Minnesota linguist and historian Elisabeth Karen (Lisa) Elbert died on August 4, 2009 at the age of 35. (Lisa’s obituary appeared in the Ames [IA] Tribuneon August 7, 2009.) Elbert’s friends remember her as remarkable: “… a multi faceted person…a Linguist; a weaver; a teacher; a civil war re-enactor; a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism; a published scholar; a dumpster diver and a champion in the preservation of the Dakota Language. But, most importantly, she was a caring, giving person and a friend to many.”
In 1997, Elbert graduated from Carlton College, Northfield Minnesota. She went on to earn and earn two Master’s degrees at the University of Minnesota: in U.S. History (2005); and in Teaching English as a Second Language, with an emphasis on Dakota language (2006). At the time of her death, Elbert was a PhD student in Applied Linguistics and Technology at Iowa State University.
Lisa’s empathy for Dakota people was more than an intellectual commitment to help right past wrongs. As she wrote in American Indian Quarterly, recalling her first encounter with cancer at the age of 28:
Wanna cante etanhan owawa kte. Damakota sni, tka Dakota oyate tewicawahinde. Kodawicawaye. Tohan taku yazanpi kinhan, nakun mayazan.Now I am going to write from the heart. I am not Dakota, but I cherishthe Dakota people. They are my friends. If something hurts them, ithurts me.
How does a person-or a people-cope with tragedy and loss? Your world comes crashing down around you, and yet . . . you find that you are still alive. Tragedy and loss cannot be qualified or quantified. They just are. Icannot presume to understand the loss of a people driven from their homes, torn from their families and loved ones. I do not wish to compare pain in the competitive way of fishermen who argue over who caught the biggest fish. Pain, loss, suffering, grief are entirely specific to each individual, as are their coping methods. But I do believe that on a level we are all related-mitakuye owasin–and that those who have suffered have something in common with each other that they can turn to empathy and keep each other company on the road of healing.
Lisa walked the road she found herself on with passion, purpose, and a sense of humor, deprecating her professional resume as “… self-promotional junk I put together when I was trying to find a real job.” History may not be as humble appraising Elbert’s contributions. With Neil McKay and Beth Brown, Elbert was a primary author of Mnisota Dakota Iapi Owayawa the Dakota Language Program website for the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. With McKay, she edited the third edition of the text Dakota Iape (2002). Elbert wrote its verb companion text, Wicoie Yutocapi Wowapi (2003).
In 2004, American Indian Quarterly published Lisa’s reflection on her participation the 2002 Dakota Commemorative March, “Mending Bodies, Mending Hearts,” quoted above. Intrigued by oral stories related by Dakota women and children who in November 1862 were subject to forced removal from the Minnesota frontier to internment at Fort Snelling before being deported from the state in 1863, Elbert was the first historian to collect documentary evidence of their route to Fort Snelling. Her 2005 Master’s thesis on that subject, was republished as, “Tracing Their Footsteps: The Dakota March of 1862” in Wilson, Waziyatawin, Angela, ed., In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century. St. Paul: Living Justice Press, 2006.
Lisa lived the revitalization of the Dakota language: volunteering as a weekly Dakota Language teacher in the Mendota Mdewankanton Community; participating in the Dakota Commemorative Marches; helping plan Minnesota Indigenous Language and Dakota Language Preservation Conferences; presenting at international Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposia in 2005 and 2006; and receiving honorable mention for her presentation “Marking Time in the Dakota Language” presented at CIC American Indian Studies Graduate Student Symposium.
Saturday October 3, 2009 at 3:00 PM Lisa’s friends and family will gather at the Gideon Pond House to celebrate her life. The event is open to the public. For more information, contact Diane at 651-983-6363. The Pond House is located at 401 E. 104th St., Bloomington, MN 55420 between Nicolett and Portland Avenues.
It is no surprise that there are burial mounds in the Hennepin County community called Mound–which was actually named for that feature–as there are in many places around Lake Minnetonka. The lake was an ancient occupation site for the Dakota and other groups, though European-Americans did not know of the place until the 1820s or 1830s, 150 years after their arrival in the Minnesota region. Why then is it a surprise to landowners today that there are mounds at Mound?
There’s a report in the August 11, 2009 Finance and Commercethat tells of the latest “discovery” of mounds at Mound, and the financial and legal implications of that fact. The article states that some landowners were not informed of the fact that there might be burial mounds on their property when they bought the property. It says that the landowners thought the mounds “were just hills.” But anyone who knows a little about that area would know that burial mounds were a possibility.
Here’s what Warren Upham says in in his classic book Minnesota Geographic Names (first published in 1920; this quote is from page 231 of the 2002 edition):
Mound, a city on or near the northwestern shore of Lake Minnetonka. . . . The city is named for its aboriginal mounds. Three groups of mounds within the area of the village, mapped by Newton H. Winchell, have respectively 4, 18, and 9 mounds; and at the distance of about a mile westward is a remarkable series of 69 mounds, on the north side of Halsted’s Bay.
Indian Mound in Hennepin County. Painter: Edwin Whitefield (1816-1892) Minnesota Historical Society Art Collection, Watercolor ca. 1857 Location no. AV1995.141.42 Negative no. 19251
Upham goes on to say that there were 495 mounds mapped around the shores of Lake Minnetonka, some recorded in Winchell’s book Aborigines of Minnesota, which was published long before there was an Minnesota State Archaeologist–the office that now has the enormous task of keeping records on the location of burial sites.
Many of these mounds were destroyed or lowered so that they are not perceived in the landscape. Making people aware of their existence and respecting their continuing presence requires a much greater effort at education than has ever been attempted.
Funds for Building Removal and Land Reclamation Eliminated
by Susu Jeffrey
Friends of Coldwater
June 23, 2009
Coldwater supporters are angry that funds to return the area to “open green space” were dropped from the federal stimulus package. The Twin Cities office of the National Park Service (NPS) budgeted $3.5-million to remove buildings and to prepare the 27-acre property for replanting as an oak savanna.
It would be at least five more years before a financial package could be processed through Congress according to Steven Johnson, Project Manager for the Coldwater restoration program initiated by former Congressman Martin Sabo in 2003. Without action now, the historic Coldwater Spring House and limestone reservoir, built in the 1880s, could decay beyond repair.
Is a benign historical interpretation possible for Historic Fort Snelling, one that ignores the events of 1862-63 and and other tragic aspects of the fort for Dakota people? For years the Minnesota Historical Society has been groping for such a possibility. The latest attempt to put this benign interpretation into effect is the effort to associate the Greatest Generation–the subject of a new exhibit at the History Center–with a site that was reconstructed in the 1960s to represent the fort as it existed in the late 1820s. Will it work to cloak and 1820s fort with the Greatest Generation? Not if the Historical Society wishes to carry out accurate interpretation. In fact, interpreting the Greatest Generation at Historic Fort Snelling in any consistent way would require nothing less than the removal of half of the current fort.
