Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/110

 76 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY resentatives of Wabasha's and Wacoota's bands, as shown by the record, signed the treaty, although both chiefs were present, and Wabasha was head chief of the Medawakanton band. A consid- erable portion of the country ceded along the Wisconsin shore of the Mississippi was only across the river from their own lands, and they certainly had an interest in its disposition; but in the printed copies of the United States treaties their signatures do not appear. The Doty treaty, made at Traverse des Sioux, in July, 1841, failed to be ratified by the United States Senate. This treaty embodied a Utopian dream that a territory of Indians could be established, in which the redmen would reside on farms and in villages, living their lives after the style of the whites, having a constitutional form of government, with a legislature of their own people elected by themselves, the governor to be appointed by the president of the United States, much along the plan still followed in the Indian Territory, except that it embodied for the Indians a much higher type of citizenship than is found in the Indian Territory* The Indians were to be taught the arts of peace, to be paid annuities, and to be protected by the armies of the United Slates from their Indian enemies on the west. In return for these benefits to be conferred upon the Indians, the United States was to receive all the lands in what is now Minne- sota, the Dakotas and northwestern Iowa, except small portions, which were to be reserved for the redmen. This ceded land was for the most pari to be opened to the settlement of the whites, although the plan was to have some of it reserved for Indian tribes from other parts of the country who should sell their lands to the United Stales, and who. in being moved here, were to enjoy all the privileges which had been so beautifully planned for the native Indians. But no one can tell what would have been the result of this experiment, for the Senate, for political rea- i sons, refused to ratify the treaty, and it failed of going into effect. Prior to 1851, only the land on the east of the Mississippi, with a few islands in that river, were open to white settlement. The agitation started in the late forties resulted in the treaties which opened what is now Goodhue county and surrounding territory to settlement. July 22, the treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed, and on July 29, 1851, the deliberations preceding the treaty at Mendota with the Wah-pa-koota and Medawakanton bands of Sioux were started. The chiefs and head men of these two bands were thoroughly conversant with the proceedings of the Indians and the representatives of the United States at Tra- verse des Sioux, and all were on hand, ready for the negotiations
 * reason, which at the present time is not known, none of the rep-