Traverse des Sioux

Traverse des Sioux. . This ancient fording place, the "Crossing of the Sioux," was on the heavily traveled trail from St. Paul and Fort Snelling to the upper Minnesota and Red River valleys. , Here, on June 30, 1851, Governor Alexander Ramsey, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Luke Lea, Delegate to Congress Henry H. Sibley, and other government officials established a camp on a height overlooking the small trading post and mission on the riverbank. They had gathered to negotiate an important treaty with representatives of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux for almost twenty-four million acres called the Suland. , This vast tract comprised most of Minnesota west of the Mississippi and south of the line between present-day St. Cloud and Moorhead, as well as portions of South Dakota and northern Iowa. , News of the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux on July 23, 1851, started a great land rush, which brought swarms of settlers to the fertile lands acquired by the United States from the Sioux. , seal of the Natural Resources Fund , seal of The Minnesota Historical Society, Instituted 1849 , Erected by the Minnesota Historical Society , 1968.