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1851: Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. After years of mounting pressure from white settlers and facing huge debts to fur traders, the people of the Eastern Dakota Nation sign a treaty giving up all of their lands west of the Mississippi River. However, the U.S. Senate strikes out the provision granting the Dakota a reservation in Minnesota. Territorial governor Alexander Ramsey saves the deal by getting the president to allow the Dakota a reservation on a five-year lease. The Dakota are relocated to a strip of land bordering the Minnesota River in west-central Minnesota. 1858: Dakota leaders on a diplomatic visit to Washington D.C. are told they did not own the reservation land. Faced with more debt and threatened with expulsion, they are forced to sell the northern half of their reservation. August-September 1862: Frustrated by broken promises, reservation policies that forced cultural change, failed crops and the refusal of the government agent and traders to release food to starving families, Dakota men went to war to reclaim their land. As a result, over 500 settlers were killed, leaving 23 southwestern Minnesota counties virtually depopulated by the mass exodus. The U.S. Army under General Henry Sibley defeat the Dakota in six weeks. Over 6,000 Dakota refugees flee the state and about 2,000 are taken prisoner. September-December 1862: In 15-minute trials, over 300 Dakota men are condemned by a military court. President Abraham Lincoln, in a compromise decision, lowers the number to 38. Meanwhile, 1,700 Dakota people are held in a prison camp on the river flats below Fort Snelling. December 26, 1862: 38 Dakota men are hanged before a crowd of 3,000 in Mankato, Minnesota. It remains the largest mass execution in U.S. history. 1863: Forced removal of the prisoners at Fort Snelling by steamboat and railroad boxcar to the Crow Creek Reservation on the Missouri River in Dakotah Territory. More than 300 people, mostly children, died of exposure and starvation the first winter. 1866: Abandonment of the Crow Creek Reservation and establishment of the Santee Reservation near the mouth of the Niobrara River in Nebraska. Pardoned prisoners from the military prison in Davenport, Iowa join the Crow Creek survivors in this new location. 1867: Simultaneous establishment of the Sisseton (or Lake Traverse) Reservation in northeastern South Dakota and the Devil's Lake Reservation in central North Dakota for the Sissetonwan and Wahpetonwan Dakota peoples. 1869: The Flandreau Colony. Tired of government interference, 25 Mdewakantonwan Dakota families leave the Santee reservation to establish independent homesteads in and around Flandreau, South Dakota. 1871: Sissetonwan chief Tatanka Najin, or Standing Buffalo, is killed in Montana. Some of his people travel north to the Qu'Appelle Lakes in present-day Saskatchewan. Establishment of Fort Peck Reservation, serving both Dakota and Assiniboine peoples of northeastern Montana. 1875: Establishment of the Sioux Valley or Oak River Reserve in west central Manitoba, Canada by Minister of the Interior and endorsed by Dakota leaders. This is one of the many small Dakota reserves scattered across Manitoba and Saskatchewan. 1876: Custer is defeated at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Dakota warriors are reported to be represented among the assembled Indian nations. 1883: U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued a ban on traditional ceremonies and dances ... what he termed "the barbarous customs of the Sioux." 1887: The General Allotment Act of 1887 or The Dawes Act. Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts introduces legislation that allots 160-acre tracts of land to heads of households of native families. The rest of the land is thrown open to non-Indian homesteaders. As an eventual result, native-held lands are reduced by more than two-thirds, half of which was unfarmable. 1889-90: Minnesota reservations for returning Mdewakantonwan Dakota people and those who stayed are established by acts of Congress at Prairie Island, Shakopee and Lower Sioux near Redwood Falls. 1890: Wounded Knee massacre on Pine Ridge reservation. End of the Ghost Dance movement. Victims were Lakota relatives of the Eastern Dakota people. Had a chilling effect on the practice of traditional native ceremonies. 1934: Passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. The administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt officially abandons the federal policy of forced acculturation. Nevertheless, Dakota children, as are other children from other Native American tribes, continue to be punished for speaking their language in boarding schools for years afterward. 1938: The Upper Sioux Indian community near Granite Falls, Minnesota is established by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. 1972: First Mankato Wacipi (Powwow) held in Mankato, Minnesota to honor the 38 Dakota men hanged in 1862 and to celebrate the coming together of Dakota people. 1978: The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is passed. It seemed redundant, considering the religious protection the First Amendment supposedly provided. Partially because enforcement procedures were not written into the act, it has subsequently been undermined by several federal and Supreme Court decisions throughout the 80's and 90's.
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