File:Wokiksuye K'a Woyuonihan.jpg
This memorial honors the sixteen hundred Dakota people, many of them women and children, who were imprisioned here at Fort Snelling in the aftermath of the 1862 U.S.–Dakota Conflict. Frightened, uprooted, and uncertain of the fate of their missing relatives, the interned Dakota suffered severe hardship. At least 130 died during the cold winter months of captivity.
In May, 1863, the survivors from the camp were crowded aboard steamboats and taken to Crow Creek in southeastern South Dakota. Those who survived Crow Creek were moved again three years later to the Santee Reservation in Nebraska.
The pipestone in the center of the memorial was placed here by Amos Owen of the Prairie Island Indian Community during a ceremony in 1987. Please be respectful of this sacred place.
Dakota woman Photograph by BF Upton
Fort Snelling prison compound, 1862-63 Photograph by BF Upton.
Photograph by Whitney's Gallery
Little Crow's son,Photographer unknown
All photographs courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society"