Northern slave, Black Dakota : the life and times of Joseph Godfrey / Walt Bachman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bachman, Walt, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dakota Indians--Biography.

Dakota Indians.

African Americans--Biography.

African Americans.

Fugitive slaves--United States--Biography.

Fugitive slaves.

African Americans--Relations with Indigenous peoples.

Dakota Indians--Wars, 1862-1865.

Godfrey, Joseph, approximately 1827-1909.

Godfrey, Joseph.

Minnesota--History.

Minnesota.

Minnesota--Race relations.

Physical Description:

xx, 399 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Life and times of Joseph Godfrey

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2026]

Summary:

Born into slavery in free territory, Joseph Godfrey died widely reviled for his controversial role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Separated from his mother at age five when his enslaver sold her, Godfrey sought refuge in his teens among the Dakota people he had befriended as a child. Godfrey married a Dakota woman and was living with his family on the Lower Sioux Reservation in 1862, when the U.S.-Dakota War broke out. Pressured to join Dakota warriors in the war's opening days, when the six-week conflict ended, he became the first of hundreds of men tried by a military court created by Commander Henry Sibley. Sibley, who was one of Godfrey's former enslavers, approved death sentences for Godfrey and 302 other Dakota soldiers. In this riveting biography, Walt Bachman untangles the thorny questions that haunt Godfrey's story: How was he enslaved in a free state? Did he murder the frontier settlers for which the Dakota dubbed him Otakle ("Many Kills")? Did he turn traitor to save his own life? Did Godfrey's testimony send thirty-eight Dakota men, including his father-in-law, to the gallows? In this carefully researched book, Bachman argues that the 1862 war trials, which ended with the largest mass execution in U.S. history, were both more just and more unfair than we have ever understood. -- Back cover.

Contents:

Part I. Northern slave. Godfrey's early years ; Flight to freedom ; Fugitive slave, new reservation

Part II. Black Dakota. The war ; Camp release ; Godfrey's trial ; Chained alone ; The cookhouse trials ; Waiting for Lincoln ; Atop the pile of cases ; The prison years ; Life and death at Santee.

Notes:

"Bison book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-375) and index.

ISBN:

9781496245991

1496245997

OCLC:

1511528519

Publisher Number:

90104233514