Cloud Man was born a member of the
Mdewakanton Dakota around 1780 in a village from
Mendota, Minnesota, on the southern side of the
Minnesota River. His father was French and his mother was Mdewakanton, reportedly the granddaughter of a Mdewakanton chief who met
Louis Hennepin during his mission to explore
New France in the late 1670s and early 1680s. Indian agent
Lawrence Taliaferro at one point tried to convince him to begin a non-nomadic lifestyle at
Bde Maka Ska. During a hunting trip on the plains near the
Missouri River, Cloud Man and his party were trapped by a snowstorm and were forced to wrap themselves in blankets and lie on the ground, waiting for the snow to pass. Members of the party were cut off from one another, buried separately beneath snowdrifts with some small quantities of dried buffalo meat on which to subsist. Cloud Man recounted to missionary Samuel W. Pond that he would periodically dig to the surface of the snow to try and find his fellow hunters, only to be greeted with more gales of snow. When the storm subsided after almost three days, he emerged from the snow and called for the other members of his party, finding both that every one had survived the storm and that they were not far from an Indian camp. Cloud Man spent some of his time during the storm reflecting on Taliaferro's proposal and after returning home to Black Dog village, visited him at
Fort Snelling for advice on establishing an agricultural community. Military officials at the fort responded favorably to Cloud Man's plan and provided assistance in the form of tools and seeds. He returned to Black Dog village and convinced several families to move to the banks of Bde Maka Ska with him.
Ḣeyate Otuŋwe between 1835 and 1836 The agricultural colony Ḣeyate Otuŋwe was established in August 1829 on the shores of Bde Maka Ska on the present-day site of
Lakewood Cemetery in
Minneapolis. He was elected chief of the community at approximately thirty-five years old and Ḣeyate Otuŋwe began to grow corn and potatoes. Taliaferro and other white settlers in the area, such as Pond and his fellow missionary brother
Gideon H. who came to live in the village, viewed Ḣeyate Otuŋwe as an experiment in "civilized life" for the Dakota, with Taliaferro referring to the community as "my little Colony of Sioux agriculturalists." Katherine Beane argues that what Taliferro viewed as a "progressive" move towards assimilation into European customs represented a step towards independence for a Cloud Man's band at a time when traditional Dakota practices faced existential challenges from white settlers encroaching into historically Dakota spaces. Beane suggests that in establishing Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, Cloud Man never " to forsake his identity as a Dakota man" and that "The change in subsistence patterns did not make the people of this village any less Dakota." Members of Ḣeyate Otuŋwe shared some of the corn they grew with members of other Dakota villages, prompting Taliaferro to give a speech to the village in September 1835, instructing them to cease the practice as counter to their self-interests; they did not. Cloud Man also traveled to
Washington, D.C., in 1837 as part of a Dakota delegation and spoke to leaders of the
Sauk and
Meskwaki tribes regarding recent fighting between the two groups. As of 1839, the community had a population of 207 people: 54 women, 72 men, and 81 children. Ḣeyate Otuŋwe was abandoned that year as Cloud Man feared retaliation from nearby members of the
Ojibwe, following the fighting of the
Dakota-Ojibwe War reaching nearby. Cloud Man and his band moved to the shores of the Minnesota River, close to
Bloomington, Minnesota. In 1851, Cloud Man moved with his band up the Minnesota River to near
Yellow Medicine County where they joined a community of agricultural Indians, the Hazelwood Republic. During the
U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, he was interned at the
Pike Island concentration camp where he died during the winter of 1862–1863. The spot of his death and burial was near the place of his birth. In 2019, the
Bde Maka Ska Public Art Project, commemorating the history of Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, was completed. ==Family==