Though she didn’t view the Dakota as quite her equals, she nevertheless respected them to a significant degree and valued their friendship, seemingly preferring their company to that of the Agency whites. Unlike her husband, who was distrusted by many Dakota and regarded as “immoral” by at least a couple of the white missionaries living among them, Sarah got on well. Though initially unnerved by their relocation, Sarah eventually relished her deepening familiarity with both the Minnesota landscape and the Dakota people.
There he would serve as the Upper Agency physician. Their relationship seems to have been rocky from the start, and it wasn’t helped when the doctor chose in 1861 to move with Sarah and their two very young children to the remote Dakota Indian reservation in southwestern Minnesota. Soon she was married to a fellow New England transplant, Dr. In 1854 she turns up living in Minnesota, which wouldn’t become a state for two more years. But according to public records, she didn’t stay there. Sarah Brown was born to working-class parents in Rhode Island in 1829. The Dakota called her “Tonka-Winohiuca waste,” or “large woman.” During the six-week War she lost 40 pounds.) It must have been taken before the War, because during captivity her hair turned completely white. But I’ve kept at it, and the better acquainted I’ve gotten with the details of her life, the more fascinating she’s become. In addition, many of her choices were unorthodox, even scandalous, for a woman of her day, and are tough to explain from such historical distance.
Information about her has been hard to come by. Despite the popularity of her book, which became a classic, she was in many ways obscure, and she died more than a century ago. She hasn’t been an easy person to learn about. Question by question, I’ve been led further into Sarah’s life story. Sarah’s narrative filled me with questions that piqued my curiosity. In Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees, she had told the story of her wartime captivity among the Dakota Indians, or “Sioux,” as she (and most whites of the time) called them. Last summer, when I started reading intensively about the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, hoping to do some sort of related fictional project, I soon met up with Sarah Brown Wakefield, a survivor of the War. And, to tell you the truth, most of it has been a road I never expected to be walking on. Getting to this point has been a long, winding road compared to other writing projects I’ve done. I’m not completely done with my research, but I know enough now to put pen to paper. Finally: I’m ready to cross the line between researching my historical novel and writing it.
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