“In our creation story of where we first began as people on this earth, that place was sacred long before anybody from Europe arrived and saw the place. . . . We hold our lands sacred, but these lands are more sacred because of the history, because of the myth and what we are pleading for is some understanding. . . . This is more than an argument over a plot of land. It is a debate of two cultures and the understanding of the sacredness and what is sacred.” Eleven years ago on February 26, 1999, Dakota spiritual leader and Episcopal minister Rev. Gary Cavender spoke these words in a moving speech at a press conference relating to opposition to the construction of Highway 55 through the Coldwater Spring area near Fort Snelling in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Despite the clarity of his words, the knowledge they contain has been questioned time and time again by those seeking to undermine Dakota claims to the area. Rev. Cavender died in April 2009. His words are worth hearing again.
Text of Rev Gary Cavender’s Speech at Representative Karen Clark’s Press Conference February 26, 1999 -Camp Coldwater
We are coming here to talk about sacred land, and especially the sacredness of that place. In our creation story of where we first began as people on this earth, that place was sacred long before anybody from Europe arrived and saw the place. Because of the topography of the land and because of the coming together of two great rivers (Minnesota and Mississippi) it is called “Md ote” or the throat of the waters, and they named a town after it–Mendota–although it is pronounced altogether different.
In our Creation myth we the Dakota, the Seven Fires of the Dakota, came from the belt of Orion–the seven planets of the belt of Orion, the seven stars–and arrived at the convolution of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, and so in some respects it is our Eden, and the land around there is sacred as well. There is that sacred spring that is in negotiation, that sacred spring is the dwelling place of Unktehi, the God of the Waters, and in that spring there is an underground river that goes into the big river, and that is his passageway to get out into the world. To block the sacred passageway would be courting with drought and things of that nature that have to do with water, because after all, this is the God of the water. So when you hear a thunderstorm and it starts to rain, that is the underwater God having battle with the Sky God and the reason for that battle is so that the rain may come down and replenish the earth, and the Sky God is fighting–throwing down thunderbolts to fertilize the land. That is a scientific fact, and so it is not without reason that this land should be sacred to us, and so the Underwater God lives there. We came there as human beings and so that is our Eden, and the irony of it all is that in 1862-1863 that was almost the end of us as people, because that was the Ft. Snelling concentration camp. It may have been a full circle for us–the beginning and the ending, which is sacred in and of itself, but the land is sacred. The high bluffs where we went to track provisions, the throat of convolution of the 2 rivers where we got our start and almost where we got our ending. There are bodies there, there is a sacred cemetery there. Maybe all of it is gone but it is still sacred.
We hold our lands sacred, but these lands are more sacred because of the history, because of the myth and what we are pleading for is some understanding. To understand our sense of sacredness of the land. To use our image as the ultimate environmentalists–we may not be, but we have a connection to the land that perhaps you don’t understand and so this is more than an argument over a plot of land. It is a debate of two cultures and the understanding of the sacredness and what is sacred. We can’t say that the land has nothing on it and disregard the sacredness and go ahead and build on it. Wasicun seem to have the ability to prioritize, and when it comes to progress, spirituality or sacredness takes a back seat to progress. We don’t have that understanding, it is not in us, even though we’ve been in your culture for at least 200 years now and we’ve only been citizens of our own land since 1925. So how can we expect you to understand those things when you didn’t even recognize us as human beings until the 20th Century. But what we’re asking for is the beginning of understanding. Use this sacred place as a neutral ground to start a journey of understanding each other and leave it alone. Our people’s beginning spirits are there and our people’s ending spirits are there. All of the Gods are there. The Wakan Tanka is there. The Wakan Tanka is everywhere and so for us it’s only a ltittle patch of land we’re asking for. The economy isn’t going to collapse. There is an alternative way to solve the problem, but for us it is a great, great sacrifice and we’ve sacrificed so much for so long. All we’re asking for is a little understanding and perhaps respecting what we hold sacred!
Three hundred and thirty years ago, give or take a year, on June 29, French visitors to the homelands of the Dakota people, traveled for the first time into the Minnesota River or Wakpa Mni Sota, as it was known to the Dakota. There were five Frenchmen in the group, one of them named Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, who had just come into the region of the Dakota. The Frenchmen named the river after the saint whose feast day was June 29: St. Pierre or St. Peter.
Pierre Le Sueur mentioned that entrance of the French in the Minnesota River many years later, in conversations with French map makers in Paris, while explaining the French name of the river. He said that the river was given the name because it was “discovered some time ago on St. Peter’s [St. Pierre] Day and because of the five of us at the time, a Jes[uit] & 4 adventurers, there were 3 named Peter [Pierre].” Le Sueur gave no year for this event except to say that he first came to the Dakota country in 1683.
Before this date, no Frenchmen had mentioned the Minnesota River. Even Father Louis Hennepin who traveled up the Mississippi River and the tributary Rum River all the way to Mille Lacs Lake in 1679 and 1680, failed to mention going by the mouth of the Minnesota River. This may be because of the location of the large island Wita Taåka, now known as Pike Island, concealed the mouth of the river. Hennepin and other Frenchmen may have thought the water flowing around the island was simply a backwater on the Mississippi.
The Minnesota River or Rivière St. Pierre, known to the Dakota as the Wakpa Mni Sota (or in Pierre Le Sueur’s transcription, the “Ouatebamenisouté”) is shown at left on Guillaume DeLisle’s 1702 map of the region.
As a result of the “discovery” by the French of a river well known to the Dakota and other Indigenous people, Nicolas Perrot led a ceremony on May 8, 1689, at the French fort of St. Antoine, on Lake Pepin, taking “possession,” in the name of Louis XIV, of the entire Upper Mississippi region, one of many applications of the European colonialist Doctrine of Discovery. The details of the claim include a kind of inventory of Dakota groups, under names not well known later, and suggestions about where these groups were located. The document stated that the French had visited and thereby claimed
Pierre Le Sueur’s explanation for the meaning of the French name for the Minnesota River clears up a historical mystery about the origins of the name. William H. Keating, a geologist who accompanied the expedition of Major Stephen H. Long in the region in 1823 (Narrative of an Expedition, 2:335-336) wrote: “It has been, we know not upon what authority, suggested that the French name of the river, St. Pierre, was a corruption of the Sans pierres (without stones) said to have been given to it, because no stones occur along it bank for a considerable distance from its mouth.”
Regardless of the merits of this description of the river’s geology, Pierre Le Sueur’s account shoots this theory out of the water. As the editor of Zebulon Pike’s journals, Elliott M. Coues states, it was “too good to be true” anyway, though Coues also argued against the idea that the river was named after the saint at all, suggesting other more famous 17th century Frenchmen named Pierre or St. Pierre. Warren Upham, in his work Minnesota Geographic Names (page 3), was closer to the truth when he said that the French name was given in honor of Pierre Le Sueur himself. It is clear that he was only partly right.
For more information on Pierre Le Sueur’s accounts of his time among the Dakota, see Gwen Westerman and Bruce White, Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota, published by MHS Press in 2012. The DeLisle map above is in the collections of the Library of Congress.
Although the National Park Service’s final EIS for the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines property in Hennepin County, Minnesota, contains the statement that “no historical documentation of American Indian use of Camp Coldwater Spring has been found,” (repeated five times in the final EIS, beginning on page 72), there is actually ample evidence of the presence of Dakota, Ojibwe, and other Native people at Coldwater Spring. One example is a birch-bark scroll sent by Dakota leaders to invite their Ojibwe counterparts to meet with them to make peace at “Cold Spring” in the summer of 1820. The scroll is part of a detailed history of such diplomacy at Coldwater Spring.
Although it is not known if the original birch-bark message has survived, Henry Schoolcraft included an engraving based on it in his six-volume compendium Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. According to Schoolcraft the original birch-bark message was left near the mouth of the Sauk River (in between present-day Minneapolis and St. Cloud), a place bordering Ojibwe country, where it was expected Ojibwe leaders would be able to find it. Schoolcraft, who visited the area with the expedition of Michigian territorial governor Lewis Cass, described this message and later took it back with him to Washington. After seeing the message, Schoolcraft and company continued on down the river to Coldwater Spring.
Inter-tribal diplomacy between Dakota and Ojibwe is one of the biggest untold stories of early Minnesota history, particularly as it relates to Coldwater Spring. In the years that following the events of 1820, Coldwater Spring was the habitual camping place of the Ojibwe who came to visit Fort Snelling, the Indian agency, and the nearby Dakota communities. Ojibwe and Dakota traded, danced, and participated in ceremonies there for many years. It is likely that the site was also used for this purpose prior to the arrival of the Americans. Dakota-Ojibwe diplomacy was recorded long before the creation of Fort Snelling. Although the Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro liked to take credit for the diplomacy, in many cases the impetus for it came from the Native leaders themselves, particularly those who had mixed Dakota-Ojibwe ancestry through intermarriage that had been going on for hundreds of years. For Native leaders Taliaferro provided an important intermediary to continue efforts their people had been carrying out for generations.
