Lac qui Parle Mission in Chippewa County was the leading station of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ work among Dakota people between 1835 and 1854. Though missionaries cited it as the most successful project of its kind among the Dakota, the mission failed in its objective to replace Dakota culture with European American lifeways. Throughout its existence Lac qui Parle was a multicultural community, where Dakota people and European Americans cooperated with each other but experienced deep divides.
In the mid-1800s, the lake called Mde Iaúdaŋ (Small Lake that Speaks) was in the heart of Waȟpétuŋwaŋ Dakota homeland. The Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ had a village on the south side of the lake, where it empties into Mni Sota Wakpa (the Minnesota River). Sisíthuŋwaŋ Dakota people had a small village just to the south, at the mouth of Ptaŋ Siŋta Wakpa (the Lac qui Parle River). Iháŋkthuŋwaŋ and Mdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ Dakota visited the lake as well.
French fur traders reached the lake in the 1700s and translated its Dakota name into their language, calling it “Lac qui Parle.” In 1826, Joseph Renville, a fur trader of Mdewakhaŋtuŋwaŋ and French ancestry, established a trading post at the lake and became an influential leader there. Raised a Catholic, he invited the missionary families of Thomas Williamson and Alexander Huggins to establish a mission at Lac qui Parle. In July of 1835 the Williamsons and Huggins arrived at Lac qui Parle and began their mission work. The missionaries depended on Renville and his family for protection and influence among the local Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ.
Throughout the rest of the 1830s, the mission community grew. More missionaries arrived: Stephen Riggs and his family; brothers Samuel and Gideon Pond; and others. The Renvilles and their extended family made up the core of Dakota people who attended church services. Most of them were women and children, since the majority of Dakota men resisted the missionaries. Mary Renville (Tonkanne), the Mdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ wife of Joseph, and Tutidutawiŋ (Her Scarlet House, also called Catherine), a Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ woman, were early leaders of the mission community. The mission became a place of family life where the children of missionaries and Dakota children grew up.
The early 1840s were a time of success according to the missionaries, but their accomplishments depended on the desires of Dakota people. Some Dakota men joined the congregation, and a few began giving sermons in Dakota. Dakota women led the effort to build a church, which was completed in 1841. The missionaries plowed fifty acres for corn, and Dakota families, who had been planting corn before the missionaries arrived, took to the fields. For years, Joseph Renville and the missionaries worked to translate religious texts into a written Dakota language. In 1842 the first of many religious texts in the Dakota language were published.
The written Roman alphabet failed to capture the sounds, concepts, and nuances of oral Dakota. It also threatened to replace the Dakota language as part of a bigger project of assimilation. In response, most Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ and Sisíthuŋwaŋ people resisted. Some individuals killed the mission’s livestock, shot at its church bell, and threatened the missionaries. Some also harassed and ostracized the Dakota who were part of the mission community. The resistance culminated in 1842, when the Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ joined the Mdewakantunwan in an attempt to remove missions from Dakota lands. The mission survived these difficulties at first because a few influential Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ did not want the missionaries to leave. But in 1846, Joseph Renville died. Without his patronage, Lac qui Parle mission began to decline. By 1849, there were only eighteen members in the congregation.
The signing of treaties in 1851 brought changes to Lac qui Parle. Though the mission was within the boundaries of the reservation, many Dakota people relocated further downriver to Pajutazee (Phežíhutazizi K’ápi) Mission, near the Upper Sioux Agency. The missionaries at Lac qui Parle argued that the mission could continue as a government boarding school for Native children. This never happened, and in 1854, when the Riggs’ family home burned to the ground, the mission was abandoned.
In 1933 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) began a flood-control project at Lac qui Parle, leading to renewed interest in the old mission site. The Minnesota Historical Society excavated the site in 1940, and the Chippewa County Historical Society, in partnership with the WPA, reconstructed the mission in 1942. Lac qui Parle State Park was created in 1941. In 1973 the mission site was listed on the National Register as part of an archaeological historic district; in later decades, it was managed by the Chippewa County Historical Society.