Minnesota Treaties

Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, painted for Minnesota State Capitol by Francis David Millet, 1905"Suppose your Great Father wanted your lands and did not want a treaty for your good; he could come with 100,000 men and drive you off to the Rocky Mountains."

Luke Lea, U.S. negotiator, Treaty of Mendota, 1851

1805: In 1805 the Dakota ceded 100,000 acres of land at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. U.S. Army Lt. Zebulon Pike negotiated the agreement so the U.S. government could build a military fort there. Of the seven Indian leaders present at the negotiations, only two signed the treaty.

Pike valued the land at $200,000, but no specific dollar amount was written into the treaty. At the signing, he gave the Indian leaders gifts whose total value was $200. The U.S. Senate approved the treaty, agreeing to pay only $2,000 for the land.

no-captionGenerally, the Indians who signed treaties did not read English. They had to rely on interpreters who were paid by the U.S. government. It is uncertain whether they were aware of the exact terms of the treaties they signed.

Minneapolis and St. Paul are located on land ceded in 1805.

1825: The U.S. government arranged the Prairie du Chien treaty between the Dakota and Ojibwe, as well as the Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, Iowa, Potawatomi, and Ottawa tribes. The treaty set the boundaries of tribal land. After that, it was simpler for the government to negotiate with the Indians for the purchase of their lands.

1837: At Fort Snelling in 1837, the Ojibwe ceded their land north of the 1805 area to the U.S. government in exchange for cash, the payment of claims made by traders, and annual payments of cash and goods, or annuities.

Later that year, a group of Dakota leaders was brought to Washington, D.C., having been told that they would be negotiating the settlement of their southern boundary. Instead, they were pressured into ceding all their land east of the Mississippi. The land was valued at $1,600,000, but the U.S. government agreed to pay far less. The Dakota were promised the interest on $300,000, invested at 5 percent. This amounted to $15,000 per year. The government kept control over one-third of this money, reserving (but not allocating) it for education. Another $200,000 was paid to friends and relatives of the tribe and to settle debts, and $16,000 was given to the Dakota leaders as an incentive to sign the treaty. Each year for 20 years, $23,750 was allocated for annuity payments, food, education, equipment, supplies, and government services.

1847: In 1847 the Ojibwe ceded land for Ho-Chunk and Menominee reservations. This land is west of the 1837 sale. The Ojibwe received $17,000 in cash for the land and the promise of $1,000 annually for the following 46 years. The Ho-Chunk and Menominee reservations were never established.

1851: Minnesota became a territory in 1849. White settlers were eager to establish homesteads on the fertile frontier. Pressured by traders and threatened with military force, the Dakota were forced to cede nearly all their land in Minnesota and eastern Dakota in the 1851 treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota. At Traverse des Sioux, the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of the Dakota ceded 21 million acres for $1,665,000, or about 7.5 cents an acre. Of that amount, $275,000 was set aside to pay debts claimed by traders and to relocate the Dakota. Another $30,000 was allocated to establish schools and to prepare the new reservation for the Dakota.

The U.S. government kept more than 80 percent of the money ($1,360,000), with only the interest on the amount--at 5 percent for 50 years--paid to the Dakota. The terms of the Mendota treaty with the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of the Dakota were similar, except that those payments were even smaller. The treaties of 1851 also called for setting up reservations on both the north and south sides of the Minnesota River. But the U.S. Senate changed the treaties by eliminating the reservations and leaving the Dakota with no place to live. Congress required the Dakota to approve this change before appropriating desperately needed cash and goods. President Millard Fillmore agreed that the Dakota could live on the land previously set aside for reservations, but only until it was needed for white settlement.

1854: The arrowhead region of northeastern Minnesota was purchased from the Ojibwe. Three small reservations were located on parts of this land.

1855: The Ho-Chunk ceded their land in Minnesota, except for one small reservation in the southeastern corner of the Territory. The Ojibwe ceded land in north-central Minnesota. Nine reservations were created on this traditional Ojibwe land.

1858: A month after Minnesota became a state, a group of Dakota traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss their reservation. The Dakota were pressured to cede the lands on the north side of the Minnesota River. They received 30 cents per acre, estimated to be only about 5 percent of the land's value. When the funds were finally distributed in 1860, most of the $266,880 promised went to pay debts claimed by traders.

