Renville, Gabriel (1825–1892)

Gabriel Renville was a fur trader, a farmer, and the leader of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota from 1867 until 1892. Related by blood to multiple Dakota bands and mixed-ancestry families, he opposed Ta Oyate Duta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow) and other Dakota who fought against settler-colonists in the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. His choice angered some of his relatives, who saw him as serving the interests of settler-colonists. After the war, he was one of many who worked to reacquire land for the Sisseton-Wahpeton people.

Gabriel Renville, also known as Ti Wakan (Sacred Lodge), was born in about 1825, at a village west of Big Stone Lake (Bde Inyan Takinyanyan). His father was Victor Renville, of Dakota and French ancestry. His mother, Winona Crawford, was both Dakota and British. Through them, Gabriel’s family ties extended into the Mdewakanton band of Dakota. After Gabriel's father died, Winona married Joseph Akipa Renville, a Wahpeton Dakota man.

In 1835, Gabriel Renville met Joseph R. Brown, a fur trader. In 1840, Brown became his legal guardian as well as his brother-in-law (through marriage to Susan Frenier, Renville’s half-sister). When he was a teenager, Brown sent him to school in Chicago, but Renville quit after about a month. Along with Brown, Renville involved himself in various occupations, including fur trading. He did not, however, convert to Christianity. Instead, he continued to perform traditional ceremonies and spoke, and wrote, only the Dakota language.

The 1851 Treaty of Traverse de Sioux and 1858 land cession treaties confined the Dakota to reservations and disrupted their traditional lifeways. Renville supported himself by farming, and by 1859 he had established a large farm near the Upper Sioux Agency. By then he had also married three Sisseton Dakota sisters (which Dakota custom allowed): Tunkan Mani (Walking Stone, also known as Mary); Tunkan Tiyo Mani Win (Walking Stone in Her Home, also known as Anna) and Hu Teca Win (New Bone Woman, also known as Sophie). Fifteen of the family’s children survived to adulthood.

After the US–Dakota War of 1862 began at the Lower Sioux Agency in August 1862, Renville helped family, relatives, and friends, including Susan Frenier Brown, escape from potential danger. By September, Ta Oyate Duta and the Mdewakanton soldiers’ lodge that began the war had captured many white and mixed-ancestry women and children. Renville joined a peace party that worked for their release.

The warring Dakota failed to defeat the army raised against them, and in late September, the war ended. Renville was at Camp Release on September 26 when the Dakota surrendered themselves and their captives to Colonel Henry Sibley.

Although they had not fought in the war, roughly 1,600 Dakota were forced to move from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling. Renville was among those who passed through the town of Henderson on the way to the fort. Renville described the Henderson experience as life threatening, noting that the route was filled with whites seeking to harm the Dakota as they passed.

In late December 1862, U.S. military authorities confined the roughly 1,600 Dakota women, children, and old men at Fort Snelling. While there, Renville witnessed the deaths by disease of many of the children. News of the December 26 hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato reached him and those held at the fort.

In February 1863, Renville and other Dakota volunteered to serve as U.S. Army scouts under Sibley. They hunted those Dakota they labeled as "hostiles" who had fled west, including Ta Oyate Duta. After participating in Sibley’s “punitive expedition” into Dakota Territory later that year, Renville become Chief of Scouts in 1864 and, later, Superintendent of Scouts.

In 1864, Renville and other Sisseton and Wahpeton men who had scouted for Sibley formed a community at Lake Traverse. Joseph Brown then recommended him as one of twenty-six delegates to travel to Washington, D.C. There, Renville and others signed the 1867 Lake Traverse Reservation treaty, which formally established and federally recognized a new home for the Sisseton-Wahpeton.

In part to recognize his service and leadership, the U.S. government established Renville as chief, bypassing the hereditary chieftain process. In 1884, the Sisseton-Wahpeton chose him as chief for life. He died on August 26, 1892, at the home of Samuel Brown.