JACKSON, a township of small area, adjoining the city of Shakopee, was first settled in the spring of 1851 and was organized May 11, 1858. It was called Shakopee Township until the incorporation of the city, when the remaining part of the township was renamed Jackson by a legislative act, January 17, 1871. Like many counties, townships, villages, and cities throughout the United States, it was probably named in honor of Pres. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845).

SHAKOPEE, a city in Jackson and Eagle Creek Townships, the county seat, was founded by Thomas A. Holmes in 1851 as a trading post, to which he gave this name of the leader of a Dakota band living here. The village, platted in 1854, was incorporated as a city May 23, 1857, but surrendered its charter in 1861, returning to township government. It was incorporated as a village on March 1, 1866. It again received a city charter March 3, 1870, and the former township of Shakopee, excepting the city area, was renamed Jackson, as before noted, January 17, 1871. Holmes, born in Pennsylvania in 1804, is considered the "father" of Shakopee; he served in the 1849 territorial legislature and was influential in the community; he moved to Cullman, Ala., in 1878, where he died in 1888. The post office began in 1853 and was spelled Shah-k'pay until changed to the present spelling in 1857; Holmes was the first postmaster. The village had a station of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul and Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroads.

Shakopee (or Shakpay, as it was commonly pronounced), meaning Six, was the hereditary name, like Wabasha, of successive leaders, in lineal descent from father to son. The first of whom we have definite knowledge is the Shakopee who was killed when running the gauntlet at Fort Snelling in June 1827, as related by Charlotte O. Van Cleve (Three Score Years and Ten, 1888, pp. 74-79). The second, who is commemorated by the name of this city, characterized by Samuel W. Pond, Jr., as "a man of marked ability in council and one of the ablest and most effective orators in the whole Dakota Nation," died in 1860. His son, who had been called Shakpedan (Little Six), born on the site of the city in 1811, became at his father's death the leader of the band, numbering at that time about 400. He was hanged at Fort Snelling, November 11, 1865, for his actions in the Dakota War of 1862.

The Dakota in the Minnesota River valley negotiated treaties in 1837 and 1851 for sale of their land. Following the Dakota War of 1862, the people lost their reservation land in the upper Minnesota River valley. Beginning in 1887 the federal government bought land in the Prior Lake area for the returning Mdewakanton Dakota. The reservation consists of 1,500 acres northwest of Prior Lake.