2/19/2012:
The Dakota Sioux and the U.S. Government signed an important treaty on this date in 1867. It was the wish of the Government to construct a road to the Pacific through Dakota Territory. To do so, they first had to pacify the Native groups. Territorial Governor Newton Edmunds was sent to convince the Sioux that violence would not benefit either party. Among those accompanying Edmunds were Edward Taylor, northern superintendent of Indian affairs, Major-General S. R. Curtis, and Brigadier-General Henry Sibley. The men first visited bands at Fort Sully, promising the tribes $10,000 annually for twenty years. On February 19th, the group made the same agreement with the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands further south. The treaties helped establish what would later become the Devils Lake and Lake Traverse reservations.
Dakota Datebook written by Jayme L. Job
Sources:
Lounsberry, Clement Augustus. 1919. Early History of North Dakota: Essential Outlines of American History: p. 327. Washington, DC: Liberty Press.
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/sio0956.htm
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/sio1057.htm
http://files.usgwarchives.net/sd/andreas/agency.txt
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/sio0899.htm