Agent Taliaferro’s first effort at diplomacy occurred at Coldwater Spring in the summer of 1820, when the military encampment switched from Cantonment New Hope to Coldwater Spring. Taliaferro arrived at St. Peters early that summer and may have encouraged the Dakota who sent the invitation to come to Coldwater Spring. In his journal Taliaferro did not record a narrative of what occurred that summer, but he did leave a record of presents given to Dakota leaders starting in June 1820.
The invitation sent by the Dakota leaders shows the extent to which they themselves were instrumental in bringing about the diplomacy. Along with the engraving in his multi-volume work, Schoolcraft gave a written explanation of what the figures on it meant.
The scroll containing this inscription . . . as obtained above St. Anthony’s Falls, on a public expedition. . . . It consisted of white birch bark, and the figures have been carefully drawn. Number 1 [at top left], denotes the flag of the union;–Number 2, the cantonment, then recently established at Cold Spring on the western side of the cliffs, above the influx of the St. Peters [Mdote or Bdote]. Number 4 [the figure holding the sword and wearing a hat] is the symbol of the commanding officer, (Colonel H. Leavenworth,) under whose authority a mission of peace had been sent into the Chippewa country. Number 1 is the symbol of Chakope, or the Six, the leading Sioux chief [wearing what looks like a round peace medal], under whose orders the party moved. Number 8 is the second chief called Wamade-tunka, or the Black Eagle. The symbol of his name is number 10 [that is, the figure on the far right at bottom, a black dog, which means this is a reference to the chief of Black Dog’s Village, the closest village on the Minnesota River above Fort Snelling]. He has 14 lodges. Captain Douglas, who had begun the study of this ‘bark-letter,’ as it was called thought this symbol denoted his descent from Chakope. Number 7 is a chief, subordinate to Chakope, with 13 lodges, and a bale of goods (Number 9), which was devoted, by the public, to the objects of the peace. The name of Number 6, whose wigwam is Number 5, with 13 subordinate lodges, was not given. The frame, or crossed poles of the entire 50 lodges composing this party, had been left standing on the high, open prairie on the west bank of the Mississippi above Sauk River, and immediately opposite the point of Hornblende Rocks, which results from the figure-alphabet being precisely the same in both [Dakota and Ojibwe].
As a result of this effort preliminary meetings occurred between the Dakota and Ojibwe at Coldwater Spring in the summer of 1820. Henry Schoolcraft noted on August 1, that “a treaty of peace was this day concluded in the presence of Governor Cass, Colonel Leavenworth, Mr. Tallifierro, the Indian agent at St. Peter’s, and a number of the officers of the garrison.” In his account Schoolcraft makes clear that the garrison of soldiers who had come to the area in the fall of 1819 and had spent the winter on the river bank at the mouth of the Minnesota had moved to Coldwater Spring in the the spring of 1820, to avoid floods. On July 31, 1820, James Duane Doty, future governor of Wisconsin Territory, who had accompanied the Cass expedition, noted in his own diary:
Early in the Spring [of 1820] Col. Leavenworth discovered the fountain of water where the troops now are, & to which they moved as soon as the ice would permit. It is a healthy situation, about 200 feet above the river, and the water gushing out of a lime stone rock is excellent. It is called “Camp Cold Water.”
Records of peace ceremonies between Dakota and Ojibwe, such as the one that occurred in 1820 at Coldwater Spring, abound in historical and ethnographic sources. The anthropologist Ruth Landes in her work on the Prairie Island Dakota (1968: 85-86), records a traditional account of a peace ceremony said to have occurred between the Dakota and Ojibwe or as she spells the name, the Ojibwa. The story says that the Dakota chief was named Shakopee and had a village in an area near the Ford Factory in St. Paul and near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, a place that would have been close to Coldwater. But the story also says that the event took place at Shakopee, which may be the result of confusion in translation or in remembering the tradition. In fact the story recalls many ceremonies that occurred near Fort Snelling and at Coldwater.
The story told that an Ojibwa chief had sent word that “his people were coming to make peace with the Sioux.” The Dakota chief gathered all his villages to meet the Ojibwe. The people came from the east and west.
Some Ojibwa arrived in the advance of the chief; four came with their chief; next day the whole body of Ojibwa arrived and camped at a distance from the Sioux, totaling about 150 men, women, and children. The chief and his companions stayed with the Sioux until the other Ojibwa arrived; then the chief and his men returned to their people. The Ojibwa chief with some chosen men walked forward in a line parallel to the Sioux encampment. The Sioux chief likewise advanced to the Ojibwa. The Sioux lit his redstone pipe [carved starkly and decorated with dyed braids of porcupine quill and downy feathers] and handed it to the Ojibwa chief for a puff. The latter handed his pipe equally choice in style and finish, to the Sioux, inviting him to puff. Each man received back his own pipe after pointing that of the friendly enemy to the six directions. The Ojibwa chief gave his pipe to the Sioux guards facing his camp in a parallel line; and the Sioux chief reciprocated with the Ojibwa guards. Each chief, having returned to his own men, shook hands with the other, saying that they would never war against each other.
Afterwards there was a feast, dancing and other celebrations, lasting through the night. “Everyone was happy when peace was restored. Landes noted that even in 1935 the Dakota and Ojibwe still talked of being enemies, yet “these people made peace, probably as often as they made war.”
Frances Densmore, in her work Chippewa Music, published in 1910 and 1913 provided additional information of these kinds of peace events, from the Ojibwe point of view (Densmore 1973, 2: 126-29). An Ojibwe war leader whose name was the same as his tribe sang her a song that would be sung at a peace treaty between the Dakota and Ojibwe, an event “attended with much ceremony.” This song was sung by both tribes using the same melody but with different words. In it the members of each tribe would sing the praises of the leaders of the other tribe. The Ojibwe version praised Little Crow, Little Six, and Wabasha, in succession. The Dakota would have sung the same song praising Ojibwe leaders such as Hole in the Day and others. After the song the two groups would share a pipe ceremony, dances, and the exchange of presents, exactly the kinds of events that took place at Fort Snelling in the 1820s and 1830s
Many written documents record the interactions between the Dakota and Ojibwe at Coldwater Spring. It is also recorded in the Ojibwe oral tradition. Eddie Benton-Benai stated in his testimony at a hearing in 1999, relating to the Native American claim to the Coldwater area. At that hearing Benai stated, according to a rough transcript (Minnesota Department of Transportation 1999):
Through our oral traditions, our history, recent and older, we know that the falls which . . . came to be known as Minnehaha Falls, that there was a sacred place, . . . a neutral place for many nations to come, and that further geographically define the confluence of the three rivers, which is actually the two rivers, that that point likewise was a neutral place. And that somewhere between that point and the falls, there were sacred grounds that were mutually held to be a sacred place. And that the spring from which the sacred water should be drawn was not very far, and I’ve never heard any direction from which I could pinpoint, but there’s a spring near the [Midewiwin or medicine] lodge that all nations used to draw the sacred water for the ceremonies.
Now that’s in the words of our people of the [Midewiwin] lodge. And the people that are concerned or the people that are identified there are the Dakota, the Sac, the Fox, the Potawatomi, the Wahpeton Dakotas, the Mdewakanton Dakotas, the Meskwaki people as all having used and recognizing and mutually agreeing that that is forever a neutral place and forever a sacred place. That is confirmed in our oral history. And it is difficult even to estimate when the last sacred ceremony was held inter-tribally, but my grandfather who lived to be 108 died in 1942, and I will tell you this, that many times he re-told how we traveled, he and his family, he as a small boy traveled by foot, by horse, by canoe to this great place to where there would be these great religious spiritual events, and that they always camped between the falls and the sacred water place. Those are his words. . . .
Within my physical memory, visiting the Prairie Island Dakota Nation as early as the 1940s, there were still elders in that community in the 1940s who were still members of the Midewiwin Lodge along with the Winnebago of Wisconsin. And my memory serves me to say that there was a great dialogue among our people and those of the Prairie Island Community regarding the lodge, and that’s how we have always known this way of life and practice as the lodge, but meaning the Midewiwin Lodge as a system of belief. . . . The Honorable Amos Owens . . . is the last person of that community I ever heard talk about that mutually sacred place, meaning the falls and the spring from which sacred water is drawn, Coldwater.
The information presented here about the Native history of Coldwater Spring is only a sampling of a history ignored in the National Park Service Coldwater/ Bureau of Mines EIS. For the history that is included the final EIS relies on a 2002 study done for the Park Service which includes the following statement:
In a book published in 1835, Charles Joseph Latrobe stated that “lodges of the Sioux and the Chippewas encamped near the Reservation, or near the trading houses.” These would have been temporary visits, if only because the Dakota and the Chippewa were enemies unlikely to reside near one another except for brief visits to traders, the Indian Agency, or the fort.
The 1820 invitation by the Dakota for the Ojibwe to come make peace with them, along with all the other evidence not included in the final EIS, make clear the inaccuracy of this statement, and of the Park Service’s account of the Native connections to Coldwater Spring.
