The Traverse des Sioux area on the north side of St. Peter, near the Minnesota River, once was a logical place for fur traders to ply their trade. There was a place to cross the river (Traverse des Sioux is the French name for the crossing site). Two ecological systems — the Big Woods to the east and the prairie to the west — were nearby. Native Americans either were frequent visitors or were residents of the area.

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This historical marker is in front of the Nicollet County Historical Society Treaty Site History Center.

“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 the 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 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.”

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*Was closed due to Covid :(

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Native Americans had historically used a ford of the Minnesota River here from pre-contact times. A trading post at the site of the crossing likely existed by the last half of the eighteenth century, and a number of fur traders had establishments there in the first half of the nineteenth century. An Indian mission was established there in 1843.

Traverse is a French word that means crossing. The term
Traverse des Sioux has been applied both to the crossing of the Minnesota River at this location, and the transit of the prairie from the west.

As used by the French Canadian voyageurs and their Métis relatives and descendants, a traverse was a crossing from a safe resting place across an open area to another point of shelter, such as a voyageurs’ crossing of hazardous waters from point to point rather than along a sheltered shore, or its correlate on land, a crossing by Métis ox cart brigades of open prairie from one secure resting place to another. The settlement at Traverse des Sioux was a destination of Métis carters during the days of the Red River Trails, and was also home of a voyageur community during the same time.

Nineteenth-century explorer John C. Frémont used the term Traverse des Sioux to refer to the crossing of 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.

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"We went down determined to take the fort," said Wambdi Tanka (Big Eagle). "If we could take it we would soon have the whole Minnesota valley."
One of the bloodiest U.S.-Indian wars was fought along the Minnesota River, from Upper Sioux Agency to New Ulm. Here at Fort Ridgely, soldiers & Dakota warriors battled for two days.
By the summer of 1862m Dakota families were on the verge of starvation. They had been waiting month for food promised them in government treaties. Tensions exploded on August 16, 1862, when Dakota leaders confronted Lower Sioux Agency trader Andrew Myrick demanding the food they had been promised. Myrick reportedly said they should "eat grass if they are hungry." Furious Dakota warriors attacked the agencies, towns, & settlers in the region. Myrick was one of the first to be killed, & his mouth was stuffed with grass.
The violence lasted more than a month. About 500 settlers & 80 soldiers were killed. Many Dakota were also killed, & hundreds died in the aftermath. Hundreds more were rounded up & incarcerated at Fort Snelling where at least 130 died, most of them children. All treaties were voided, & the Dakota people were exiled from the state. After a trail, 38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato on December 26, 1862-the largest execution in U.S. history.

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