Here, for countless generations, Dakota people followed the traditional ways of their ancestors.
Living close to the land, they learned how to read nature's signs & developed an intimate understanding of the habitats & growth cycles of plants & animals. The Dakota word for this is Ecalensdonyapi (Ee-cha-kay-doa-stod-yah-pi)-knowing naturally.
Swan Lake
This area was the traditional homeland of two bands of the Eastern Dakota, the Sissetons & Wahpeton. Families from the two bands often blended, & there was a good deal of interchanges between the villages. The largest Sisseton population lived on islands in Swan Lake, about 10 miles of this spot. There they were safe from enemy attack & surrounded by a rich variety of food sources.

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August 20, 1862
Pejutazanzan's men launch attack, firing three shots to signal warriors hiding in the ravine to join in.
August 22, 1862
The Dakota hear three shots from the east when a mail carrier is killed & prematurely launch their attacks from the ravine.
August 22, 1862
Dakota soldiers kill a mail carrier with three shots, inadvertently signaling warriors in the ravine to launch their attack.
August 20, 1862
Dakota attacks from the ravine are delayed, leaving Pejutazanzan's men exposed to cannon fire in the northeast.

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For centuries people gathered here to hunt game & exchange goods & information. By 1700 they were joined by Europeans who came to this area to trade guns, cloth & other products the Dakota wanted for furs. Over the next 150 years, traders & Indians did business with each other at Traverse des Sioux, swapping news, ideas, & customs as well as trade items.
B7 1851 settlers in the newly established Minnesota Territory were pressing hard to open Indian lands for settlements. In a treaty signed here that year, the Sisseton & Wahpeton bands of the Dakota sold most of southwestern Minnesota-some 21 million acres-to the government for about 7.5 cents per acre. The sale triggered a land rush. By 1853 this historic meeting place had become the town of Traverse des Sioux. But, like hundreds of other towns in the Territory, it soon failed. The site was farmed until 1969, when it was named into a state park. In 1973, in recognition of its unique significance, Traverse des Sioux was listed on the National Register of Historic Places & designated a state historic site.

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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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The Reverend Stephen Riggs ^& his wife, Mary arrived at Traverse des Sioux in 1843 to establish a Protestant mission for the Dakota.
He a& other missionaries believed they had a duty to convert Indians to Christianity. Their efforts alienated most of the Dakota, who had their own deeply held spiritual beliefs & practices. When Riggs relocated to the mission at Lac qui Parle in 1846, the Reverend Robert Hopkins took over for him.
"Without their assent at all"
After the Dakota made a unanimous decision in 1849 to stop attending Christian worship services & the mission school, a disappointed Hopkins wrote his governing board. "We came here without the hearty assent of the Indians=perhaps without their assent at all...We found Brother Pond (a fellow missionary)here. He had been encamped here several days & was acquainted with the feelings of the people. The Rev. Stephen Riggs asked Mr. Pond whether he should ask the Indians for leave to stay here, He answered, not if you wish to stay."

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