Wahpekhute

The Wahpekhute are one of the four bands of the Eastern Dakota, the Santee of the Sioux Seven Council Fires; their name means Leaf Archers, or Shooters Among the Trees. The most nomadic of the Santee, they formed the alliance's Upper Council with the Mdewakanton.

Before the seventeenth century they hunted and gathered wild rice around Lake Superior and in the Wisconsin woods, but wars with the musket-armed Ojibwe drove them southwest to southern Minnesota by the late eighteenth century.

They entered the fur trade, moving their village to Alexander Faribault's post in 1834. War with the Sauk and Meskwaki cost some hundred and seventy Wahpekhute lives between 1815 and 1825 and killed their chief Shakeska in 1822; his son Tasagi succeeded him as game grew scarce and dependence on traders deepened.