The Chippewa Treaty at the Old Crossing of Red Lake River.

From the 1840's to the 1870's thousands of two wheel ox carts came and went from St. Paul Minnesota to the Red River Colony (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada). They carried badly needed trade goods through forested and swampy areas of north western Minnesota. The route used between St. Paul and Winnipeg became known as the "Woods Trail" because of the forested area south of Detroit Lakes. Locally the trail is called the Pembina Trail. The more westerly trail along the Red River of the North was dangerous because of attacks by the Dakota Sioux, so ox cart drivers began using the Woods Trail which was in an area controled by the Ojibwe then known as the Chippewa. In 1863, the lands in Northwestern Minnesota belonging to the Ojibwe were ceded to the United States at Hout, Minnesota.

The Red Lake Band and the Pembina Band of Ojibwe signed away their ownership to over 5,000,000 acres of very fertile lands of the Red River Valley land extending 30 miles on each side of the Red River of the North. This was the sixth session of land in Minnesota by the Ojibwe and it opened up homesteading after the Civil War primarily as a reward to the displaced veterans who had served the Union Forces. There was also pressure from an influx of immigrants from northern European countries looking for land.

The treaty was misrepresented to the Ojibwe bands with some show of force as a needed route for trade and travel and not as a land grab. Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple stated sometime after the treaty was signed that the treaty was "from beginning to end a fraud...".