The schedule for the June 13-14 weekend at Historic Fort Snelling describes the re-enactment of an odd juxtaposition of historic periods at the 1820-period fort:
Travel back to the World War II era to learn about Minnesota’s role on battlefields and at home. Costumed staff, period displays, weapon firing demonstrations and an encampment of Allied reenactors occupy the historic fort during this special weekend devoted to “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation.” Participate in many hands-on WWII activities for families including crafts, games and obstacle course. Winning films from the 2008 Greatest Generation Film project will be shown in the Visitor Center. Learn more about the Greatest Generation from the exhibit “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation: The Depression, The War, The Boom” at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
It is true that Fort Snelling as a whole did serve as the entry point and exit point for soldiers who entered the Army during World War II. But that had little to do with Historic Fort Snelling, the place first built in the 1820s and reconstructed in the 1960s. When soldiers entering the Army in the 1940s came to Fort Snelling, there were a few buildings standing from the original fort, including the Round Tower, the Commandant’s House and officers’ quarters. But these buildings had been greatly altered since the 19th century. The original walls of the fort and many other structures were long gone.
Minnesota’s Historic Fort Snelling, designed as a military outpost when built in the early part of the 19th century, was called into active duty one last time during World War II. For 300,000 young men of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation, the fort represented their gateway into military service. At the end of the war, it represented their ticket out.
What was Fort Snelling during World War II? Physically it was a vast complex of offices, warehouses, rail yards, barracks, parade grounds and classrooms sprawled over a 1,500-acre site above the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. It was buildings as old as 120 years – solid brick and stone structures on park like green lawns studded with mature elms – and hundreds of tar paper and wood frame huts heated with coal stoves.
But more importantly, what was Fort Snelling to those who experienced it – over 600,000 men and women during the war years? To a regular army officer or enlisted man, the post’s historical character made a strong impression. The commander of the Reception Center wrote in 1943:
“When I stood at the commandant’s house overlooking the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers and gazed about me, I could hardly fail to realize that I was stationed at a post that was physically older than most of the other forts and posts in the Middle West. How far back in the nation’s history this Fort Snelling reached! I could turn and see two buildings that actually dated from the 1820s – the Round Tower, the oldest man-made structure in Minnesota, and the Hexagonal Tower still guarding the actual junction of the two rivers, though its gun ports are laughable now when one considers the size of modern artillery…. Fort Snelling took its place in the vision of a coast-to-coast United States–a picture, incidentally, that few men were capable of envisioning in the year of our Lord 1820!…the men who were responsible for erecting Fort Snelling were not ordinary bureaucrats, but patriots who dared to love their country well enough to think and plan for its future.”
It is not surprising that soldiers of later generations might view Historic Fort Snelling in this light, glossing over the unpleasant associations that might come from a more careful reading of the history of the fort, remembering only the service to their country of those who were stationed there in the 19th century. But historians have an important role to remind their fellow citizens of both the good and the bad in their history, including the fact that for much of the 19th century Fort Snelling, both the original fort and the expanded fort on the Upper Bluff, was associated with a longterm war against Indian people. And as stated before, associations aside, the bottom line is that if one were to commemorate Historic Fort Snelling as seen by World War II soldiers it would be the place before its reconstruction in the 1960s. So, if the connection of the Greatest Generation to Fort Snelling is to be one of the reasons for the Historical Society to continue to operate Historic Fort Snelling, accuracy requires the careful removal of all the changes made to restore the 1820s-era fort.
Historic Fort Snelling looking east from the Fort Snelling Bridge, in 1939, during a Works Progress Administration project to restore some of the stone work of the outer wall below the fort. The structures in the background were substantially the same during World War II and little was done to restore the fort to the 1820s era until after the Minnesota Statehood Centennial, during the 1960s. Minnesota Historical Society photograph.Fort Snelling's old Round Tower as it looked to the Greatest Generation in 1942, covered with ivy and surrounded by a grassy lawn. Minnesota Historical Society photograph.
Here’s what the Historical Society has planned at Historic Fort Snelling in June 2009, according to a recent press release.
World War II Weekend
June 13 and 14, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Travel back to the World War II era to learn about Minnesota’s role on battlefields and at home. Costumed staff, period displays, weapon firing demonstrations and an encampment of Allied reenactors occupy the historic fort during this special weekend devoted to “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation.” Participate in many hands-on WWII activities for families including crafts, games and obstacle course. Winning films from the 2008 Greatest Generation Film project will be shown in the Visitor Center. Learn more about the Greatest Generation from the exhibit “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation: The Depression, The War, The Boom” at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
Cost: Activities are included with regular admission fee of $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and college students, $5 for children ages 6-17.
Historic Fort Snelling Craft Program
June 13, 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m.
Join in a free craft activity that helps participants learn about Minnesota’s role in World War II. This hour-long program is offered as part of Historic Fort Snelling’s World War II Weekend program. Space for the craft program is limited, but any child under 16 may register in person from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. for a chance to win a free American Girl doll. Craft sessions are held at 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. The drawing will be held at 4:30 p.m.
Cost: Craft activity is included with regular admission fee of $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and college students, $5 for children ages 6-17.
Blacksmith for a Day
June 21, 1 to 4 p.m.
Join the skilled tradesmen of the fort at blacksmithing. Select a project with the smith, work the forge, pound out the hot metal, and shape the iron using hammer and tongs as it was done two centuries ago. Bring the project home to impress family and friends. Children ages 12-17 must be accompanied by an adult. Groups of up to eight people can participate with advance reservations.
Cost: $33; $30 for MHS members. Reservations are required. Call call 612-726-1171 or register online at http://shop.mnhs.org/category.cfm?Category=190
Civil War Walking Tour
June 27, 10 a.m.
More than 24,000 troops trained for the Civil War at Fort Snelling, including the famous 1st Minnesota Regiment, which played a vital role in the victory at Gettysburg. In 1862-3, Minnesota volunteers were called upon to fight the Dakota in western Minnesota. After five weeks of fighting the Dakota were defeated, resulting in the tragic internment of over 1,600 Dakota in the river flats below the fort. This special walking tour will focus on the fort from 1858 to 1865, including the role President Lincoln played in the trials of the Dakota, and a walk down to the memorial located where the Dakota were held over the deadly winter of 1862-63. This tour does not include admission to Historic Fort Snelling.
Cost: $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for children 6-17, with a $2 discount for MHS members.
Upper Post Walking Tour
June 28, noon
Fort Snelling served as an induction and training center during World War II with more than 300,000 members of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation beginning their military life there from 1941-1945. The Fort also trained several special groups, including military police, railroad engineers, and Japanese translators at the Military Intelligence Language School. During the special tour, start in the Visitor Center where a World War II map shows the Fort extending to include the National Cemetery. Then follow a guide on a two-mile loop to the Upper Post, where many World War II-era buildings still stand, including the old barracks, headquarters and other structures that were a part of the biggest military base in Minnesota. This tour does not include admission to Historic Fort Snelling.
Cost: The fee is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for children 6-17, with a $2 discount for MHS members.
What will happen to Historic Fort Snelling, the anachronistic product of Minnesota’s Statehood Centennial celebration of 1958? It is hard to read the tea leaves at the Minnesota Historical Society these days, especially from a distance, but the proposed cuts at the Historical Society give some suggestions. It may be that in the very near future, beginning July 1, 2009, Fort Snelling will shut down so that careful work can begin to remove 16% of the walls of the fort. It would be a good start. But maybe this is all wishful thinking.
Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie's playful view or critique of Fort Snelling as a White Castle hamburger stand, with an Edward Curtis paparazzi in the foreground, a Minnesota state seal come to life in the background at left, and many other trenchant historical references; reproduced with the permission of the artist.
