In 1849 Wakute led the Red Wing community as chief, with Iron Cloud as the lead soldier or second chief. The relationship of these two men had been strained since the death of Walking Buffalo (Red Wing) on March 4, 1829. Both wished to become principal chief of the village.¹¹
    Lawrence Taliaferro, the respected Indian agent at Ft. Snelling, gave Wakute written recognition in September as the new chief of the Red Wing band. The following summer Iron Cloud asked Taliaferro to recognize him as leader. The Indian agent decided he would not take sides in the dispute.
    The unresolved differences between the two leaders remained. Most of the village’s young men supported Iron Cloud, a warrior as was Walking Buffalo (Red Wing), but the majority of villagers sided with Wakute. These differences caused the band to separate. From about 1832 to 1838, Wakute and his followers usually lived closer to Wabasha’s village. The two factions had reunited, however, by the time the Aitons and the Hancocks, Presbyterian missionaries, reached Red Wing.
    Wakute impressed the whites who met him. Distinguished, well-proportioned, and standing six feet tall, he looked the part of chief. About 60-years-old in 1849, he possessed good judgement, intelligence, and was a sound, if not forceful, leader. Joseph Hancock and Dr. William W. Sweney, who both knew Wakute well, liked him and found the chief friendly to whites. He also seemed willing to adopt some of the ways of what Sweney called “civilized life,” and sent his children to the missionaries’ school. Whites in Red Wing sided with Wakute in his power struggle with Iron Cloud.¹²
    Wakute held limited power with the Red Wing Mdewakanton. Many Indians did not like his close ties to the whites. Young men backed Iron Cloud because he was a soldier and resisted most of the white ways. Iron Cloud’s mystical style and spiritual beliefs also impressed his followers. Whites in the village thought that Iron Cloud purposely disrupted Wakute’s plans to improve the lives of his people—meaning, in the white view, rejection of old tribal ways.
    Whites disliked and distrusted Iron Cloud and saw him as a threat to Dakota-settler relations. Sweney described Iron Cloud as “a crafty, intriguing politician” who was second in rank to Wakute “but first in real power.”
    Wakute and Iron Cloud factions shared the Red Wing village in 1849, although their rivalry continued. A small stream, known as the Jordan to whites, served as a dividing line separating the two Indian groups. The Jordan cut a winding, diagonal path through the village between today’s city hall and train depot on the riverfront. Indians used the creek’s inlet as a canoe harbor.
    The Jordan still flows today, but has been routed underground. Before settlers bridged the Jordan’s small marshy valley—today’s John Rich Park site was part of this marsh—“cross-town” travelers were forced to make a wide detour around it.

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    More whites began moving into Red Wing and Minnesota Territory in 1850, but not the flood of people for which Ramsey hoped. The new census listed 6,077 living in Minnesota’s original nine counties—it did not count the Indians in the area. Among whites, men outnumbered women 3,695 to 2,343. A separate category for “Free Colored” people listed 39 men and women. The handful of whites at Red Wing lived in the territorial county of Wabashaw (1850 spelling).¹³
    The census listed 55 residents for all of Wabashaw County. Those in Red Wing included the missionary Hancocks, their daughter Marilla and their newborn son John Jr. Also counted were government farmer John Bush and his mixed-blood wife Charlotte, and trader John Snow, his wife Dianthy and son John Jr.  Maria Hancock and her son would die within a year.
    Gov. Ramsey encouraged settlers to come to Minnesota Territory even though such action was illegal. The United States had yet to buy the Dakota lands, except for the military reservations around Ft. Snelling and the mouth of the St. Croix. Only missionaries, government farmers and licensed Indian traders such as the whites at Red Wing, could stay. Yet hopeful settlers knew from past example that the government would buy Indian lands once they became part of a territory. History taught that so-called “squatters” and “preemptors” would eventually be allowed to keep land they claimed.¹⁴
    Although Ramsey yearned to buy what the newspapers called “Suland” (short for Sioux-land), its owners did not want to leave their Minnesota homes. The eastern Dakota received annual payments for land they sold to the U.S. in 1837. They didn’t wish to sell more.
