Big Eagle was the chief of a band of Mdewakanton Dakota in Minnesota. He played an important role as a military leader in the Dakota War of 1862. Big Eagle surrendered soon after the Battle of Wood Lake and was sentenced to death and imprisoned, but was pardoned by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Big Eagle's narrative, "A Sioux Story of the War" was first published in 1894, and is one of the most widely cited first-person accounts of the 1862 war in Minnesota from a Dakota point of view.
Chief Big Eagle (1864)
Big Eagle (far left) went to Washington, DC in 1858 as part of the Mdewakanton & Wahpkute Dakota Treaty Delegation
Chief Big Eagle (1858)
Chief Wabasha (1858)
The Dakota are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into the Eastern Dakota and the Western Dakota.
Charles Alex Eastman (1858–1939), physician, author, and co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America
Zitkala-Sa (1876–1938), Yankton author, photographed by Joseph Keiley