Latest / Pionerd / The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux: The 1851 Land Deal That Built Minnesota
Transcript
- The Choice at the River On a hot riverbank in July 1851, an ancient way of life collided with an unstoppable rush for land. The Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota faced a terrible trap. Years of harsh winters and no bison left their families on the brink of starvation. On the other side stood federal agents and land hungry speculators, holding the power to cut off food and aid. At Traverse des Sioux, leaders of the Dakota gathered to make a choice. They had to decide whether to sell twenty-one million acres of their ancestral homeland in a deal that, combined with the Treaty of Mendota, yielded twenty-four million acres or watch their people perish. What happened next changed Minnesota forever. The Council Under the Oaks Earlier, on June 30, the steamboat Excelsior churned through high, flood-swollen waters and tied up at Traverse des Sioux. Federal commissioners Alexander Ramsey and Luke Lea stepped onto the muddy bank near the old grooved-log trading posts of Louis Provencalle. They came with authority from Washington to purchase twenty-one million acres of rich prairie for the United States. Standing right beside them was fur trade magnate Henry Hastings Sibley. Sibley wanted to make sure his company recovered over two hundred thousand dollars in old debts claimed against the Dakota. With the delegation came newspaper editor James Goodhue to write dispatches for the Minnesota Pioneer, and artist Frank Blackwell Mayer to sketch the council in real time. Nearby, missionary Stephen Riggs prepared to translate every word spoken in council. Across the second river terrace, hundreds of Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota waited in their camps. A succession of harsh winters had wiped out local bison herds. Hunger shadowed the lodges, leaving tribal members in a desperate position. Workmen built a shaded council arbor using fresh tree branches woven across wooden poles. Under this green canopy, the commissioners made their terms clear. They offered one million six hundred sixty-five thousand dollars for the land, which averaged about seven and a half cents per acre. The Dakota leaders knew white homesteaders were pressing west regardless, but they hesitated to sign away the soil where their ancestors lay buried. High Water and Broken Councils For three agonizing weeks, heavy summer rains flooded the sloughs and delayed distant western bands. Seven white commission tents stood on the hillside while on the prairie young Dakota men played a high-stakes game of Takapsicapi, known today as lacrosse. As severe thunderstorms rolled down the valley, Dakota dancers performed the sacred Wakinyan dance or Thunder-Bird dance to calm the weather. Tragedy struck on July 4, when missionary, Robert Hopkins, drowned in the swollen Minnesota River. His body was recovered by a joint search party, casting a dark mood over the encampment. As days dragged on, food supplies dwindled. Governor Ramsey grew restless and threatened to cut off rations if talks did not begin. On July 18th, the council finally convened under the leafy arbor, but negotiations broke down instantly. Sisseton Chief, Sleepy Eye, objected strongly before the commissioners in council. Remembering Governor Doty’s failed treaty attempt at this exact crossing ten years earlier, Sleepy Eye knew how federal promises worked. He declared that asking for his country made his heart sad, leading his followers in a dramatic walkout. Inside the Dakota camp, a bitter rift opened. Younger warriors organized a Soldiers' Lodge, threatening senior chiefs with violence if they surrendered their ancestral soil. Ramsey responded with cold pressure, locking up the drove of beef cattle under guard right beside the council grounds. Starving families watched the penned cattle while Wahpeton Chief, Opiyahedaya, demanded every U.S. offer be put in writing. Leaders met all night in secret inside Chief Takara's tepee on the high bluff. Trapped between guarded food and armed young warriors, the elders sent word at dawn that they would return to the table. The Barrel and the Pen At noon on July 23, 1851, the sun finally broke through the clouds over Traverse des Sioux. Commissioners Ramsey and Lea took their seats under the leafy arbor, opening the grand council with a smoke from a red pipestone pipe. Missionary Stephen Riggs read the Dakota translation of the treaty aloud to the assembled chiefs. The terms ceded twenty-one million acres in exchange for one million six hundred sixty-five thousand dollars, nearly eight cents an acre, with most of it held in trust by the federal government. Wahpeton Chief, Big Gun, stepped forward and signed the document first. Sisseton Chief, The Orphan, signed next, asking the commissioners to keep whiskey out of Dakota territory as long as he lived. Then Wahpeton Chief Opiyahedaya, known as Curly Head, took the pen. He looked at the federal agents and warned that while the white men thought they were paying a great sum, every dollar would simply flow back to the traders. What happened next created a bitter legacy. As each chief stepped away from the main treaty table, Joseph R. Brown directed them to a separate document resting on an upright barrel. While official federal records logged this as a voluntary assignment of debt, Dakota leaders later testified before Senate investigators that they were never read the text and believed they were merely signing a third copy of the land agreement. This Traders' Paper siphoned over two hundred thousand dollars directly out of treaty funds. Henry Sibley’s company claimed more than sixty-six thousand dollars, while other traders took tens of thousands more. By the time the ink dried on the barrel, the Dakota had sold their homeland, yet much of their immediate cash was already gone. The Broken Chain On August 5, federal agents met downriver at Mendota, securing a second treaty with the lower Dakota bands. Yet the promises made on paper quickly fell apart in Washington. When the document reached the United States Senate, lawmakers unilaterally struck out Article 3. This move erased the permanent reservation strip along the Minnesota River, leaving the Dakota as temporary squatters on land they had owned for generations. Back in Minnesota, anger over the barrel paper exploded into public view. A U.S. Senate investigation collected testimony in St. Paul in 1853 to examine charges of fraud against Governor Ramsey. Although a U.S. Senate inquiry cleared Governor Ramsey of fraud in 1854, the diversion of over two hundred thousand dollars to fur traders left the Dakota deeply distrustful of federal authorities. That distrust turned to tragedy over the next decade. More than one hundred thousand white settlers flooded into southern Minnesota, surrounding the narrow reservation strip. When crop failures hit and federal annuity payments arrived late in the summer of 1862, families began to starve. The resulting US-Dakota War lasted six agonizing weeks. It ended with the December 1862 mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato, followed by the complete forced removal and exile of the Dakota nation from their ancestral homeland in 1863. The Shadow of the Crossing The story of Traverse des Sioux is not merely a record of an old land deal. It marks the precise moment when the course of Minnesota history shifted forever. Leaders like Sleepy Eye and Curly Head saw the trap clearly, yet they signed to save their starving people from immediate ruin. Every farm, highway, and town across southern Minnesota sits on the twenty-one million acres traded away under that leafy arbor on July 23, 1851. Remembering Traverse des Sioux honors the Dakota who lost their homeland and reminds us of the true cost of the land we call home today.