Ramsey County History – Summer 2005: “Rendezvous at the Riverbend: Pike’s Seven Days in the Band of Little Crow—the Wilderness That Later Became St. Paul”

Rendezvous at the Riverbend: Pike’s Seven Days in the Band of Little Crow—the Wilderness That Later Became St. Paul
Author: Gary Brueggemann

In 1805, Zebulon Pike, a twenty-six year old lieutenant, led the first American expedition to explore Minnesota. A group of twenty-two men came up the Mississippi River in a thirty-foot bateau. The author describes the native Mdewakatwon Dakota in the area, their village of Kaposia, and Carvers Cave. In 1817, Major Stephen Long also described the village as did Henry Schoolcraft in 1820. Little Crow held a council with Pike on what is now known as Pike Island. In a treaty that Pike negotiated with the Dakota, the government acquired land for a military post, which later became Fort Snelling, but Pike didn’t write a clear treaty to show the boundaries of the land covered by the treaty. Pike then went further up the Mississippi and later returned to Pike Island. He wanted Little Crow to accompany him to St. Louis, but the Dakota leader declined.
PDF of Brueggemann article