The Dakota first laid eyes on whites when they met French explorers Pierre Radisson and Seur des Groseilliers in 1660. The Mayflower had landed in America just 40 years earlier.

At the time, the Dakota were living in northern Wisconsin. They later moved to the Mille Lacs Lake area but were pushed south after battles with the rival Ojibway. The two Indian nations had a long series of conflicts stretching from 1736 to the mid 1850s.

In 1825 the Ojibway and Dakota reached an agreement that set a boundary that ran diagonally across Minnesota, from what is now Stillwater to the Fargo area. The Dakota were south of the line, including the Minnesota River Valley.

At the same time, white traders and trappers were flowing into the river valley drawn by abundant wildlife, including bison, muskrat, beaver, fox and other furbearers.

The river became an important transportation route as trappers brought pelts by canoe and by oxcart along the river’s edge.

Traders increasingly relied on Indians for pelts, trading them for blankets, gunpowder, alcohol, tobacco and other products. The trade played a key role in the coming misfortunes of the Dakota.

In 1837, a treaty was signed giving all Dakota land east of the Mississippi to the government. Much of the money that was to go to the Indians instead went to traders who said — sometimes falsely — that they were owed debts by the Dakota.

In 1851, one of the nation’s most important treaties was signed at Traverse des Sioux between the government and the Wahpeton and Sisseton bands of Dakota.

Traverse des Sioux, just north of St. Peter, had long been a well-used river crossing because it had a rare solid bottom and shallow waters. Early French explorers gave the site its name, which meant “crossing place of the Sioux people.”

In the treaty, the Dakota gave up 24 million acres of land in southern Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota.

In exchange, the Indians were given a tract of land 10 miles wide on each side of the Minnesota river, from near Fort Ridgely to the South Dakota border. They were to receive just more than $3 million in payments over 50 years.

The government established two administrative centers: the Lower Sioux Agency, from Fort Ridgely to Granite Falls; and the Upper Sioux Agency, from Granite Falls to the border.

Fort Ridgely was 30 miles up river from New Ulm.

By the winter of 1861 and 1862, the Indians were in dire condition. Promised food and money didn’t arrive. According to the Redwood Gazette newspaper at the time, the Indians had resorted to eating most of their dogs and many horses to survive.

The Dakota were not only starving and felt betrayed but felt a sense of weakness among the Minnesota frontier settlers, brought on by the departure of many of their young men to fight in the Civil War.

The spark of the conflict came on Aug. 17, 1862, when four young Dakota warriors murdered five settlers near Acton. On Aug. 18, Indians at the Lower Sioux Agency rebelled, killing most of the settlers on their reservation.

The Dakota warriors turned to Chief Little Crow to lead them. But Little Crow, who had once traveled to Washington, D.C., and had seen the military’s strength, argued against an all-out war.

“Kill one, two, ten and ten times ten will come to kill you,” he told the warriors.

But Little Crow was eventually persuaded to lead the fight.

News of the rebellion spread quickly through the settler and Indian communities. The Dakota killed most of the settlers they encountered but often made captives of the women and children.

The Army amassed 180 men at Fort Ridgely, where well-sited artillery helped the soldiers fend off two attacks by about 400 Indians. At New Ulm, which became a magnet for settlers fleeing the rebellion, two attacks took place, with the Dakota burning 190 buildings.

Col. Henry H. Sibley arrived at Fort Ridgely on Aug. 27, leading a group of green soldiers. The Dakota surprised and inflicted a tactical defeat on Sibley's men at Birch Coulee on Sept. 2, where 23 soldiers were killed.

Sibley got reinforcements, including 240 veterans of the 3rd Minnesota Infantry Regiment.

The final battle took place Sept. 23 at Wood Lake near Birch Coulee at a battlefield between Granite Falls and the town of Echo. Three days later, the Dakota released 269 captives they held west of Montevideo and surrendered.

By the time the fighting ended, at least 450 settlers and soldiers were killed with some estimates as high as 800.

The number of Dakota killed was not known, in part because of the Indian custom of removing all dead and dying from the battlefield.

A military commission was set up to decide which Indians should be punished. They tried as many as 40 cases in a single day with Indians having as few as five minutes to defend themselves.

In the end, the commission sentenced 307 Dakota to death.

President Lincoln was under pressure from politicians, the public and media to give the final order for execution.

But Presbyterian missionaries wrote letters to the press calling for new, fair trials for the condemned.

Lincoln eventually ordered the execution of 39 Dakota. One was later reprieved.

At 10 a.m. on Dec. 26, 1862, the 38 ascended a specially made timber gallows erected in Mankato. There was snow on the ground and the temperature was 15 degrees.

More than 1,400 soldiers were on hand to keep order among a crowd of hostile citizens.

Martial law had been declared and liquor banned in an attempt to control the citizens who had come from across the countryside.

Mounted Scout William Duly, who lost three children in the conflict, severed the rope to hang the Indians.

The bodies were buried, but because of high demand for cadavers for anatomical study, the graves were opened and the bodies distributed among local doctors. One doctor, William Worrall Mayo — a founder of the eventual Mayo Clinic — received the body of Mahpiya Okinajin (He Who Stands in Clouds).

(Years later, Mayo dissected it in the presence of medical colleagues in Le Sueur. The remains of Mahpiya Okinajin and other Native Americans later were returned by the Mayo Clinic to a Dakota tribe for reburial per the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.)

In the mid 1860s, new settlement in the Minnesota River Valley slowed as fears persisted. The Dakota either fled the area, were relocated to other states or were put in prison.

The Dakota did not begin returning to the reservation lands until the 1880s.

Through the early and mid 1900s, life on the reservation remained one of low income and growing social problems.

In 1984, the Dakota opened a small bingo hall on the Lower Sioux Agency near Morton. Jackpot Junction Casino opened in 1988.

Today, the casino employs 950 people. A hotel, convention center, golf course and other amenities have been added in recent years.