38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End

Library JournalIn 1862, resisting broken treaties and encroachment on their lands, the Dakota rose up against white soldiers and settlers on the Minnesota frontier. Once they were put down, a military tribunal condemned more than 300 to death for murder. President Lincoln intervened to save 285 Dakotas, but 38 hung in the largest government-ordered execution this country has seen. Berg tells this sorrowful story partly through the personalities involved. Important.




Publishers WeeklyBerg, a teacher of writing and literature at George Mason University, turns his attention from Pierre L'Enfant, planner of Washington, D.C. (Grand Avenues), to the Dakota War of 1862 in a gripping narrative of this little-known conflict and a careful exploration of the relationships between events of the Civil War and America's expansion west.