Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award winner
Robert Hopkins was a man caught between two worlds. As a member of the Dakota Nation, he was unfairly imprisoned, accused of taking up arms against U.S. soldiers when war broke out with the Dakota in 1862. However, as a Christian convert who was also a preacher, Hopkins’s allegiance was often questioned by many of his fellow Dakota as well. Without a doubt, being a convert—and a favorite of the missionaries—had its privileges. Hopkins learned to read and write in an anglicized form of Dakota, and when facing legal allegations, he and several high-ranking missionaries wrote impassioned letters in his defense. Ultimately, he was among the 300-some Dakota spared from hanging by President Lincoln, imprisoned instead at Camp Kearney in Davenport, Iowa, for several years. His wife, Sarah, and their children, meanwhile, were forced onto the barren Crow Creek reservation in Dakota Territory with the rest of the Dakota women, children, and elderly. In both places, the Dakota were treated as novelties, displayed for curious residents like zoo animals.
Historian Linda Clemmons examines the surviving letters from Robert and Sarah; other Dakota language sources; and letters from missionaries, newspaper accounts, and federal documents. She blends both the personal and the historical to complicate our understanding of the development of the Midwest, while also serving as a testament to the resilience of the Dakota and other indigenous peoples who have lived in this region from time immemorial.
“Students and citizens alike will appreciate Linda Clemmons’s Dakota in Exile, a history text with a personal edge. From its “precipitating event” to its aftermath, this is a heartbreaking story of westward expansion.”—Foreword Reviews
“Dakota in Exile adds to our knowledge about and understanding of the history of the Dakota Nation in particular and of the U.S. more broadly, as the history of colonization and settler colonialism is integral to the history of the United States.”—Colette Hyman, author, Dakota Women’s Work: Creativity, Culture, and Exile
“Clemmons's approach at reading against the grain fills important voids in both US and Dakota historiography. Future research could delve into other actors of the Dakota War, but this book's nuanced argument superbly demonstrates the contested meanings of the Dakota War and recenters Dakota perspectives previously pushed to the periphery.”—Great Plains Quarterly
“Linda Clemmons shines a light on the frequently overlooked aftermath of the Dakota War through the experiences of prisoners of war and exiled survivors united in a common goal: survival of post-war persecution. She captures the varied collective experiences and humanity of the Dakota during a chaotic, genocidal chapter in Indian-white relations.”—Jacki Thompson Rand, University of Iowa
2020 Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award