Anyone holding a ceremony at Coldwater Spring, a sacred and culturally important place for Dakota people, is required to get a permit from the local office of the National Park Service office in St. Paul, known as the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area or MNRRA. However as of August 30, 2012, no permits are being granted for ceremonies or anything else at Coldwater Spring, until the spring of 2013 at the earliest. Any violation of this rule or others relating to MNRRA’s regulations may subject the violator to a fine of “up to $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for organizations, or by imprisonment not exceeding six months, ” as well as being “adjudged to pay all court costs associated.” No exceptions appear to be available for the Dakota people whose original place of creation includes Mni Owe Sni or Coldwater Spring.
Information about this and other rules promulgated by Superintendent Paul Labovitz of MNRAA are found in an annual “Superintendent’s Compendium,” an annual listing compiled by all Park Service superintendents for the areas they supervise and which they may revise “as necessary.” Labovitz issued his new compendium on August 30, 2012. In it are rules designed to govern everyone who uses the Coldwater Spring site and the few other locations that are part of MNRRA. The reference to ceremonies occurs in a section entitled “Activities that Require a Permit,” deriving from 36 CFR 1.6, in the Code of Federal Regulations. These activities include ceremonies and many other events. Following each item is a rationale given in the Superintendent’s Compendium citing the basis for the requirement of a permit:
§2.50(a) Conduct a sports event, pageant, regatta, public spectator attraction, entertainment, ceremony, and similar events
Events need to be regulated to ensure there is no resource damage and to ensure that events do not conflict with each other.
• §2.51(a) Public assemblies, meetings, gatherings, demonstrations, parades and other public expressions of views
Gatherings need to be regulated to ensure there is no resource damage and to ensure that events do not conflict with each other.
Nothing in these rules specify any exceptions for Dakota people, for whom many if not all gatherings at Coldwater Spring may involve ceremony. In fact it appears that MNRRA will apply this rule to any ceremony involving any number of people, as indicated in the proviso that no permits would be issued for any events at Coldwater Spring prior to the spring 2013 :
NOTE: The NPS is not issuing any special use permits for Coldwater Spring until late spring of 2013. The land and wetland restorations are so new that even small events could harm them. The NPS will review this position in the spring to determine whether it is okay to open Coldwater Spring to permitted events.
According to the Superintendent’s Compendium anyone with comments on these and other regulations are invited to write to the superintendent who issued them in the first place:
Superintendent
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area
111 E. Kellogg Blvd., Suite 105
St. Paul, MN 55101
However, given the lack of responsiveness of Labovitz and others in his office to concerns about the attitude of MNRRA toward the Dakota and other Native people, a more useful response may come from:
Could the National Park Service be a fit guardian for the Gettysburg Battlefield if it announced publicly that it did not accept the belief that a profoundly important battle took place there, one that was a turning point in the history of the Civil War and indeed for the history of the country, and that because of this belief the battlefield should be approached with great reverence? What if the Park Service announced that it understood that the battlefield had some contemporary importance among Civil War re-enactors, but that the battlefield was also important among nature lovers, polo players, and others with various agendas and that the Park Service had to serve all its many stakeholders and that the role of the battlefield as a public park open to everyone would adequately serve these many constituents?
It is hard to imagine that this would ever be possible. Yet the Park Service’s Twin Cities branch, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area or MNRRA, is now managing a public park located at Coldwater Spring, a site considered to be a sacred place and traditional cultural property by the Dakota people, from whom the spring was obtained in the Treaty of 1805, while maintaining that it does not accept the cultural and historical connection of the Dakota to the site. The record of MNRRA and its employees has, for the past six years, made clear that it does not and will not ever respect the cultural heritage of the Dakota. The full record of the Park Service’s biases against the Dakota–and its unfitness to manage Coldwater Spring–has been discussed in great detail on this website over the last six years. Perhaps the earliest inkling of Park Service attitudes was revealed in what follows a story first published online on September 13, 2006. For those who do not know the issues involved this is a good place to start.
Every minute, for thousands of years, 70 gallons or more of cool, pure water have gushed from Coldwater Spring, on the west bank of the Mississippi River just upstream from where the Minnesota flows into the Mississippi. It is a part of the area’s complex watershed, a remarkable feature of an area the Dakota people consider to be the center of the world. Historic sources disclose that the Dakota have considered and do consider springs to be sacred places, but Coldwater Spring, now located on the Bureau of Mines (BOM), Twin Cities Campus property in Hennepin County, Minnesota, is not, according to the National Park Service, a place of traditional cultural importance—a “traditional cultural property” or TCP—for Dakota People.
This Park Service opinion was revealed in late August 2006, in a statement rejecting the report of an outside consultant which had found that Coldwater spring is a TCP. Contrary to the consistent statements of Dakota people and Dakota communities, other Indian people, and other experts, the National Park Service will admit only that the spring has “contemporary importance to many American Indian people.” The Park Service has declined to explain much about the announcement, including any clue about how it reached that conclusion. Nonetheless, the announcement appears to be a direct challenge to the historical and cultural beliefs of Dakota people in Minnesota and elsewhere and to the sovereignty of their tribal governments. It is difficult to know whether this was intentional or merely the result of bad judgment.
An Environmental Review
On August 18, 2006, the National Park Service sent out a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and supporting documents describing the cultural, historic, and environmental characteristics of the Bureau of Mines (BOM) property and considering the effects that a variety of actions might have on the property. The Bureau of Mines property contains the place where Coldwater Spring comes out of the ground, where its waters are gathered in a pool and where these waters begin to flow to the Mississippi River. One of the reports attached to the DEIS was a study (Ethnographic Study) analyzing whether Coldwater Spring is a TCP, the term used for sites of places of traditional importance under the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) criteria.
People not familiar with the process may wonder why the term TCP is used for what most people might call, simply, a sacred site. As it happens the federal government has appropriated that ancient term sacred for its own purposes, so that to be sacred under federal law, in relation to Indian people, a place must be declared such by a tribal government or religious leader. The source for this is President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order of May 24, 1996, No. 13007, dealing with Indian Sacred Sites:
“Sacred site” means any specific, discrete, narrowly delineated location on Federal land that is identified by an Indian tribe, or Indian individual determined to be an appropriately authoritative representative of an Indian religion, as sacred by virtue of its established religious significance to, or ceremonial use by, an Indian religion; provided that the tribe or appropriately authoritative representative of an Indian religion has informed the agency of the existence of such a site.
Coldwater Spring reservoir in winter, in the 1880s. Original in the Minneapolis Public Library.
Given this special definition under federal law, a place of cultural importance to Dakota people might not be considered a TCP by the federal government but could be a sacred site, or visa versa.
Dakota and other Indian people hold Coldwater Spring to be important because of their religious and cultural beliefs and their history. The spring and the Bureau of Mines-Twin Cities Campus property are in federal hands today because in 1805, at the mouth of the Minnesota River, two Dakota leaders from nearby villages signed a treaty in which they gave the U.S. government, as represented by Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, the right to use the area around the mouth of the Minnesota to build and support a fort. Article 3 of the treaty provided that the Dakota people would continue to have the right to “pass, repass, hunt or make other uses of the said districts, as they have formerly done, without any other exception, but those specified in article first [relating to the use of land for a military post].” The meaning of this provision has not yet been determined by a court of law, but it should be clear to anyone who hopes to make use of the Bureau of Mines property that this right, and other possible rights, may be perpetual, even though Dakota people have been barred from the property for long periods of their history.
From the 1805 to the 1850s the Dakota did have access to Coldwater Spring. As described by some of the Indian consultants and in historical documents, Coldwater Spring was part of a neutral ground, a place where many Indian groups came for treaties and ceremonies. Ojibwe leaders camped at Coldwater Spring when they signed the Treaty of 1837, the first sale of their land in present-day Minnesota. A number of individuals of mixed Dakota, Ojibwe, and European ancestry lived around the spring. The wife of Benjamin Baker, the most important trader located at the spring, was Ojibwe, as were the wives of some of Baker’s employees. Marguerite Bonga, of African and Ojibwe descent, was married to Jacob Falstrom, a Swedish blacksmith. Nancy Graham, the daughter of Duncan Graham and a Mdewakanton Dakota woman named Ha-za-ho-ta-win, was married to Joseph Buisson.
Specific examples of Dakota people using the water from Coldwater Spring, or any spring at all for that matter, are difficult to find in written sources. [However see the later research that showed that the Dakota did come to the spring, as discussed in my new book Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota.] Does this mean that Dakota people never came to the spring, did not understand its importance, or did not value it? One might as well ask whether it is possible that the soldiers at Fort Snelling did not understand the importance of the spring because there are so few records of soldiers actually going there. In historical documents there are actually very few direct references to people drinking water at the spring, even though we know that it was crucial to the support of the fort and to the historic settlement located around it. Springs were important but they were a part of the landscape that was seldom mentioned in historical documents.
