Everyone else left the area

SS: I made a history of Leavenworth and a book for our township, and in all the checking I did, they’re the only ones that I could find that came back to the area after the Uprising. Everyone else left the area. And my great-grandparents, they came in 1864, after the Uprising. I guess because they were warned, they weren’t afraid to come back. Everyone else just left the area and didn’t want to come back anymore because so many had got killed and everything. They were just afraid to come back again, I guess.

DL: There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again.

SS: That’s right. There were still a lot of problems that went on for years. It took really until 1880 when Wounded Knee until it really got all settled, which is close to 30 years after that. So there were still problems in the area, and I think that’s why [most people] were afraid to come back.

DL: Where did all of these people go to? Did the records show where they left for?

SS: Well, it says a lot of them went to Mankato. From New Ulm they went to Mankato and I really don’t know where they would have went, but they left the area. And it’s quite a few people that would have been around the area. When Leavenworth Township was established in 1858, they had like 30 or 40 people vote in the first election. So there were quite a few people in the area, and all them left.