Traverse des Sioux

Infobox_nrhp | name =Traverse des Sioux
nrhp_type =nrhp

Traverse des Sioux, is a historic site in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Once part of a historic trade route, it commemorates that route, an important river crossing on it, a nineteenth century settlement, trading post, and mission at that crossing place, a transshipment point for pelts in fur trading days, and an important treaty with Native Americans which dispossessed the Dakota people of part of their homeland and thereby opened up much of southern Minnesota to white settlement.

Formerly a Minnesota state park, the site of the old settlement and river ford is now a State Historic Site and a Minnesota State Monument, [ [http://ros.leg.mn/bin/getpub.php?pubtype=STAT_CHAP_SEC&year=current&section=138.585&image.x=8&image.y=7 Minnesota Statute § 138.585, subd. 28] .] and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Traverse des Sioux is located in Nicollet County, Minnesota on the Minnesota River, just north of the city of Saint Peter. [http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/tds/index.html Minnesota Historic Sites: Traverse des Sioux] .]

Name and location

[
Minnesota River enters from the west and flows southeasterly to Mankato, there taking a right-angle turn to the north-northeast. The West Plains Trail initially parallels the river, but crosses directly east to Traverse des Sioux to rejoin and follow the river northeast to its confluence with the Mississippi at Mendota near Saint Paul.] "Traverse" is a French word that means "crossing", and some sources state that its use in the name refers to the crossing of the Minnesota River at this location. [ [http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/tds/index.html Minnesota Historic Sites: Traverse des Sioux] ; Thomas, [http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_352230402.html Historic river crossing rediscovered.] These uncited sources use language similar to Thomas Hughes' paper presented to the Minnesota Historical Society on September 9, 1901, which states:

Traverse des Sioux, being the French translation of its Dakota name “Oiyuwega,” (crossing), was then, and from time immemorial memorial had been, the most important point on the Minnesota. The excellent river crossing there found, together with its position where the great forest of the east and the vast plains of the west naturally met, where the Blue Earth and its tributaries were conveniently accessible, and where the headwaters of the Minnesota and Red rivers could be reached by a short cut over land, made Traverse des Sioux the natural capital of the Sioux country.

Nineteenth century explorer John C. Frémont used the term "Traverse des Sioux" to refer to the transit across the plain west of the river. Westbound travelers left the Minnesota River at the settlement of Traverse des Sioux and went directly west across the open prairie, leaving the shelter of the wooded riverbank in order to shortcut the right-angle elbow of the river at Mankato. They returned to the river near the mouth of the Cottonwood River at modern New Ulm. [John C. Frémont describes his 1838 westward crossing of the traverse in his "Memoirs":

The "Traverse des Sioux" is a crossing-place about thirty miles long, where the river makes a large rectangular bend, coming down from the northwest and turning abruptly to the northeast . . . . In this great elbow of the river is the Marahtanka or Big Swan Lake, the summer resort of the Sissiton Sioux. Our way over the crossing lay between the lake and the river. At the end of the "Traverse" we returned to the right shore at the mouth of the Waraju or Cottonwood River . . .

History

A ford of the Minnesota River existed from Pre-contact times. It likely was the site of a trading post in the last half of the eighteenth century, and a number of fur traders had establishments there in the first half of the nineteenth century.Hughes (1901), p. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2000.03.0045;query=spage%3D%23128;layout=;loc=103 104] .] An Indian mission was established there in 1843, [Meyer (1991), p. 31; Gilman (1979), pp. 5, 7.] and by 1851 the settlement had two missionaries and their families, a school, several fur trading establishments, a few cabins of French voyageurs, and twenty to thirty Indian lodges. By the 1840s it was used as a transshipment point in the fur trade. Pelts from upstream fur posts and from collection points as far away as Pembina and Fort Garry, Canada, were brought by ox cart trains traveling on the "West Plains Trail", the westernmost of the Red River Trails. At Traverse des Sioux the furs were transferred to flatboats bound for Mendota, Minnesota and eastern markets. In the later part of that period some cart trains went all the way to Mendota or Saint Paul, Minnesota, where the furs were taken by Mississippi riverboat to markets downriver. [Gilman (1979), pp. 48-52.]

In 1851 the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed at the post, by which tribes of the Sioux people were induced to cede 24 million acres (97,000 km²) of land for seven cents per acre, opening up vast areas of Minnesota Territory to non-native settlement. The lands surrendered including Minnesota west of the Mississippi and south of the lands of the Ojibway, [Lass (1978), pp. 110-11.] all of what later became South Dakota east of the Big Sioux River, and much of northern Iowa. [Christianson (1935), pp. 211-13; Hughes (1901), pp. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2000.03.0045&query=head%3D%2379 100] , [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2000.03.0045&query=head%3D%2390 112] .]

