I'm Here



On Dec. 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota thirty-eight Dakota Indians wailed and danced atop the gallows, waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them. The scaffold, built to accommodate the largest mass execution in United States history, swayed under their weight.

“It seemed that the purpose of the singing and dancing was only to sustain each other in their last ordeal,” a witness observed. “As the last moment rapidly approached, they each called out their name and shouted in their native language: ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ ”

The shock waves of that mass execution still reverberate today among the Dakota people. Each year at this time a group of Dakota ride on horseback to Mankato to remember the executed warriors.

Dakota 38 is a film about their journey.

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