Few whites wrote about the Dakota beliefs about springs in general or Coldwater Spring in particular. Perhaps the most important written information about the spring is found in the work of Gideon Pond, a missionary who thought of Dakota religious beliefs as being superstitions, but who still recorded them with detailed though sometimes incomplete descriptions. Springs for the Dakota were “breathing places of the wakan,” or the sacred and mysterious, including such beings as Unktehi, “the God of the waters.” Unktehi was specifically associated with the hill just west and north of Coldwater Spring, Taku Wakan Tipi, “the dwelling place of the gods,” known to the soldiers at Fort Snelling as Morgan’s Mound. In historic times the area between Coldwater Spring and Taku Wakan Tipi was a wetland, nourished by seepage from Coldwater Spring—or from Coldwater’s own sources—around Morgan’s Mound. Archaeologist Robert Clouse’s 2000 survey of the Bureau of Mines site showed deeply buried wetland soils at the north end of the property, further evidence of the persistent presence of Unktehi (Clouse Report, p. 68).
The significance of Coldwater Spring for Dakota people today comes in part from the traditional reverence that springs have had for Dakota people. But Coldwater Spring is an especially important spring because of its association with Taku Wakan Tipi and with the larger Mdote—or more accurately, Bdote—Minisota area, an area with a number of linked sacred places, including Pilot Knob or Oheyawahi, which was also associated with Unktehi in Dakota beliefs. Mdote Minisota is the place of Dakota creation, the center of the world, which helps explain the rich number of Dakota sacred places in the area. In fact, though Mdote refers to the mouth of a river, there is no reason to believe that the place of creation is limited to the water at the mouth. An early French source uncovered by the anthropologist Carolyn Anderson describes the first woman coming out of the ground on the plain between Mdote and St. Anthony Falls. This means that the sacred area of Dakota origins is much larger than the literal mouth of the Minnesota River.
Coldwater Spring, Taku Wakan Tipi, Oheyawahi, and many other places in the Fort Snelling area also have significance for Dakota people for their history, including the tragic events culminating in the imprisonment of 1300 [1600] people below Fort Snelling and their subsequent exile from their homeland. Only a few Dakota were allowed to stay in Minnesota. It was not until many years later that some were allowed to come back to Minnesota to revisit the graves of their ancestors on Oheyawahi. Did any return to Coldwater Spring at that time? The closest Dakota community was across the river in Mendota, but it would have been difficult for the Mendota people even in the 1880s to visit a spring that now was part of a system piping water to an expanded fort stretching toward the present-day airport. This expanded fort was the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Department of Dakota. It supplied the troops and equipment for battling the relatives of the Minnesota Dakota on the Plains. Access to the spring has also been restricted during the last 50 years of Bureau of Mines control. Up to recent times Native American religious practices have also been restricted. (See for example.)
Preserving Dakota Places of Importance
Until recent years no sites of traditional cultural importance to Dakota people in Minnesota have been included on the National Register of Historic Places. The first was Boiling Springs in Scott County, nominated by archaeologist Scott Anfinson and placed the Register in December 2002. This site had the advantage of being fairly discreet and uncontested; although it is important, it lacks the profound importance of the areas around Fort Snelling. Oheyawahi or Pilot Knob in Dakota County was nominated in 2003 and determined to be eligible in January 2004 by the Keeper of the National Register. It was the first Dakota site within the Mdote [Bdote] Area to be acknowledged in this way, although other locations have been discussed. While the boundaries of the Fort Snelling Historic Landmark and District areas include some sites of Dakota importance, documentation on these areas includes little, if anything, that acknowledges Dakota history, culture, beliefs, traditions, or even presence. Several consultants have suggested that a Mdote Cultural District, embracing the many sites of importance to the Dakota and other tribes, should be documented fully and nominated, but no actions have been taken to do so.
Because of the lack of Dakota sites on the National Register, and because of the profound importance of the Mdote area, and because of the tragic history of 1862 and its aftermath, special sensitivity is required by all who deal with properties located there. Such sensitivity appears to have been applied in documenting and analyzing Coldwater Spring by the firms Summit Envirosolutions and Two Pines Resource Group, under contract with the National Park Service as part of the current Bureau of Mines environmental review process.
Researchers under the lead of principal investigator Michelle Terrell studied the written documentation about the spring and then consulted with six key Dakota cultural experts, one key Ojibwe cultural expert, eleven official representatives of four Dakota communities and one Ojibwe reservation, and six additional Indian and non-Indian consultants. Their report describes this research and consultation, and it carries out the usual National Register analysis familiar to cultural-resource specialists but often viewed as arcane by others. The consultants determined that Coldwater Spring is a traditional cultural property for Dakota people, under Criteria A and C of the National Register criteria. The analysis, recorded in a fourteen-page discussion and a later seven-page summary, is extensive and thorough and will not be repeated here, except to quote the unmistakable conclusion:
As a result of this evaluation, Coldwater is recommended as being significant at a statewide level as a TCP associated with the Dakota communities in Minnesota. The spring is recommended as eligible for the National Register under Criterion A for its association with Mdote. The spring is also recommended as eligible under National Register Criterion C as representative of the type of natural springs (many of which have been destroyed or which are no longer accessible) that figure significantly in Dakota traditional practices and are important for the continued maintenance of their cultural identity (Ethnographic Study, p. 79).
Boundaries are often a key issue with TCPs. The consultants discussed the boundaries that Dakota and Ojibwe people assigned to Coldwater Spring. The report noted:
There is a consensus that the boundaries of Coldwater Spring include not only where the water flows from the rock wall, but also the source of the spring and the location where the spring water finally deposits into the Mississippi River (Ethnographic Study, p. 93).
As a result of this finding, the consultants recommended that “the actual boundary determination be made in consultation with the Dakota and Ojibwe communities.”
Had the Park Service accepted the findings of its own consultant it would have provided the agency the opportunity to do the right thing and make up, in a small way, for years of inattention to Dakota sacred places. But apparently the facts or the analysis in the study were not to the liking of the Park Service. Exactly what process the agency used to evaluate the report, where this evaluation took place, and when a conclusion was reached are matters that the Park Service refuses to discuss with the public. But in issuing the DEIS, the Park Service stated:
After review of the study, the National Park Service has determined that Camp Coldwater Spring does not meet the criteria in the NHRP for designation as a TCP. However, Camp Coldwater Spring and Reservoir are important to some Indian people for ritual and ceremonial reasons. The importance ascribed to this area, including the spring and reservoir and the subsequent need for protection, is addressed in the alternatives presented in this draft EIS (DEIS, p. 26)
No citation was given for this comment, but on the second page of the separate Ethnographic Study, the Park Service placed the following notice intended to contradict the entire content of the consultant’s report:
National Park Service Statement
The National Park Service recognizes that Camp Coldwater spring and reservoir located on the former Bureau of Mines property holds significant contemporary importance to many American Indian people. However, the evidence presented in this report does not meet the criteria of the National Register of Historic Places for determining them eligible for the Register as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP).
In May 2006 the National Park Service sent a review copy of the Ethnographic Study to Stanley Crooks, chairman of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, and, possibly, to other Dakota communities. Providing slightly more information than in the DEIS, JoAnn Kyral, superintendent of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), the local agency handling the EIS process, stated in a letter to Crooks:
The study offers substantial background information about Dakota Indian Life around the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers and about Dakota traditions related to springs and water. However, little evidence is provided that relates directly to the site specific use of the Center [BOM-Twin Cities Campus] property or Coldwater Spring. After thoroughly reviewing the evidence provided in the report the National Park Service has concluded that neither the Center nor Coldwater Spring meet the specific criteria in the National Register to designate the area as a TCP. However, it is clear that the spring has significant contemporary cultural importance to many Indian people, and the spring is already a contributing element to the Fort Snelling National Historic Landmark and the Fort Snelling National Register of Historic Places District. In recognition of this contemporary cultural importance and the contributing element factors, an alternative will be included in the EIS that would provide protections for the spring and reservoir (Ethnographic Study, Appendix B).
Kyral’s words are condescending, suggesting that although the federal government rejects the Dakota communities’ claim to the spring as a historical and cultural feature and in the process rejects the history and cultural traditions on which it is based, the Park Service will 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 is not significant; its white history is. The irony of this juxtaposition is evidently lost on the Park Service.
These short statements concerning the Park Service’s TCP decision provide little information about the deliberative process that produced this determination to reject the findings of the consultant. This continued after the DEIS was released. In late August in response to a request for more information about any deliberative process, an agency spokesperson would only state:
The stated position is that of the National Park Service based upon an agency internal review.
In other words, the Park Service wished to make clear that The Agency—meaning anyone from the Park Service Director Fran Mainella, Regional Director Ernest Quintana in Omaha, some park superintendent in Hawaii, or one or two local staff in Minnesota including, possibly, Superintendent JoAnn Kyral, Project Manager Kim Berns, historian John Anfinson, cultural anthropologist Michael J. Evans, or even MNRRA’s Singing Ranger Charlie McGuire—had decided that Coldwater Spring does not meet the criteria as a traditional cultural property for Dakota people. The Park Service wanted everyone to know this but was unwilling to provide reasons, and use of the term “internal review” suggests that the Park Service would claim an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act to anyone who requesting documentation of the process.