By 1858 the Dakota had only a small strip of land in Minnesota. Without access to the land upon which they had hunted for generations, they had to rely on treaty payments for their survival. The inadequate money and goods often arrived late. By summer 1862, most of the Dakota were starving--one of the causes of the U.S.-Dakota War, which lasted six weeks. Nearly 400 Dakota men were tried by a military commission, and 303 were sentenced to death. President Lincoln pardoned many, but 38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato. The remaining Dakota were sent to prison in Iowa or to reservations at Crow Creek in what is now South Dakota, and at Santee in Nebraska Territory.

In 1863 the Dakota were forced to give up all their remaining land in Minnesota, and the U.S. government canceled all treaties made with them. The Ojibwe reluctantly ceded most of their remaining land in northwestern Minnesota in treaties of 1863, 1864, and 1867. In 1871 Congress ended the practice of making treaties with Indian nations. However, past treaties remained in place.

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Bibliography

Kaplan, Anne R., and Marilyn Ziebarth. Making Minnesota Territory, 1849-1858. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1999.

Wingerd, Mary Lethert. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Resources for Further Research

Websites
Tales of the Territory. Minnesota Historical Society.
Treaties with Minnesota Indians
Minnesota Humanities Center Treaties Project

Primary
Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties.Vol. II. Compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler.Washington:Government Printing Office, 1904.Oklahoma State University Library.

Glossary Terms

Treaty

Key People

Joseph R. Brown
Joseph R. Brown
A.H.H. Stuart
A.H.H. Stuart
Frank Blackwell Mayer
Frank Blackwell Mayer
Makato
Makato
Taoyateduta (Little Crow)
Taoyateduta (Little Crow)
Henry H. Sibley
Henry H. Sibley
Wabaṡa
Wabaṡa
Alexander Ramsey
Alexander Ramsey
Wambditanka (Big Eagle)
Wambditanka (Big Eagle)
Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)
Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)
Joseph R. Brown

Joseph R. Brown


Joseph Renshaw Brown was born in York County, Pennsylvania, on January 5, 1805.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1820, he was assigned to the Fifth Infantry Regiment, which had been sent to the upper Mississippi River area in order to build a military post at the river's confluence with what is now known as the Minnesota River. The post--Fort St. Anthony--was later renamed Fort Snelling. After leaving the army in 1828, Brown remained in the area, and in the ensuing years he was at various times a fur trader farmer; lumberman; stagecoach line owner; justice of the peace, clerk of court, and register of deeds; printer; newspaper editor, owner, and publisher; and U.S. Indian agent in Minnesota (1857-61).

Actively involved in politics, he served in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, as a delegate to the conventions that organized Minnesota Territory and drafted the state's constitution, and in the Minnesota Territorial Council and Legislature. He was also an avid promoter of a steam-powered traction engine which he purchased from a New York engineer. Brown was associated with the development of several Minnesota communities, including the town of Henderson.
In 1850, the twice-divorced Brown married Susan Frenier, whose forebears included a French fur trader, a Mdewakanton Dakota chief, and a Yankton Dakota chief.

During the U.S.-Dakota War, while he was away from Minnesota on business related to the steam wagon, Brown's house near what is now the town of Sacred Heart was burned and his family captured. They were later released. Following his return to Minnesota he served as superintendent of the Indian prison at Mankato, participated in the military campaigns against the Dakota, and was special military agent at Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory. He died in New York City in 1870, while on a business trip in connection with the steam wagon.


For more information, see: Nancy Goodman and Robert Goodman, Joseph R. Brown: Adventurer on the Minnesota Frontier, 1820-1849, Rochester, MN: Lone Oak Press, 1996

View full article: Joseph R. Brown

A.H.H. Stuart

A.H.H. Stuart

“In this new home [the reservation], which is of comparatively small extent, they will be so concentrated as to be readily controlled and influenced for their real welfare. Farms will be there opened for them. Mills and schools established, and dwelling houses erected; and as gradually the white settlements close in around them, destroying game and rendering hunting life impossible, and as they will have within their own territory the means of living with very little labor on their part, the force of circumstances alone will compel their resorting to agriculture for subsistence…" -A.H.H. Stuart to Alexander Ramsey, August 6, 1851
Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart served in President Millard Fillmore's cabinet as the Secretary of the Interior from 1850-53. In that capacity, he wielded considerable influence over Indian affairs and conflicts on the American frontier. A native of Virginia, Stuart became a powerful political figure in the Confederacy during the Civil War.

