To Banish Forever - Author Cathy Coats

Historic Chateau Theater - Peace Plaza

Join Rochester Public Library and Assisi Heights Spirituality Center for a presentation by author Cathy Coats on her book To Banish Forever at the Historic Chateau Theater.

In 1863, after the end of the US–Dakota War, a group of white men living 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.”

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.

This is the story of the Knights, the Ho-Chunk, and the ethnic cleansing of southern Minnesota.