One of the many unhappy announcements in the last few weeks of budget-cutting news was that Heather Koop, southern district manager of the Minnesota Historical Society’s Historic Sites Department, was among those slated to be laid off, assuming the Historical Society has to cut 16% of its budget. This announcement has implications for what happens at Historic Fort Snelling since Koop was among the few people in a position to accomplish anything, who was actually confronting the issues about Fort Snelling and trying to make a difference. For the past few years Koop and others at the Historical Society had launched a discussion among many people about changing the nature of the interpretation at the historic fort.
Interpretation at Historic Fort Snelling has focused on early nineteenth century military history, but a revitalization project hopes to broaden the history to include the complex relationships between the military and the Dakota people. Over the last year, a public participation process with Dakota people has been taking place across the American Midwest and Canada. The site is fraught with controversy. Today, Fort Snelling is the subject of on-going protests by some in the Dakota community that seek to “tear the fort down.” Other Dakota hope to develop a memorial or living commemoration to Dakota culture and history. It is a controversy characterized by historic divisions in the Dakota community: friendlies vs combatants, federally recognized groups vs those communities not recognized, treaty ratification and failure. Layer on a dominant narrative that has not paid much attention to these issues and there is quite a lot to suggest the power of place and meaning.
In the paper Koop gave an effective critique of the way Fort Snelling had been interpreted in the past and why it was necessary to overhaul it.
When the historic fort was reconstructed in the 1970s a living history program was developed and implemented. Costumed guides interpreted 1827 military life on the frontier, complete with period-appropriate armaments, uniforms, barracks, and domestic implements with washerwomen, soldiers, and blacksmiths performing daily rituals. First person interpretation was popular in the bicentennial ear with visitors eagerly immersing themselves in living history museums and historic sites around the U.S. and Canada.
While visitors were taking a step back in time during their tours, the interpretive method and historic content did little to challenge visitor’s conceptions of the struggles of the time period let alone their relevancy to contemporary times. Visitors perhaps walked away feeling the early medical science was a lot of guess work and procedures primitive or that more soldiers were bored than exhilarated by battle or that there was little in the way of equality for women. They most definitely did not leave the site with any better understanding of the issues of treaty making, the history of westward expansion, or the role of slavery in supporting the mostly southern officer corp. The limitations of first person interpretation did not allow interpreters to engage visitors with the bigger issues of the day. How could a washerwoman be expected to discuss with visitors the impact of the 1805 treaty that ceded hundreds of thousands of acres of land to the United States and changed the industrial economy of the Dakota Indians? How to explain that the residency of one slave and his wife at Fort Snelling would be the basis for one of the most important Supreme Court cases in United States history? How could we move from these singular perspectives to a dialogue about the broader impacts of history? The Society felt that there was great potential in moving beyond the tried and true interpretation at this site. . . . In order to devise a new interpretive plan, we looked to the public participation processes that are utilized by planners and adapted them for our purposes.
In the rest of the paper Koop described the process itself, how she and other Historical Society staff began and carried on a discussion about the future of Fort Snelling with various groups which had varying interests in Fort Snelling. The process was based on a familiar trope of management theory–a “stakeholder analysis,” the identification of “any individual or organization that can place a claim on the organization’s attention, resources, or output, or is affected by that output.” Once stakeholders were identified, discussions were initiated with stakeholders as a whole and with groups of stakeholders.
While the idea of stakeholder analysis appears to be designed to be a benign way to identify and cater to people who care about historic sites, a stakeholder analysis process hangs or falls on the way in which it categorizes groups of people and determines how to deal with them:
The first step was to find the right stakeholders. A staff-working group was convened to brainstorm a list of stakeholders. . . . We then asked ourselves, whom are we missing? Who else might be interested in a revitalized interpretive plan? Are there groups or individuals who we have purposely neglected? We wanted to know what the power and interest relationships were in relationship to one another. One useful stakeholder analysis techniques is the Power vs. Interest grid, which help to determine the potential coalitions that should be encouraged or discouraged and to provide information on how to convince stakeholders to change their views.
The language here indicates the degree to which stakeholder analysis, like interest-group politics–is both calculating and judgemental. It also demonstrates how it caters to powerful groups and entities. And the way in which groups were identified in this case says a lot about the nature of the Minnesota Historical Society as an institution. The groups categorized as “Subjects” having a “high interest” and “low power” were: Staff and volunteers, Other local sites, Ojibwe community, Dakota community, History buffs, Re-enactors, and Archaeologists. In contrast, those categorized as “Players” having “high interest” and “high power” were considered to be: National Park Service – MNRRA, State Historic Preservation Office, National Trust, Fort Snelling State Park Association, DNR Parks, Senior Citizens, Daughters of the American Revolution, School users, and Sibley Friends [Friends of the Henry H. Sibley Historic Site]. Those “Context setters” with “low interest” and “high power” were: City of Mendota, Hennepin County, Mn. Dept. of Transportation, Donors, State Gov’t, Other MHS sites & departments, and Other area attractions.
Koop writes that it is these last two “powerful” groups, not the Dakota or others in the first category, that were of primary importance in the process. These were the groups to be satisfied.
Plotting the stakeholders on the Power vs. Interest grid graphically illustrates the quadrant that was most critical to success of the project. Those groups with both high interest and high power – players — and low interest and high power –context setters had to be satisfied first. The subjects and crowd had to be paid attention, as well, but our focus would be on satisfying those in the context setters and player categories.
It is truly shocking to read this analysis and learn that the Historical Society placed Dakota people in the same category as historical re-enactors, history buffs, and archeologists, with less perceived power than the Daughters of the American Revolution. But for anyone who knows the way the leadership of the Historical Society has run the institution for the last 30 years and longer, these statements ring true. Throughout this time period the Historical Society has often sought to identify the powerful–defined in traditional “mainstream,” Master Narrative terms–and to cater to them.
In fact, however, Koop’s paper makes clear that during the process of discussion Dakota people were actually given greater respect than indicated by the outlines of the stakeholder analysis; they were in fact perhaps the most important group of stakeholders of all. Perhaps this was a result of an evolution in the thinking of Historical Society staff members during the process. In particular they may have realized that the initial stakeholder analysis was faulty and that Dakota people, including several powerful Dakota communities in Minnesota were more more powerful in terms of achieving results than anticipated. Perhaps there was a realization of the importance of the Dakota Treaty of 1805 and the longterm claim and very tangible stake it gives Dakota people in the Fort Snelling Reservation. Or perhaps the Historical Society was influenced by a justice argument, realizing that because of what happened to Dakota people at Fort Snelling, Dakota people were different from Ojibwe people and historical re-enactors in terms of their claim on Historic Fort Snelling.
Koop mentions many of the details of what happened historically to Dakota people at Fort Snelling. She and those working with her made a real effort to understand the positions of Dakota people about Fort Snelling and their concerns about how it is to be interpreted in the future. Although Waziyatawin, for one, would not engage in the process, Koop appears to have made an effort to try to understand Waziyatawin’s point of view expressed about Fort Snelling expressed in such works as What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.
In addition, “deliberative workshops” took place with Dakota people in southern Minnesota. Koop and others heard that not all Dakota people pushed for the tearing down of Fort Snelling, but, “believing that the Society and other dominant cultural institutions had been disingenuous with Dakota history, they urged us to tell the truth about the treaties and dishonesty that led to war.” They learned that many Dakota people wanted this to be the beginning of a relationship that would lead to continuing discussion about the issues. At the time the paper was written Koop anticipated that the discussions would continue this year. Now however, if Koop were to leave it is not clear that these discussions can continue.
