The Lower Sioux Indian Reservation, (Dakota: Cansa'yapi) also known as the Mdewankanton Tribal Reservation, is an Indian reservation located along the southern bank of the Minnesota River in Redwood County, Minnesota, east of the city of Redwood Falls, just south of Morton. The land became part of a reservation after the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851, but has now shrunk to a very small size. As of the 2000 census, the site had a population of 335, and a land area of 2.705 sq mi (7.006 km²). The community operates Jackpot Junction Casino Hotel, which began in 1984 as a bingo facility. The casino has become a major employer for the surrounding communities. The Minnesota Historical Society has an interpretive site on the reservation (now operated by the Mdewakanton band) that discusses the Dakota War of 1862.
Jackpot Junction Casino Hotel was the state of Minnesota's first casino. Jackpot Junction features three bars, three restaurants, an amphitheater, and two grand ballrooms. Live music is played every weekend, usually country occasionally rock. The casino is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
County Highway 2 runs through the reservation, connecting it to U.S. Route 71 and Minnesota State Highway 19 to the northwest.
Famous quotes containing the words indian and/or reservation:
“This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on the west.... Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Music is so much a part of their daily lives that if an Indian visits another reservation one of the first questions asked on his return is: “What new songs did you learn?””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)