View full article: A.H.H. Stuart

Frank Blackwell Mayer

Frank Blackwell Mayer

Frank Blackwell Mayer (1827-99) was a young artist from Baltimore when he decided in 1851 to travel far into the American frontier came to Minnesota Territory in order to document the Traverse des Sioux treaty negotiations and other aspects of Dakota life. He brought along a sketchbook, and the drawings he made at the treaty signing are the most important visual documents we have of this historic event. In 1886, he worked up his earlier drawings into an oil painting of the treaty signing, now in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. The small painting was used as the basis for a large mural rendition of the scene for the Minnesota State Capitol in 1905.
Why had Mayer been so keen to capture these scenes? Maybe he had read this passage in the 1850 annual report of the Baltimore museum where he worked before leaving for Minnesota:
"The aboriginal inhabitants of this great continent are fast yielding to the more powerful race now peopling their ancient domain. . . . The greater the necessity for now rescuing from oblivion every memorial of a people so soon to be extinguished or blended with those who are so superior to them in numbers if not in intellectual endowment."

View full article: Frank Blackwell Mayer

Makato

Makato

Born about 1822, Mankato was the son of Good Road, for whose family the village "Mankato" was named. The Blue Earth River takes its name from the Dakota phrase "Makato Osa Watapa," or "the river where blue earth is gathered."
Mankato was a member of the delegation who signed the Treaty with the Dakota on June 19, 1858. He appears (left) in the famous photograph of the treaty signers made at a photography studio in Washington, D.C. During the U.S.-Dakota War he led a band of Mdewakanton soldiers into battle at Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee, and Wood Lake. On September 23, 1862, he was killed by a cannonball at the battle of Wood Lake.

View full article: Makato

Taoyateduta (Little Crow)

Taoyateduta (Little Crow)

"We have waited a long time. The money is ours, but we cannot get it. We have no food, but here are these stores, filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry they help themselves"
Taoyateduta, 1862
Taoyateduta (which translates as "His Scarlet Nation," though he was more often known as Little Crow, after his father) was born into the Mdewakanton village of Kaposia about 1810. He succeeded his father as leader in 1846. During the 1850s, he was widely recognized as a spokesperson for all the Lower bands of Dakota. He was a negotiator and signer of the Treaty of Mendota in 1851 and the Treaty of 1858. By the 1860s, Little Crow had adopted some European customs — he owned some European-styled clothing, for example, and he lived in a wood-frame house. But like most Dakota farmers on the Lower reservation, he staunchly refused to compromise his Dakota religious beliefs.
Little Crow tried to use his knowledge of white culture to guide the course of the war. On August 19, with hundreds of settlers already dead in Brown and Renville counties, and with attacks on white settlements continuing, he is reported to have said, "Soldiers and young men, you ought not to kill women and children. . . . You should have killed only those who have been robbing us so long. Hereafter make war after the manner of white men."

On September 7, 1862 — three weeks into the fighting — Little Crow sent a letter to Henry Sibley pinpointing the reasons Lower soldiers went to war. Little Crow’s letter condenses decades of frustration over misuse of government funds, late annuity payments, and poor relations between government officials and Dakota leaders into a few terse sentences.

"Dear Sir – For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. it is on account of Maj. Galbrait [sic] we made a treaty with the Government a big for what little we do get and then cant get it till our children was dieing with hunger – it is with the traders that commence Mr A[ndrew] J Myrick told the Indians that they would eat grass or their own dung. Then Mr [William] Forbes told the lower Sioux that [they] were not men [,] then [Louis] Robert he was working with his friends how to defraud us of our money, if the young braves have push the white men I have done this myself."

Letter to Col. Sibley, Sept. 12, 1862:

"Red Iron Village or Mazawakan
To Hon H. H. Sibley
We have in Mdewakanton band one hundred & fifty five prisoners. not including the Sisiton [sic] & Warpeton [sic] prisoners. then we are waiting for the Sisiton what we are going to do with the prisoners they are coming down. they are at Lake qui Parl now. the words that I have sent to the governed I want to here [sic.] from him also. and I want to know from you as a friend what way that I can make peace for my people. in regard to prisoners they fair [sic.] with our children or our self just as well as us
your truly friend
Little Crow
per Scott Campbell"

After the Battle of Wood Lake, he left Minnesota and attempted to gather support for a continued war in the west and Canada. He was killed on July 3, 1863 after returning to Minnesota. For many years some of his remains were put on display by the Minnesota Historical Society before being returned to his descendants for burial.

