Little Crow III, ca. 1810-1863

Little Crow III; Dakota: Thaóyate Dúta; c. 1810 – July 3, 1863; was a Mdewakanton Dakota chief who led a faction of the Dakota in a five-week war against the United States in 1862.

In 1846, after surviving a violent leadership contest with his half-brothers, Taoyateduta became chief of his band and assumed the name Little Crow.[1] He played a pivotal role in signing the 1851 Treaty of Mendota which ceded most of their lands in present-day Minnesota and Iowa to the United States. In 1858, Little Crow led a delegation of Dakota leaders to Washington, D.C., where they were pressured by the U.S. government to give up their remaining holdings north of the upper Minnesota River.[2] Faced with anger and mistrust at home, Little Crow lost an election for tribal spokesman in 1862, after which he tried to change his traditionalist ways ...

Taoyateduta (which translates as "His Scarlet Nation," though he was more often known as Little Crow, after his father) was born into the Mdewakanton village of Kaposia about 1810. He succeeded his father as leader in 1846. During the 1850s, he was widely recognized as a spokesperson for all the Lower bands of Dakota. He was a negotiator and signer of the Treaty of Mendota in 1851 and the Treaty of 1858. By the 1860s, Little Crow had adopted some European customs — he owned some European-styled clothing, for example, and he lived in a wood-frame house. But like most Dakota farmers on the Lower reservation, he staunchly refused to compromise his Dakota religious beliefs.

Little Crow tried to use his knowledge of white culture to guide the course of the war. On August 19, with hundreds of settlers already dead in Brown and Renville counties, and with attacks on white settlements continuing, he is reported to have said, "Soldiers and young men, you ought not to kill women and children. . . . You should have killed only those who have been robbing us so long. Hereafter make war after the manner of white men ...