Over the earth I come

December 26, 1862. On the day after Christmas, in Mankato, Minnesota, thirty-eight Sioux Indians were hanged on the order of President Lincoln. It stands today as the greatest mass execution in the history of the United States. In Over the Earth I Come, Duane Schultz brilliantly retells one of America's most violent and bloody events--the Great Sioux Uprisings of 1862. In less than one week in August, the Sioux went on a rampage throughout Minnesota that left hundreds of settlers dead. Whole families were burned alive in their farmhouses. Children were nailed to barn doors, girls raped by a dozen braves and hacked to pieces, babies dismembered in front of their horrified mothers. Nearly forty thousand settlers became refugees, and for one brief moment in time, the Sioux people were restored to their ancestral land and reclaimed their pride and dignity.

In this well-researched and insightful narrative, Duane Schultz uncovers the events and injustices that sparked this violent uprising. The Sioux of Minnesota, perceived as a peaceful tribe, harbored intense resentment over the lands appropriated by the whites, the disappearance of the buffalo, broken treaties, and the lies and deceptions of the government and its representatives. In the summer of 1862, delayed annuity payments from land treaties and the refusal of traders to release food to starving Indians sparked the first of a series of wars between Indians and whites. Over the Earth I Come recounts a part of American history that should never be forgotten.