Treaty Site History Center

Destination Sites

How to get there: Located at 1851 N Minnesota Avenue, one-mile north of downtown Saint Peter at Highways 169 and 22, across from the Mankato Clinic.

What you will find: The Treaty Site History Center is the headquarters of the Nicollet County Historical Society. A county museum and a full-service research archive, the site’s exhibits explore the history of Nicollet County, the Dakota people, European explorers, traders, and settlers. and Minnesota’s territorial expansion. The interaction between these people laid the historical groundwork for the signing of the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, signed here in July of 1851, and opened the land to new settlers and westward expansion.

Services at this site: Exhibits, archive, gift shop, and public rental facilities

Oiyuweǧe, or Traverse des Sioux, was a Sisituŋwaŋ village located at the eastern end of the overland shortcut across the big southern bend of the Minnesota River. Earlier, Dakota people had another village nearby called Maya Skadaŋ or “little white bluff” located downstream. This was known as a meeting place of the Sisituŋwaŋ when they left for buffalo hunts or when they went to gather wild rice. It was also where they waited for traders arriving from the east in the fall. In the 1830s, the village was relocated across the river to Traverse des Sioux.

In July 1851, U.S. government officials negotiated a treaty with the Sisituŋwaŋ and Waḣpetuŋwaŋ Dakota for the sale of their land throughout southern Minnesota to the government. This flawed agreement, imperfectly translated to the Dakota signers, was shaped as a tool for financial graft on the part of traders and government officials. A similar treaty with the Bdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ and Waḣpekute was signed in Mendota a few weeks later. Together the two treaties ceded 24 million acres of Dakota land in Minnesota and adjacent regions.

Once settlers began pouring into Nicollet County, fur trading was replaced by farming and soon little villages became bustling towns with booming businesses. The Treaty Site also takes a look at local agriculture, business, geology, and much more in its rotating exhibits featuring Nicollet County history.

Things to Do: Destination Site, Museum, U.S. - Dakota War of 1862