The Dakota War (1862) was a searing event in Minnesota history as well as a signal event in the lives of Dakota people. Sarah F. Wakefield was caught up in this revolt. A young doctor’s wife and the mother of two small children, Wakefield published her unusual account of the war and her captivity shortly after the hanging of thirty-eight Dakotas accused of participation in the "Sioux uprising." Among those hanged were Chaska (We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee), a Mdewakanton Dakota who had protected her and her children during the upheaval. In a distinctive and compelling voice, Wakefield blames the government for the war and then relates her and her family’s ordeal, as well as Chaska’s and his family’s help and ultimate sacrifice. This is the first fully annotated modern edition of Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees. June Namias’s extensive introduction and notes describe the historical and ethnographic background of Dakota-white relations in Minnesota and place Wakefield’s narrative in the context of other captivity narratives.

Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees is a reprint of the classic narrative of Sarah Wakefield's survival. Told in her own words, this compelling tale was a best seller when it was originally published more than one hundred years ago. Today it offers readers a unique perspective on Sioux culture and what life was like on the Great Plains in mid-nineteenth-century America.

The Dakota War (1862) was a searing event in Minnesota history as well as a signal event in the lives of Dakota people. Sarah F. Wakefield was caught up in this revolt. A young doctor’s wife and the mother of two small children, Wakefield published her unusual account of the war and her captivity shortly after the hanging of thirty-eight Dakotas accused of participation in the "Sioux uprising." Among those hanged were Chaska (We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee), a Mdewakanton Dakota who had protected her and her children during the upheaval. In a distinctive and compelling voice, Wakefield blames the government for the war and then relates her and her family’s ordeal, as well as Chaska’s and his family’s help and ultimate sacrifice. This is the first fully annotated modern edition of Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees. June Namias’s extensive introduction and notes describe the historical and ethnographic background of Dakota-white relations in Minnesota and place Wakefield’s narrative in the context of other captivity narratives.

Captivity narratives have been a standard genre of writings about Indians of the East for several centuries.a Until now, the West has been almost entirely neglected.a Now Gregory and Susan Michno have rectified that with this painstakenly researched collection of vivid and often brutal accounts of what happened to those men and women and children that were captured by marauding Indians during the settlement of the West."

Custer, Sitting Bull and Little Bighorn are familiar names in the history of the American West. Yet the Great Sioux War of 1876 was a less notorious affair than earlier events in Minnesota during 1862 when, over a few bloody weeks, hundreds of white settlers were killed by Sioux led by Little Crow. The following three years saw military thrusts under generals Sibley and Sully onto the Western Plains where hundreds of Indians, as innocent as the white victims, were cut down by American soldiers. From this carnage Sitting Bull first emerged as a military leader. This history reexamines the facts behind Sitting Bull's legend and that of the white captive, Fanny Kelly.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year In August 1862, after suffering decades of hardship, broken treaties, and relentless encroachment on their land, the Dakota leader Little Crow reluctantly agreed that his people must go to war. After six weeks of fighting, the uprising was smashed, thousands of Indians were taken prisoner by the US army, and 303 Dakotas were sentenced to death. President Lincoln, embroiled in the most devastating period of the Civil War, personally intervened to save the lives of 265 of the condemned men, but in the end, 38 Dakota men would be hanged in the largest government-sanctioned execution in U.S. history. Writing with uncommon immediacy and insight, Scott W. Berg details these events within the larger context of the Civil War, the history of the Dakota people and the subsequent United States–Indian wars, and brings to life this overlooked but seminal moment in American history.