The Treaty of Mendota was signed between the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of Dakota and the United States government in 1851. By signing it and the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux the same year, the Dakota transferred ownership of much of their lands to the United States. The treaties of 1851 opened millions of acres to white colonization, but for the Dakota, they were a step towards the loss of their homeland and the US–Dakota War of 1862.

Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut (also known as du Luth), was born in Lyons, France, around 1639. A nobleman who quickly rose to prominence in the French royal court, he traveled to New France (Quebec, Canada) in 1674 at the age of thirty-eight to command the French marines in Montreal.

The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux (1851) between the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of Dakota and the US government transferred ownership of much of southeastern Minnesota Territory to the United States. Along with the Treaty of Mendota, signed that same year, it opened twenty-four million acres of land to settler-colonists. For the Dakota, these treaties marked another step in a process that increasingly marginalized them and dismissed them from the land that had been—and remains—their home.