Bdewekhantunwan

The Bdewekhantunwan, or Mdewakanton, are the leading band of the Eastern Dakota, the Santee of the Sioux Seven Council Fires, and their name means Spirit Lake Village, after Mille Lacs Lake. Tradition numbers them first among the seven fires, and with the Wahpekute they formed the Santee Upper Council.

In 1687 the French explorer Greysolon du Lhut visited their lakeside village of Izatys. Driven southwest by wars with the Ojibwe, by the early nineteenth century they held the lower Minnesota River under the head chief Wabasha, called The Leaf.

Wabasha fought for the British in 1812 and signed the Prairie du Chien treaties of 1825 and 1830. In 1805 two of their chiefs, Little Crow I and Penichon, signed Pike's Purchase, ceding a hundred thousand acres at the mouth of the Minnesota River, and in 1837 they sold all their lands east of the Mississippi.