Andrew Myrick: Hunger, Credit, and the U.S.–Dakota War

Hunger, credit and Myrick’s letter

Before the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, food and money promised under treaties had become instruments of dependence. A poor harvest, declining access to hunting, delayed annuity payments, and traders’ refusal to extend credit left Dakota families facing hunger.^[2] The Minnesota Historical Society describes these pressures as connected causes of the conflict, not background to a single provocative remark.

Andrew Myrick traded at the Lower Sioux Agency. In a letter to his brothers dated July 26, 1862, he described traders acting together to withhold credit and expressed the expectation that hunger would force payment of debts.^[1] This surviving correspondence supplies stronger evidence of his conduct than an unattributed quotation circulating online.

The grass story and the outbreak of war

Myrick is also associated with the statement that hungry Dakota people could eat grass. The historical society attributes that response to him but introduces the account of grass being found in his mouth after his death as a story.^[1] He was killed while fleeing the agency on August 18.^[1] The reported detail should not be upgraded into a verified forensic finding.

The war followed decisions made by different people under unequal circumstances. On August 17, four Dakota men killed five settlers near Acton; some Dakota leaders subsequently chose war, while others opposed it.^[2] Dakota farmers had also shared food with hungry relatives. Treating an entire people as having one intention erases those distinctions.

Myrick’s letter helps explain an economic relationship in which access to food could be withheld to collect debts. The famous insult may make the episode memorable, but treaty failures, hunger, and official decisions are necessary to understand why the confrontation became a war.

Reading an adversary’s account

The letter also preserves Dakota resistance as reported by an adversary. Myrick described councils, a refusal to pay debts and demands that traders stop cutting wood and grass.^[1] Those passages record conflict over credit and local resources, but his hostile descriptions are his own. They should not become a neutral account of Dakota motives simply because the letter is contemporary.

The delayed annuity and the trader’s decision were separate links in the crisis. Treaty payments were owed through government arrangements; extending store credit was a choice made by traders. Myrick’s letter describes withholding credit deliberately to obtain a change in behaviour. That distinction identifies agency within the economic pressure instead of making famine seem an impersonal accident.

The famous ending and its limits

The grass story’s symmetry made it especially memorable: an insult about hunger was answered after the speaker’s death. Symmetry can also make a story easier to repeat than to verify. The historical society’s cautious wording leaves the reported scene separate from the much firmer letter and dated killing, allowing the source record to carry more weight than the narrative’s satisfying ending.