The largely untold story of the Ho-Chunk exile from Minnesota, in which local white residents sought to expel all indigenous people from the region and deny Native claims to some of the richest farmland in the world.
In 1863, after the end of the US-Dakota War, a group of men in Mankato, Minnesota, formed a secret society. At the beginning of every meeting, members of the Knights of the Forest recited its ritual pledge, including these words: "I sincerely hope this meeting may be profitable to each one of us, and that we may go forth from this Lodge stronger and braver in the determination to banish forever from our beautiful State every Indian who now desecrates our soil."
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This is the story of the Knights, the Ho-Chunk, and the ethnic cleansing of southern Minnesota.