“The other Civil War” is how many Minnesotans think of the U.S.-Dakota Conflict of 1862, fought for six weeks in the recently established state as the Civil War raged elsewhere (Nichols). These hostilities between groups of Dakota Indians and the U.S. government were triggered by a containable incident near Acton, Minnesota, in which four hungry young Dakotas apparently challenged five white settlers over food and then killed them. But some Indians decided against containment, and the Conflict instead escalated into a contest for traditional Dakota cultural identity and cohesion. Of course, the Dakotas' sense of siege had been exacerbated for years by “the historically familiar rapacious traders, ethnocentric missionaries, white men's decimating diseases, inept Indian Bureau officials, equivocating United States government representatives, and deplorably conflicting military policies,” as well the growing number of “land-hungry settlers” (Russo, 99). When the war ended in late September 1862, about five hundred whites and a considerable, but unknown, number of Dakotas and crossbloods were dead (Anderson and Woolworth, 1). The U.S. government unilaterally abrogated treaties with the Dakotas – regardless of individuals' actual involvement in the Conflict – removed or imprisoned them, conducted hasty and illegal trials, and sent thirtyeight to the gallows in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862. It is believed to be the largest mass execution in American history. Although little known outside the state, this short but intense war has been called “a microcosm of the tragedy of Indian–white relations in America,” and its repercussions still resonate over a century later (Nichols, 4).