Mankato

Last night’s motel stay was quite pleasant. Super 8s vary from You know, this is okay” to “Is this a motel or an archeologic dig?” The desk clerk was an Indian man and once again I found myself curious as to how this particular group of people became such a feature of the hospitality landscape here in the Midwest.

It could be as simple as how it was with my great-grandparents, who emigrated from Norway in the late 1880s. They came looking for a place with decent land for farming and a climate not too different from the home country. Once they had set down a single root they wrote home saying “Come,” and that was it. That part of Wisconsin became loaded with Norwegians before you could say lease. When Wisconsin filled up they sent their children on to Minnesota which is where my grandparents settled.

Friday we crossed into the central time zone, “losing” that precious hour of travel time. As seems common with older travelers we are more comfortable with driving in the sunshine than by the light of the moon. When we decided last evening to seek lodging it was coming on dark already. The first place we stopped was full, so when the desk clerk at the Super 8 said there was a room available we said “We’ll take it!” without hesitation.

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Today our goal is Mankato MN where a room has been arranged for us by daughter Sarah, who is a wonderful person with a wicked sense of humor. Mankato had a dark role to play in history, when the largest mass hanging in U.S. history took place.

The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, or Little Crow’s War, was an armed conflict between the United States and several eastern bands of Dakotacollectively known as the Santee  Sioux It began on August 18, 1862, when the Dakota, who were facing starvation and displacement, attacked white settlements at the Lower Sioux Agency along the Minnesota River valley in southwest Minnesota The war lasted for five weeks and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of settlers and the displacement of thousands more. In the aftermath, the Dakota people were exiled from their homelands, forcibly sent to reservations in the Dakotas and Nebraska, and the State of Minnesota confiscated and sold all their remaining land in the state. The war also ended with the largest mass execution in United States history with the hanging of 38 Dakota men.

Wikipedia: Dakota War of 1862

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