From the Minnesota Historical Society website, a composite image of Director Nina Archabal in front of Historic Fort Snelling.
A few years ago, Fort Snelling was said, among people who knew things about Fort Snelling, to be “the next big thing.” By this it was meant that the fort would become the focus of attention and money. Over the last 25 years this has meant primarily one thing: construction. Among the previous big things were the History Center and the Mill City Museum. In building buildings, the Historical Society appeared to believe it was building a brighter future for history in Minnesota. Several years ago the Historical Society hatched plans to build a new interpretive center at Fort Snelling, which, it was hoped would, among other things, solve the nagging interpretive problems at the fort. But in this case, attempts to raise money at the legislature for a new Historic Fort Snelling interpretive center have met with many obstacles over the last few years, including finally, the effects of the current recession. Heather Koop’s work in mediating a solution for Fort Snelling was to be part of the same process involving the new interpretive center and it continued even after the interpretive center plan was put on hold. Now it appears that even her work will stop.
Perhaps the problem with the Historical Society’s building plans for Fort Snelling is that the problems with the fort are not ones that more building can cure. There is no way that Fort Snelling can ever fit into the kind of happy, upbeat, nostalgic, popular message some in the leadership of the Historical Society seem to favor. But even some of the scenes of the Holocaust in Germany have museums, so perhaps something could be done to make Fort Snelling into that kind of Museum for the Dakota experience. It may be hard to imagine this ever happening under current leadership of this Historical Society, but something of this kind should be on the table for discussion about the future of Fort Snelling.
In the meantime, perhaps the best thing to do, for all sorts of reasons, including the budget crunch, would be to shut down Fort Snelling for a few years, to give it a rest. It is an attractive idea, especially with the upcoming 150th anniversary of the events of 1862. Perhaps Fort Snelling should be closed so that all the stakeholders can think about its future. Then in a few years, perhaps the solution about what to do with this stony anachronism will be clearer.
According to a traditional account, recorded from Anishinaabe informants at Mille Lacs and other reservations, Tail Feather Woman (Tailfeather Woman) or Wiyaka Sinte Win, the visionary Dakota woman who originated the big drum, went to Mille Lacs Lake around 1880 to teach Ojibwe people about the construction of the drum and the vision and the songs that went with it. According to this account and written records, this was just the beginning of the spread of Tail Feather Woman’s vision across the Midwest. As described here in March, it is this vision that Dakota people plan to commemorate this year at Pickerel Lake in South Dakota.
One of the most misleading myths about Minnesota is the idea that Dakota and Ojibwe people were implacable enemies for generations. The history of shared beliefs, shared territory, and intermarriage among the two groups belies the importance given to that myth. Among the Ojibwe, particularly those who lived at Mille Lacs and along the St. Croix River, the Ma’iingan or Wolf clan owes its existence to marriages between Dakota men and Ojibwe women hundreds of years ago. The story of how Dakota people brought the drum to the Mille Lacs people is yet another example of the shared history of Ojibwe and Dakota people in Minnesota.
In the early 1950s, Fred K. Blessing, a collector of Ojibwe handiwork and technology, recorded the accounts of what happened when Tail Feather Woman brought the drum to Mille Lacs Lake. According to summaries of the information supplied to Blessing by several informants, Tail Feather Woman was Sisseton. She was part of a band of Sisseton Dakota who were being attacked by the U.S. Cavalry. She was cut off from her people. To escape she jumped into some water and hid among some bullrushes. The soldiers camped nearby and she was forced to hide out for four days. During her experience, without food, she had a vision in which the Creator spoke to her and instructed her to build a big drum. The Creator told her that small drums were too faint to hear, so a big drum was called for. It would be a peace drum. Tail Feather Woman was instructed on how to build the drum and how to conduct the drum ceremony.
A Dakota woman sitting in a tepee in the 1870s. Charles Zimmerman photo, Minnesota Historical Society.
When the soldiers left, Tail Feather Woman found the remnants of her people and told them of her vision. They made camp and began to build the drum. She taught them the sacred songs. According to Blessing’s notes:
When all was ready, the first Sioux Drum ceremony was held, including the preparation of a feast. A group of Cavalrymen happened along and heard the singing. They thought a war party was being organized and so approached the group carefullly. They saw only a peaceful gathering. Some of the warriors motioned for the soldiers to join them as the feast was about to be served. The soldiers came in and ate. When the ceremony resumed, the soldiers joined in the dances. When the soldiers were ready to leave, they all shook hands in friendship. As near as can be determined, this was in the spring of 1879.
The exact date of these events is not known. Thomas Vennum in his book The Ojibwa Dance Drum (available in book form and online as a pdf) suggests that Tail Feather Woman was part of a group attacked by the forces of General Custer prior to his death in 1876. Blessing’s notes state that it was in 1880 that Tail Feather Woman and a group of Dakota came to Mille Lacs Lake bringing the drum and the teachings to be shared with the Ojibwe there. However, newspaper accounts from Minnesota and Wisconsin suggest that this may have occurred earlier, in the spring of 1878.
The precise date, however, is not important. What is important is the story of Tail Feather Woman and her vision and how it was shared by Dakota people with Ojibwe in Minnesota and elsewhere. According to Blessing’s notes, some Sisseton “warriors” arrived in Minnesota with Tail Feather Woman leading the way “in the manner of a missionary.” The Ojibwe called her Wah nah skit (as spelled by Fred Blessing), meaning “tail feathers.” The leading warrior was said to have been called by an Ojibwe name that meant “Crooked Leg Sioux,” because he had been crippled by a wound in the knee.
News was received by the Mille Lacs Ojibwe that the Dakota were bringing a “bwan day way ee gun” (bwaanidewe’igan) or “Sioux drum.” The leader of the Mille Lacs group who met them was Mazomanie (also spelled Mo-zo-ma-na, and a number of other ways), whose village was located on the south shore of the lake, north of Onamia, near a point which still bears his name. Like many Ojibwe at Mille Lacs he was a member of the Ma’iingan or Wolf clan and therefore was part Dakota. Some sources suggest that his name was actually a Dakota word (perhaps similar to the name of the Wahpeton chief Mazamani or Iron Walker).
The Sisseton first offered the drum to Mazomanie, but he suggested that it be given to someone younger. As a result two younger men received drums. According to Blessing, the Sisseton camped at Mazomanie’s village for most of the summer, “teaching the songs and ceremonies that went with the Sioux drum. The two tribes also joined in the social drum ceremonies,” which are the basis of present-day powwows. The Sisseton also presented a woman’s drum to the daughter of Wadena, another Mille Lacs leader. Blessing stated that when the Sisseton left Mille Lacs they traveled on into Wisconsin, as far as Lac du Flambeau. Some of the Mille Lacs people traveled with them “to act as interpreters.”
