Thomas Teakle
The North High School
Des Moines Iowa
CONTENTS
I
THE ADVANCING FRONTIER
Clothed in myth and legend and held in sacred awe by the Siouan Indian, Lake Okoboji and Spirit Lake had rested in seclusion for ages at the headwaters of the Little Sioux. To the red men these lakes had been a sort of Mecca, second only to the red pipestone quarry to the northwest, for the silent adoration and worship of the Spirit.[1] Although the region had been little disturbed by the whites the Sioux were becoming uneasy as the frontier continued its westward advance. By the middle of the nineteenth century the meeting and clashing of the two races became more frequent.
This rivalry of the races was engendered by the white man’s disregard of what the Indian held as sacred: it was embittered by the unstable policies of the government. Finally, in the early days of March, 1857, came one of those tragic events in the long series of misguided attempts to deal with the Indian and solve the problem of the frontier. In this terrible tragedy in the pioneer history of northwestern Iowa, the lives of more than forty white people were sacrificed. The Spirit Lake Massacre was the result of an Indian policy which has been characterized as “vacillating, full of inconsistencies and incongruities, of experiments and failures.”[2] For the Sioux this policy had been the cause of frequent humiliation.