In August of 1862, hundreds of Dakota warriors opened without warning a murderous rampage against settlers and soldiers in southern Minnesota. The vortex of the Dakota Uprising along the Minnesota River encompassed thousands of people in what was perhaps the greatest massacre of whites by Indians in American history. To read about the fast paced and unpredictable flood of killing and destruction is to discover heartrending emotion, irony, tragedy, cowardice, and heroism from unexpected quarters. Previous attempts to sort out individual experiences and place the events in a coherent chronologic