Join the La Crescent Public Library and the Ho-Chunk Nation for an author talk with Cathy Coats about her new book, To Banish Forever: A Secret Society, the Ho-Chunk, and Ethnic Cleansing in Minnesota. We will gather at the Ho-Chunk Nation Three Rivers House (724 Main St, La Crosse) – food will be provided. Pearl Street Books will be selling copies of the book after the program.

About the book: In 1863, after the end of the US–Dakota War, a group of white men living in Mankato formed a secret society, the Knights of the Forest. At the beginning of every meeting, members recited their ritual pledge: “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.”

The Ho-Chunk people, who had not participated in the war, occupied a reservation about two miles south of Mankato on some of the state’s richest agricultural lands. The Knights, determined to claim these lands for their own profit, advocated for the removal of the Ho-Chunk, who had already been forced to move three times. Exploiting the fears of white people living in the area at the end of the brutal war, the Knights sent armed men to surround the Ho-Chunk reservation, threatening to shoot anyone who crossed the line.

Cathy Coats is a Metadata Specialist at the University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities. The book is published with the Minnesota Historical Society Press. This program is co-sponsored by the La Crescent Public Library and the La Crescent Area Historical Society in partnership with the Ho-Chunk Nation La Crosse Youth and Learning Center.