Jim Hallum grew up on the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska not knowing anything about the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Now, 162 years later, he and 30 others are on a nearly 300-mile ride from the reservation to southern Minnesota to mark one of the most tragic periods in Minnesota history — the hangings in Mankato of 38 Dakota warriors and two other men at the war’s end, the largest mass execution in American history.

Hallum is one of the organizers of the Dakota Exiles ride, a journey through frozen fields and open country covered in snow on horseback. They rode once before in 2020. They’ll meet up with another group of riders to commemorate the Dec. 26, 1862 hangings ordered by President Abraham Lincoln that led to a mass exile of Native people from Minnesota.

The ride is meant to honor those hanged in Mankato but also the thousands of people later forced from their homelands, Hallum said. Riders also want to preserve this painful history of the Dakota in the hope of helping heal the intergenerational trauma it created, he added.

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