Sioux indians
Under the name of Naduesiu the Sioux are first mentioned by Father Paul le Jeune in the Jesuit Relation of 1640, apparently on the information of that pioneer western explorer, Jean Nicolet, the first white man known to have set foot in Wisconsin, probably in 1634-5. In 1655-6 two other famous French explorers, Radisson and Groseilliers, spent some time with them in their own country, about the western border of Wisconsin. At that time the Sioux were giving shelter to a band of refugee Hurons fleeing before the Iroquois. They were rated as possessing thirty villages, and were the terror of all the surrounding tribes by reason of their number and prowess, although admittedly less cruel. Fathers Allouez and Marquette, from their mission of St. Esprit, established at Lapointe (now Bayfield, Wis.) on Lake Superior in 1665, entered into friendly relations with the Sioux, which continued until 1671, when the latter, provoked by insults from the eastern tribes, returned Marquette's presents, declared war against their hereditary foes, and compelled the abandonment of the mission. In 1674 they sent a delegation to Sault Ste. Marie to arrange peace through the good offices of the resident Jesuit missionary, Father Gabriel Druillettes, who already had several of the tribe under instruction in his house, but the negotiations were brought to an abrupt end by a treacherous attack made upon the Sioux while seated in council in the mission church, resulting in the massacre of the ambassadors after a desperate encounter, and the burning of the church, which was fired over their heads by the Ojibwa to dislodge them.
The tribal war went on, but the Sioux kept friendship with the French traders, who by this time had reached the Mississippi. In 1680 one of their war parties, descending the Mississippi against the Illinois, captured the Recollect Father Louis Hennepin with two companions and brought them to their villages at the head of the river, where they held them, more as guests than prisoners, until released on the arrival of the trader, Du Luth, in the fall. While thus in custody Father Hennepin observed their customs, made some study of the language, baptized a child and attempted some religious instruction, explored a part of Minnesota, and discovered and named St. Anthony's Falls. In 1683 Nicholas Perrot established a post at the mouth of the Wisconsin. In 1689 he established Fort Perrot near the lower end of Lake Pepin, on the Minnesota side, the first post within the Sioux territory, and took formal possession of their country for France. The Jesuit Father Joseph Marest, officially designated "Missionary to the Nadouesioux", was one of the witnesses at the ceremony and was again with the tribe some twelve years later. Another post was built by Pierre LeSueur, near the present Red Wing about 1693, and in 1695 a principal chief of the tribe accompanied him to Montreal to meet the governor, Frontenac. By this time the Sioux had a number of guns and were beginning to wage aggressive warfare toward the west, driving the Cheyenne, Omaha, and Oto down upon the Missouri and pushing out into the buffalo plains. During Frontenac's administration mission work languished owing to his bitter hostility to missionaries, especially the Jesuits.
About the year 1698, through injudiciously assisting the Sioux against the Foxes, the French became involved in a tedious forty-years' war with the latter tribe which completely paralyzed trade on the upper Mississippi and ultimately ruined the Foxes. Before its end the Sioux themselves turned against the French and gave refuge to the defeated Foxes. In 1700 LeSueur had built Fort L'Huillier on the Blue Earth River near the present Mankato, Minnesota. In 1727, an ineffective peace having been made, the Jesuit Fathers, Ignatius Guignas and Nicolas de Gonnor, again took up work among the Sioux at the new Fort Beauharnais on Lake Pepin. Although driven out for a time by the Foxes, they returned and continued with the work some ten years, until the Sioux themselves became hostile. In 1736 the Sioux massacred an entire exploring party of twenty-one persons under command of the younger Verendrye at the Lake of the Woods, just beyond the northern (international) Minnesota boundary. Among those killed was the Jesuit father, Jean-Pierre Aulneau. In 1745-6, the Foxes having been finally crushed, De Lusignan again arranged peace with the Sioux, and between them and the Ojibwa, and four Sioux chiefs returned with him to Montreal. On the fall of Canada the Sioux, in 1763, sent delegates to the English post at Green Bay with proffers of friendship and a request for traders. They were described as "certainly the greatest nation of Indians ever yet found", holding all other Indians as "their slaves or dogs". Two thousand of their warriors now had guns, while the other and larger portion still depended upon the bow, in the use of which, and in dancing, they excelled the other tribes.