Determinations and Pre-Determinations
Why should a finding without explanation or justification be taken seriously? In the wider world of historical study, you are expected to support your theories with facts and arguments. In such a world the “determination” of the Park Service, presented without evidence or argument, would not be taken seriously and it would have little effect. In this case the Park Service is supervising an EIS process, and the determination is actually a pre-determination, one that biases a process that is supposed to be an open and honest one. An EIS is not merely the discussion of the consequences of various actions, but a compilation of information presented as facts. By presenting information in certain ways, a government agency can pre-determine the result it wishes to achieve. In rejecting the recommendation of its consultants on the TCP question without actual discussion of the information or issues raised, the Park Service has raised questions about the consultant’s facts and analysis without actually presenting any useful alternative facts or analysis.
In sharp contrast, the Park Service has reported the recommendations of their other outside consultants without apparent bias. In discussing the 2001 Clouse Report, the DEIS states exactly what Clouse’s recommendations were, including further testing of one of the archaeological zones on the BOM property and the expansion of the boundaries of the Fort Snelling Historic Landmark to include archaeological Zone II surrounding the spring (DEIS, p. 80). Similarly, a section on the 2002 Henning historical study stated that:
the author concluded that neither the spring nor associated features are independently eligible for the NHRP. However, she did conclude that Camp Coldwater Spring does contribute to the significance of the Fort Snelling National Historic District, the Fort Snelling National Historic Landmark, and the Old Fort Snelling State Historic District (DEIS, p. 81).
The Henning conclusions, which are contained in a skimpy half-page analysis in the Henning report—in contrast to the 21-page discussion in the Ethnographic Study—are highly questionable. There is a wealth of information contained in the Henning report and in other sources that would show that Coldwater Spring is independently eligible for the NHRP, were the Park Service disposed to undertake such a examination.
By presenting Henning’s conclusions with no comment, the Park Service gives them tacit endorsement. But in writing about the Ethnographic Study, the Park Service not only does not report the findings of the consultants, it does not examine the evidence they presented fully or accurately. The DEIS states:
During the course of that study, some participants identified springs as a general category of culturally of culturally important resources due to spirit entities that inhabit such water sources, and the ceremonial use of water for various purposes. Although no historical documentation of American Indian use of Coldwater Spring was found, the oral traditions and histories collected during the investigation suggest that natural springs like Coldwater Spring are associated with sacred healing. Camp Coldwater Spring is currently used by some members of federally recognized Dakota and by Ojibwe communities, and by other American Indians as a source of water for ceremonies (DEIS, page 81).
It is important to note the distinction made here between “historical documentation” and “oral traditions and histories.” One would have thought this kind of ethnocentric distinction—which holds written evidence to be more important than oral tradition—had long been discredited in applications of National Register criteria. Only someone with a confirmed bias would suggest that this is a fair presentation of the evidence in the Ethnographic Study. Coldwater Spring is not just a spring among springs, all of which may be sacred to the Dakota, but it is the most visible surviving spring, one that happens to issue in part from Taku Wakan Tipi, the very place where Unktehi was said to reside. The Park Service knows these facts but chooses not to mention them, for reasons the agency has not shared.
Coldwater Spring also happens to be within the area of Mdote Minisota [Bdote Mni Sota], a place of great importance to the Dakota people. But even in relation to Mdote [Bdote], the Park Service inserts its own bias:
Camp Coldwater Spring was also identified as important in relationship to the Mdote Minisota or the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. While the confluence is not located within the area of the proposed actions, the interviewees stressed the importance of considering Camp Coldwater Spring within this larger context (DEIS, p. 82).
Not content to draw conclusions about Coldwater Spring opposite to those reached by its own consultants, the Park Service here presumes to draw its own boundaries for a Dakota place of traditional importance, without any particular evidence and without consulting with Dakota people. Evidence in the Ethnographic Study and in other sources contradicts this statement, extending the boundaries of the place of Dakota creation usually described by the term Mdote a great distance away from the actual mouth of the Minnesota River. The Park Service chooses to ignore its own evidence. One can only assume that for the Park Service’s BOM agenda to be achieved, it is convenient for Coldwater Spring to be entirely independent from the place of Dakota creation.
The Park Service DEIS also shows its bias in the way the Park Service discusses the Dakota communities who find Coldwater Spring to be of traditional cultural importance. The DEIS notes:
The primary American Indian communities that have been identified as having an association with the area surrounding the spring are the Mdewakanton Dakota, who currently reside at the federally recognized Lower Sioux Indian Community; Prairie Island Indian Community; Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community; and Upper Sioux Indian Community (DEIS, p. 82).
By naming individual communities, the report suggests that four local groups, out of some unnumbered Dakota, are represented. In fact these are the entirety of federally recognized Dakota communities in the state. In 1999, the chairman of each community separately sent the same letter to a Minnesota state official which said
As you are aware, the Coldwater Spring and the area at the meeting of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers have held significant cultural and practical importance to Indian people for thousands of years. We once again state our support of our spiritual leaders that the Coldwater Spring is a spiritual and cultural sacred site (Ethnographic Study, Appendix G).
Referring to later letters from tribal leaders, Park Service conveniently fails to mention that the leaders had previously declared that Coldwater Spring was a “sacred and cultural site,” reporting only a later statement that “Coldwater Spring holds significant cultural importance to the Dakota People” (DEIS, page 28).
Similar bias occurs when the Park Service reports the statement contained in a letter from the chairman of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma, representing descendants of the people who were in the region of Mdote [Bdote] several hundred years ago. Marianne Long, director of tribal operations in 1999, wrote: “Camp Coldwater is a sacred site for the Iowa Tribe and other Native American groups” (Ethnographic Study, Appendix G). The Park Service says it attempted to contact the Iowa Tribe about these statements but “no response was received from the tribe” (DEIS, p. 29).
What particular response was needed from the tribe? Having said that the place was sacred, what purpose would be served by elaborating? In a similar situation in 2003 a Dakota elder was questioned repeatedly about his statements describing another sacred place, one also said to be connected to Unktehi. The elder had limited his responses to general statements about the sacredness of the place. He was then asked for more specific answers about Unktehi. In response the Dakota elder said:
You asked me something in a different way. . . . And see, that’s a European concept. If they don’t get an answer, well then they’ll ask another way. They can’t accept what they’ve been told. They want to change it . . . . So we don’t change nothing. Same with our ceremonies, we don’t change them. Our ceremonies come through dreams and visions. Our way of life is conducted . . . through dreams and visions. We don’t change it. We don’t have that right. It is not of our making.
What part of “sacred” does the Park Service fail to understand? Why would any tribe want to consult with a Park Service that presumes to tell tribes about the meaning of their own heritage, history, and culture? Why is it so difficult for the Park Service to accept the beliefs of Dakota and other groups about sacred and traditional places? [See Is it sacred now?]
Their Own Set of Secret Facts
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is credited with saying that every person is entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts. In the case of Camp Coldwater, the Park Service has reserved the right to its own set of secret facts, so as to support an opinion that disagrees with that of its own expert consultants. Why are Park Service officials determined to carry out this course in what is supposed to be an open and honest process? One possibility is that the Park Service really does not want to have to consult with Indian people about what should happen to Coldwater Spring. Park Service officials may not want to sit down with Dakota people and discuss where the sacred area of Coldwater Spring begins and where it ends. If that is the case, the Park Service’s determination to reject Coldwater Spring as a TCP is as it appears, nothing less than a direct insult to the Dakota, to their history, their culture, and also their sovereignty, in other words, an invitation to “Drop Dead.”
Thomas F. King literally wrote the book on traditional cultural properties, in National Register Bulletin 38, entitled “Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties,” the report that originated the term. Since then King has written a number of other books dealing with such places. King has repeatedly noted the proclivity of federal agencies to argue with Indian people about the meaning of sacred and traditional places. King maintains that government agencies could save time and money simply accepting the beliefs of Indian people and moving on to negotiate with particular groups about the effects of federal actions. In this case, however, Park Service, unable to find a consultant who agreed with its belief that Coldwater Spring was not a traditional cultural property, has simply decided to veto the findings of its consultant. That, of course, has happened before with federal agencies.In Places that Count: Traditional Cultural Properties in Cultural Resource Management(p. 142), King states that one of the best quick TCP studies was written about Chequamegon Bay by John Anfinson, then a historian with the Army Corps of Engineers in St. Paul. King writes that in the 1990s “Anfinson spent a couple of days talking informally with tribal members and captured the essentials of the bay’s traditional significance in a half-dozen page memorandum.” The Corps was not satisfied with his report, and apparently, according to King, Anfinson was not either. Two years later the Red Cliff and Bad River Bands of Chippewa paid Thomas King several thousand dollars to write a TCP study. King himself observes that his report says virtually the same thing as Anfinson’s, only in more words.
