At the same time as the Navaho crisis was unfolding in New Mexico, tensions were being inflamed between the Santee Sioux and white settlers along the Minnesota River in the north. The Santee, who were the eastern flank of the Sioux nations, had fallen prey to two unfair treaties which left them only a marginal remnant of their territory and reduced them to relying on government annuities and food rations from the local Indian agencies set up by US authorities. In 1862, as the ongoing Civil War curtailed United States resources in frontier areas, the agencies refused to distribute the promised rations. One of the Santee leaders, Little Crow, resisted calls to violence at first, having been to Washington, DC, and seen the power of US forces. His position changed, however, when white traders in the area mocked the Santee people’s deprivation: “if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung” (40). Some of the Santee, driven to desperation, made provocative raids on settlers’ homes.

The Santee forces rallied by Little Crow attacked one of the government’s Indian agencies, then turned their attention to Fort Ridgely. They narrowly failed to take the fort, then attacked the nearby town of New Ulm before retreating up the Minnesota valley.