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Elsa Jemne created a well-balanced triptych for her mural in Hutchinson, MN. The three sections show a group of musicians in the center, villagers huddled behind a stockade on the left, and a group of Native Americans attacking and setting fire to a village schoolhouse on the right.
What does all this mean? First of all, the central image depicts something fundamental to the existence of the town of Hutchinson. Beginning in 1840 the children of a large farm family in Milford, New Hampshire gave their first concert - in the Baptist church meeting house. Members of the Hutchinson family who had been singing in the church choir became interested in attracting larger audiences outside the church. They soon realized that they could reach a larger public by singing about social issues and local political concerns. Remarkably, they were able to rise to national and international prominence with a repertoire that focused on abolition, temperance, and women's rights. In this sense they were the first American protest singers.
In 1855 three of the family members - Asa, John and Judson - traveled west with the idea of founding a new town in Kansas. As things turned out, they stopped in Minnesota, and thus the town of Hutchinson, MN was born. The central image in Jemne's mural featured the three singers with their two violins and a cello. The same tableau now graces a statue in the town's Library Square.
What of the rest of the mural? The right panel shows a violent attack on the outskirts of the town, while the left panel shows townspeople cowering behind an improvised stockade. These details are historically accurate. Left out, however, are the reasons behind the unrest of the Dakota Indians and the reasons for their attack on the town.
The United States government had concluded treaties with the Dakotas in 1851, under which they promised to make regular annuity payments. When the United States failed to uphold their treaty obligations, the Dakota people were starving and felt moved to violence to obtain food to survive. Chief Little Crow and a party of 200 warriors attacked Hutchinson on September 4, 1862.
After an attack at the Lower Sioux Agency in August, 1862, Hutchinson townspeople had hastily dismantled log cabins in the town and used the timbers to create a stockade, fortified with earth dragged in from nearby farms. The stockade was largely able to resist the Dakota attack, although buildings outside the stockade, including the town school, were looted and burned. So these elements of the mural are accurate.
But, in addition to ignoring the causes of the town's strife with the Dakotas, the mural also ignores its tragic aftermath. The state of Minnesota held a mass execution of members of the Dakota tribe in Mankato, and the entire tribe was largely expelled from the state in the following years.
It's ironic, to say the least, that a town founded by a group dedicated to racial equality should have become so mired in an act of genocide against Native Americans. It's hard to blame the citizens of Hutchinson, since they were caught between the policies of a duplicitous federal government and the desperate Native American victims of that policy.
American was founded on two original sins. One was slavery, but the Hutchinson Family Singers - and, by extension, the people of Hutchinson - stood against that crime. The second was genocide of the Native American population, and the state of Minnesota ended up being complicit in that ongoing policy.