There are many other written accounts of the spread of the drum and Tail Feather Woman’s teachings. Newspaper articles from the spring and summer of 1878 stated that “Sioux runners” were traveling across Wisconsin and Minnesota bring the new dance, to places such as Chengwatana (near Pine City), Minnesota, and Ashland, Wisconsin. In white communities there were suspicions that an “uprising” was about to occur. Many settlers left their homes and sought protection from the state and federal governments. When the meaning of the dance was explained after a few weeks, whites realized they had nothing to fear. Benjamin Armstrong, a white man who was married to the daughter of Chief Buffalo of Lapointe recalled, in his reminiscences, meeting Tail Feather Woman at Ashland in the spring of 1878. He described her as “a young Sioux girl.” He said that she was part of a band almost completely destroyed by Custer’s forces in May 1876. Armstrong himself had the strange suspicion that the dance was being pushed by ex-Confederates who wanted to foment a new rebellion. Even he, however, gave a fairly complete account of Tail Feather Woman’s vision and story.
Although the traditions at Mille Lacs said that Tail Feather Woman was Sisseton, Thomas Vennum refers to other accounts that identify her simply as Santee, a term used by many, including the western Dakota and Lakota to refer to the Eastern Dakota, which could have included the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, and Wahpeton. Some of the Menominee accounts of Tail Feather Woman, in particular, use the term Santee. Given what happened to the Dakota throughout the 1860s and 1870s, the story of an attack by the U.S. Cavalry is entirely believable.
It is a tribute to Tail Feather Woman that despite the suspicion engendered by the gatherings when she brought her vision, and the differing ways she has been identified, her vision has been recounted again and again with remarkable consistency, in newspapers, books, and in the oral tradition. The various accounts tell of her taking refuge in the water, the details of the vision, and the construction of the drum. They also make clear that the purpose of her teachings was to bring peace and harmony to warring peoples.
What does Fort Snelling say when no one is speaking? The answer to this question is the reason for tearing down the fort. When this idea was first suggested several years ago, it caused the tearing of hair and rending of garments, even among those who never cared for the fort in the first place. When I first heard it myself, I did not embrace the idea. Now after careful thought, I suggest a gradual process of deconstruction, starting with the northwest or southwest walls, so that in the future a person arriving at the fort from the nearby visitor center will see a breach in this monolithic diamond. That would be a good start.
The truth is that many who have dealt with the history of the fort over the years may secretly embrace the idea of tearing down the fort for their own reasons. And if they did so, I believe they would be speaking out for more truthful history as well as for the moral truth that would be affirmed. What many people don’t seem to realize is that much of the fort is a reconstruction done in the 1960s and inspired by the Minnesota Centennial celebration in 1958. By the 1950s only a few portions of the original fort were left. Postcards from the early 20th century show the Round Tower, sitting in the midst of a grassy field, in an almost bucolic setting, with a streetcar line passing nearby. A few of the officer’s quarters had been turned into apartments. The hexagonal tower was still standing above the path down to the river.
Fort Snelling's Hexagonal Tower, as it looked in the early 1900s when much of Fort Snelling had disappeared around it.
In the late 1950s however highway construction and a new Fort Snelling bridge threatened what remained of Fort Snelling. This was in the midst of Minnesota’s Statehood Centennial. Citizens were motivated to help save the fort by building a tunnel underneath it instead of routing the highway through it. At the same time work began to excavate the fort site, to do extensive research into the history of the fort and to reconstruct it as it had existed shortly after it was built.
I know the research part of it from first hand. My mother, Helen White, did quite a bit of the first research on the fort at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. in the early 1960s, when my father was working for the Department of Interior. One of my first research experiences was being taken, at the age of 12 or 13 and put to work looking through a register of correspondence from all the military surgeons around the country, searching for documents from Fort Snelling. I don’t remember what I found, but I have a strong memory of the rich odor of that leather-bound volume.
Though she participated in the historical research that led to the reconstruction of the fort my mother was never one to view history as contained only in the physical remains of the past. She knew that places were what people made of them and that their essence was in communities past and present. My mother recalled an argument with an archaeologist about the comparative importance of the information supplied by the documents and the archaeological record. He said: “If I can’t see it in the ground it didn’t happen.” She did not agree, because she knew that history was about people’s memories and the meanings they invest in places.
One of the major decisions made about the reconstruction of the fort, was to rebuild it to the period of the 1820s and to remove evidence of other eras that had become part of the place. For example, inside the ivy-covered walls of the Round Tower was an extensive WPA mural depicting the settlement of Minnesota, painted by Richard Haines, a prominent Iowa-born artist. While art such as this in post offices and public buildings has been preserved across the country, it was felt that its removal would contribute to reconstructing the fort as it had been shortly after it was built. The mural was destroyed. Photographs show it depicting Native and military history in fairly stereotypical ways but with all the energy of other public murals of that era.
I often wonder what it would have been like to see the mural, just as I wonder what it would be like today if the Fort Snelling of the 1900 were still there, with the Round Tower sitting in the midst of a green field. Sometimes ruins are preferable to elaborate reconstructions because when you visit them much is left to the imagination. The problem with Fort Snelling today is that there is too little room for imagination and memory. And there is very little room for the telling the history of Indian people and their place in Minnesota history.
In erecting this convincing historical reconstruction the Minnesota Historical Society, people who were my mother’s friends and colleagues, and some of whom later became my friends and colleagues, with all the best of intentions, succeeded in recreating a setting in which only one kind of history could be told, a military story. Though Indian people came to Fort Snelling, they seldom went in to the fort. Much of their interaction with whites took place at the Indian agency, which was located along the bluff to the west, mostly where the current massive highway intersection and the approach to the Mendota Bridge is located. Unfortunately the Centennial celebration of the 1950s did nothing to preserve the historical evidence of that aspect of Fort Snelling’s history.
A portion of the Richard Haines mural which once circled the inside of the Round Tower at Fort Snelling, showing a Dakota family traveling across a prairie. Minnesota Historical Society photo.
Recently I read through all of the journals of Lawrence Taliaferro, the Indian agent who managed the agency at Fort Snelling in the 1820s and 1830s. Taliaferro was on good terms with Dakota and Ojibwe leaders. Though he was certainly patronizing and manipulative, he treated them with respect as representatives of sovereign nations. His journal records extensive speeches by Indian leaders in which they dealt with the issues between themselves and the United States and with each other.
Taliaferro mentioned few occasions where Indians were allowed in Fort Snelling. On several occasions Indian people entered as prisoners, which of course was also the case with the chiefs Medicine Bottle and Shakopee who were held prisoner there until their hanging right outside the walls of the fort in 1864. In Taliaferro’s time there was a continuing discussion between agent and the officers of the fort about whether Dakota or Ojibwe people should be allowed to enter the fort. Sometimes when they did they were given liquor by the soldiers. In other cases soldiers assaulted them. Both matters concerned Taliaferro a great deal and he was in favor of their never going in the fort at all, for their own protection.
From a historian’s point of view, the real problem with Fort Snelling is that it makes it very difficult to remember, to record, to tell a different kind of history, other than a military one. Certainly in the 1820s and 1830s, there was a lot else going on at Fort Snelling. There were the Indian people who outnumbered the whites. There were traders, missionaries, and settlers. But these people seldom ventured inside the fort. Their history in the area did not occur inside Fort Snelling. It occurred at the Indian agency, at Coldwater Spring, at Pike Island, at Pilot Knob, and in the nearby prairies and river valleys.
