09/04/2026
Fun Fact Friday Sept 4th 1863 .The Union faced a war on many fronts with multiple nations. The Battle of Whitestone Hill (known also as Whitestone Hill Massacre by the Dakota) was a battle of the Sioux Wars in 1863 in the Dakota Territory as punishment against the Sioux in the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862. From September 3-5, 1863, Brigadier General Alfred Sully led U.S. Army troops against a village of Yanktonai, Santee, and Teton (Lakota) Sioux. The reported casualties vary, but U.S. Army troops killed somewhere between 150 and 300 Sioux and captured between 150 and 250 Sioux, including women and children, and they suffered approximately 22 killed and 38 wounded. Background : The Dakota War of 1862, a faction of the Santee Dakota, or Sioux, in Minnesota rose up in rebellion against the United States because of the non-payment by the U.S. government to the Sioux of food and money as agreed to by treaties In mid-1863, the United States Army under General John Pope in Minnesota mounted two large military expeditions against the Sioux in eastern Dakota Territory. The objectives of the expeditions were to prevent the renewal of the 1862 war, promote white settlement in the eastern Dakotas, and protect access to the Montana goldfields via the Missouri River. Brigadier General Henry Hastings Sibley commanded one of the two prongs of the operation. He led 2,000 soldiers overland from Minnesota to the Missouri River, fighting three battles in July with the Sioux at Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, and Stony Lake. Although Sibley's men did not inflict heavy casualties, they pushed the Sioux to the western side of the Missouri River and destroyed much of their property including winter supplies of jerky and many of their tipis. (Illustration of the battle as it appeared in Harper's weekly in Oct of 1863.)
