Traverse des Sioux
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Traverse des Sioux
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Minnesota River at Traverse des Sioux
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| Location | Nicollet County, Minnesota |
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| Nearest city | St. Peter, Minnesota |
| Coordinates | 44°21′4″N 93°56′45″W / 44.35111°N 93.94583°WCoordinates: 44°21′4″N 93°56′45″W / 44.35111°N 93.94583°W |
| Built | 1851 |
| NRHP Reference # | 73000990 |
| Added to NRHP | March 20, 1973 |
Traverse des Sioux is a historic site in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Once part of a preindustrial trade route, it commemorates that route, a busy river crossing on it, a nineteenth-century settlement, trading post, and mission at that crossing place, a transshipment point for pelts in fur trading days, and an important treaty with Native Americans which dispossessed the Dakota people of part of their homeland and opened up much of southern Minnesota to white settlement.
Formerly a Minnesota state park, the site of the old settlement and river ford is now a State Historic Site and a Minnesota State Monument, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Traverse des Sioux is located in Nicollet County, Minnesota on the Minnesota River, just north of the city of St. Peter.
Traverse is a French word that means crossing, and some sources state that its use in the name refers to the crossing of the Minnesota River at this location. At least one scholarly source however states that Traverse des Sioux is named for the transit of the prairie to the west, and not for the river crossing. As used by the French Canadian voyageurs and their Métis relatives and descendants, a traverse was a crossing from a safe resting place across an open area to another point of shelter, such as a voyageurs’ crossing of hazardous waters from point to point rather than along a sheltered shore, or its correlate on land, a crossing by Métis ox cart brigades of open prairie from one secure resting place to another. The settlement at Traverse des Sioux was a destination of Métis carters during the days of the Red River Trails, and was also home of a voyageur community during the same time.
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