Taoyateduta’s village at Kaposia on the Mississippi River, ca.1846–1848. Water color painting by Seth Eastman.

Illustration depicting an Ojibwe man named Kawetahsay reportedly wounded during the Battle of Shakopee, Saint Paul Globe, October 7, 1900.

Black-and-white photograph of the site where the Dakota and Ojibwe fought the Battle of Shakopee in 1858. Photographed c.1875 by William H. Jacoby.

Hole-in-the-Day the Younger (1827–1868) signed almost every land cession treaty between the Minnesota Ojibwe and the U.S. government. MN90 producer Marisa Helms reports that though he was an effective negotiator he was also a controversial figure with many enemies. On June 27, 1868, as he was traveling to Washington, D.C., to fight the removal of his people to a reservation at White Earth, Hole-in-the-Day was assassinated by Ojibwe men from Leech Lake just a few miles from his home in Crow Wing.

Participants at a powwow organized by the Prairie Island Dakota community and held on July 13, 1969. Photograph by Monroe P. Killy.

Half black, half Ojibwe, George Bonga was the first person of African descent born in what was then the territory of Minnesota in 1802. He was a fur trader and a treaty translator that forged vital relationships with both Europeans and Native Americans. Allison Herrera tells us more about his important role in Minnesota history.

The Dakota leader Good Thunder (seated) and his family. Photographed at the Lower Sioux Dakota community in Redwood County c.1900.

Detail view of a map made in 1685 and 1686 by Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin. Lake Mille Lacs (at center left) is labelled as "Lac des Sioux" (Lake of the Sioux), suggesting that the area was known as a home for Dakota people as early as the seventeenth century.