Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862

December 26, 1862. On the day after Christmas in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Sioux Indians were hanged, by order of President Abraham Lincoln. It stands today as the largest mass execution in US history. In Over the Earth I Come, Schultz brilliantly retells one of American’s most violent and bloody events, the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. It recounts a part of American history that should never be forgotten.

In less than one week in August, the Sioux went on a rampage throughout Minnesota that left hundreds of settlers dead. Whole families were burned alive in their farmhouses. Children were nailed to barn doors, girls raped by a dozen braves and hacked to pieces, babies dismembered in front of their horrified mothers. Nearly 40,000 settlers became refugees, and for one brief moment in time, the Sioux people were restored to their ancestral land and reclaimed their pride and dignity.

This well-researched and insightful narrative uncovers the events and injustices that sparked the uprising. The Minnesota Sioux, perceived as a peaceful tribe, harbored intense resentment over the lands appropriated by Whites, the disappearance of the buffalo, repeatedly broken treaties, and lies and deceptions of the US government and its representatives. That summer, delayed annuity payments from land treaties, and the refusal of traders to release food to the starving Indians, sparked the series of wars between the Sioux and the settlers.