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University of North Dakota UND Scholarly Commons Digital Press Books The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota 2015 The aW r with the Sioux Karl Jakob Skarstein Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/press-books Recommended Citation Skarstein, Karl Jakob, "The aW r with the Sioux" (2015). Digital Press Books. 3. https://commons.und.edu/press-books/3 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota at UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Press Books by an authorized administrator of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE WAR WITH THE SIOUX: NORWEGIANS AGAINST INDIANS 1862-1863 Translation of Karl Jakob Skarstein Krigen mot siouxene: nordmenn mot indianerne 1862-1863. Copyright © 2015 by The Digital Press at The University of North Dakota Norwegian edition published by Spartacus Forlag AS, Oslo © Spartacus Forlag AS 2008 Published by Agreement with Hagen Agency, Oslo “Translators’ Preface” by Danielle Mead Skjelver; “Historical Introduction” by Richard Rothaus, “Becoming American: A Brief Historiography of Norwegian and Native Interactions” by Melissa Gjellstad, and “The Apple Creek Fight and Killdeer Mountain Conflict Remembered” by Dakota Goodhouse, are available with a CC-By 4.0 license. The translation of this work was funded with generous support from a NORLA: Norwegian Literature Abroad grant. www.norla.no The book is set in Janson Font by Linotype except for Dakota Goodhouse’s contribution which is set in Times New Roman. The War with the Sioux Norwegians against Indians 1862-1863 Karl Jakob Skarstein translated by Melissa Gjellstad and Danielle Mead Skjelver The Digital Press @ The University of North Dakota Contents Translators’ Acknowledgements i Translators’ Introduction DANIELLE MEAD SKJELVER iii Historical Introduction RICHARD ROTHAUS xi Becoming American: A Brief Historiogaphy of Norwegian and Native Interrelations MELISSA GJELLSTAD xxi The Apple Creek Fight And Killdeer Mountain Conflict Remembered DAKOTA GOODHOUSE xxxi THE WAR WITH THE SIOUX Karl Jakob Skarstein Foreword 3 1. Two Peoples 9 2. The Uprising 31 3. The Whites Strike Back 105 4. The War on the Prairie 179 5. Afterword 241 Sources and Literature 245 Notes on Contributors 251 TRANSLATORS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The translators would like to thank the following for their exper- tise in linguistic and historical matters: Ottar Dahl, Sjur Høgberg, Kim Pedersen, Inger Skrede, Kerstin Bergman, Karin McGregor, Dave Flute, Tamara St. John, Richard Rothaus, Dakota Goodhouse, Bill Caraher, Cynthia Prescott, Sebastian Braun, Aaron Barth, Jeff Skjelver, Daniel Staberg, Robert Caulkins, and Daniel Sau- erwein. A hearty thanks to Amanda Osgood Jonientz for editorial expertise. We also appreciate Thor Skjelver's research assistance at the Minnesota Historical Society. Joan Wilson, Katrina Size- more, Michelle Schad, Echo Shea, Karen Garvin, Charley Robson, Kathleen Young Rybarczyk, Cathryn Mullen, Larissa Jones, Linda Monath Gregory, Echo Shea, Cesar Ivan, Janet Walden-West, Anna Genest, James Rock, and Hywela Lyn provided valuable lit- erary commentary, and Sheryl Cameron contributed an original copy of a primary source which we relied upon heavily. This translation received generous support from NORLA, Nor- wegian Literature Abroad, whose mission is to promote the distribution of Norwegian books in translation around the world. NORLA is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE Danielle Mead Skjelver Karl Jakob Skarstein’s Krigen mot siouxene: nordmenn mot indianere, 1862-1863 is a riveting read and has proven popular in Norway. An important work for its previously untapped Norwegian sources on the US-Dakota War, this book examines the conflict through a unique lens – that of a 21st century Norwegian analyzing the expe- rience of 19th century Norwegian emigrants. Bringing this book into English presented a number of wel- come challenges for the translators. Sometimes the challenges were a matter of specificity, such as the wordavtale , which means all of the following in English: agreement, arrangement, pact, and contract. There were also instances when singular and plural were not clear, such as with løsnet skudd, where someone fired (literally loosed) a shot or shots. Perhaps most fundamental to the tone of the translation is the word opprør, appearing throughout the text. This word can mean rebellion, revolt, uprising, insurrection, riot, uproar, or commotion. Clearly the Dakota War was not a riot, up- roar, or commotion. However, the other terms all appeared valid to us in translation. Ultimately we chose to alternate, using “up- rising” most often because terms like “insurrection,” “rebellion,” and “revolt” can carry assumptions such as, for example, that the Dakota saw themselves as subject to the United States government, something that may not have been a settled question at all. These challenges