Minnesota Historical Society, 1905
"Even today, you live in the United States of Dakota. All of this is Dakota Territory."
--Ray Owen, Prairie Island Indian Community, 2010, through the Minnesota Historical Society
"Brothers, we know that the whites are like a great cloud that rises in the east, and will cover the whole country. Brothers you see that the sweat runs from my face, for I am troubled."
--Wicasta Duzahan (Swift Man), Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the U.S.-Dakota War
"Suppose your Great Father wanted your lands and did not want a treaty for your good; he could come with 100,000 men and drive you off to the Rocky Mountains."
--Luke Lea, U.S. negotiator, Treaty of Mendota, 1851, Through the Minnesota Historical Society
Taoyateduta became the first leader of his Mdewakanton band to sign a series of treaties that, taken together, would end in the Dakota alliance ceding 24 million acres of land to the U.S. government. In theory the land would have been payed for with $3 million in food, schools, farming equipment, and other goods to aid the Dakota left on a narrow strip of land on the Minnesota River. Most of this, however, ended up in the hands of traders living amongst the Dakota who claimed the debt was owed them.
To the white traders and politicians involved in the treaties, they were an entrepreneurial endeavor. Yet for the Dakota it was nothing less than an attempt to ensure the survival of their people amidst a time of extraordinary political and cultural change. Little Crow saw it as an unpopular but necessary step in his stewarding of the Dakota into a new age. Instead, it became an exercise in deception and extortion that caused cultural and economic upheaval unprecedented in the Dakota's history. Although he could not have foreseen it at the time, Little Crow's signature would serve as the kindling for a fire that would erupt into the beginning of the U.S.-Dakota War.