Bishop Whipple: Decolonizing and Indigenizing Concordia

Concordia College’s campus houses a select number of academic buildings named after various benefactors as well as historical figures significant to Minnesota. The oldest building on campus, Bishop Whipple, is named after the Episcopal Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple. The structure, formerly the home of the Bishop Whipple Academy, was purchased by the Northwestern Lutheran College Association in 1891 in order to establish a Norwegian Lutheran school in Moorhead. While many Concordia students and faculty learn and work in this building on a daily basis, most are unaware of the work done by Bishop Whipple, the namesake of this iconic Concordia building. More so, Bishop Whipple’s connection to and work done for the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples from our region, which is unknown to most of the Concordia population, must be assessed and recognized at a campus wide level. Through his passions and labors, Bishop Whipple helped 265 Dakotas obtain pardon from execution after the US-Dakota War. After this, Whipple continued his mission of advocacy for Native Americans, continuing the work of his missions across the state of Minnesota as well.

However, it is also important to examine the ways in which Bishop Whipple participated in pushes towards Native assimilation, perpetuated paternalistic attitudes towards Native Americans, and worked with government agents to further “civilize” Native peoples. Despite this, his compassion and fervent advocacy for Native Americans was exceptional at a time when the commonly held belief was that extermination of all Native people would be the only solution that would provide safety to homesteaders. Additionally, he frequently opened dialogue that publicly criticized the US government’s treatment of Native Americans. This propensity to criticize the status quo is a lesson we must all take with us as we work to decolonize and indigenize Concordia, even if it means criticizing those who teach us this lesson.

Early Life and Background

Born on February 15, 1822 in Adams, New York, Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple was a man who led a full life outside of his activism work; his faith and family were very important to him. Whipple attended Oberlin Collegiate Institute from 1838-1839 but had to drop out due to health issues. [1] After leaving Oberlin, Whipple worked for his father, the county merchant, and he became active in New York politics as a conservitave Democrat. Bishop Whipple married Cornelia Wright on October 5, 1842; they had six children together. Cornelia passed away in July of 1890, and Bishop Whipple went on to remarry to Evangeline Simpson in 1896. [2] 

Religion fueled all of Bishop Whipple’s work. His midwestern religious career began in 1857 when he became the first rector of the first free church in Chicago, the Church of the Holy Communion. He welcomed everyone to his services from tradesmen to immigrants. Bishop Whipple also spent much of his time holding religious services for inmates in Chicago prisons. [3]

After his time in Chicago, Bishop Whipple and his family moved to Minnesota in 1859. From touring various parishes and going on missions throughout the state, he learned of the poor conditions Native Americans were facing before settling in Faribault in the early months of 1860. [4] In 1859, Whipple was the first person elected as the Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota; he held this position until his death in 1901. [5]

In 1860, Whipple worked to incorporate the Bishop Seabury Mission, which eventually became three separate religious schools. He founded another school in Wilder, MN to provide an education to the children of rural farmers. [6]

Bishop Whipple found his calling in the work that he did with tribes in and around Minnesota.  The Bishop was very concerned with the welfare of Native tribes, and he spent much of his time coordinating with government officials in order to provide them with better resources. [7]

Bishop Whipple and the US-Dakota War 

Throughout the mid 1800s, the Dakota people were pushed into a narrow reservation along the Minnesota River because of the migrations of white settlers and ignored treaties. Starving and desperate, Little Crow and three other young Dakota men killed five white settlers on August 17, 1862. Bishop Whipple had long been a critic of US treatment of the Dakota, these critiques becoming more vocal as tensions between the Dakota and white immigrant communities led to the US–Dakota War in August 1862. This conflict resulted in the deaths of about 800 settlers and soldiers and arounds 150 Dakota warriors. Following this, General Henry H. Sibley brought 303 Dakota men to trial. [8]

While national and local opinion was intensely hostile towards the Dakota, Whipple was one of the few working to acquit the 303 Dakota facing execution. At the time, Minnesota’s Governor Alexander Ramsey called for the Dakota to be “exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state,” and the state offered bounties of up to $200 for Dakota scalps. [9]

Claims such as these were appalling to Whipple, as he believed the government did not have the right to order a mass execution, instead arguing that the Dakota should be treated as prisoners of war. Additionally, he argued that the US was to blame because of the years of treaty violations, and condemned the fact that the Dakota were being punished more harshly than any other tribe who engaged in conflict with the US in the past. [10] All of these arguments and more were laid out in letters to President Abraham Lincoln, several other prominent political figures, and various newspapers. After meeting personally with President Lincoln, Lincoln was deeply impressed by Whipple and thus had the list of condemned warriors pared down to those accused of leading the attacks and spared those who had merely participated in battle. [11] Yet in December of 1862, Lincoln authorized the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota in Mankato, Minnesota. On December 26, thousands of spectators cheered as they witnessed the largest mass execution in US history. This event was not the end of the attacks on the Dakota, however. In fact, it marked a turning point for the Dakotas, as around 1700 Dakota people, mostly women, children and elders, were forced first into a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. Later, increased pressure from distrusting settlers exiled the Dakota people to North and South Dakota, Montana, Kansas, Nebraska and Canada. [12]

For his work during the Dakota War trial, Whipple gained a national reputation as a spokesperson for Indian affairs and served on the Sioux Commission in 1876, the Northwest Indian Commission in 1887, and the US Board of Indian Commissioners from 1895 to 1901. [13]

Other Advocacy Work 

Of course, neither Whipple’s advocacy work nor his episcopate ended with his famous plea for the lives of the Dakota men sentenced to death. Before, during, and after the US-Dakota War, Whipple’s primary work took the form of his religious missions. The locations of these missions included but are not limited to Red Lake, White Earth, Leech Lake, Birch Coulee, and Faribault, known as the aforementioned Bishop Seabury Mission. Faribault was also the site of Whipple’s home, which had an addition built in 1866 called St. Mary’s Hall. [14] The institute was established as a boarding school; this was a common result of the many missions Whipple organized.

