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About Hokah, MN

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the area that is now the city of Hokah was a Native American settlement of the Dakota people. The city's name, which is said to be a Native American word meaning gar fish or the Dakota name for the nearby Root River, derives from the chief of the settlement, Chief Wecheschatope Hokah. There were, at one time, more than thirty Indian mounds throughout the area including several effigy mounds, though most have been lost. The first recorded European settler in Hokah was Edward Thompson, who arrived in 1851 with his wife and family and constructed a flour mill and dam on Thompson Creek, a tributary of the Root River that runs through the city and now bears his name. The first town meeting was held in 1858, and the town was officially incorporated into a village by the state of Minnesota on March 2, 1871.