In 1863, a U.S. team headed by Alexander Ramsey and including three companies of mounted troops met with 353 Indians near present-day Huot, Minn. After 14 days, they had forged the Old Crossing Treaty.
The agreement was not a peace treaty. Rather, it executed what in international law is known as a "land cession." The United States bought 11 million acres from the Indians that included Grand Forks County and much of the Red River Valley.
Now, an exhibit at Grand Forks County Historical Society Myra Museum, "When the Chippewa Owned Grand Forks County: The 1863 Treaty of Old Crossing," takes a look at those decades before the treaty.
The exhibit uses artifacts, works by artists George Catlin and Paul Kane, whose paintings showed the lives of early-day Indians, and panels to tell a story of the Dakota and Chippewa in Minnesota and North Dakota.
The exhibit, made possible with financial support from UND and Bremer Bank of Grand Forks, has been organized by David Vorland.
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"The exhibit is designed for several different kinds of people," Vorland said. "Some people want to look at the hard history, others want to look at artifacts or some other aspect. And the exhibit does include all those things."
There's clothing, including a hat with horns and feathers that may have been used during ceremonies. There's a tomahawk pipe, which an Indian would have obtained from British traders, perhaps in exchange for furs, and a trade musket used for buffalo hunting.
There are arrowheads, various cutting tools used in the butchering of buffalo and a grooved maul, which was used to break up bones for their marrow, from the Jon Campbell collection.
Before "When the Chippewa Owned Grand Forks County" opened, the historical society asked people from the area to lend their artifacts to the exhibit. Several of the pieces on display come from a Grand Forks collector who asked to remain anonymous.
A rare grinding set, discovered near Northwood, N.D., by Albert Stamness, is on loan from the Northwood, N.D., museum. The anvil and hand stone were used for converting soft pigment stones into paint or, more likely, for crushing berries and seeds to make foods such as pemmican, Vorland said.
The exhibit, which officially opens at 5 p.m. June 24, is about the decades just before Grand Forks County was opened for settlement. It is part of the story of the last two tribes to arrive here, the Dakota and the Chippewa, and of what led to the Old Crossing Treaty of 1863.
To read all of the written information from the exhibit, go to
GrandForksHerald.com.
