Treaty of Old Crossing - Earlier Negotiations With The Ojibwe Bands

Earlier Negotiations With The Ojibwe Bands

The Dakota relinquished any claim to the Red River Valley in the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and to most of the rest of the future State of Minnesota in the Treaty of Mendota in 1851. Within a few weeks, the United States Indian Commissioners also negotiated a separate treaty at Pembina whereby the Red Lake Band and the Pembina Band of Ojibwe signed away their rights to over 5,000,000 acres (20,000 km2) of rich Red River Valley land extending 30 miles (48 km) on each side of the Red River. In the face of opposition from Southern states concerned about the balance of free and slave states as a result of Minnesota expansionism, and in order to preserve and obtain ratification of the Sioux treaties and land cessions which also had just been secured, the Northern sponsors of the Pembina treaty withdrew their support, the Senate denied confimation, and the Ojibwe land cession failed.

With the introduction of steamboat operations on the Red River and plans for railroad development in Northwest Minnesota, the clamor for development and settlement south of the 49th parallel continued unabated throughout the 1850s. Incursions into Ojibwe territory on the part of fur traders and others were common. A leading trader and Métis state legislator, Joseph Rolette, even started a townsite called "Douglas" at the Old Crossing which was designated by the Legislature as the first county seat of Polk County. The Ojibwe objected to the peremptory establishment of a town on their unceded territory, and the Legislature removed the county seat to Crookston, but demands for doing something about the "sullen Chippewa" and their claims to the territory continued to mount and by 1862 had risen to a crescendo.

After the onset of the Civil War, with factional Southern opposition to expansion of the free states no longer a factor, and still urged on by railroad interests and other promoters of development and settlement in the area, the United States in 1862 renewed efforts to negotiate a "treaty" with Ojibwe tribes for the cession of the Red River Valley. Several tribal chiefs were invited to treat at the Grand Forks of the Red Lake River and Red River. These Ojibwe negotiators were encamped there late that summer, waiting for the United States negotiators, when skirmishing in the Sioux Uprising (now generally called the Dakota War of 1862) spread to the Red River Valley, forcing the United States negotiators to take refuge in Fort Abercrombie. In the aftermath of the Uprising, United States troops and Minnesota militia chased the Dakota out of the Red River Valley for good and the fur traders and steamship operators renewed efforts to have the politicians wrest the territory from the Ojibwe.