Indigenous Peoples Day is Oct. 14, 2024, and the University of St. Thomas will be closed in celebration.
This holiday commemorates the native people of America. When settlers started making their way to the indigenous peoples’ land, they were forced to leave. It is important to remember these people today and what they were forced to give up, especially for the founding of the University of St. Thomas.
When St. Thomas was founded in 1885, it was built on the land of the Dakota Wahpekute people. Their land takes up much of the St. Paul area.
The land that St. Thomas sits on was forcibly acquired by the government in the Zebulon Pike Treaty of 1805. U.S. Army Lt. Zebulon Pike forced the Dakota people to give up 100,000 acres of land for a military fort, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Infantryman William Finn was the first person to secure a bounty warrant to choose a piece of land within the Fort Snelling military reservation, according to “Journey Toward Fulfillment: A History of The College of St. Thomas” by Joseph B. Connors. Finn left the land to St. Thomas’ founder, John Ireland, who ultimately started the St. Paul Seminary and College of St. Thomas on that site, according to OneStThomas.
The university emphasizes the importance of the land it occupies by requiring speakers to recite a land acknowledgement before events such as athletic games and educational speakers to recognize the history of the people who once lived there.
Mni Sota (Minnesota) is considered the birthplace of the Dakota people. They began living there around 1000 A.D., according to the Star Tribune.
The Dakota people are comprised of four groups: the Bdewakantunwan, Wahpetunwan, Wahpekute and Sissitunwan, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
The Dakota people lived in what is now Northern Minnesota until the mid-18th century, according to an ArcGIS StoryMaps post by the Rice County Historical Society and students at Carleton College.
The Ojibwe tribe, which had lived in southern Ontario and northern Michigan, migrated across Lake Superior and came into Dakota territory between 1650-1700. The two tribes stayed peaceful until 1736-1760, when there was a battle between them. The Ojibwe tribe won, forcing the Dakota people away from northern Minnesota. The Wahpekute people moved to what is now Rice County.
In August 1862, the U.S.-Dakota War occurred. Then-governor Alexander Ramsey created an army to march against the Dakota people following an attack in St. Paul. After the Battle of Wood Lake in what is now Yellow Medicine County, the Dakota people were defeated, causing many of them to move westward into Dakota Territory. The remaining members were ordered to Fort Snelling in November 1862, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Many Dakota people survived this Fort Snelling concentration camp, though many died as well. Others were able to stay in their homelands of the Mni Sota region.
On Feb. 16, 1863, Congress passed an act annulling all treaties with the Dakota people. All land and annuities were to be given to the U.S. government. On March 3, 1863, a second act removed all Dakota people from their homelands, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
In March 1891, a law was passed requiring Native children to attend boarding schools in an attempt to “Americanize” them. They were forcibly taken from their homes if they did not comply. There were 16 of these schools in Minnesota, including the Pipestone school, which housed the Dakota children, according to MNopedia.
Students were not allowed to speak their tribal languages and were kept under harsh disciplines such as being confined to cells with only bread and water. Their motto was to “kill the Indian…and save the man,” according to MNopedia. Minnesota boarding schools recorded epidemics of diseases such as measles and mumps, as well as fatal accidents like drowning.
MNopedia states that in 1928, a government report showing evidence of the terrible conditions at the boarding schools closed most of them down. Day schools on reservations were built, and though tribes and the Bureau of Indian Education still run schools nationwide, as of 2016 there are no such boarding schools left in Minnesota.
There are four remaining Dakota tribes in Minnesota today: the Shakopee Mdewakanton in Scott County, the Prairie Island Indian Community on an island 30 miles southeast of St. Paul, the Upper Sioux Community in Yellow Medicine County and the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Redwood County. Today, Mni Sota continues to be sacred land for the Dakota people.
Bridget Schmid can be reached at schm1520@stthomas.edu.