View full article: Taoyateduta (Little Crow)

Henry H. Sibley

Henry H. Sibley


In 1834, Henry Sibley became a partner in the American Fur Company and settled in Mendota, Minnesota. Like a number of other traders, Sibley entered into a relationship with a Dakota woman, Red Blanket Woman. Their relationship produced a daughter, Helen Sibley, before the couple parted to live separate lives. Sibley acknowledged his daughter, protected her interests and education, and remained involved in her life. After the fur trade dwindled, Henry Sibley became a successful businessman, investing in lumbering, river transportation, railroads, and land. He played a pivotal role in the 1851 treaty negotiations and later commanded U.S. troops during the war and on the 1863 punitive expeditions. From 1867-70, he served as president of the Minnesota Historical Society.


During the war, Sibley was vilified in the press for his slowness in advancing to Fort Ridgely to liberate captive settlers. He wrote to his wife on September 4, 1862:

"I see . . . that the people are dissatisfied with my slow advance. Well, let them come and fight these Indians themselves, and they will [have] something to do besides grumbling. I have told Gov. R. in my dispatch that he can have my commission when he sees fit, as I would be too glad to let some one take my place. . . . I have not slept more than an hour in two nights, and have been in the saddle almost [all] of the time for two days and nights. . . ."

Colonel Sibley to Governor Ramsey, August 25, 1862:

"My heart is steeled against them, and if i have the means, and can catch them, I will sweep them with the besom of death."

Sibley convened the military commission that condemned 303 Dakota men to death in the wake of the war.



Letter From Col. Henry Sibley to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, December 19th, 1862.

"[I]t should be borne in mind that the Military Commission appointed by me were instructed only to satisfy themselves of the voluntary participation of the individual on trial, in the murders or massacres committed, either by voluntary participation of the individual on trial, in the murders or massacres committed, either by his voluntary concession or by other evidence and then to proceed no further. The degree of guilt was not one of the objects to be attained, and indeed it would have been impossible to devote as much time in eliciting details in each of so many hundred cases, as would have been required while the expedition was in the field. Every man who was condemned was sufficiently proven to be a voluntary participant, and no doubt exists in my mind that at least seven-eighths of those sentenced to be hung have been guilty of the most flagrant outrages and many of them concerned in the violation of white women and the murder of children."

Source: Executive documents, MNHS collections and Henry H. Sibley: An Inventory of His Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society and Governors of Minnesota.

View full article: Henry H. Sibley

Wabaṡa

Wabaṡa

"We think our Great Father may have forgotten his Red children & our hearts are very heavy — the Agents he send to us seem to forget their father’s words before they reach here for we often think they disobey what he has said. . . . You have said you are sorry to see my young men engaged still in their foolish dances--it is because their hearts are sick. They don’t know that whether these lands are to be their home or not."
Wabaṡa to Bishop Whipple, 1862
Chief Wabaṡa (also known as Wabasha, Wapasha, or Tahtapesaah), a member of the Mdewakanton band of Dakota, lived on a farm on the Lower Reservation by the Agency. During the U.S.-Dakota War, there were divisions between groups of Dakota people who were for or against the fighting. Wabaṡa joined a group of Dakota called the Peace Party whose aim was to bring people to safety.
After the war, Wabaṡa was exiled to Crow Creek in South Dakota, and later to Santee, Nebraska.

View full article: Wabaṡa

Alexander Ramsey

Alexander Ramsey

"Our course then is plain. The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of Minnesota."

Alexander Ramsey to a special session of the Minnesota legislature, September 9, 1862
 
Alexander Ramsey was born September 8, 1815, at Hummelstown, Pennsylvania.
 
In 1849, Ramsey was appointed governor of Minnesota Territory by President Zachary Taylor.  In this role, he also acted as the territory’s Indian superintendent. Aware that his political future depended on his ability to open lands west of the Mississippi River for white settlement, Ramsey teamed up with his friend Henry Sibley, a former fur trader who was also the territory's delegate to the U.S. Congress. Together with Luke Lea, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, they negotiated the treaties of 1851. Ramsey was investigated and acquitted by the U.S. Congress on allegations of fraud connected to the 1851 treaty negotiations.
 