    Historian Roger Kennedy later wrote a stinging indictment of Ramsey’s motivations for acquiring Suland: “The frontier, to Ramsey, was an invitation to exploitation, a vast tract of real estate which, when cleared of its wild animals, trees, and original inhabitants, would be ripe for development.”¹⁵
    Finally, in February 1851, Ramsey got the okay from federal officials to begin negotiating for Suland. He and Indian Commissioner Luke Lea first met with the Sisseton and Wahpeton at Traverse des Sioux (near present day St. Peter). Government negotiators targeted those tribes in the belief that they would be easier to deal with, compared to the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute, with their known hostility to land sales.¹⁶
    As early as 1841, the Red Wing and Wabasha bands flaunted their defiance to the idea of further land deals. They were so determined that Indian agent Amos Bruce suggested that the military might need to remove them from their lands by force. As the 1851 talks began, Hancock reported that members of the Red Wing band complained openly and some younger men “declared they would shoot the first chief or head man who signed the treaty.”¹⁷
    The Mdewakanton and Wahpekute suspiciously waited their turn with Ramsey and Lea. The officials met with Indian leaders at Mendota on July 29, explaining their purpose and giving the Dakota a copy of a proposed treaty.  Wabasha and Wakute introduced the subject of money still owed the eastern Dakota from the treaty of 1837.¹⁸
    Wabasha returned the treaty draft the next day without comment, and a long, uncomfortable silence followed. Lea said he hoped to have the treaty signed immediately. Wakute replied, “Our habits are different from those of the whites and when we have anything important to consider we take a long time.” Lea said he understood, but added disdainfully, “You are chiefs, not women and children; you can certainly give us an answer tomorrow.”
    The following day an angry Little Crow, powerful leader of the Kaposia band near St. Paul, pressed Dakota concerns about the earlier treaty, stating, “We will talk of nothing else but that money if it is until next spring.”¹⁹
    Wakute also spoke of broken promises. He recalled his 1837 trip to Washington where Mdewakanton leaders “...were told many things which...we found out could not be done. At the end of three or four years, the Indians found out very differently from what they had been told—and all were ashamed.” The leader of the Red Wing band feared more double-dealing from Washington.
    Four days of behind-the-scenes talks now took place. The eastern Dakota leaders—many of who had traveled to Washington, D. C. and had seen the power of the United States for themselves—decided to bargain. The Wabasha-Wakute faction still resisted, but it became clear the Indians were going to give in.
    A dejected Wakute stood and started a slow, deliberate and, for him, lengthy speech. He now agreed to sell the land, but worried that the treaty would be changed to the detriment of the Dakota once it got to Washington. “I say it in good feeling,” he declared, “but I think you yourselves believe it (the treaty) will be changed without our consent, as the other treaty was.”²⁰
    Wakute requested a special reservation for the Red Wing band. “I was not brought up in a prairie country, but among woods; and I would like to go to a tract of land called Pine Island, which is a good place for Indians. I want you to write this in the treaty. I mention to you my wishes in this respect; but if you do not think it can be complied with, and is not right and just, I will say no more about it.” His request would not be granted.
Final treaty ceremonies began. When their turn came, Wakute and Iron Cloud, along with seven principal men from the Red Wing village—Good Iron Voice, Stands on the Earth, Stands Above, Sacred Fire, Red Stones, Sacred Blaze and Iron Cane—marked the document.
    As Wakute predicted, political decisions in Washington threatened the eastern Dakota. The Senate did not like the idea of Minnesota reservations for Indians and simply removed them the agreement. Wabasha considered the news and said, “There is one thing more which our great father can do, that is gather us all together on the prairie and surround us with soldiers and shoot us down.”²¹
    Ramsey then managed to cobble together a plan that saved the treaty. Two years later the U.S. Senate held hearings on what    some charged were Ramsey’s questionable, possibly criminal, dealings with the Dakota during the land talks. The investigation cleared the governor.
    Historians have been harsh in their judgments of the 1851 treaties. Newton Winchell called them a “monstrous conspiracy.” Roy W. Meyer, an expert on the eastern Dakota, wrote a blunt review of the process:

“From beginning to end—the tactics used to get the Indians to accept the treaties in the first place, the bad faith of the Senate in amending them, the devices employed to force the Indians to accept the amendments, the whole nefarious business of the trader’s paper—it was a thoroughly sordid affair, equal in infamy to anything else in the long history of injustice perpetrated upon the Indians.”²²