DECEMBER 4:

1885 Montreal Quebec - Memorial mass for Louis Riel held in Montreal.

December 4, 1862:  The 303 Santee Sioux sentenced to hang by the courts for their part in the uprising are being held by Col.Henry Sibley's troops in a prison camp on the South Bend of the Minnesota River.  Tonight, an angry mob of local citizens tries to raid the camp and lynch the Indians. The soldiers will be able to keep the angry crowd from getting to the prisoners.

1674 Chicago Illinois - Jacques Marquette 1637-1675 reaches Chicago River and winters on the site of Chicago, a name the local Indians give to a variety of wild onion.

1615 New York State - Samuel de Champlain c1570-1635 leads defeated Huron war party back to Cahiagué in Huronia; arrives Dec. 23
 
 
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", by Dee Brown.  Random House, publishers.  ISBN 0 09 95264 9
 

... Being a man of conscience, however, Abraham Lincoln asked for "the full and complete record of the convictions; if the record does not fully indicate the more guilty and influental of the culprits, please have a careful statement made on these points and forward to me."  On receipt of the trial records, the President assigned two lawyers to examine them so as to differentiate between murderers and those who had engaged only in battle.

Lincoln's refusal to authorize immediate hanging of the 303 condemned Santees angered General Pope and Governor Ramsey.  Pope protested that "the criminals condemned ought in every view to be at once executed without exception ... Humanity requires an immediate disposition of the case."  Ramsey demanded authority from the President to order speedy executions of the 303 condemned men, and warned that the people of Minnesota would take "private revenge" on the prisoners if Lincoln did not act quickly.

While President Lincoln was reviewing the trial records, Sibley moved the condemned Indians to a prison camp at South Bend on the Minnesota River.  While they were being escorted past New Ulm, a mob of citizens that included many women attempted "private revenge" on the prisoners with pitchforks, scalding water, and hurled stones. Fifteen prisoners were injured, one with a broken jaw, before the soldiers could march them beyond the town.  Again on the night of December 4, a mob of citizens stormed the prison camp intent upon lynching the Indians.  The soldiers kept the mob at bay, and next day transferred the Indians to a stronger stockade near the town of Mankato.

In the meantime Sibley decided to keep the remaining 1,700 Santees - mostly women and children - as prisoners, although they were accused of no crime other than having been born Indians.  He ordered them transferred overland to Fort Snelling, and along the way they too were assaulted by angry white citizens.  Many were stoned and clubbed; a child was snatched from its mother's arms and beaten to death.  At Fort Snelling the four-mile-long procession was shunted into a fenced enclosure on camp bottomland.  There, under  soldier guard, housed in dilapidated shelters and fed on scanty rations, the remnants of the once proud woodland Sioux awaited their fate.