The story of Oȟéyawahe, known in English as Pilot Knob is one of slow redemption. Oȟéyawahe today is a large swath of grassland featuring well-manicured walking trails just south of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. If you read the educational signs along the way, you will find that the history of the land is rich with cultural meaning and fraught with conflict between development and conservation interests.
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. Eventually, most of Minnesota’s Dakota were expelled to Nebraska in 1862, but some who were married to white settlers remained, and many who had left began to return in the 1880s. One motivation for returning was the presence of the graves of their ancestors on Oȟéyawahe. 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.”1Deloria, Ella. The Dakota Way of Life. Mariah Press, 2007.
Oȟéyawahe continues to have cultural and religious significance for the Dakota. Many Dakota people go to the bluff to perform religious rituals, such as pipe ceremonies. Even Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the Nineteenth Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf, held two pipe ceremonies on the bluff in 1999 and 2009.2Pilot Knob Preservation Association. “Chief Arvol Looking Horse Leads Pipe Ceremony.” Pilot Knob/Oheyawahi. Last modified October 4, 2009. Accessed June 19, 2015. http://pilotknobpreservation.org/wp/?p=14.
By the early years of the 21st century, the land was privately owned by two individuals who planned to build a large housing development on it. Through years of dedicated activism by several community groups, not just the Dakota, the city of Mendota Heights, Minn. bought 27 acres of the as yet undeveloped land in 2006 and 2007 and turned into an ecological and cultural sanctuary open to the public. In 2017 Oȟéyawahe’s protected status was cemented when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
