The Crow Creek Reservation began in hardship after the U.S.-Dakota War started in 1862, when starving Dakota people revolted against poor treatment, harsh conditions, and the U.S. government's failure to meet treaty obligations. In 1863, the U.S. military forcibly removed most of the Dakota and the Ho-Chunk people, including many who were not involved in the war, and relocated them to Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek Reservation. In May 1863, 1,300 Isanti Dakota and Ho-Chunk, mainly women and children, were sent there on crowded steamships after imprisonment, and many died on the voyage. They arrived malnourished and in shock to a desolate reservation suffering from severe drought, while supplies took six weeks to obtain and many had spoiled by the time they arrived. Starvation and illness spread widely, and in the first six months more than 200 Dakota people, most of them children, died. The expulsion shattered many families and brought an era of bare survival. After the war, the U.S. military found 303 Dakota men guilty and hanged 38 men in Mankato, Minnesota. Old Fort Thompson later evolved from a prison camp into a town and social hub, but when Fort Randall Dam was built, the town flooded and moved to its present location. Today the Crow Creek Reservation includes the districts of Big Bend, Crow Creek, and Fort Thompson, and its people remain through the strength and adaptability of their ancestors.