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Compiled by Rev. Dr. David B. Lindsey
The following is the first history segment in a series, shared regularly in COMMAntary to help us come to terms with our past. We’re doing this not to be mired in nostalgia for “the good old days,” but to consider what our history might tell us about God’s aims for our present and future ministry.
There’s no one correct way to tell the story of the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ, but there’s no way to tell the story correctly without including the Indigenous peoples in this region.
When you draw the MN Conference on a map, you find a land that has been inhabited for at least 9,000–12,000 years by diverse peoples. The Ho-Chunk, Cheyenne, Oto, Iowa, and the Sac & Fox tribes all have oral history that includes inhabiting the same land that the Minnesota Conference covers. By the mid-1600s, though, two major Native American peoples came to prominence here: the Dakota and the Ojibwe. This week, we reflect on the Dakota community, who encountered Congregationalist missionaries in the early 1800s.
The Dakota peoples came to what we now call Minnesota by 1250 CE. The Dakota included (and includes) subgroups, often divided into Eastern and Western Dakota. The Eastern Dakota are sometimes called the Santee, and they include the Mdewakanton, Sisseton, Wahpekute, and Wahpeton bands. The Western Dakota include the Yankton and Yanktonai bands. Although the Yankton live in South Dakota today, their name derives from when they lived at Spirit Lake north of Mille Lacs in Minnesota.
Up until the 1600s, the Eastern Dakota lived along Lake Superior in what is now Minnesota and Wisconsin. When the Ojibwe from the East arrived during the 17th century – armed with muskets from French and English settlers – the Eastern Dakota were forced south and west into territory where the Western Dakota and Teton (Lakota) were residing. Such conflicts were compounded with the arrival of French and then English settlers.
In the years after the War of 1812, the U.S. government held a gathering at Prairie du Chien in an attempt to negotiate who would live where (the Dakota were notably absent). This was the first of several treaties of Prairie du Chien in the 1800s that ultimately “divided” present-day Minnesota into northern (Ojibwe) territory and southern (Dakota) territory. This would not, however, be the last time that the U.S. government would declare where the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples could and would live.
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