During his political career, Ramsey held many offices in Minnesota and Washington, D.C.: territorial governor, mayor of St. Paul, state governor, U.S. senator, and Secretary of War under President Rutherford B. Hayes. He was also a shrewd businessman, and made a sizeable fortune in real estate. Ramsey was also the first president of the Minnesota Historical Society, a post he was holding when the U.S.-Dakota War broke out in 1862.

View full article: Alexander Ramsey
Wambditanka (Big Eagle)

Wambditanka (Big Eagle)

"There was great dissatisfaction among the Indians over many things the whites did. The whites would not let them go to war against their enemies. . . . Then the whites were always trying to make the Indians give up their life and live like white men--go to farming, work hard as they did--and the Indians did not know how to do that, and did not want to anyway. It seemed too sudden to make such a change. If the Indians had tried to make the whites live like them, the whites would have resisted, and it was the same way with many Indians. The Indians wanted to live as they did before the treaty of Traverse des Sioux--go where they pleased and when they pleased, hunt game wherever they could find it, sell their furs to the traders and live as they could."
Wambditanka (Big Eagle), Mdewakanton Dakota leader, in an interview conducted with journalist Return I. Holcombe in 1894
Also known as Jerome Big Eagle, Wambditanka was born in 1827 at Black Dog’s village, a few miles above Mendota on the south bank of the Minnesota River. He succeeded his father, Grey Iron, as chief in 1857. By 1858 had moved to the Redwood (Lower Sioux) Agency to farm. When war broke out he joined the fighting and was at the battles of New Ulm, Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee, and Wood Lake. After the war he was tried and convicted by the military commission, but received a pardon from President Lincoln in 1864. After several years living on reservations, Wambditanka and his family returned to Minnesota where he lived until 1906.
On the war of 1862:
"It began to be whispered about that now would be a good time to go to war with the whites and get back the lands. It was believed that the men who had enlisted [to fight in the Civil War] last had all left the state, and that before help could be sent the Indians could clean out the country, and that the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunk], and even the Chippewas [Ojibwe], would assist the Sioux. It was also thought that a war with the whites would cause the Sioux to forget the troubles among themselves and enable many of them to pay off some old scores. Though I took part in the war, I was against it. I knew there was no good cause for it, and I had been to Washington and knew the power of the whites and that they would finally conquer us. We might succeed for a time, but we would be overpowered and defeated at last. I said all this and many more things to my people, but many of my own bands were against me, and some of the other chiefs put words in their mouths to say to me."
"I did not have a very large band. . . . Most of them were not for the war at first, but nearly all got into it at last. A great many members of the other bands were like my men; they took no part in the first movements, but afterwards did. . . . When I returned to my village that day I found that many of my band had changed their minds about the war, and wanted to go into it. . . . I was still of the belief that it was not best, but I thought I must go with my band and my nation, and I said to my men that I would lead them into the war, and we would all act like brave Dakotas and do the best we could. All my men were with me; none had gone off on raids, but we did not have guns for all at first."

View full article: Wambditanka (Big Eagle)

Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)

Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)

"When I gave up the war path and commenced working the earth for a living I discarded all my former habits.... My wife died during the winter which left my heart very sad. It was very hard for me to learn the white man’s ways, but I was determined to get my living by cultivating the land and raising stock."
Anpetutokeca (John Other Day), 1869
Anpetutokeca, also known as John Other Day, was born in about 1819 in present-day Nicollet County. He was a leader of a small band of Wahpeton Dakota farmers living on the reservation near the Upper Agency with his wife, Roseanne. For rescuing more than 60 residents of the Upper Agency, Other Day was received as a hero in St. Paul. He served as a scout for Henry Sibley and fought beside white soldiers at the battle of Wood Lake. He died in Dakota Territory in 1869.