Anfinson was still with the Army Corps in St. Paul in November 1999, when he received a call from Michelle Heller of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. At this time a coalition of Indian people, environmental groups, and many others were seeking to stop the construction of Highway 55 through the Coldwater Area. One point of contention was a set of oak trees, some over 137 years old. Some people said the oak trees were sacred. At the same time the issue of whether the spring or the trees were TCPs had been raised. Earlier in the year the firm of Berger and Associates, working for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), had issued a report that rejected TCP status for the trees but suggested that Coldwater Spring could very likely qualify.
At the boundary between development and preservation, Coldwater Spring comes out of the ground between highways 55 and 62 and the lush vegetation alongthe Mississippi River near Fort Snelling, in the former Bureau of Mines Property in Hennepin County, Minnesota.
Michelle Heller of the Advisory Council called Anfinson to get his opinion on the Highway 55 issues, perhaps because there had been and would continue to be complaints to the Council on the way in which the historic and historic resources of the area had been treated by MnDOT. Notes of that phone conversationwere kept by Heller or someone else at the Advisory Council and were made available to me in 2001 as a result of a FOIA request:Ms. Heller questioned Dr. Anfinson about his knowledge of the highway 55 project and of the background of the area and tribes.
Dr. Anfinson explained that his brother Scott is an archeologist in the SHPO office and they have talked about the case. The Corps has not been involved as there have been no permit issues for the area yet. Dr. Anfinson has experience in dealing with Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) since there are 28 tribes in his Corps district.
Dr. Anfinson provided some background on the history of the area. He then stated that there is no basis to argue for the four trees or anything in the area as a TCP. He said that the spring supposedly had traditional cultural association but expressed that written evidence needs to be compared to oral testimony in determining whether this is a political move on the part of tribes.
Dr. Anfinson has been using bulletin 38 in his determination of what constitutes a TCP though he believes that this bulletin needs to be reworked. He explained that what constitutes a community needs to be defined. For example he asks, “Do eight or ten people out of a tribe of 100 constitute a community?He also questioned what would be considered as an adequate level of evidence and states that these things need to be defined by the National Register of Historic Places. He stated that the issue of the spring is a National Register question and suggested that we talk to Carol Schull [the Keeper to the National Register]. He believes that the evidence should be weighed to determine whether it constitutes a community interest to some Native American community. He doesn’t believe that the evidence is there to support them.
He further went on to explain that this issue has been embarrassing to the Native American community because of the large amount of protesting with the lack of evidence to support the claim.
One month later MnDOT cut down the oak trees and proceeded with highway construction, but later state legislation forced a redesign of Highway 55 to protect the flow of water to the spring. In June 2000, after highway construction had been going on for over six months, the Advisory Council turned down a request to intervene. That year John Anfinson went to work for MNRRA, the agency now handling the Bureau of Mines process. What light, if any, can these statements said to have been made by Anfinson in 1999 cast on the “determination” of the Park Service about the Ethnographic Study in 2006? Assuming that Anfinson actually made the statements or something like them in 1999, one might argue that he has been biased since then against the idea of the spring as a TCP and that now he must have been a voice this year for rejecting the conclusions made by the authors of the Ethnographic Study. However, even if that were the case, Anfinson is a historian, someone who knows the importance of evidence. It is unlikely that Anfinson would have believed that the Park Service’s statement about the study would be an adequate response to such a thorough discussion of an issue as contained in the Ethnographic Study. He would know that if the Park Service wished to dispute the finding of its consultant, the response should be as detailed and as careful as the consultant’s analysis, and that any response should be in writing, so that the public can know the basis for the Park Service decision. [It turned out later that this was giving Anfinson too much credit.]
By now Anfinson must also understand what everyone else does, that the issue of Coldwater Spring is very different from the issue of the four oak trees. There was a wide range of opinion about the trees; there is unanimity about the spring, at least outside the Park Service. Anfinson spent many months in 2001 negotiating a draft Memorandum of Agreement that would have addressed the concerns of Minnesota Dakota about the protection of Coldwater Spring had the land been sold to the Metropolitan Airport Commission, a plan then under consideration. The agreement included this provision:
Whereas the Bureau of Mines Closure Team has consulted with the Upper Sioux Community, Lower Sioux Indian Community, Prairie Island Indian Community, Shakopee Mdewakanton Community, and the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma which may hereafter be referred to in this MOA as “concurring federally recognized tribes,” and they have declared the area around the Mississippi and Minnesota River confluence, specifically including Camp Coldwater Spring, culturally and historically important and have been invited to concur in this MOA.
Perhaps for purposes of reaching an agreement that all parties would support, this statement does not include the information that these federally recognized Indian groups also called Coldwater Spring a sacred place. Still the agreement acknowledges aspects of Dakota beliefs about the traditional importance of the spring. Having negotiated this agreement and knowing what he knows about the practice of history, John Anfinson would not likely suggest to the Park Service that a “Drop Dead” strategy on the idea of Coldwater as a TCP was a good idea.
Rather, the impetus for the Park Service’s stance must have come from someone so thoroughly steeped in bureaucratic methods and with little knowledge of the way the discipline of history works as to believe that the conclusion of a consultant can be rejected simply because someone at an agency says so.
Perhaps Anfinson or someone else could have explained to the Park Service how counterproductive this approach is. The Park Service’s stance does little to undercut the traditional cultural importance of Coldwater Spring, but it does do great damage to the Park Service itself. The Park Service’s arrogant assertions about Coldwater Spring have already had and will continue to have a profound and disproportionate effect on the federal government’s environmental review process relating to the disposal of the Bureau of Mines property. As a result it is unclear if the Park Service is capable of carrying out a fair and unbiased environmental review. The best that can be said is that some aspects of the Park Service’s Coldwater Spring agenda are now on the table for everyone to see, instead of being hidden by exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act.
It is time for the National Park Service to leave Coldwater Spring in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The NPS, or its local branch, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), is unfit to manage this sacred and culturally important site which first entered federal hands through the Dakota Treaty of 1805. As reported in the last few days by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, MNRRA has largely completed the removal of the ruined Bureau of Mines buildings that marred the site for many years. Restoration of the landscape is continuing. Now it is time for NPS and MNRRA to leave this property and turn its management over to Dakota people for whom the spring is a sacred site and a place of traditional cultural importance.
Over the past six years the National Park Service has shown that it is completely unfit to be the steward for a site of such importance to Dakota people. Largely through the efforts of MNRRA Historian John Anfinson (as fully documented on this website), backed by his superiors in the Park Service, MNRRA has cut corners, stonewalled, and disrespected the requests of the Dakota people for a fair consideration of its cultural heritage. In 2006 the MNRRA rejected the finding of a respected consultant which supported Traditional Cultural Property status for Coldwater Spring as a Dakota site. This and many other aspects of MNRRA’s mismanagement of the traditional cultural status of Coldwater is described in detail in Chapter 5 of our new book Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota, newly published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. Here, for example is a section on MNRRA’s rejection of TCP status for Coldwater Spring in 2006:
Despite this report and the earlier testimony of Dakota people, NPS staff announced publicly in August 2006 that they would not accept the study’s findings about Coldwater Spring. By that point the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area superintendent had already written to Dakota communities, stating, “After thoroughly reviewing the evidence provided in the report the National Park Service has concluded that neither the Center nor Coldwater Spring meet the specific criteria in the National Register to designate the area as a TCP.” The letter concluded by acknowledging that the spring had “significant contemporary cultural importance to many Indian people” and noting that “the spring is already a contributing element to the Fort Snelling National Historic Landmark and the Fort Snelling National Register of Historic Places District.” In recognition of the “contemporary cultural importance” of the site to the Dakota and the significance of the site in Fort Snelling history, protections
would be recommended.
The 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 the claim was based, the park service would try to protect the spring because it was 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.
In the years that followed MNRRA continued to forestall any fair consideration of the TCP status, standing by the self-serving and cursory 2006 finding rejecting the TCP status of Coldwater. Then, as described in Chapter 5 of Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota:
In January 2010, at the end of the environmental review process, the National Park Service announced it would retain ownership of the property for itself, to be used as a public park. The park service issued a press release: “The public’s interest in this site throughout this process illustrates the great significance that the Dakota and so many others attach to this special place . . . We are excited to be the caretakers, and to work with many partners to tell all the stories associated with this place. There are many layers of history associated with this site, from the Dakota to European settlement to 20th century mining technology.” Since the park service had consistently denied any historical or cultural connection of the Dakota to the property, the statement was surprising. Rejecting Dakota traditions and then using them in the agency’s historical interpretation appeared to add insult to injury.
Such statements also illustrated the hypocrisy of the Park Service’s entire environmental review process and the emptiness of its consultation with Dakota governments. Even today MNRRA continues to claim that it has consulted adequately with Dakota tribal governments and Dakota people. It lists the many letters it has written to various Dakota tribal groups. Unfortunately MNRRA can provide no comparable record of actual conversations that it has had with Dakota leaders or Dakota people or any case where it actually listened or learned from Dakota people. Consultation through one-sided correspondence is no consultation at all.
