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A scarce federal map documenting the land cessions and reservations of the Upper and Lower Sioux (Dakota) Indians, compiled in the Indian Office by R.F. Thompson and issued to accompany Senate Document No. 68, 55th Congress, 2nd Session. Drawn at the height of congressional deliberations over Dakota claims, the map provides a highly detailed visual record of dispossession, reservation formation, and residual Indian landholdings across the Upper Midwest.
The map covers a wide swath of public-land-survey territory, from the forty-eighth to thirty-ninth parallels and from the one-hundred-first to eighty-ninth meridians, encompassing Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, northern Missouri, and large portions of the Dakotas and Nebraska. Within this carefully ruled township grid, the story of Dakota land cessions unfolds through a layered symbology: thick orange lines trace the outer boundary of former Sioux lands; colored hatching indicates successive treaty cessions (labeled by number, keyed to the accompanying Senate report); and small red blocks denote school tracts and other federal set-asides. River systems supply geographic context.
Prepared as part of the federal government’s response to long-standing Sisseton and Wahpeton demands for compensation related to the 1851 treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, as well as subsequent agreements following the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, the map offers a unique synthesis of fifty years of land transfers. In contrast to the contemporaneous Royce Maps published by the Bureau of American Ethnology, Thompson’s work presents an integrated visual brief, focused specifically on the eastern Dakota and their evolving land base.
Issued as part of a slim congressional report, the map was printed in limited numbers and often excluded from later printings.
A powerful cartographic document capturing the contraction of Sioux territorial claims and the bureaucratic logic of allotment and compensation. It stands as an essential companion to the Royce atlas and a key resource for the study of Dakota land history in the post-treaty era.
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