View full article: Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)

Related Images

Treaty of Traverse des Sioux
Treaty of Traverse des Sioux
1858 Treaty Delegation Group
1858 Treaty Delegation Group
Camp at Traverse des Sioux
Camp at Traverse des Sioux
1858 Treaty Delegation
1858 Treaty Delegation
1858 Dakota Treaty Delegation
1858 Dakota Treaty Delegation
Treaty of Traverse des Sioux

Treaty of Traverse des Sioux

This painting by Francis David Millet, after a sketch by Frank Blackwell Mayer, completed more that 50 years after the event it depicts, is believed to contain portraits of many of the key players in the treaty negotiations, including commissioner Luke Lea (center, with outstretched hand); Alexander Ramsey (behind Lea); Henry Sibley (behind Ramsey); and missionaries Thomas Williamson (back row, second from left) and Stephen Riggs (back Row, fourth from left).

1858 Treaty Delegation Group

1858 Treaty Delegation Group

A month after Minnesota became the 32nd state in the union, a group of Dakota leaders were summoned to Washington, DC, where they were detained until they signed another treaty relinquishing all land north and east of the Minnesota River to the United States. Dakota title to a 10-by-150-mile strip of land--a portion of the land designated a reservation in 1851--was acknowledged through this treaty. Authority was given to allot individual claims on this reservation land to Dakota farmers. Talking later about his visit to Washington, chief Wapasha, said:

"When I saw our Great Father, I spoke to him about what was my chief desire, which was to have land. The traders were constantly following me for other purposes, and opposing me bitterly; but I paid no attention to them- I shut my ears against them. I only desired to get a title to lands and fix my people so that they could live. I made a treaty at this time, and lands were given to us at Red Wood, on both sides of the Minnesota River. I went home, and lived upon the land, and built houses there. The Great Father told me, before leaving, that he wished us to be well off, but that the whites would endeavor to get this land from us, and that the traders were like rats; that they would use all their endeavors to steal our subsitence, and that if we were wise, we would never sign a paper for anyone. If we did so, he said, we would neve see 10 cents for all our property. I remembered the words of our Great Father and I Knew they were true. I was, consequently, always afraid of the traders."

The people in this photo are; front, from left: Makato, Wabaṡa, Henry Belland. Rear, from left: Joseph R. Brown, Antoine Joseph Campbell, Whale, Andrew Robertson, Red Owl, Thomas Robertson, Nathaniel Brown.

Source: Anderson, Gary Clayton, Woolworth, Alan R. Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988.

Camp at Traverse des Sioux

Camp at Traverse des Sioux

This drawing was done by Frank Mayer in July, 1851. Mayer camped with the government delegation of treaty negotiators at Traverse des Sioux. He described the camp in his diary:

Our camp consisting of several tents and tepees commands a view of St. Peters’ river, the prairie with its numerous lodges, the trading &mission houses and the surrounding country, & is tenanted by the commissioners & their officers & a motley collection of Frenchmen and half-breeds, traders, interpreters, voyageurs & trappers. . . .

1858 Treaty Delegation

1858 Treaty Delegation

A treaty delegation to Washington D.C. in 1558. The people in this photograph are:

Akepa
Other Day, John
Crawford, Charles R.
Hahutanai
Maza kutemani
Ma-za-sha
Mazzomanee
Ojupi
Upiyahideyaw
Wamdupidutah

1858 Dakota Treaty Delegation

1858 Dakota Treaty Delegation

In 1858, a month after Minnesota became the 32nd state in the union, a group of Dakota leaders were summoned to Washington, DC, where they were detained until they signed another treaty relinquishing all land north and east of the Minnesota River to the United States. Dakota title to a 10-by-150-mile strip of land--a portion of the land designated a reservation in 1851--was acknowledged through this treaty. Authority was given to allot individual claims on this reservation land to Dakota farmers. Wamditanka (Big Eagle) later said:

"In 1858 the ten miles of this strip belonging to the Mdewakanton and Wacouta (Wahpekute) bands, and lying north of the river were sold, mainly through the influences of Little Crow. That year, with some other chiefs, I went to Washington on business connected with the treaty. The selling of that strip north of the Minnesota caused great dissatisfaction among the Sioux, and Little Crow was always blamed for the part he took in the sale. It caused us all to move to the south side of the river, where there was but very little game, and many of our people, under the treaty, were induced to give up the old life and go to work like white men, which was very distasteful to many."

The people in the photo are; standing: Big Eagle, Traveling Hail, Red Legs; seated: Medicine bottle, The Thief, unidentified

Source: Anderson, Gary Clayton, Woolworth, Alan R. Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988.