Clearly, from the beginning MNRRA had one goal only for Coldwater, to make itself the manager of a park. But MNRRA has shown through its cultural biases that it is unfit to manage a culturally significant and sacred place like Coldwater. The agency has finished its work of removing the ruins of the Bureau of Mines. Now it is time for MNRRA to leave.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” as William Faulkner wrote. I was not deliberately thinking of this quotation on February 5, 2011, when I again stood in the circle of peoples around the fire, honoring the memory of of those Dakota women, children, and older men who in November of 1862, were force-marched across southern Minnesota to the fenced-in camp below the bluff on which sat Fort Snelling.
I was remembering those people, the hardships and cruelty they suffered from the treatment they received from the military personnel, the harsh Minnesota winter, the illnesses for which they had no immunity nor reserves to resist — the on-going trauma of the events of the summer of 1862 etched into every fiber of their bodies and spirits.
In re-membering these people, acknowledging their presence in the circle with us on February 5, I was also re-membering a little four-year-old girl, whose German immigrant parents had been counseled by Dakota acquaintances to seek shelter from the warfare about to break out . . . A four-year-old girl who is my mother’s father’s mother — my great-grandmother–and whose presence also I could feel there in the circle.
We are standing on holy ground, I was thinking, ground blessed by the blood and bones of those who perished here in the winter of 1862-1863. On holy ground, witnessing to the deaths of the people, and the deaths of the dreams of the people. On holy ground, honoring the losses, the grief–individual and collective. And on holy ground, pregnant with the hope that our gathering for these ceremonies, this re-membrance, will bear witness to our commitment to truth-gathering; to listening to, honoring and being with, people’s stories; and to seeking circles that lead to the healing of the historic trauma which we all carry within us. These, then, were some of the thoughts going through my mind, during the ceremonies on February 5th at Fort Snelling State Park. In this place the past was truly not dead. It was very much alive.
I also thought of the words of Waziyatawin who wrote about Fort Snelling: “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.” She went on to say: “It is time we take down all the forts, literally and metaphorically.”
We need to share more stories. We need to take down all the metaphorical forts. One hundred fifty years of methaphorical forts around the reality of what happened before, during, and after 1862-1863, are 150 years too many for the Dakota, Minnesotans, and citizens of this country.
And if, in the sharing of the stories, the uncovering of the truth of what has happened over the centuries of domination of one people over another, we discover that the healing of the historical trauma that sits within each of us–oppressed and oppressor alike–depends upon literally taking down the fort, this Fort Snelling, what would keep us from jumping at the chance?
Mary Black Rogers, an anthropologist and ethnohistorian from Minnesota who studied the culture and history of Ojibwe and Métis communities in Canada and the United States, died in Vancouver, British Columbia, on January 27, 2011.
The daughter of Fred R. Bartholomew and Stella LaVallee Bartholomew, Mary Rose Bartholomew was born on May 6, 1922, in Minneapolis, where she grew up. In the 1940s she married a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot from Texas named Alan J. Black, from whom she was later divorced. After World War II she contracted tuberculosis, which she survived after the removal of part of one lung. In 1950 she enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where she received a BA in 1954 and a MA in 1958, both in Anthropology, with a focus on Native Americans. She wrote her MA thesis on “The Value System of the Winnebago Indians.”
Mary Black Rogers at Weagomow Lake, Ontario, in 1975
In 1960 she enrolled in graduate program in Anthropology at Stanford University, where she was a student of anthropologists Joseph H. Greenberg, George D. Spindler, and Paul Kay. Four years later she started her fieldwork among the Red Lake Ojibwe at Ponemah, Minnesota. In 1967 she completed her dissertation, “An Ethnoscience Investigation of Ojibwa Ontology and World View,” (authored under the name Mary B. Black) a study of the Ojibwe language and the way in which Ojibwe speakers classified the natural and human worlds, as reflected in their rich language. She described the way in which the Ojibwe saw the world around them as animate, including trees, plants, rocks, and other natural features that other cultures saw as mute, lifeless, and inanimate.
The Ojibwe elders Mary came to know at Red Lake were Native speakers, for whom English was a second language. Learning Ojibwe, viewing the elders as her teachers, she developed a special relationship with Red Lake spiritual leader Dan Raincloud, Sr. In an essay about Raincloud published in 1989, Mary wrote with gratitude of what she learned from him:
Dan always operated from the true center of “his Indian way,” whether dealing with his own people or outsiders. His distinctiveness emanated from the very centrality of the role he sustained, central to what remained of the traditional culture. This was the essence of the complex identity he imparted.
Mary also wrote about Dan Raincloud’s knowledge and about his sense of humor. She said that Raincloud had initially given her an Ojibwe nickname that he said meant “I wonder why.” It was a reflection not only of her anthropological calling, but also of the curiosity that many others who knew her saw also.
Mary was inspired by the previous work of the anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell, who had learned through his studies that the Ojbwa on the Berens River in Manitoba made no distinction between “natural” and “supernatural.” Ojibwe people believed, he wrote, that they obtained many of their abilities from powerful non-human beings, or spirits. Black-Rogers noted that her research at Red Lake strongly supported this idea. She wrote that the people there did not separate “special” or “magical” powers from “those which are requisite for everyday living.” Instead they included within everyday skills, “the abilities for which they must depend on non-human beings.” She wrote: “There seems to be a continuous spectrum of powers, going down to the most mundane, which are receivable from some non-human source and which are not inherent in human beings.” Such abilities might include the success at hunting, or designing and making beadwork for which a human beings needed to show gratitude for their success. At the other end of the spectrum would be things completely beyond “natural human abilities.” Both ends of the spectrum involved “supernatural” involvement; the difference was merely one of degree.
In later years, Mary applied her understandings of the way the Ojibwe at Red Lake viewed the world to analyzing the history and culture of the Ojibwe people in the past, as it was recorded in historical documents. Her influential 1985 paper, later published as “Varieties of ‘Starving’: Semantics and Survival in the Subarctic Fur Trade,” showed how an understanding of Ojibwe semantics could explain the way Ojibwe people interacted with fur traders, in complex exchanges. English words such as “starvation” or “starving”—when used by traders to describe the condition of Indian people who came to their trading posts—had much more complex Ojibwe nuances than apparent to people today or even to traders in the past.
After completing her graduate studies, Mary was hired by the anthropologist Edward S. Rogers, curator of ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, to work with him in a study of the history and culture of the Weagamow Lake (or Round Lake) Ojibwa-Cree First Nation in northern Ontario, near the Manitoba border. Subsequently she married Rogers. In their work together at Weagamow Lake, Ed and Mary developed a close relationship with the community. Mary was adopted by the elder Mamie Quequish to replace a child who had died fifty years before. Ed and Mary left Weagamow Lake for Burlington, Ontario, in 1975, but continued to have contact with the community. After his death in 1988, Edward Rogers was buried at Weagamow Lake with the permission of the community. His gravestone described him as a “Weagamow Friend.” Mary returned to the community for the burial and again in 1991 and 1994. She also received visits from community members in Burlington.
Mary Black Rogers, in 1991, with Mamie Quequish, the woman at Weagamow Lake who had adopted her 1969
After her 1991 visit she wrote in a letter to friends,
In late September, another visit to my husband’s grave was very rewarding. By bush plane north from Sioux Lookout to Weagamow Lake, Ontario, in whose cemetery he was honored to be buried in 1988, by the northern Ojibwa/ Cree people we had known for so long. It was joyful to see so many old friends and adopted family. This year it coincided with their annual feast which culminates a week of hunting and cooking in the old ways. These ways have not disappeared altogether, but the youngest echelon of Weagomow people had never seen it full-blown. This was for me a time of mourning, and also of renewal. I was happy to be able to take the trip, though it was a bit more tiring than I recall from the past.
Like her husband, Mary was interested not only the current culture but in the history of Weagamow community, many of whose members had descended from a man known as Ojicak, or Crane, in the 18th century. As a result, the community was mentioned in records of the Hudson Bay Company and governmental agencies as “The Cranes.” Mary continued to do research on “The Cranes,” in the years after returning from Weagamow, presenting her findings in articles and at conferences. In the 1980s Mary became interested in studying the history of the people of mixed European-Native marriages, sometimes called Métis. Her interest stemmed not only from her anthropological work but also from her own ancestry. Her mother Stella LaVallee was the granddaughter of Antoine Pepin, a trader and blacksmith who lived in the Coldwater Spring area near Fort Snelling in the 1830s, later moving to Little Canada, north of St. Paul.
For Mary, studying the history of people like Antoine Pepin was a “Roots” project, a link between her own family history and the broader sweep of events. Though they had long careers in the fur trade that took them across the Great Lakes and northwestern Canada, they founded local communities in Minnesota and Canada and were intermediaries socially and culturally in the fur trade and in settlement times, She saw the potential in telling a broad history through the “life histories” of particular families, which she believed would demonstrate the broad patterns in the development of the Métis people. In her later years Mary engaged in extensive research on Métis communities, presenting her ideas in conference papers and in an extensive correspondence with colleagues and Métis descendants. Her letters were as full of detail as her notes and papers, reporting her lastest finds and her newest ideas. Though she never completed her study of Pepin and other Métis, her ongoing work in showing how the large picture of Métis history could be told through individual and family histories has inspired many others to undertake such research.
