If They Are Hungry, Let Them Eat Shit

A vignette from the Minnesota Massacre

This episode took place in the hungry days before the Dakota Outbreak in August 1862 when the Sioux were starving and tempers were at knife edge. As always, I plan to come back to it later in fuller depth.

A trader named Andrew Myrick at the Lower Village reportedly said "If they are hungry, let them eat shit." I have seen various versions of his comment from the bowdlerized "Let them eat grass" to "Let them eat grass and dung" to "Let them eat shit."

Personally, I think "Let them eat shit" rings truer to the time and the absolute rage that it aroused in the Sioux.

Myrick was killed in the first hours of the Uprising and his mouth was found stuffed with "Grass and Dung." Personally, I think it would have been stuffed with more "shit" than "grass and dung."