Religious/Cultural Significance

The Significance of Oheyawahi/Pilot Knob

Oheyawahi, or Pilot Knob, has considerable historical, cultural, and religious significance for both Dakota people and other Americans. Oheyawahi, “the place much visited,” is a bluff located in Dakota County, MN at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. According to Chris Leith, a Dakota elder and spiritual leader at Prairie Island, Oheyawahi is a “sacred landmark” because of the great being, Unktehi’s, appearance there.¹ Samuel Pond, who studied the Dakota in the nineteenth century, noted that according to Dakota oral history records, around the year 1800, Unktehi, a huge being, perhaps a mammoth with great spiritual power, who created the earth in its present form, came down the Mississippi River, damming the water behind him. Unktehi then turned up the Minnesota River and disappeared. Unktehi’s appearence pushed up the bluff, the physical site of Pilot Knob, to its current height.

Traditionally, Dakota people used Oheyawahi for Wakan (Medicine) Ceremonies, in which they would pray to Unktehi. They also used it for gatherings and other religious ceremonies. These practices were well documented by explorers and soldiers at the nearby Fort Snelling.² Moreover, the bluff served as a sacred burial ground for the Dakota, who often interred their dead on high ground. Archaeological evidence supports Dakota claims that they buried their dead not only on the summit of the bluff, but on other parts of Pilot Knob as well, rendering the entire mound a burial site. The Dakota would wrap the deceased in a blanket, or after contact with white settlers, sometimes place the deceased in a wooden coffin, and set the body on a burial scaffold or in the branches of a tree. This tradition likely originated because it was impossible to dig graves in the frozen ground during winter, and until the grave could be dug, the body had to be kept out of reach of animals. Streamers of cloth or American flags were tied to poles next to the scaffolds, and food or other offerings were placed on the scaffolds. After several days, months, or even years, what was left of the body was taken down and buried two to three feet deep in the ground. These graves were then usually marked with stones or wooden markers. 

"We could not stay away so we managed to find our way back, because our makapahas [graves] were here."-Ella Deloria

In 1851, the Dakota signed a treaty on Pilot Knob ceding approximately 35 million acres of land in Minnesota and Iowa to the federal government (Images 2 and 3.) Eventually, in 1862, most of Minnesota's Dakota were forcibly removed to South Dakota and Nebraska, many of them first corralled in a prison camp along the river below Oheyawai. However, some Dakota who were married to white settlers remained, and many who had left began to return in the 1880s. The presence of the graves of their ancestors on Oheyawahi was a major motivation for returning. According to Ella Deloria, a Dakota anthropologist, one woman told her “we could not stay away so we managed to find our way back, because our makapahas [graves] were here.”³