SOURCE: "Sarah Wakefield and the Dakota War," in White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier, University of North Carolina Press, 1993, pp. 204-61.

In the excerpt below, Namias claims that Sarah Wakefield, who was captured during the Dakota War of 1862, wrote a narrativized "act of conscience" in attempting to portray her captors realistically and sympathetically, in conflict with prevailing popular opinion.

Sarah Wakefield's career as author and reporter of her own experience as a captive began shortly after the hangings [of her captors] at Mankato. Why did she write her book? What is its history and what does it tell us about this woman, the historical event in which she participated, and the role of conscience? Wakefield's decision to write her narrative was infused with her sense of guilt and her inability to overlook what appeared to her as a deliberate attempt to get rid of Chaska...