere else and many, many of course have not survived. sarah wakefield deals if they listen to her concerns her name can be cleared and whipple believes that if lincoln who listens. and the third connection to lyndon that goes beyond the review of the trial records and the concern of the military situation, the last and final connection is little crow and lincoln because when lincoln falls in the black hawk war, lincoln is 23-years-old.

and though she doesn't -- the she's not involved in any attacks on the indians, the group of other men under the command this drives them across the mississippi river, and they are then chased into west eastern iowa on to some of their older land. they are chased over there and they are hunted down the they are not hunted down by u.s. soldiers because they can't keep up with them. who does the u.s. army enlisted to chase down the indians with their ancestral indians, the dakota, a group of young warriors. the 40 dakota warriors in their teens are enlisted by the general atkinson in charge of the white forces in the battle. ..

how and that to me speak to larger interconnections that this isn't just for the flyers in 1862 in ends six weeks later. it goes back a long way, goes forward into events, that is the web i try to put together. if you read it you will get 1 after another, you're getting all these going into a web and hopefully it hangs together but largely that is a decision you make. anyway i probably have time for a few questions so thanks for listening appreciate it if

anybody has any questions. [applause] >> i did make my time. >> if you have a question please speak to the microphone so everyone here, make sure it gets on c-span too. >> i should have assumed that. >> between knowing that, quite a understand -- >> what i meant by that was background. this is not a single end study that a ph.d. in history -- my background is in journalism. i featuring english department, not the history department. my concern was to bring what some historians might call a little foolish, try to bring all of these characters into the same story while remaining a

nonfiction story so there's scholarship here but it will not be delivered as a dissertation in history. it is a narrative that tries to bring a lot of different stories to get there. >> that was very informing. >> i appreciate that. >> you look back to those tides of change, move from the east, and all of the years of warfare that that would do, did you finy instead of that way -- >> great question. >> we would not have had -- notice the years of war that led up to all the we have now that seems to be so hard to change. >> there is this sense you have to fight and fight when you research this history, there is a sense of inability because of

course a sense of instability is sort of a forgiveness of the various factors, right? very 1860's to to have the train coming by. a sense of inevitability which anybody can act any way they want because it is bound to happen and on the other hand, on the other hand it can be powerful at times, tragedy or bloodshed, speaking of scholars and historians, wrote a book, put the year on it many years ago called the middle ground. and other tribes in the great lakes region in very much the pre revolutionary era and calls it middle ground because it is this story of the window that opened because when for instance

population numbers were not so uneven. when the designs on the left, when what you had, small group of sellers and fur traders and this happens in minnesota, pretty civil war as well, where you have any enormous amount of intermarriage first of all, where you have inclined financial interests with the fur trade and seven years before this story the fur trade was booming, john jacob astor, it is all booming and in many ways, not all the time, mutual beneficial to native american tribes, and a lot of money and also a sense of cultural affirmation and interestingly almost always when right for traders and soldiers and really become, henry sibley, ends up

beating the charge in 1862. as a very young man, lived in the. s, married a dakota woman, helped at the total white child, his story is not all that unusual, and much more sort of a lesson narrowed, the interactions between the iroquois and white settlers and hints at that possibility. richard white suggests, always handled better. it will be allowed to happen. there is a way to peace and prosperity, but it wasn't that way forever. and it suggested a very different possible reality, the

grand sweep of history had not gone differently and is a bittersweet reading but there's weakness that reading. one more question of anybody has it. >> when you went through the records of the 38 that were actually hand, was the evidence against the release wrong? >> had to do with the fact that military commissions have been used once before the mexican-american war, and there was not a lot of guidance, native american tribes were classified by the supreme court earlier as domestic dependent nations but no one knew, should they be tried as enemy combatants? should they be tried as enemy combatants? should they be tried as citizens, should they be tried, they would never have called terrorists if they didn't have that word, how should they be tried? in the last half of the trials,

standards that were implied a few had anybody say they saw dakota indians holding a gun and going off to battle that was capitol hill. lincoln didn't want to fight so the restricted his murder of unarmed civilians and cases of rape, hundreds of cases of rape reported. in the end not reported, hundreds of cases mentioned in the end, there were two cases reported and two of the men were harmed for rate, the other 38 or 37 were accused of killing unarmed civilians and that was lincoln's standard and the book goes through how that standard develops from the time they're doing trials on the prairie, the time -- i am writing an article about this for military history quarterly. to the time that in fact they hang in a safe place. this chapter of the hangings was understandably talking about the

toughest one to write because>>ñ