02. What is the significance of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 to the state of Minnesota, the region and to the United States?

 
By 1862, the treaty and reservation system significantly changed Dakota culture and shrank its land base to a small tract of land along the Minnesota River. The war itself resulted in the deaths of hundreds of settlers, soldiers and Dakota, and depopulated much of southwest Minnesota for more than a year. With the abrogation of the treaties after the war, all Dakota land in Minnesota was opened to settlement. Passage of the Homestead Act of 1862 virtually guaranteed that this newly vacated land would be filled quickly with white settlers. Exiled from the state, the Dakota were left to create new lives on reservations further west in Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota or north in Canada. The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 set the stage for continued warfare with the Lakota in the coming decades, ultimately resulting in Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn and the massacre at Wounded Knee.