Pike Island

Pike Island, Dakota name Wita Tanka, is an island at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers in the southwestern part of Saint Paul in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota, U.S.. The island is now part of Fort Snelling State Park. It is a portion of the 100,000 acres of land purchased from the Mdewakanton Sioux Indians by Zebulon Pike in September 1805. Pike's Purchase was later to become Fort Snelling, Minneapolis, and Saint Paul. The U.S. government wanted to build a fort to protect American interests in the fur trade in the region, and Pike negotiated the treaty. Pike valued the land at $200,000, but the U.S. Senate later agreed to pay only $2000.
In 1819 Colonel Henry Leavenworth invited Jean-Baptiste Faribault, a French Canadian, and his family to settle on Pike Island near the new fort to help promote the fur trade. An 1821 treaty gave ownership of Pike Island to Elizabeth Pelagie Ferribault, a Dakota Indian, and wife of Jean-Baptiste Faribault.

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