Wrong man on the gallows? Even though President Lincoln had spared him, a Dakota Indian was executed for attacking settlers on the Minnesota frontier. Some say it's not too late for justice.

• Author: Elder, Robert K.
• Position: NATIONAL - We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee

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On Dec. 26, 1862, 38 doomed Dakota Indians wailed and danced atop the gallows, waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them. The square scaffold--built in Mankato, Minnesota, to accommodate the largest mass execution in U.S. history--swayed under their weight.

Thirty-seven of the men were among the "most ferocious" followers of Dakota leader Little Crow, according to the federal government. They were accused of killing 490 settlers, including women and children, in raids along the Minnesota frontier.

But one man, historians say, did not belong on the gallows. A captured Dakota named We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee, often called Chaska (chas-KAY), had had his sentence commuted by President Abraham Lincoln days earlier. Yet on the day after Christmas in 1862, he was executed with the others.

It was a case of wrongful execution, says Gary Anderson, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma. "These soldiers just grabbed the wrong guy," he says.

Although the story of the mass execution in Mankato is well-known locally, Chaska's case has long been overlooked nationally. Now an effort is under way to make more Americans aware of the story as the 150th anniversary of the execution, in 2012, approaches.

"It's time to talk about it and time for people to know about it," says Gwen Westerman, a professor at Minnesota State University at Mankato and a member of the Dakota tribe, historically called the Sioux. She plans to investigate Chaska's case with one of her classes, hoping her students can "put together some more pieces of the puzzle."

And in Washington, D.C., A1 Franken, one of Minnesota's two Senators and a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, is considering a push for a posthumous pardon for Chaska.

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The executions took place during the Dakota War, also known as the Sioux Uprising, which was part of the much larger Indian wars fought across the West in the second half of the 19th century. By the time of the Civil War, many of the eastern tribes had already been removed to reservations farther west, but as the United States expanded west of the Mississippi, there were a series of confrontations with Indians in the region (see box, facing page).

'Act of Desperation'

Tension between the Dakota and the Minnesota settlers had been mounting for years by the time Minnesota became a state in 1858. And when the Civil War began in 1861, it disrupted the delivery of food and supplies...