BRUCE VENTO NATURE SANCTUARY

Minnesota Historical Society

Minnesota Historical Society

Little Crow’s Village on the Mississippi by Seth Eastman Taoyateduta, also known as Little Crow, led the Kaposia band during a time of About a dozen permanent bark houses provided summer shelter at Kaposia. increasing contact with Outside the entrances, large platforms were constructed for food drying, storage European immigrants and and sleeping on hot summer nights. By Mark Apfelbacher enormous changes for the Dakota people.

TATANKA OYATE Dakota life along Wakpa Tanka MAKOCE Land of the Dakota people lived along the Mississippi Buffalo People

River — known as Wakpa Tanka — for There are Dakota hundreds of years. From the mid-1700s to names for many of the places in this the mid-1800s, the seasonal village of area. Kaposia existed in two locations downstream Imnizaska “white from here, near Pigs Eye Lake. cliffs” — the name given to the rock Mdewakanton Dakota resided in Kaposia face we now call Dayton’s Bluff or mainly during the warmer months of the year. Mounds Bluff. Some people made maple sugar, and others Wakan Tipi “spirit hunted game such as rabbits, fowl, deer and house” — the sacred cave that is now part buffalo. Seeds, roots, plants and other foods, of the Bruce Vento including wild rice, were gathered in season Nature Sanctuary, also known as and dried for preservation. After the first hard Carver’s Cave. frost the band would separate and spend the Wakpa Tanka “big winter in sheltered creek valleys. river” — the name for the Mississippi Kaposia residents would have visited this land River. for its sacred cave, Wakan Tipi, and may have hunted in the marshlands that once existed here.

DAKOTA SITES ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI AND MINNESOTA RIVERS.

Courtesy of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) community. For more information visit www.shakopeedakota.org