The Lac qui Parle Mission opened in 1835, when Dakota people remained in control of the region and their lives, and the missionaries and their families were guests in a land that did not belong to them. In a May 16, 1836 reflection at Lac qui parle, Thomas S. Williamson wrote that understanding would require learning Dakota ways of thinking and proving through the missionaries’ manner of living among them that they were friends who spoke the truth. The station closed in 1854, the year after the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was ratified, leaving Dakota people a fragment of their homelands as a reservation within the United States.