Santee Sioux Nation Museum

The Santee Sioux Nation, Isanti Dakota exiled from Minnesota after the war of 1862, came to this stretch of the Missouri in 1866, and an executive order of February 27 that year recognized the reservation along the south bank in Knox County. The village of Santee, in its northern corner, is the seat of tribal government, and the museum opened in 2006 with the tribal headquarters on Spirit Lake Avenue.

It is as much an archive as a museum. It holds census records of the reservation from 1866 to 1940, a large collection of photographs of the community and of the Santee Normal Training School, books on Dakota history, objects about a century old, and free use of Ancestry for anyone tracing family. It also keeps microfiche of the school's two papers, Iapi Oaye and the Word Carrier, which tell a good deal about this place.

The Rev. Alfred L. Riggs, a Congregational missionary, opened the school in 1870. It grew to 18 buildings on 480 acres and more than 200 students, many from other reservations on the plains, and turned out ministers, teachers, nurses and engineers before money ran out in 1936. Its press printed in Dakota. Iapi Oaye, the Word Carrier, began on May 1, 1871 as a monthly in the Santee dialect, was edited at Santee by Alfred Riggs and later Frederick Riggs, split from its English edition in 1884, and was still printing in Dakota when it ended in March 1939. The museum keeps weekday office hours, and weekend visits can be arranged by calling ahead.