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Spur Awards Finalist, Western Biography, Western Writers of America, 2024
Born in Minnesota in 1845, the daughter of a prominent mixed-ancestry Dakota family, Angelique Renville (1845–1876) learned traditional Dakota ways of life from her relatives while navigating the complex multi-cultural world of the declining fur trade. At age six, along with her younger sister Agnes, she was formally adopted by Protestant missionaries Stephen and Mary Riggs, who did their utmost to erase her Dakota identity and educate her as a “proper” Christian woman. Despite their best efforts, Angelique remained close with her Dakota kin, especially her mother and siblings.
After a frustrating year at a female seminary in Ohio, Angelique worked as a domestic servant for a family friend, ostensibly continuing her education. The outbreak of the U.S.–Dakota War in 1862 and Agnes’s subsequent death in a U.S. Army prison camp changed everything. Returning to Minnesota, Angelique turned her back on the missionaries, entered a polygamous marriage with a Dakota man, and moved with her relatives to the Dakota Territory, where she increasingly distanced herself from the Riggs family. In 1869, she took legal action to emancipate herself from the guardianship of Stephen Riggs and to seek legal redress against unscrupulous loan sharks who had illegally sold her lands. It was an extraordinary act for an American Indian woman of the time, and she faced a steep uphill battle in court. Despite her untimely death of tuberculosis in 1876, Angelique Renville lived her final years on her own terms.
Author Linda Clemmons works from extensive primary sources, including letters written by Angelique herself—a rarity for American Indian women who are all too often silent or ignored in the historical record. Unrepentant Dakota Woman follows Angelique’s remarkable struggle for Indigenous identity and self-determination, while revealing new insights into relations between missionaries and their converts, education of American Indians, disparities between Native and Euro-American conceptions of family, and the challenges faced by Dakotas during one of the most tumultuous periods in their history.
Includes an appendix of letters written by Angelique Renville.
“Linda M. Clemmons's biography of Angelique Renville (1845–1876) offers a wonderful addition to the ongoing project of rethinking the history of mid-nineteenth-century Dakota country. . . . Clemmons's work is exemplary in its close and attentive use of primary sources, demonstrating how to read against the grain of documents written largely by men to preserve the stories of men.” — Catherine J. Denial, Bright Distinguished Professor of American History & director of the Bright Institute at Knox College (excerpt from review in North Dakota History Vol. 88.1)
“Unrepentant Dakota Woman represents an important methodological study that conveys how ignored histories can add depth to our study of the past. Indigenous women, Clemmons posits, should be central to studying and understanding this period; her book succeeds in supporting such an argument. Readers will find stories of power and resistance that offer fresh perspectives on Indigenous women during the nineteenth century.” — John R. Legg, George Mason University (review from The Western Historical Quarterly, Winter 2024 issue)
“Linda Clemmons has written on a topic little explored in Indian-white relations in the mid-19th Century. . . . In a fascinating and troubling narrative, Clemmons succeeds in exposing how missionaries pressured Native people to accept the white man's Christian values.” — Abraham Hoffman, Western Writers of America, Roundup Magazine, April 2024 Issue
“Clemmons reveals a young woman who tried to live within a foreign social structure, but also longed to live with her Dakota family. She ultimately succeeded, but living with the Riggs family had consequences for the rest of her short life.” — South Dakota Magazine, July/August 2024 Issue