Inkpaduta

Inkpaduta (variously translated as "Red End," "Red Cap," or "Scarlet Point") (about 1797 – 1881 or 1882) was a war chief of the Santee Sioux during the 1857 Spirit Lake Massacre and the 1862 Dakota War against the United States Army in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory.

Inkpaduta was born in what later became the Dakota Territory shortly before the turn of the 19th century, the son of chief Wamdisapa. Inkpaduta had suffered from smallpox, which killed several of his relatives and family members. It left him badly scarred for life. When his father was later murdered in a tribal dispute, the band moved to Iowa, near present day Fort Dodge.

Left out of the treaty negotiations in 1851 that transferred the land in northwestern Iowa to the United States, Inkpaduta refused to recognize the treaty restrictions. In 1852, when the new chief (Inkpaduta's older brother) and 9 of his family were axed to death by a drunken white whiskey trader, Inkpaduta assumed the role. He informed the U.S. Army of the murder, but to his anger, very little was done to bring the killer, Henry Lott, to justice, and the local prosecuting attorney nailed the dead chief's head to a pole over his house.

In the late winter of 1857, Inkpaduta led his starving warband from the reservation throughout Iowa stealing food, where on March 8, he launched a series of bloody raids on white civilians that became known as the Spirit Lake Massacre. When it was over, 38 victims lay dead. Chased by the army, Inkpaduta retired into the wilderness and peace finally came to Iowa.

In 1862, Inkpaduta again resumed the warpath during the American Civil War. The Army sent in forces under Brig. Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley, who defeated the Indians in a series of battles. Inkpaduta's uprising finally collapsed, and he fled westward onto the plains. He eventually fell in with the Lakotas and became personal friends with Sitting Bull, and fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn against George Armstrong Custer.

When Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada, Inkpaduta accompanied them. He died in Manitoba in 1881.

External links

* [http://www.montana.edu/wwwfpcc/tribes/santee.html Montana website for Inkpaduta]
* [http://members.aol.com/dlbristow/inkpadut.htm Inkpaduta's Revenge]
* [http://www.rrcnet.org/~historic/inkpadu.html Inkpaduta]