MIGRATIONS—ARGUMENTS FROM HISTORY. 179 
of the “Sioux of the West” as “more than ‘a thousand tepees.” It is added, 
“They do not use canoes, nor cultivate the earth, nor gather wild rice. 
They remain generally in the prairies, which are between the Upper Missis- 
sippi and the Missouri Rivers, and live entirely by the chase.” 
Jonathan Carver, a native of New England, was the first English 
traveler who visited the country of the Dakota and added to our knowledge 
of their history. He left Boston in June of 1766, and by the way of Green 
Bay and the Wisconsin River he reached the Mississippi at the town whose 
name he writes ‘La Prairie les Chiens,” consisting, as he says, of fifty 
houses ‘This was then, and for many years after, the great fur mart of the 
Upper Mississippi. The villages of the Sauk and Fox he passed on the 
Wisconsin River. The Dakota he first met near the mouth of the St. Croix. 
For years past they had been breaking away from their old home on Knife 
Lake and making their villages along down the river. Hence the name of 
“River Bands,” a term that then comprised the ‘Spirit Lake,” the “Leaf 
Villagers,” and the “Sisseton.” The Nadouessies of the plains, he says, were 
divided into eight bands, not including the Assiniboin. 
Carver ascended the St. Pierre River for some distance and wintered 
with a camp of Indians. In the spring he descended, with several hundred 
Dakota, to the mouth of the river. When they came to deposit their dead, 
in what seems to have been a ve eel place of interment, in the cave, since 
called “‘Carver’s Cave,” Jonathan claims to have obtained from them a deed 
of the land. This purchase, however, has never been acknowledged by the 
Sioux. 
Carver found, in 1766, the Dakota at war with the Ojibwa, ana was 
told that they had been fighting forty years. Before the year 1800 the 
Ojibwa had driven the Dakota from what hold they had on the Sandy Lake 
and Leech Lake country. As the Indian goods commenced to come to them 
up the Mississippi, they were naturally drawn down to make more perma- 
nent villages on its banks. Then two forces united diverted the Dakota 
migration to the south and the west. 
The Government of the United States, in the year 1805, sent into the 
Dakota and Ojibwa countries Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, for the purposes 
of regulating the trade and making alliances with the Indians. He met 
the Dakota first at Red Wing, a short distance above Lake Pepin, and then 
at Kaposia, a short distance below where is now St. Paul. The respective 
chiefs were Red Wing and Little Crow. He also visited a Dakota village 
a short distance up the Minnesota River, and held a grand council with the 
Dakota assembled on the point where Fort Snelling was afterwards built. 
