Saturday July 21, 1860, Alfred J. Hill took this photo of the Hazlewood (Hazelwood) Republic on the Upper Sioux Reservation in Minnesota. According to a letter written a few days later by one of the men in the foreground, the photographer’s vantage point was, “on the little mound back of Simon’s.”

Twenty five months later, August 27, 1862, Mdewankanton Chief Little Crow and 2,300 Mdewankanton and Wahpekute Dakotas, with their captives, went into camp, uninvited, on this spot: Simon’s back yard.

Wahpeton Dakota Simon Anawangmani was the President of the Hazlewood Republic. He was also a leader in the war-time Dakota Peace Coalition head-quartered in the mission school boarding house, the two-story building framed by the tipis on the left side of the photo.

Please join me on Tuesday January 29, 2013 at 7:00 PM at the Minnesota Historical Society, for my History Lounge presentation on some of the most unfamiliar stories of the Dakota War of 1862: the stories of the Dakotas who allied for peace.

Image Credit: the Minesota Historical Society, usdakotawar.org