Traverse des Sioux
Traverse des Sioux | |
Minnesota State Register of Historic Places
| |
Location | Nicollet County, Minnesota |
---|---|
Nearest city | St. Peter, Minnesota |
Coordinates | 44°21′4″N 93°56′45″W / 44.35111°N 93.94583°W |
Built | 1851 |
NRHP reference No. | 73000990[1] |
Added to NRHP | March 20, 1973 |
Traverse des Sioux is a historic site in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Once part of a pre-industrial trade route, it is preserved to commemorate that route, a busy river crossing on it, and a nineteenth-century settlement, trading post, and mission at that crossing place. It was a transshipment point for pelts in fur trading days, and the namesake for an important United States treaty that forced the Dakota people to cede part of their homeland and opened up much of southern Minnesota to European-American settlement.
Formerly a
Name
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,[4] and the transit of the prairie from the west.[5][6]
As used by the
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.[10]
History
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.[11] An Indian mission was established there in 1843.[12]
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 traveled all the way to Mendota or Saint Paul, Minnesota, whence the furs were taken by Mississippi riverboat to markets downriver.[13] 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.[11]
In 1851 the
After the treaty a town was platted, which kept the settlement's name of Traverse des Sioux. Its seventy buildings included two hotels, several churches, and five taverns.
Preservation
In 1905 a legislative commission was formed to identify the site of making 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.[17]
The park was reclassified as a state wayside park in 1937 during the
A self-guided tour of the town and treaty site is available.[2] The Nicollet County Historical Society maintains its headquarters at the adjacent Treaty Site History Center, with exhibits about the treaty and other area history. The site is managed by the county historical society in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society.[18]
In 2006, historians and an engineer located the site of the historic river ford. After historians found a map published in Old Traverse des Sioux (1929) by Thomas Hughes, engineer Dick Gardner surveyed and mapped the remains of the village; he combined the two sources by computer to integrate the location of the fur post, cemetery, and other features of the historic settlement.[6][19] In addition, archaeologists have found Paleo-Indian projectile points in the area estimated to be 9,000 years old, indicating this site was inhabited or visited by Native Americans for many millennia. The ends of the ford are now marked by PVC pipe, as the river has shifted course.[20]
References
- ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
- ^ a b c d e Minnesota Historic Sites: Traverse des Sioux.
- ^ 2013 Minnesota Statute § 138.585 subd. 28.
- ^ Traverse des Sioux; Dylan Thomas, "Historic river crossing rediscovered", Minnesota Historic Sites. These 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 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.
Hughes (1901), p. 104.
- ^ Gilman (1979), p. 94, fn. 27.
- ^ a b Newsletter, Winter 2007. Minnesota Archaeological Society.
- ^ Nute (1931), p. 61.
- ^ Gilman (1979), pp. 40, 44.
- ^ Nute (1931), p. 193.
- ^ 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 [Sisseton] 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 . . .
Frémont, Memoirs of My Life (1886), p. 34; see also Gilman, p. 94, fn. 27.
- ^ a b Hughes (1901), p. 104.
- ^ Meyer (1991), p. 31; Gilman (1979), pp. 5, 7.
- ^ Gilman (1979), pp. 48-52.
- ^ Lass (1978), pp. 110-11.
- ^ Christianson (1935), pp. 211-13; Hughes (1901), pp. 100, 112.
- ^ a b c Meyer (1991), p. 31.
- ^ Meyer (1991), pp. 29-30.
- ^ Treaty Site History Center.
- ^ Map from Thomas Hughes, Old Traverse des Sioux, 1929.
- Mankato Free Press, 18 December 2006.
Bibliography
- Christianson, Theodore (1935). Minnesota: The Land of Sky-Tinted Waters. Vol. I: From Wilderness to Commonwealth. Chicago and New York: The American Library Society..
- ISBN 0-8154-1164-2.
- Gilman, Rhoda R.; Carolyn Gilman; Deborah M. Stultz (1979). The Red River Trails: Oxcart Routes Between St. Paul and the Selkirk Settlement, 1820-1870. St. Paul: ISBN 0-87351-133-6.
- Hughes, Thomas (1901). "The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851". Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. 10 (1). St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society: 100–129.
- Hughes, Thomas, Map from Old Traverse des Sioux (1929), onto which has been projected the present river channel. Republished by Mankato Free Presson December 18, 2006
- Lass, William E. (1978). Minnesota, A History (2d ed.). New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-04628-1..
- Meyer, Roy Willard (1991). Everyone's Country Estate: A History of Minnesota's State Parks. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 0-87351-266-9.
- 2019 Minnesota Statutes § 138.585, subd. 28. Retrieved on 2019-12-27.
- Minnesota Historic Sites: Traverse des Sioux, Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved on 2019-12-27.
- National Register of Historic Places, Nicollet County, Minnesota. Retrieved on 2019-12-27.
- Nute, Grace Lee (1955) [1931]. The Voyageur. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society. ISBN 0-87351-012-7.
- Thomas, Dylan, "Historic river crossing rediscovered", Mankato Free Press, 18 December 2006.
- "Traverse des Sioux". Nicollet County History Society. Retrieved December 27, 2019.