The remnants of the Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Ojibwe reside on and near a 32.35 acre reservation in Aitkin County, Minnesota. The reservation lies nestled in the southern part of the famous Arrowhead country; a region of fish-filled lakes, of deep valleys, and of rugged pine and hardwood covered hills.

The reservation is located approximately one hundred and twenty-five miles north of the Twin Cities and sixty miles west of Duluth, near the town of McGregor, Minnesota.

Sandy Lake Band's history as an Indian Group can be traced back to the 1730s, when westward Ojibwe expansion reached beyond the Great Lakes to the Sandy Lake area of what is now Aitkin County in Minnesota.

The Sandy Lakers played a vital role in establishing a permanent Ojibwe presence in the north-central Minnesota region.

The Sandy Lake Band strategically made its home on the historic Mississippi water route - rich in wild rice and game - and the legendary Savanna Portage, which linked the Mississippi and Great Lakes drainage systems. This important transportation network hosted the exploratory travels of notables like David Thompson, Zebulon Pike, Lewis Cass, and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, to name a few, who all wrote about the Sandy Lake Ojibwe.

Traders and government officials did business with the Sandy Lakers; and missionary activity at Sandy Lake went on for decades. In fact, the first school in what is now Minnesota was established at Sandy Lake by Rev. Frederick Ayer and his wife in 1831. Prominent missionaries like Ely, Hall, Pierz, Spates, and Whipple speak of the Sandy Lake Band in their correspondences and memoirs. The British Northwest Company and the American Fur Company established posts there in 1794 and 1826 respectively.

Chiefs and headmen of the Sandy Lake Band figured prominently in Ojibwe history. Grosse Guelle, a Sandy Laker, was among the Chippewa who addressed the 1825 treaty conference which included Chippewa, Sioux, and U.S. Government officials at work on the Chippewa-Sioux boundary line, Ka-ta-wah-be-dah (Broken Tooth), Kroseweezais-hish (Curly Hair), Hole-in-the-Day I, We-we-shan-shis (Bad Boy), and Ka-nan-da-wa-win-zo (Le Brocheux), were a few of the Sandy Lake leaders during a long period in the 18th and 19th centuries when Sandy Lake was the most prominent power base for the Chippewa. In 1864, Chief Hole-in-the-Day II (younger) represented the Chippewas of the Mississippi in treaty negotiations.

Sandy Lake Band prominence, as a people and as an Ojibwe leadership capitol, are treated at length by historians, from the Ojibwe writer, William Whipple Warren(History of the Ojibway People) to William Watts Folwell, scholar and first president of the University of Minnesota(A History of Minnesota, 4 vols.); from N.H. Winchell's TheAborigines of Minnesota (1911)to
ethnohistorian Harold Hickerson's Ethnohistory of Mississippi Bands and Pillager and Winnibigoshish Bands of Chippewa. (1974).

Scores of academic works in the areas of history, ethnohistory, and archaeology detail the Sandy Lake Band record. In his book, Minnesota's Chippewa Treaty of 1837 (Brainerd, Minn,: Historic Heartland Association, 1993), Historian Carl Zapffe observed correctly that for many years "Sandy Lake was to the Ojibwe people what Washington D.C., is to the United States today."

Indian agency and subagency records from places like St. Peters (Fort Snelling), Fond du Lac, La Pointe, St. Louis, Crow Wing, and Sandy Lake- plus the correspondences of agents and other government personnel, refer specifically to the Sandy Lake Band and help detail its ongoing condition, its relations with the U.S. government, and its continuing existence as an autonomous Indian group.

Today's Sandy Lake Band archives include scores of documents for each decade beginning in the 1820s, when the Sandy Lake Band travelled to the St. Peters Agency at Fort Snelling. (The papers and diaries of Agency Lawrence Taliaferro, at the Minnesota Historical Society, are detailed).

The Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs contain considerable information about the Sandy Lake Band, including descriptions of the Band (example: Alexander Ramsey's Smith's report on how attempts to remove the Sandy Lakers in the late 1860s were "a farce", and how despite government efforts, the Sandy Lake people "with few exceptions, returned to their old haunts". (Annual Report, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, For the year 1872, p. 208.) Records of annuity payments and census reports of Chippewas of the Mississippi include the Sandy Lake Band as a separate Indian group.

The Sandy Lake Chiefs and Headsmen were signatories to ten (10) treaties with the United States beginning in 1825 and ending in 1867 during the 1871 treaty-making period. The original Sandy Lake Indian Reservation, was created by the Treaty of Feb. 22, 1855 (10 Stat., 1165), included all of what is now called Big Sandy Lake and a surrounding land area. The reserved tract at Sandy Lake is specifically described in the treaty document.