Kaposia: the meaning behind the name

Kaposia: the meaning behind the name
By Tim Spitzack | Editor | September 2023

The Dakota Village of Kaposia is more deeply threaded into the tapestry of South St. Paul history than any other prominent person, place or event. The name Kaposia is used to designate the city’s annual summertime celebration, two parks and an elementary school, and the new Dakota County Library branch under construction and set to open in early 2024 at Seventh and Marie. Here’s a primer for those who didn’t grow up in South St. Paul and learn of its history in elementary school.

The word refers to the village of the Kaposia band of the Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota), who lived along the Mississippi river near present-day Kaposia Landing, 800 Bryant Ave. Legend has it that its people were skilled in the game of lacrosse, which in those days was played on a field a half-mile long. They called the sport Tin-TaTa-Ka-Psi-Ca and took their village name from it. When early European explorers and settlers arrived, they shortened the name to Ka-Psi-Ca or Ka-Po-Ja, which most closely resembles the iteration we know today.

The village is thought to have been founded on the east bank of the river near Pig’s Eye Lake and was relocated following the Treaty of 1837, which ceded Dakota land east of the Mississippi to the United States government. Proving they were agile in more ways than one, the Dakota swiftly moved to the west bank of the river, where the village grew to 300 people or more. The band lived in tepees during the wintertime and much cooler bark homes in the summer. They were led by Taoyateduta (His Red Nation) and four of his descendants, all of whom went by the name of Little Crow, given by Europeans after noting that the chief’s ceremonial dress was fringed with the wings of a raven or crow.

Chief Little Crow V was the last to lead the band before it was forcibly relocated to a reservation. He was a signer of the Treaty of Mendota in 1851 that led to the sale of about 5 million acres of Dakota land and the band’s eventual removal to the Lower Sioux Agency reservation on the Minnesota river, near present-day Morton, Minn. The Dakota were promised approximately $1.4 million for the land but were gravely shorted. The treaty’s ratification in February 1853 opened the floodgates to settlement and future hostilities between the settlers and Native Americans. Taoyateduta (Little Crow V) is perhaps best known for his part in the Sioux uprising and the U.S. Dakota War of 1862.

Kaposia became the first county seat of Dakota County, organized in July 1853. During the settlement period and as the City of South St. Paul began to take shape following its incorporation in early 1887, remnants of the native village and its people surfaced. At one time, skeletal bones were unearthed when Dakota burial grounds were disturbed during excavation, but arrangements were quickly made to preserve them and reinter them near the village site. The last remains were reinterred in 1958 at a memorial park on Highland Avenue near 11th Avenue North. Today, a stone marker commemorates the burial grounds.