Angela Wilson's hatred for all of 19th-century Minnesota, but for only some of the Dakota, shows through the thin veil of misstated historical references produced in the Dec. 2 piece, "Time to Level." Her racism here is but an encapsulation of the same offensive opinions published this year in her book, which I also read. I can find no reason that supposedly responsible people continue to offer her a stage for her intentional misstatements of those very complicated and troubled times.

She gets a few things right. Yes, 38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato on Dec 26, 1862, which remains to this day the largest mass execution in American history. But she declines even a mention of the context in which that event was carried out. In response to premeditated widespread depredations against persons and property -- which included mass murders of unsuspecting, largely unarmed and unresisting citizens -- these men were put to death by federal, not state, authorities. I searched in vain for any mention from Wilson of their innocent victims (estimates run from 400 to 1,000 human beings, with 500-600 not being unreasonable), the greatest number of whom were women and children.

She fails to acknowledge that the Dakota were not of a single mind on this plot. Significant numbers of Dakota immediately recognized the immorality of the uprising and not only refused to participate but actively sought -- at the risk of their own lives -- to stop it, offering protection to the targets of the rampage. Indeed, for the first 10 days until Col. Henry H. Sibley (also the state's first governor ) could organize and move his forces up the Minnesota River valley, these gallant Dakota -- mostly Upper Sioux -- were the only people who could provide any degree of safety to the nearly 300 hostages who had been seized by the belligerents. That is exactly what they did, and the bravery and moral courage of these "Peace Indians" are almost universally overlooked, with Wilson being no exception.

Nor did she bother to mention the subsequent loss of life among soldiers and civilian militia who sought desperately to restore order in the emergency. Modest estimates of those figures top 100, with probably double that inflicted on the Dakota renegades who opposed them. All of those deaths -- all of them -- fall squarely upon the Dakota who hatched this murderous plot, and a plot it was, having been discussed for much of the summer.

But was justice done at Mankato? Many today want to oversimplify the matter as just another example of American disdain for the basic humanity and human rights of the native peoples. That is irresponsibly ignorant of the facts.

First of all, the Dakota at that time were not even American citizens, as much by their own desire as anything else; they were members of a sovereign nation and were not entitled to the same protection under American law as citizens. Nonetheless, a rudimentary system of justice was extended to them by means of a military commission convened by the newly promoted Gen. Sibley. Originally 303 Dakota men were sentenced to die by the findings of the military commission, but those sentences were not carried out. They were forwarded to federal authorities in Washington. No less an arbiter than President Abraham Lincoln himself, already overburdened by the demands of our own Civil War, took a personal interest in having the sentences reviewed. His standard was that only those proven to have committed murder or rape would receive the death penalty. Military police in Minnesota actively protected the accused against attempts at vigilante justice, even though numbers of them had lost friends or family members during the conflagration.

Lincoln reduced the list of condemned to 39, most guilty by their own admission. Even on the eve of the hangings, this number was further reduced by one when the authorities determined the innocence of Round Wind and commuted his sentence. These are hardly the acts of bloodthirsty racists bent on genocide, as Wilson would have us believe.

Was justice done at Mankato? Only if you believe that a mere 38 individuals were responsible for the deaths of some 600 innocents and 100 defenders who sought to restore order. In fact, most of the worst offenders were among those who sought to elude justice and departed with Little Crow into the Dakota Territory and Canada. The subsequent efforts of the authorities to arrest them and bring them to account for their evil deeds are described by Wilson as efforts to "hunt down and terrorize those trying to flee." I guess Wilson's judgment is that their murderous acts should have been simply overlooked.

I will agree with her on this: Those horrible days in our state's history are terribly misunderstood, and a cooperative reevaluation of those events is long overdue. But we shouldn't begin the process by laying blame on each other. All of those people are dead and the people living today had nothing to do with any of it. The sesquicentennial would be a good time to undertake a fresh look, but let's not commence by manipulating the facts.

Patrick Hill, St. Paul, has published articles on the Civil War in Minnesota History and Ramsey County History magazines.