Efforts have been made over the years. Talented and thoughtful staff of the Minnesota Historical Society have sought to enlighten and make richer the history told at Fort Snelling. But the place itself always undermined their efforts. The proof of the impossibility of telling a different story at Fort Snelling comes from the checkered history of attempts by the Historical Society to make any permanent change in the interpretation at the fort. In the 1990s a decision was made to try to interpret a broader social history beyond the military history of the place, specifically the stories of what happened there in 1838, among a rich population of Native people, soldiers, settlers, missionaries, lumbermen, slaves such as Harriet and Dred Scott, interacting in the aftermath of the two 1837 treaties with the Dakota and Ojibwe.
In the 1997, the Historical Society’s Historic Sites Department hired two historians, my mother Helen White and I, to do a study to guide the change. We authored a report called “Fort Snelling in 1838: A Historical and Ethnographic Study.” The report had many flaws that I would try to correct if I were doing it today, but people at the Historical Society seemed happy with the result. Within a few years, however, those people had left and one remaining official told me: “There’s no support around here for switching to 1838.” A few years later I heard that the latest plan was to interpret all aspects of the history of the fort: the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. Military history was obviously making a comeback as it always does at Fort Snelling. The last I heard, Fort Snelling was to be “the next big thing,” something I did not fully understand, and in any case, that was before the recession.
Inevitably the story of Historic Fort Snelling, that diamond-shaped monolith, is a military story. The fundamental fact about the fort–as reconstructed and as interpreted–is that it is a fortress and that for many years since its reopening, when you walked into the fort you went through a gate, and often there was an interpreter there, dressed as a soldier, guarding that gate. The reconstructed fort created a logic of its own. One could try to give a different message inside the fort, but what did the fort itself say when no one was speaking? What did the mere presence of the fort say? The message was a military message and it told the story of the colonial conquest of the 19th century.
This is precisely the point that Waziyatawin makes in her new book What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (Living Justice Press, St. Paul, Minnesota). She writes:
Fort Snelling still stands as this moniker of imperialism. In spite of its purpose and history, because it has marked the landscape for so long, many of us have come to accept it as a permanent feature. . . . In fact it has only been through the systematic and faithful efforts of White Minnesotans that the fort continues to be resuscitated. Human activities, fires, gravity, and Minnesota weather have jeopardized the fort on more than one occasion and Minnesotans have had to reinvest consciously in their icon of imperialism in order to save it.
Waziyatawin is also critical of one of the efforts made to transcend the colonial aspects of the history of the fort and reclaim it and the space it represents for Indian people. Several years ago Brenda Child, a professor at the University of Minnesota and a board member of the Minnesota Historical Society started an effort to “reclaim Fort Snelling,” for Native people by having a Dakota/Ojibwe language and culture institute at the fort, not in the diamond, but in an adjacent empty cavalry barracks. She was aided in this effort by a number of Dakota and other Native people, including some of her Dakota students, who interviewed Dakota and Ojibwe elders around the state in formulating the plans. The resulting proposal was criticized by Waziyatawin and others at a contentious public meeting at the University of Minnesota. Eventually the Historical Society, in a typical response, appears to have lost interest in the plan because of the controversy, not in judgment of the plan’s merits.
Among other criticisms, Waziyatawin stated that the plan “glosses over the genocidal role the fort played in 1862-63 and reaffirms the benign narrative also espoused by literature produced at Historic Fort Snelling.” Despite my basic agreement with Waziyatawin about the importance of recognizing the history of Dakota genocide at Fort Snelling, I disagree with some of her criticisms of the language-school plan. It seems to me that a language school might have been good for the Fort Snelling area, though perhaps not in an old cavalry barracks. In fact the idea of a language school and cultural center was proposed many years earlier by the Mendota Dakota Community, which has sought to play a conciliatory role in shaping what will happen to the area. Over the years Jim Anderson of the Mendota Dakota has spoken frequently of the need for the area around Fort Snelling, particularly Coldwater Spring, to be used as a place for people to come together. Anderson speaks of Fort Snelling as a place of Dakota genesis and of genocide, yet he calls for positive steps to repair the pain of Dakota history.
However, regardless of how one feels about the controversy involving the language school or any other of the controversies about Fort Snelling, the very fact of controversy demonstrates Waziyatawin’s point about the problematic nature of the fort and the need to address those areas which make it problematic. To begin with Dakota genocide and the full history of the fort and the surrounding community must be acknowledged and told.
The problem is that it is so hard to tell that story within the existing Historic Fort Snelling. Despite the best efforts of many the colonial story keeps reappearing. It is no accident that in May 2008, misguided Sesquicentennial commemorators maneuvered their covered wagons to Historic Fort Snelling (see the YouTube videos documenting this event). Something about Fort Snelling attracts colonial re-enactments. It is my understanding that this was not something the Historical Society encouraged, but did not feel it could actively discourage. When Waziyatawin, Jim Anderson and others, lay down in front of the wagon train, along the approach to the old fort, they provided much needed Dakota commentary.
In surprising ways the wagon-train arrival was a very successful interpretive event for a state institution that has sought Native involvement in its interpretation for many years in many ways. At a meeting with some other historians I asked what it was that possessed people to think of wagon trains when they thought of Minnesota statehood, since people seldom came to Minnesota in wagons; they came in steamboats. In response I was told: “You sound like you are saying that all historians should have been lying in front of the wagons.” In retrospect I think this is right; historians should have been there doing the same thing.
Telling the American Indian story has been a challenge everywhere in the Fort Snelling area. One of the best efforts has been done in Fort Snelling State Park, the location of the camp where Dakota people were concentrated during the winter of 1862-63. The story of that period is discussed with great sensitivity in an exhibit in the visitor center there and memorialized in a monument outside. Wisely the Department of Natural Resources has not tried to reconstruct the concentration camp and its surrounding stockade. Every year in the nearby woods the Mendota Dakota hold a ceremony in mid-winter to mark the suffering of the people in the camp. It is hard to imagine a ceremony like that within the walls of Historic Fort Snelling.
On the other hand, in other places within the checkerboard of government ownership in the Fort Snelling area, even in places where one might think a Native story could be told, the overriding military history of the fort takes hold. At Coldwater Spring, little has been done to interpret Native history. The area below the spring, along the stream that leads to the Mississippi is managed by the Minnesota Historical Society. Occasional tours have been given by Historical Society staff and the place is mentioned by tour guides at the old fort, but little has been done to maintain or interpret the area.
Markers for the 38 Dakota hanged in 1862, at Fort Snelling State Park, near the location of the concentration camp. Photo taken by Bruce White in January 2009 and the time of the annual Mendota Dakota ceremony honoring those who survived the camp and those who died while there.
As for the Bureau of Mines property, the location of the place where Coldwater Spring comes out of the ground there, it has been a real struggle to achieve recognition of the American Indian connections to this place. Several years ago, when the Park Service addressed the idea that Coldwater Spring might be a place of traditional cultural importance to Dakota people, Park Service officials rejected the advice of a number of experts who had examined the evidence affirmed its importance to the Dakota. In writing to several Dakota communities MNRRA stated that it acknowledged that the spring had “significant contemporary cultural importance to many Indian people,” and in any case the spring was “already a contributing element to the Fort Snelling National Historic Landmark and the Fort Snelling National Register of Historic Places District.”
These remarkably condescending words suggested that although the federal government rejected the Dakota communities’ claim to the spring as a historical and cultural feature and in the process rejected the history and cultural traditions on which it is based, the Park Service would try to protect the spring because it is part of a site important for, among other things, its role in colonizing Minnesota and sending the Dakota into exile in 1863. The area’s place in Dakota history was not significant; its white history was. The irony of this juxtaposition was truly lost on the Park Service.