After the treaty a town was platted, which kept the settlement's name. Its seventy buildings included two hotels, several churches, and five taverns. This town lost its position as county seat of Nicollet County in 1856, and soon was superseded by Saint Peter, the new seat a short distance to the south.Meyer (1991), p. 31.] The old town was abandoned by 1869.

Preservation

In 1905 a legislative commission was formed to identify the site of the 1851 treaty. Investigation located the spot, which was dedicated in 1914. Traverse des Sioux Treaty Site Park was established by legislative action, but little development occurred. [Meyer (1991), pp. 29-30.]

The park was reclassified as a state wayside park in 1937, and efforts were made to acquire additional land. By 1963 these efforts had stopped, and the site was inundated by the devastating 1965 floods of the Minnesota and Upper Mississippi Rivers. In 1969 however expansion was authorized, and the foundation ruins of the townsite were marked. In 1980 the wayside and townsite were removed from the state park system and transferred to the control of the Minnesota Historical Society; the additional land went to the city of Saint Peter.

A self-guided tour of the town and treaty site is available, and the Nicollet County Historical Society maintains its headquarters at the adjacent Treaty Site History Center, with exhibits about the treaty and other area history. [ [http://www.nchsmn.org Treaty Site History Center] (under "Sites").]

In recent years historians have been able to locate the site of the river ford, and using an old map, have related it to the location of the fur post, cemetery, and other features of the old settlement. [http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/images_sizedimage_352230708/resources_photoview Old Traverse des Sioux.] ] Archaeologists have also found Paleo-Indian projectile points estimated to be 9,000 years old, indicating the site was inhabited or visited by Native Americans for many millennia. [http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_352230402.html Historic river crossing rediscovered.] ]

ee also

* Red River Trails
* Treaty of Traverse des Sioux

References

Notes

ources

*Citation
last = Christianson
first = Theodore
author-link = Theodore Christianson
title = Minnesota: The Land of Sky-Tinted Waters
place = Chicago and New York
publisher = The American Library Society
year = 1935
volume = I: From Wilderness to Commonwealth .

* Citation
last = Frémont
first = John Charles
author-link = John C. Frémont
year = 1886
title = Memoirs of My Life
volume = I
publisher = Belford, Clarke & Co.
location = Chicago and New York

* cite book
last = Gilman
first = Rhoda R.
coauthors = Carolyn Gilman & Deborah M. Stultz
year = 1979
title = The Red River Trails: Oxcart Routes Between St. Paul and the Selkirk Settlement, 1820-1870
publisher = Minnesota Historical Society Press
location = St. Paul
id = ISBN 0-8735-1133-6

* cite journal
last = Hughes
first = Thomas
title = The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851
journal = Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society
volume = 10
issue = 1
pages = 100–129
publisher = Minnesota Historical Society
location = St. Paul, Minnesota
date = 1901
url = http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2000.03.0045&query=head%3D%2379
accessdate = 2008-02-07

*Citation
last = Lass
first = William E.
title = Minnesota, A History
place = New York & London
publisher = W.W. Norton & Co.
year = 1978
edition = 2d
isbn = 0-3930-4628-1 .

* cite book
last = Meyer
first = Roy Willard
year = 1991
title = Everyone's Country Estate: A History of Minnesota's State Parks
publisher = Minnesota Historical Society Press
location = St. Paul
id = ISBN 0-8735-1266-9
* [http://ros.leg.mn/bin/getpub.php?pubtype=STAT_CHAP_SEC&year=current&section=138.585&image.x=8&image.y=7 Minnesota Statute § 138.585.] Retrieved on 2008-02-05.
* [http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/tds/index.html Minnesota Historic Sites: Traverse des Sioux] , Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved on 2008-02-05.
* [http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/MN/Nicollet/state.html National Register of Historic Places, Nicollet County, Minnesota.] Retrieved on 2008-02-05.

* cite book
last = Nute
first = Grace Lee
year = 1931, 1955
title = The Voyageur
publisher = Minnesota Historical Society
location = St. Paul
id = ISBN 0-8735-1012-7
* [http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/images_sizedimage_352230708/resources_photoview Old Traverse des Sioux] , map of settlement from Thomas Hughes' "Old Traverse des Sioux" (1929), onto which has been projected the present river channel. Republished by Mankato Free Press on December 18, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-02-06.

* Citation
last = Thomas
first = Dylan
title = Historic river crossing rediscovered
newspaper = Mankato Free Press
date = 2006-12-18
url = http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_352230402.html
accessdate = 2008-02-05.

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