Henry Hastings Sibley (20 February 1811-18 February 1891) was the Democratic Governor of Minnesota from 24 May 1858 to 2 January 1860, succeeding Samuel Medary and preceding Alexander Ramsey.
Biography[]
Henry Hastings Sibley was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1811, the son of Solomon Sibley. He became a fur trading agent in Sault Ste. Marie in 1828, and his work took him to Mackinac Island and later to the lands west of Lake Pepin at the mouth of the Minnesota River. He traveled to St. Peters (now Mendota, Minnesota) in 1834, taking over the American Fur Company's "Sioux Outfit" in 1835 at the age of 24. He secured government contracts for the American Fur Company and negotiated treaties with local tribes, and he later opened his own company as American Fur declined. Sibley also entered the timber, sawmill, steamboat, and general merchandise industries opening a store in St. Paul. Sibley traded with the Métis, Ojibwe, British Army, and Dakota, and he concurrently served as a justice of the peace in Mackinac County and Clayton County, as a lobbyist for Governor James Duane Doty's 1814 treaty with the Sioux to create an all-Indian territory, as a lobbyist against Winnebago relocation, as a delegate to the US House of Representatives from the Wisconsin Territory from 1848 to 1849 and from the Minnesota Territory from 1849 to 1853, and as Minnesota's first state governor from 1858 to 1860. He went on to serve as a colonel during the Dakota War of 1862, and he executed 38 Indians for their murder of white settlers. In 1863, he led a successful expedition against the Sioux in the Dakota Territory, and he left the army in 1866 with the brevet rank of major-general. He went on to re-establish the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce and several other civic ventures, and he died in 1891.