It can readily be seen that the government was illy prepared to cope
with an outbreak of such magnitude as this soon proved to be. By the
terms of the treaty of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 the
Sioux sold all their lands in Minnesota, except a strip ten miles wide
on each side of the Minnesota river from near Fort Ridgely to Big
Stone lake. In 1858 ten miles of the strip lying north of the river
was sold, mainly through the influence of Little Crow. The selling of
this strip caused great dissatisfaction among the Indians and Little
Crow was severely denounced for the part he took in the transaction.
The sale rendered it necessary for all the Indians to locate on the
south side of the Minnesota, where game was scarce and trapping poor.
There was nothing for them to live upon unless they adopted the habits
of civilization and worked like white men. This was very distasteful
to many of them, as they wanted to live the same as they did before
the treaty--go where they pleased, when they pleased, and hunt game
and sell fur to traders. The government built houses for those who
desired to occupy them, furnished tools, seed, etc., and taught them
how to farm. At two of the agencies during the summer of the outbreak
they had several hundred acres of land under cultivation. The
disinclination of many of the Indians to work gradually produced
dissension among themselves and they formed into two parties--the
white man's party, those that believed in cultivating the soil; and
the Indian party, a sort of young-man-afraid-of-work association, who
believed it beneath the dignity of the noble Dakotan to perform
manual labor. The white man's, or farmer's party, was favored by the
government, some of them having fine houses built for them. The other
Indians did not like this, and became envious of them because they
discontinued the customs of the tribe. There was even said to have
been a secret organization among the tepee Indians whose object it was
to declare war upon the whites. The Indians also claimed that they