In many ways the message of the failure to get Coldwater Spring acknowledged as a traditional cultural property for the Dakota is that throughout the Fort Snelling area, the military history generally wins out. It is as though the walls of Historic Fort Snelling exist not only in physical form but in the minds of people. If nothing else at all happens these are the walls that need to be torn down. As Waziyatawin stated in her new book: “It is time we take down all the forts, literally and metaphorically.”
The National Park Service/Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) has announced that there will be no further public meetings planned concerning the disposition of the Coldwater Spring property. A further meeting had been announced for mid-April, but that meeting will not take place. The decision appears to be the result of what happened at the Open House on February 23, 2009, at which some of those attending insisted on speaking publicly on the various issues involved in front of all those gathered, rather than speaking individually to the officials present. The decision was announced in an email to several of those interested in what happens to the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines property.
Email from Steven P. Johnson of MNRRA, April 7, 2009
Thanks, both of you [Waziyatawin and Wicanhpi Iyotan Win Autumn Cavender-Wilson], for asking about the future of public engagement on the Coldwater site (former Bureau of Mines).
We have received considerable public input concerning restoration of the site and spring, and are proceeding to plan accordingly. You had asked about another public meeting. When we first began working on site restoration planning in November, we contemplated having two public meetings on that topic. As we got further into the issue, it seemed clear that one meeting would be adequate. That meeting (February 23) and the subsequent 30-day comment period provided us with ample public input about site restoration alternatives.
I know both of you are primarily interested in the future of ownership/management of the site. We are working on completion of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), which will be based on the preferred alternative identified by the property owner, the Department of the Interior. That preferred alternative, as you recall, is that the site and spring be restored and that the Department of the Interior retain ownership, assigning management to the National Park Service. As was described to you in February, we hope to complete the FEIS and publish it about mid-June.
When it is published, we will notify you and many others of its availability. I have email addresses for the many people who have already submitted comments directly to us on this topic, and will notify each of them.
Publication of the FEIS triggers a 30-day written comment period in which it will be appropriate for individuals and organizations to comment on the Department of the Interior’s preferred alternative for future management of the site. Autumn, you will want to resubmit your petition at that time. All comments received during that 30-day period will be forwarded to the Department of the Interior, which will evaluate the FEIS and the comments received before making a final decision. The Department of the Interior’s final decision will be announced in a document called a Record of Decision. I would hope that Record of Decision would be issued in Fall 2009 so that we can move toward site restoration.
Steven P. Johnson
Chief of Resource Management
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area
National Park Service
111 E. Kellogg Blvd., Suite 105
St. Paul, MN 55101
Mille Lacs Lake is one of many places in Minnesota that need to be acknowledged for their connection to Dakota people. Known to the Dakota as Mde Wakan or Spirit Lake, it is a place of special importance in their history and culture. The name of the most easterly group of Dakota people, the Mdewakantonwan, memorializes the name of the lake around which they lived until the mid-18th century.
As the website of the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota community states it, the Mdewakakanton Dakota were “those who were born of the waters.” In fact one of the Dakota origin stories places that origin at Mille Lacs Lake. Dakota leader Leonard E. Wabasha stated (on a Mille Lacs Kathio State Park interpretive sign):
My people are the Mdewakanton Oyate. Mdewakanton means the People of Spirit Lake. Today that lake is known as Mille Lacs. This landscape is sacred to the Mdewakanton Oyate because one Otokaheys Woyakapi (creation story) says we were created here. It is especially pleasing for me to come here and walk these trails, because about 1718 the first Chief Wapahasa was born here, at the headwaters of the Spirit River. I am the eighth in this line of hereditary chiefs.
As described by archaeologist Lloyd A. Wilford (1944: 329), Father Louis Hennepin visited the Sioux at Mille Lacs Lake in 1680 and reported that it was the sacred lake of these Indians and the focal point of the whole nation, from which the tribes and bands spread out over a wide area.
The shore of Lake Mille Lacs around 1910, from the Edward McCann photo collection.
In addition to Mille Lacs, Mdewakanton Dakota also described that origin as taking place at Bdote, near the mouth of the Minnesota River. The truth is that among different groups of Dakota and Lakota peoples there have been various origin stories told. Today for many Lakota the Black Hills is considered one of their most sacred sites, the center of the world, the place of the gods, where the warriors would go to wait for visions and to speak to the Great Spirit.” Black Elk, famous religious leader of the Dakota people, was taken to Harney Peak in the Black Hills– the “center of the world”– in his Great Vision.” A timeline of Dakota history states that in the 1830s: “The Oglala become more centrally organized with most bands following Bull Bear [and] with many of the rest following Smoke. This was a change from their previous more loosely governed bands with many leaders of comparable influence. The Bear Butte area in western South Dakota, extending west to Devil’s Tower was the geographic and spiritual center of their world.”
When addressing the subject of Lakota/Dakota creation stories, Wilhelm K. Meya, one of the most active anthropologists working with the Lakota today, wrote, in an email: “The Mdewakanton are considered in the oral tradition, one of the most ancient divisions of the Sioux Nation or Ocetisakowin ‘Seven Council Fires’. The sacred lake (Mille Lacs) figures prominently in Lakota/Dakota creation stories. The lake is considered sacred because the Dakota people emerged from it as human beings into this world.”
In addition the Rum River originally shared the name of the lake, Wakan, but was mistranslated by early whites. In an Isanti County News article about a 2008 Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) Canoe Expedition that provided a group of inner-city Dakota boys from Minneapolis and St. Paul an opportunity to paddle the natural artery of their ancestors, LeMoine LaPointe, director of the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, stated: “Their 165-mile paddle from Mille Lacs Lake to Minneapolis commemorated many important aspects of Dakota history and culture.” He further noted: ”The Rum, known for centuries as Wakan Wakpa (Holy River), is an important spiritual and cultural artery to the Dakota who, until 1745, lived at Mille Lacs (Mde Wakan) and considered it the center of their world.”
Because of my knowledge of the importance of Mille Lacs Lake and surrounding area as a Dakota homeland, I initiated and am spearheading the local, national and international movement to change the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota’s Rum River, the river that flows from Mille Lacs Lake, back to its sacred Dakota name, Wakan. There is more about this at my website: http://www.towahkon.org/
On a muggy evening in late August 2000, at the Henry B. Whipple federal building at Fort Snelling, John Steinworth, a member of a loose coalition of Coldwater Spring supporters known as the Preserve Camp Coldwater Coalition (PCCC) stood up and spoke to the assembled agency representatives who had come to hear public comment about the impending transfer of the Bureau of Mines property to the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC). Steinworth talked about accomplishments of the coalition in bringing public attention to the effect of Highway 55 on the spring and the surrounding area. “We have been around quite some time.” Whoever gets the property Steinworth said, “gets us too. We come with the property.”
The 2000 meeting where this occurred came about because the Department of Interior had reached a decision about what would happen to Coldwater/Bureau of Mines property. Now the agency, through the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), a branch of the National Park Service, wanted to get public input about what to put in the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with MAC, to protect the character of the property. After the meeting the public would have seven days–later extended to two weeks–to submit written comment.