shaped our rendition of the book. They required us to puzzle out Skarstein’s intent within the historical context. Interestingly, the range of Skarstein’s descriptors for firearms and their projectiles is fairly small. There are numerous Norwe- gian terms for specific hand held firearms and their projectiles. Yet Skarstein keeps his range primarily to gevær and haggle, meaning iv “gun” and “shotgun”, while using musket and rifle, “musket” and “rifle” rarely. (“Rifle” at this time usually referred to a rifled musket. Since this was a period of technological transformation, the term “musket” still may have referred to smooth-bore barrels.) Sometimes the projectile mentioned could help us determine if a shotgun were the weapon. Kule was the term Skarstein used for projectiles. This word can mean either “ball” or “bullet.” From a musket, one would see a single ball; from a shotgun, one would see many balls. When the kind of weapon used was not clear, kule did not narrow down the possibilities. We generally translated this as “rounds”, “balls of shot”, or simply “ball” to be on the safe side, since modern bullets, conical in shape, would be associated with rifles. Many times it was wise for Skarstein not to differentiate be- cause, as in Mikkel Olsen Slaabakken’s experience, it may well have been shotgun pellets, musket balls, and bullets all at once. At other times, differentiation would have been helpful to us and to the En- glish reader. Certainly not all people in the period differentiated between the two. Skarstein’s conflation of handheld firearm pro- jectiles into kuler was a matter of audience and flow. His goal was to eliminate details that had limited significance for the narrative, which was more human than technical. Similarly problematic was the expression streife omkring, which means “wandered around” or “roamed around.” Skarstein used this term with the idea of living from the buffalo hunt. Because “wandered” and “roamed around” can imply a kind of aimlessness that does not accurately describe Indians living on the prairie, we chose to translate this as simply “roamed” without the preposition.* For one event, we chose to translate the word slag as “strike” rather than as “battle.” The word can mean, “strike,” “hit,” “blow,” or “battle.” In military matters, slag is generally translated as “battle,” and we followed this custom for all but one event. That one event is Whitestone Hill which we chose to translate as “The Strike at Whitestone Hill” rather than the Battle of Whitestone Hill. The event is arguably more a massacre than a battle.** Curiously for a book on this topic, Skarstein uses the term pioner, * My thanks to Dave Flute for his insight here. ** My thanks to Dakota Goodhouse for his suggestion of considering other definitions ofslag for Whitestone Hill. v “pioneer,” only once, when referring to “rugged pioneer-types,” which is barske pionertyper. As a result, we chose to avoid it as well. While he certainly spins a good tale, going so far as to wrap his figures in drama and some stereotypes, he does not use this value laden term,* opting instead for innvandrer and nybygger meaning “immigrant” “settler/colonist.” Another set of challenges emerged in determining Skarstein’s intended literary effect. For example, in his consistent use of hvi- tene or de hvite and indianerne, “the whites” and “the Indians,” to describe the two sides, we explored whether it would be best to use modern, scholarly terms such as Euro-American and indigenous or Native. In the end, we decided that Skarstein’s choice of terms was useful for its stark, racist dichotomy. Thus, the reader sees the terms in their literal meaning as Skarstein wrote them. Skartein’s use of the term hvitene or de hvite is also helpful to the reader in the discussion of what was going on in the United States at the time of the Dakota War. The American Civil War was raging, but because Skarstein’s audience is not American, he does not assume that the Civil War is central to his reader’s thinking or to Native Americans’ thinking. He refers to it as de hvites borgerkrigen, “the white’s civil war” as often as borgerkrigen, “the Civil War.” This paints the Civil War for the reader as a distant event just as it was for the Dakota participants in the US-Dakota War. Our view that Skarstein is aiming to highlight the racial or ethnic tension in this conflict is supported by his analysis of a sol- dier who shot fleeing warriors. Skarstein notes, “The soldier who related this episode did not give any indication that he thought there was anything wrong with this brutal murder of fleeing ene- mies. Had anything similar happened in the Civil War, where the enemies were white soldiers like themselves, the soldiers would most certainly have attempted to take those fleeing as prisoners.” While there were instances of retreating Civil War soldiers shot by the opposing side, Skarstein’s statement gets to the core of his view.

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