The Dakota first laid eyes on whites when they met French explorers Pierre Radisson and Seur des Groseilliers in 1660. The Mayflower had landed in America just 40 years earlier.

At the time, the Dakota were living in northern Wisconsin. They later moved to the Mille Lacs Lake area but were pushed south after battles with the rival Ojibway. The two Indian nations had a long series of conflicts stretching from 1736 to the mid 1850s.

In 1825 the Ojibway and Dakota reached an agreement that set a boundary that ran diagonally across Minnesota, from what is now Stillwater to the Fargo area. The Dakota were south of the line, including the Minnesota River Valley.

At the same time, white traders and trappers were flowing into the river valley drawn by abundant wildlife, including bison, muskrat, beaver, fox and other furbearers.

The river became an important transportation route as trappers brought pelts by canoe and by oxcart along the river’s edge.

Traders increasingly relied on Indians for pelts, trading them for blankets, gunpowder, alcohol, tobacco and other products. The trade played a key role in the coming misfortunes of the Dakota.

In 1837, a treaty was signed giving all Dakota land east of the Mississippi to the government. Much of the money that was to go to the Indians instead went to traders who said — sometimes falsely — that they were owed debts by the Dakota.

In 1851, one of the nation’s most important treaties was signed at Traverse des Sioux between the government and the Wahpeton and Sisseton bands of Dakota.

Traverse des Sioux, just north of St. Peter, had long been a well-used river crossing because it had a rare solid bottom and shallow waters. Early French explorers gave the site its name, which meant “crossing place of the Sioux people.”

In the treaty, the Dakota gave up 24 million acres of land in southern Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota.

In exchange, the Indians were given a tract of land 10 miles wide on each side of the Minnesota river, from near Fort Ridgely to the South Dakota border. They were to receive just more than $3 million in payments over 50 years.

The government established two administrative centers: the Lower Sioux Agency, from Fort Ridgely to Granite Falls; and the Upper Sioux Agency, from Granite Falls to the border.

Fort Ridgely was 30 miles up river from New Ulm.

By the winter of 1861 and 1862, the Indians were in dire condition. Promised food and money didn’t arrive. According to the Redwood Gazette newspaper at the time, the Indians had resorted to eating most of their dogs and many horses to survive.

The Dakota were not only starving and felt betrayed but felt a sense of weakness among the Minnesota frontier settlers, brought on by the departure of many of their young men to fight in the Civil War.