In the winter of 1766-7 the American traveller, Jonathan Carver, spent several months with the Santee visiting their burial-ground and sacred cave near the present St. Paul, and witnessing men and women gashing themselves in frenzied grief at their bereavement. Soon after this period the eastern Sioux definitively abandoned the Mille Lac and Leech Lake country to their enemies the Ojibwa, with whom the hereditary war still kept up. The final engagement in this upper region occurred in 1768 when a great canoe fleet of Sioux, numbering perhaps five hundred warriors, while descending the Mississippi from a successful raid upon the Ojibwa, was ambushed near the junction of Crow Wing River and entirely defeated by a much smaller force of the latter tribe. In 1775 peace was again made between the two tribes through the efforts of the English officials in order to secure their alliance in the coming Revolutionary struggle. The peace lasted until the close of the Revolutionary War, in which both tribes furnished contingents against the American frontier, after which the warriors returned to their homes, and the old feud was resumed. In the meantime the Teton Sioux, pressing westward, were gradually pushing the Arikara (Ree) up the Missouri, and by acquiring horses from the plains tribes had become metamorphosed from canoe men and gatherers of wild rice into an equestrian race of nomad buffalo hunters.
Some years after the close of the Revolution, perhaps about 1796, French traders in the American interest ascended the Missouri from St. Louis and established posts among the Yankton and Teton. In 1804 the first American exploring expedition, under Captains Lewis and Clark, ascended the river, holding councils and securing the allegiance of the Sioux and other tribes, and then crossing the mountains and descending the Columbia to the Pacific, returning over nearly the same route in 1806. As a result of this acquaintance the first Sioux (Yankton) delegation visited Washington in the latter year. At the same time, 1805-6, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike ascended the Mississippi on a similar errand to the Santee Sioux and other tribes of that region. In this he was successful and on 23 September, 1805, negotiated the first treaty of the Sioux with the United States, by which they ceded lands in the vicinity of the present St. Paul for the establishment of military posts, at the same time giving up their English flags and medals and accepting American ones. Up to this period and for some years later the rapidly diverging bands of the east and west still held an annual renunion east of the lower James River in eastern South Dakota. In 1807 Manuel Lisa, founder of the American Fur Company, "the most active and indefatigable trader that St. Louis ever produced" (Chittenden), established headquarters among the Sioux, at Cedar Island, below the present Pierre, S.D., later moving down to about the present Chamberlain. Lisa was a Spaniard, and like his French associates, Chouteau, Ménard, and Trudeau, was a Catholic. At his several trading posts among the Teton and Yankton Sioux, and the Omaha lower down the river, he showed the Indians how to plant gardens and care for cattle and hogs, besides setting up blacksmith shops for their benefit, without charge, and caring for their aged and helpless, so that it was said that he was better loved by the Sioux than any other white man of his time. Being intensely American in feeling, he was appointed first government agent for the upper Missouri River tribes, and by his great influence with them held them steady for the United States throughout the War of 1812, notwithstanding that most of the eastern, or Santee, Sioux, through the efforts of Tecumtha and a resident British trader, Robert Dickson, declared for England and furnished a contingent against Fort Meigs. Lisa died in 1820. At the close of the war, by a series of five similar treaties made 15 July, 1815, at Portage des Sioux, above St. Louis, the various Sioux bands made their peace with the United States and finally acknowledged its sovereignty. Other late hostile tribes made peace at the same time. this great treaty gathering, the most important ever held with the tribes of the Middle West, marks the beginning of their modern history. In 1820 Fort Snelling was built at the present Minneapolis to control the Santee Sioux and Ojibwa, an agency being also established at the same time. In 1825 another great treaty gathering was convened at Prairie du Chien for the delimitation of tribal boundaries to put an end to inter-tribal wars, and clear the way for future land cessions. At this period, and for years after, the Sioux led all other tribes in the volume of their fur trade, consisting chiefly of buffalo robes and beaver skins.