Inkpaduta was born in what later became the Dakota Territory shortly before the start of the 19th century, the son of chief Wamdisapa. As a child he contracted smallpox, which killed several of his relatives and family members. The disease left him badly scarred for life. After his father was later murdered in a tribal dispute, the band moved to Iowa, near present dayFort Dodge.
Career
Inkpaduta and his band were not signatories with the rest of the Wahpekute to the 1851 Treaty of Mendota, which transferred the land in northwestern Iowa to the United States. They refused to recognize the treaty restrictions. In 1852, Henry Lott, a drunken white whiskey trader, killed the new chief and nine of his family; and Inkpaduta succeeded his brother as chief. He told the U.S. Army of the murders, but little was done to bring Lott to justice. The localprosecuting attorney nailed the dead chief's head to a pole over his house. In the late winter of 1857, which was severe, Inkpaduta led his starving band into Iowa, where on March 8, he launched a series of raids on white settlers in the Spirit Lake area, in which a total of 38 people were killed. The European-Americans called this the Spirit Lake Massacre. His warriors took four young women captive; three were married and Abbie Gardner was age 14. Although chased by a civilian corps from Fort Ridgely in Minnesota, Inkpaduta and his band evaded capture. They killed two of the women along the way, and released the third relatively quickly. The following summer in 1858, the US succeeded in negotiating the ransom of the girl Abbie Gardner, who was returned to Spirit Lake. She later became known for her memoir about the events and her captivity, published in 1888 to great success, with repeated editions and two reprintings by the early twentieth century. By the time of the Dakota War of 1862, during the American Civil War, Inkpaduta had already been driven out of Minnesota, with the help of other Dakota who didn't wish to put their own annuity goods and money at risk. After many of the Dakota were driven out of the state following the 1862 war, the Army sent two major punitive expeditions into Dakota Territory; one in 1863 under Brig. Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley, who defeated the Indians in a series of battles, and another, larger expedition under Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully in 1864 which concluded with the Indians' defeat in the decisive Battle of Killdeer Mountain. Inkpaduta's band withdrew westward with their Lakota cousins, and the chief migrated with survivors onto the Great Plains. He eventually fell in with the Lakotas and became friends with Sitting Bull. He fought with the Lakota in the Battle of Little Bighorn against George Armstrong Custer. When Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada following the battle, Inkpaduta accompanied them. He died in Manitoba in 1881.
