Traverse des Sioux, the ancient “Crossing of the Sioux,” was a fording place on the heavily traveled trail from St. Paul and Fort Snelling to the upper Minnesota and Red River valleys. On June 30, 1851, Governor Alexander Ramsey, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Luke Lea, Delegate to Congress Henry H. Sibley, and other government officials established a camp on a height overlooking the small trading post and mission on the riverbank. They had gathered to negotiate an important treaty with representatives of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux for almost twenty-four million acres called the Suland. This vast tract comprised most of Minnesota west of the Mississippi and south of the line between present-day St. Cloud and Moorhead, as well as portions of South Dakota and northern Iowa. News of the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux on July 23, 1851, started a great land rush, which brought swarms of settlers to the fertile lands acquired by the United States from the Sioux.