Staff photo by Fritz Busch An eight-foot high bronze sculpture created by JoAnne Bird, in the likeness of Chief Sleepy Eye is located in Wooldrik Park, just south of the U.S. Post Office on First Avenue North, downtown Sleepy Eye. Bird is also a member of Chief Sleepy Eye’s band—the Sisseton/Wahpeton band of Dakota (Sioux) Native Americans, according to the Sleepy Eye Chamber of Commerce.

SLEEPY EYE — A replica of a painting of Chief Sleepy Eye will disappear from the front of Sleepy Eye High School next fall as well as the mascot from school athletic team uniforms, but a monument and sculpture will continue to stand tall downtown.

A monument in honor of Chief Sleepy Eye stands just east of the restored 115-year-old depot at the Sleepy Eye Museum operated by the Sleepy Eye Historical Society south of the railroad tracks.

Across the street, south of the Sleepy Eye Post Office in Wooldrik Park stands an eight-foot tall bronze sculpture of the likeness of Chief Sleepy Eye. It was created by JoAnne Bird of the Dakota Sioux Tribe.

The City of Sleepy Eye took its name from Sleepy Eye Lake, which was named after Chief Sleepy Eye and where he lived. He was described as “always a friend of the whites,” according to the monument.

Born around 1780 in a Sisseton Sioux Indian village at Swan Lake, Nicollet County, according to a Minnesota Historical Society marker at the monument site, the Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioned him a chief in 1824.

Chief Sleepy Eye’s fame was achieved not as a warrior or hunter but as a friend to explorers, traders, missionaries and government officials.

Chief Sleepy Eye was one of four Sioux Native Americans chosen to meet President James Monroe in 1824 in Washington, D.C. He signed four treaties with the U.S. government.

Traditionally, his band, often called the Swan Lake or Little Rock band, hunted in a large area between Swan Lake and Coteau des Prairies in southwestern Minnesota and southeastern South Dakota.

From 1857 to 1959, Chief Sleepy Eye’s village was at Sleepy Eye Lake, near the plaque. He died in about 1860, while hunting in Roberts County, S.D.

Sleepy Eye was platted in 1872 and incorporated as a city in 1903.

The Sleepy Eye Depot is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday from May through mid-November. For more information, visit sleepyeyechamber.com/sleepy-eye-depot-museum.html