Whipple was able to continue these missions by raising awareness of the hardships Native Americans faced and raising money accordingly. This included his seats in many organizations, such as the aforementioned commissions as well as the American Episcopal Church’s Board of Missions, which Whipple was allotted a seat on due to his status as the Bishop of Minnesota. [15]

In the immediate aftermath of the Dakota War, many of the tribes in Minnesota were relocated to new reservations. Whipple played a role by acting as a voice for the tribes both among tribal councils and government officials. While primarily known for his work with the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples, Whipple also aided the Chippewa when they were subjected to relocation. He approached the tribe when the time came to craft a new treaty in 1862 and asked them what they believed was the best land in their country. With his help, the Chippewa secured the land they identified as the best, known now as the White Earth Reservation. [16] This reflects a greater trend of Whipple aiding tribes with the negotiation of often unfair terms in previous treaties.

Whipple became such an authority on Native American relations that in 1868, when Congress set $45,000 aside for the Sioux peoples in Sisseton and Wahpeton, a condition was set that said Whipple would be the one to spend the money. [17] It is noteworthy that he only agreed to these terms when the government threatened that the Sioux would not get the funds otherwise. Whipple proceeded to employ a simple method of distributing it; he bought goods that were distributed to those that worked and refused to those that didn’t, promoting a movement to European style sedentary agriculture. [18]

Presidents sought out Whipple when they were looking to end hostilities between settlers and Native Americans in Minnesota. One such occurrence of this was in 1876, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, which was part of the Sioux reservation. The existing treaty stated that white people were not allowed on the Sioux reservation, but the allure of gold led to settlers disregarding this stipulation and resulted in conflict. [19] Whipple was selected to be part of the party to end these problems, but unlike the government officials with him, he sided with the Sioux chief’s sentiment of white people as a “race of liars.” [20] This was one of many times that Whipple participated in such activities.

These trends of expanding his religious missions within his diocese, establishing schools, and aiding local Native American tribes whenever the need arose continued later into his life. Eventually, his traveling days of advocacy ended, and he remained in his home in Faribault until his death in 1901. [21]

Critiques of Whipple 

While the many of Bishop Whipple’s views were fairly progressive for the time, this does not absolve him from criticism. Whipple participated in the process of cultural genocide by insisting that he must save Native Americans, not only from execution, but from their “spiritual wanderings” and uncivilized practices. [22] He held paternalistic attitudes towards the Ojibwe and Dakota people and also stressed that Indians needed to be “civilized” in the Euro-American ways of farming and education. [23]

Whipple’s own autobiography shows much of this give and take dynamic. On the one hand, Whipple criticizes government policies and rejects many of the existing stereotypes of Native Americans at the time. He makes a point on many occasions to point out that some consequence of destitution, rather than the person themself, is to blame for something other white people at the time would have cited as justification for their view of the “savage” Native Americans. For instance, it was not savages that Whipple accused of forcing the missionary at Leech Lake to flee in 1857, rather drunken savages. [24] He goes on to blame drunkenness, poverty, starvation/malnutrition, and just about every other issue going on on the reservations on the government’s inept and dishonest policies towards Indians. 

Yet, for all of his activism and critiques of government policy, Whipple’s visions for the future of Native American life in the US looked eerily similar in both the image and the methodology to the American government. Both believed that the Native Americans needed to be “civilized” by adopting Euro-American styles of living, which is to say that their culture and traditions were to be destroyed. While Whipple was more moderate on his views of Indigenous cultural practices comparatively, he still advocated replacing many “heathen” beliefs with those of the Episcopal Church and promoting a shift to white cultural norms. This includes modes of dress, gender roles, etc. To implement these norms, Whipple founded several Indian boarding schools, places notorious for their mistreatment of Native American children. Additionally, Whipple spent years engaging in Christian missionary work with tribes in Minnesota. During these missions are where much of Whipple’s paternalism and views of Native peoples as uncivilized heathens became evident. He believed that the hardships facing the Native peoples he visited was because they were “savage men without governmental control.” [25] While he was more honest, generous, and gracious with the Native Americans he worked with than the average settler at the time, his paternalistic actions and perpetuation of the Native savage stereotype is worth consideration.

Conclusion

When the Concordia community encounters its campus’s oldest building, it is vital that each of us takes the time to recognize that good intentions from the past do not excuse actions that have contributed the cultural genocide of Native Americans. Each and everyday, we each must work to listen to the voices of Native peoples and work to correct the wrongs done to them for centuries. This can and should be done by continuing to criticize the settler colonists of American history who have been upheld as heroes, yet represent harmful attitudes against Native peoples. Bishop Whipple serves as an example of a person who did tangible good for Native peoples from the Minnesota-North Dakota region, but whose motives for this good often stemmed from a desire to proselytize and civilize them. 

When placing Bishop Whipple in the context of modern times, we might question: How does Whipple’s work translate into today’s society? Would he be an advocate for racial justice? Would he believe now that Native culture is to be preserved and celebrated, rather than believed they must be civilized and assimilated? 

Overall, Concordia’s community must continually reassess the work of Bishop Whipple in ways that place the voices and experiences of Indigenous people in the foreground, yet still find inspiration from the ways in which Whipple subverted the status quo and fought for the oppressed.

Authors: Louise Fouquerel-Skoe, Terry Kreps, and Elizabeth Routzahn for History 325