Sioux
Treaties and reservation period beginnings

In 1805, the Dakota signed their first treaty with the American government. Zebulon Pike negotiated for 100,000 acres of land at the confluence of the St. Croix River about what now is Hastings, Minnesota and the confluence of the Minnesota River and Mississippi River about what now is St. Paul, Minnesota. The Americans wanted to establish military outposts and the Dakota wanted a new source of trading. An American military post was not established at the confluence of the St. Croix with the Mississippi, but Fort Snelling was established in 1819 along the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. In return, Dakota were promised the ability to "pass and repass, hunt, or make other uses of the said districts as they have formerly done".

In an attempt to stop intertribal warfare and to better able to negotiate with tribes, the American government signed the 1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chien with the Dakota, Ojibwe, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, Iowa, Potawatomi, and Ottawa tribes. In the 1830 Treaty of Prairie de Chien, the Western Dakota (Yankton, Yanktonai) ceded their lands along the Des Moines river to the American government. Living in what is now southeastern South Dakota, the leaders of the Western Dakota signed the Treaty of April 19, 1858, which created the Yankton Sioux Reservation. Pressured by the ongoing arrival of Europeans, Yankton chief Struck by the Ree told his people, "The white men are coming in like maggots. It is useless to resist them. They are many more than we are. We could not hope to stop them. Many of our brave warriors would be killed, our women and children left in sorrow, and still we would not stop them. We must accept it, get the best terms we can get and try to adopt their ways." Despite ceding their lands, the treaty allowed the Western Dakota to maintain their traditional role in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ as the caretakers of the Pipestone Quarry, which is the cultural center of the Sioux people.

With the creation of Minnesota Territory by the U.S. in 1849, the Eastern Dakota (Sisseton, Wahpeton, Mdewakanton, and Wahpekute) people were pressured to cede more of their land. The reservation period for them began in 1851 with the signing of the Treaty of Mendota and the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. The Treaty of Mendota was signed near Pilot Knob on the south bank of the Minnesota River and within sight of Fort Snelling. The treaty stipulated that the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands were to receive US$1,410,000 in return for relocating to the Lower Sioux Agency on the Minnesota River near present-day Morton, Minnesota along with giving up their rights to a significant portion of southern Minnesota. In the Treaty of 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. However, the American government kept more than 80% of the funds with only the interest (5% for 50 years) being paid to the Dakota.

The U.S. set aside two reservations for the Sioux along the Minnesota River, each about 20 miles (30 km) wide and 70 miles (110 km) long. Later the government declared these were intended to be temporary, in an effort to force the Sioux out of Minnesota. The Upper Sioux Agency for the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands was established near Granite Falls, Minnesota, while the Lower Sioux Agency for the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands was established about thirty miles downstream near what developed as Redwood Falls, Minnesota. The Upper Sioux were not satisfied with their reservation because of low food supplies, but as it included several of their old villages, they agreed to stay. The Lower Sioux were displaced from their traditional woodlands and were dissatisfied with their new territory of mostly prairie.

The U.S. intended the treaties to encourage the Sioux to convert from their nomadic hunting lifestyle into more European-American settled farming, offering them compensation in the transition. By 1858, the Dakota only had a small strip of land along the Minnesota River, with no access to their traditional hunting grounds. They had to rely on treaty payments for their survival, which were often late. The forced change in lifestyle and the much lower than expected payments from the federal government caused economic suffering and increased social tensions within the tribes. By 1862, many Dakota were starving and tensions erupted in the Dakota War of 1862.
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