Not all of the people there that night were members of PCCC, but all who were there were not happy. As John Steinworth also pointed out the Coldwater people felt that they had been pushed around and ignored in the process of determining the ultimate ownership of the property. They wanted to be heard not only on the MOA, but on the basic decision the Park Service was announcing. The Department of Interior and MNRRA wanted to keep things simple. The meeting was intended to start out with various officials speaking about the process. Then people were supposed to split up in smaller groups to discuss and give comments. After this was announced in the meeting, there was a lot of grumbling. Someone called for a vote. Very few people wanted to go into small groups. Most wanted to remain in the large group, so that everyone could hear what everyone said. Finally, after much hemming and hawing, officials acquiesced and the Coldwater people got the meeting they wanted, where everyone got to talk and say his or her piece.
Watercress growing the stream below Coldwater Spring, May 1977. Photo by Bruce White
Over the course of the next few, muggy hours, many people spoke, including both Coldwater people and public officials. The Coldwater people who spoke that night were from many different backgrounds and had come to support the preservation of the spring for many different reasons. Some had been involved in the Highway 55 “Stop the Reroute” opposition, but after the battle was lost they re-formed as the PCCC, to preserve the spring. The group met periodically at local restaurants and operated under a consensus-model of decision-making. Also involved and represented that night was the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, the only vocal Dakota support for preserving the spring, but a group with neither money nor federal recognition. Others were like Dave Fudally, a local resident who had gotten to know the area very well over many decades. He was and is an amateur historian who had been a pioneer in trying to convince agencies for several decades to preserve the area.
Though there are a wide diversity of opinions about many things, these diverse people had united in their support for the preservation of Coldwater. Notes of what was said that night are incomplete, but it appears that most of the discussion was about the advisability of giving the property to MAC. Many wanted the Park Service to keep it and manage it. There was fear that the Airports Commission would fill the property with parking lots or would do something else to develop the property.
Lynn Levine pointed out that people supporting the preservation of Coldwater had been lied to a lot. She was concerned about the ongoing health of the spring. Jim Anderson and Linda Brown of the Mendota Dakota spoke about the importance of the spring to the Dakota and a need for that to be acknowledged. Dave Fudally spoke about how important the property was to all Minnesotans, not just Dakota people. Michael Kincaid spoke abut the need to erase the artificial boundaries that divided all the various important properties in the Fort Snelling area. Legislator Karen Clark questioned the desirability of transferring the property to an agency that had no experience in managing cultural and historic places. Someone stated that the preservation of Coldwater was a “justice issue.” Tom Holtzleiter raised the issue of the fifty-year run of the Memorandum of Agreement governing the transfer of the property to the Airports Commission. What would happen then and how would the National Park Service protect the spring? Answering most of the questions was historian John Anfinson of MNRRA. He gave detailed and credible answers but not ones that truly satisfied the Coldwater supporters. They simply believed that Anfinson was defending the indefensible.
Even so, by the end of the night people who attended had an exhilirating feeling that their voices were finally being heard. After the meeting, when many lingered outside the Whipple Building to hash over what had happened, Susu Jeffrey–a longtime activist on many political and military issues– relished the moment and, referring to the sale of the property to the Airports Commission announced triumphantly: “That agreement is toast.” It did turn out to be toast, but what ended it was the events of 9/11 which caused fundamental changes in the air-transportation system in the country.
Supporters of Camp Coldwater preservation gathered at Coldwater Spring in December 1999. Dick Bancroft photo.
At the time of the meeting, many thought that Dakota or Indian ownership of the Coldwater property was desirable, though few believed that it was possible, since there seemed to be no interest among the federally-recognized tribes in Minnesota about owning the property. However, all supporters of Coldwater preservation tried to communicate what they believed to be the importance of the place for the Dakota, something that a number of Dakota elders had made clear to the Minnesota Department of Transportation in public hearings in 1999.
In the following years, the importance of the spring to the Dakota seemed to be an operating assumption of Coldwater supporters. In 2001, they fought and obtained a provision of state law which protected the flow of water to the spring from any governmental action. As described by Mary Weitz, who did a lot of the lobbying for the bill at the State Capitol, Coldwater supporters also fought for inclusion of language designating the area as a “traditional cultural property,” the term used to describe a place of cultural importance to a people such as the Dakota. The language was stripped out of the bill before final passage. However the law passed contained the following statement:
Neither the state, nor a unit of metropolitan government, nor a political subdivision of the state may take any action that may diminish the flow of water to or from Camp Coldwater Springs. All projects must be reviewed under the Minnesota Historic Sites Act and the Minnesota Field Archaeology Act with regard to the flow of water to or from Camp Coldwater Springs.
The effect of the law, which was later tested in court, was to force the Minnesota Department of Transportation to protect the flow of water to the spring in the construction of Highway 55 south of the Highway 62 interchange, just west of the Bureau of Mines property.
After 2001, the Park Service went back to the drawing board in arriving at a solution for the BOM property. Meanwhile the Coldwater people met periodically, bided their time, tried to read the tea leaves about what the Park Service might do, and continued to go to Coldwater Spring for water. Whenever the Park Service has done anything to limit access to the spring, Coldwater people have been quick to challenge it, as in 2005 when a permit system was implemented for access to the Coldwater property.
In 2001, Susu Jeffrey split away from the PCCC to form the Friends of Coldwater. In her prolific writing Jeffrey has consistently maintained that federal ownership would provide the greatest protection for the spring, although she also acknowledges the sacredness of the spring to the Dakota. Others continued working with the older group, the PCCC, in arriving at the consensus that the property should first be offered to the Dakota. In 2006, working with environmental lawyer Thomas E. Casey, they drafted comments on the Bureau of Mines draft EIS, urging that the property be transferred to the Dakota:
Preserve Camp Coldwater Coalition strongly recommends that one (or combination of more than one) of the recognized Dakota communities receive title to the Bureau of Mines/Coldwater Spring area property. Dakota communities and other Native American tribes have, from the distant past through the present time, continued to gather at the Coldwater Spring area for water and other ceremonies. This is why the Dakota communities have the largest vested interest in protecting the area. They also may have the financial resources to ward off would be interlopers. Some Dakota communities are also considering a serious bid of private funds for the area. However, albeit unlikely, a future tribal election could result in elected officials who are less dedicated to protecting Coldwater Spring and the surrounding area. In that event – and to provide the highest level of protection – the conservation easement provisions described . . . below are essential conditions for the transfer of ownership.
At the time this was written a lot more interest had been shown in the Coldwater property by federally-recognized Dakota communities, including Shakopee, Prairie Island and Lower Sioux, which all submitted proposals, in 2006, asking for the property. But MNRRA, acting for the Department of Interior, has not considered these proposals seriously and has declined to acknowledge that Coldwater Spring is a traditional cultural property for Dakota people.
All of this is background for what occurred at the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines open house on February 23, 2009, when Waziyatawin, Sheldon Wolfchild, and others demanded that the property go to the Dakota people. Although some of the speakers that night did thank those who had supported the preservation of the property over the years, many Coldwater people felt that their role was not properly acknowledged or respected. They had been advocating for the property and for its importance for the Dakota since 1999 and earlier. They continued to favor ownership by the Dakota. They felt slighted and some simply felt that the style of the demands made in the speeches was not helpful in achieving the desired results. So, in some ways, what occurred that night challenged continuing consensus among Coldwater people about the best way to save Coldwater Spring.
