History

The ancestors of the Dakota had their primary land base in what is now Minnesota. The identification of Sandy Lake pottery at the Rum River (Mille Lacs) site furnishes one means of defining the region occupied by the eastern Dakota. Sandy Lake ware has been found at a large number of sites in Wisconsin, Manitoba, western Ontario, and eastern Manitoba. Archival evidence reports Dakota occupation around Lake of the Woods in 1717– 22 and Dakota war expeditions as far north as the head of the Churchill River. Cree place names in that locality (puarsipi) suggest some sort of Siouan presence. The trouble with this evidence is that puat is used with reference not only to Dakota but also to other Siouan groups, notably the Assiniboine or Stoney. A second complicating factor is the depopulation of the northern plains/ western woodland region in the 1780s that resulted from a major smallpox epidemic. The earlier occupation of what is now Saskatchewan was massively disrupted, and so it is difficult to trace named ethnic units (bands) from the eighteenth-century records into the nineteenth century. Yet we are virtually certain that the homeland of the eastern Dakota was Minnesota, and there is strong reason to believe that they held occupations of varying length in what is now western Ontario/eastern Manitoba during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and probably earlier. Whether these now-Canadian territories were actually “theirs” in the estimation of other aboriginal occupants cannot be definitively established. The issue of whether or not the Canadian Dakota can claim an aboriginal occupation north of the 49th parallel has been of central importance in their relations with both the Canadian and the United States governments.

The French mentioned the Nakota, referring to them as Assiniboine, as early as 1640. Their presence in territories within modern Saskatchewan and Manitoba is clearly indicated in the 1693 journal of fur trader and explorer Henry Kelsey. According to Nakota oral traditions in Alberta, their traditional hunting territory lay along the eastern slopes and foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The oral traditions preserve memories of warfare with Cree, Saulteaux, and Blackfoot, but the Nakota also maintained peaceful relations with the Cree during certain periods. Early explorers’ accounts describe mixed encampments of Cree and Nakota, and, as noted above, such mixed communities are still in evidence today. Some have speculated that the Nakota were “cultural godfathers” of the Cree on the northern plains, serving as agents in the transmission of the economy and technology of bison hunting.

We have archaeological materials dating from the immediate pre-contact period – about 1500–1700 C.E.– which can tentatively be associated with the northern and southern branches of the Nakota. This is the so-called Mortlach phase, marked by a distinctive type of thin, compact pottery decorated with cord and check stamps in a variety of styles. The northern phase of this pottery and other associated technology may be northern Nakota, and the southern phase southern Nakota. These two different populations – if such they were – appear to have been involved in different trade and exchange networks, judging from the kinds of “foreign” pots found in the two assemblages and the types of stone they used for their lithic artifacts.

The settlement of the Dakota in Canada began in the winter of 1863–64 with the influx of a party of refugees who, following the suppression of the Minnesota Uprising, were fleeing from the U.S. military. The Dakota claimed refuge in the North-West Territories (presentday Saskatchewan and Alberta) and the protection of the Crown by virtue of the allegiance that they had demonstrated during the War of 1812. Within a few years they had established themselves in a territorial pattern which was later formalized in grants of reserve land by order-in-council.

Although there are oral traditions of conflict and raiding between Nakota and Cree, there were also intervals of peaceful coexistence in which they camped, hunted, and travelled together. Indeed, the multicultural First-Nations communities that exist today, such as the White Bear community in Saskatchewan, are not that different in composition from ones that existed in early contact and pre-contact times, however different the modern socio-political causes of their formation may be from those that existed before contact.

Regarded as refugees from the United States, the Dakota were not admitted into treaty. Among the Nakota of Saskatchewan, the White Bear and Carry the Kettle bands signed Treaty 4 (1874) and the Mosquito band signed Treaty 6 (1876). In Alberta, Treaty 6 also encompasses two Nakota reserves west of Edmonton.