We think it is sufficiently manifest that the Sioux occupied the better part of Minnesota when Europeans entered it, a little after the middle of the seventeenth century. It does not, however, appear that they were the first, much less the only inhabitants of the country. Their common and most reliable traditions inform us, that when their ancestors first came to the Falls of St. Anthony, the Iowas—whom they call AYUHBA [Drowsy]—occupied the country about the mouth of the Minnesota river, and the Shiens, called by the Dakotas SHA-I-ENA, sometimes written by the French Chaienne, and by others Shiene, dwelt higher up on the same river. We cannot pretend to determine with certainty at what time the Sioux first came to the Falls of St. Anthony; but may say, with confidence, it was a long time ago, probably before the discovery of America by Columbus. One of the best informed men concerning their traditions that I have met with among the Dakotas, who has been dead more than ten years, when questioned on this point, told me, that they supposed it to be at least equal to the lifetime of four old men, who should live one after the other; and as an example of an old man, named his father, who, I suppose, was at the time at least eighty years old, [which would make the time three hundred years.] The Winnebagoes, Otoes, and Omahas, have been named among the nations driven by the ancestors of the Dakotas from the Minnesota valley. I have not found any evidence, satisfactory to my mind, that the Winnebagoes ever had a home in this Territory prior to their late removal into it by the United States government. As respects the Otoes and Omahas it seems not improbable that they were reckoned as a part of the Dakota nation, when the Sioux first hunted on the banks of the Mississippi, and for some time after. The Anthontantas, mentioned as a part of the Nadouesiouz, by Hennepin, were probably the same people as the Otoctatas, mentioned in connection with the Ayavois, as owners of the country about Blue Earth river, in the fragment of Le Sueur, preserved by La Harpe, and again some further on, as having recently left their village in that neighborhood, and settled near the Mahas on the Missouri river, and it is highly probable that the Otoctatas of Le Sueur are the same people now called Ottoes or Otoes. The Mawhaws, Shiens and Schiannesse, are mentioned by Carver, as bands of the Naudowessiex of the plains. Thus it appears that the Shiens, the Iowas, the Omahas and the Ottoes, were the earliest inhabitants of Minnesota of whom we have any written or certain traditional account. I have neither seen nor heard of any artificial mounds, ancient fortifications, or monuments of any kind in or near the Minnesota valley, which might not have been constructed by these Indians. Such mounds