My own initial knowledge of the work of Mary Black Rogers came from reading her thoughtful foreword to a published collection of Ojibwe stories entitled Clothed in Fur: An Introduction to an Ojibwa World View, which included annotation about the Ojibwe culture contained in the stories. In her foreword she wrote about how story-telling among the Ojibwe was a method for teaching young people about the culture. She herself had learned Ojibwe culture from hearing such stories, when doing her fieldwork. She remembered how impatient she had been in hearing such stories, with the “strange happenings and seemingly irrelevant connections and unexplained motivations” contained in them. Yet she noted that when Ojibwe children were told such stories they were not as impatient. They could deal with the unknown because there was much they did not understand about life in general. Mary wrote:
I have observed children enjoying a story immensely even when large portions remain beyond their understanding. They apparently can accept those parts, like so much in their daily experience, rest upon knowledge yet to be attained, contain clues to a future unraveling of the mystery of life—the still largely mysterious life of the adults around them.
Mary compared the reactions of children to acceptance many people have in reading mystery stories, which contain puzzles but also of the promise of an understanding to be reached in the end. She concluded:
The readers of this book will receive some outside help in western-culture style, since the authors have generously provided explanatory keys to the Ojibwa doors to life. But please, dear reader, don’t cheat and look at the ethnographic sections first. Be like the child of the culture, or at least like the ethnographer—trust that the meaning is there; proceed as thought the only way to find it is the hard way—by living, and wondering.
When I read these words they were inspirational, but I did not understand the extent to which they came from a complex, nuanced mind, one capable of extremely detailed analysis of culture and history. In 1984 my friend John Fierst and I both had research to do at the Hudson Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg, where Ed and Mary were working on The Cranes, the people of Weagamow Lake. They seemed as eager to know about our research as they were in telling us about theirs. We had several good meals with them, (at Ed’s expense, I think) and had a delightful time. Because Mary was working on her Roots research, relating to Minnesota history, I often saw her and corresponded with her in the following years.
Like many others, I soon became the recipient of long, richly detailed letters, full of information, ideas, and an amazing energy that came from someone who in person gave the misleading impression of being frail. After Ed’s death she started to spend part of the year in Minneapolis for research at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. She and I often went to lunch at It’s Greek to Me, or any other Greek restaurant that might happen to be nearby. The last time I saw her was in 2007, when she came to the launch party for my book and we had lunch at Christo’s. Now I wish that I could talk with her again, but reading her articles, her rich letters, I feel again the inspiration of her energy, her knowledge, and her understanding. Even though she is gone, our conversations with Mary and her ideas will continue.
Those interested in reading some of Mary’s many published essays and articles should know that during her professional career her work was published under several names. Her first work was published under the name Mary Bartholomew Black or Mary B. Black. Later on, after her marriage to Edward Rogers her name was usually given as Mary Black-Rogers or Mary Black Rogers, without the hyphen. Eventually I hope to put together a more complete bibliography. For now, most of her essay on her adoption at Weagamow Lake can be read online at Google books.
The quotation in the title concerning the powerful underwater beings known also to the Dakota Taku Wakan demonstrates the perils of government bureaucrats attempting to substitute their own judgments about Dakota places of cultural importance for the cultural interpretations of Native people. The statement makes clear the primacy that government officials place on written documents, even in discussing cultural matters about which oral tradition and the testimony of living people has been presented, and it is so full of errors of fact and interpretation that it is difficult to know where to begin in addressing them.
When public officials present themselves as arbiters of the meaning of Native beliefs and spiritual practices, the results are unfortunate if not embarrassing for all concerned. The statement about Unktehi is from a National Park Service evaluation of the Traditional Cultural Property (TCP) study (or Ethnographic Resources Study) on Coldwater Spring, located on the former Bureau of Mines-Twin Cities Campus property in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The evaluation was done by Michael J. Evans, a Park Service Senior Cultural Anthropologist, in January 2006. He sent the evaluation to Kim Berns of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) in St. Paul, in whose office historian John Anfinson was doing an evaluation of the TCP study. Anfinson, who also exchanged emails with Evans on the topic, is credited by the Park Service with having made the determination that Coldwater Spring was not, as far as the Park Service was concerned, a place of traditional cultural importance to the Dakota, contrary to the findings of the outside consultants who wrote the Ethnographic Study.
Dakota people have often described St. Anthony Falls–as well as the ice dams that formed there in winter and sometimes gave way in a massive rush of water–as manifesting the power of Unktehi. William H. Jacoby photograph, ca. 1875, Minnesota Historical Society.
The Evans evaluation was included with a series of emails from that time period released by the National Park Service in spring 2010 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by MinnesotaHistory.net. To his credit Evans was forthcoming in providing these emails documenting his and others’ participation in evaluating the TCP study. Evans not only included his own and Kim Berns’ emails but some written by John Anfinson, who was then in the midst of responding to the TCP study.
Interestingly John Anfinson himself did not produce these same emails in response to the FOIA request. He produced no emails at all showing his communication about the TCP study, despite a FOIA reqeuest for just such documents. In a followup to the Park Service FOIA officer Nene McManus in June 2010, I asked why Anfinson had failed to provide these emails. In response, McManus wrote that she would look into the matter: “I have contacted John Anfinson regarding his emails and will get back to you as soon as I can–he may or may not have kept these.” Six months later there has been no further response.
It should be noted that under the National Park Service’s Director’s Order #19, regarding records management, “NPS records in the possession of individual employees are not the personal property of those employees and are to remain accessible to other employees unless restricted by law.” John Anfinson’s records recording his deliberations in reaching the conclusion that Coldwater Spring was not a TCP are part of the record of the EIS process relating to the Coldwater Spring site and should be available to the public.
While Anfinson has resisted revealing much information about his evaluation process, Michael Evans did explain his thinking on the issue, as quoted in full at the end of this article. What is striking about the evaluation is how it reveals the problems with public officials evaluating Native culture and becoming arbiters about issues such as TCPs. Many of the issues raised are not only wrongly based but appear testy and querulous at the very least, as though Evans (like Anfinson, as reported elsewhere) was making clear how difficult it would be to convince him of the idea that Coldwater Spring could be a TCP for the Dakota. While the author questioned the factual basis for the spring as a TCP, he relied on erroneous statements to support his own arguments. The paragraph on Unktehi, in particular, is full of errors, revealing a profound lack of knowledge of Dakota culture. It should be noted that Unktehi is (or rather, are, since there are many) associated with the entire area of Bdote, which explains part of the connection to Coldwater Spring. It was that point, brought out by present-day Dakota people in the Ethnographic Study that Evans sought to dispute:
Unktehi – The discussion of this religious being in Dakota cosmology should probably also include the information presented by Walker for the Lakota. In brief, [James R.] Walker’s texts indicate that Unktehi was a malevolent being (but not a spirit being) that was perceived as being dangerous and to be avoided. There is no reference in Walker’s work that Unktehi gave the medicine lodge to the Lakota. While it is to be expected that some cultural differences will be identifiable between present-day Dakota and Lakota peoples due to different experiences each have gone through since the Lakota bands moved from Minnesota to the northern Plains, this difference in cosmology (the Dakota interviewees describing Unktehi as “good;” Walker’s interviewees describing Unktehi as “bad”) deserves some analysis to see whether the difference in beliefs affects the cultural significance of the spring and any proposed management regimes for the area.
Almost every word of this confused account about Unktehi requires commentary.
A view of part of Bdote, the mouth of the Minnesota River, looking up the river, an engraving done in the 1880s, based on a water color by Seth Eastman from the 1840s.
1. Why would it be necessary for the Dakota of Minnesota to agree with an ethnographer’s report about the beliefs of the Lakota of South Dakota? Even if the ethnographer’s report is accurate, this is a bit like saying that the Swedes disagree with the Norwegians about something. It is not a surprising assertion, but it provides no evidence about the nature of the subject being discussed.
2. On the nature of Unktehi, there is, in fact, plenty of evidence in James R. Walker’s Lakota work about the multiple nature of Unktehi as a power for good and ill for the Lakota. One remarkable account that is included in his book Lakota Myth (p. 130-33) was obtained from an Oglala man named Left Heron. It tells of “the Mysterious Lake,” the place known as Mde Wakan or Mille Lacs, around which many Dakota and Lakota communities were located for centuries. The account tells of the Unktehi who lived in the lake and wished to marry the daughter of the chief of the people who lived there.The Unktehi said: “I have nothing to give you but if you will put the seed of things that are good in the water and in the earth, they will grow and you can have plenty to eat.” The Lakota chief agreed and as a result the Unktehi taught the Lakotas about how to grow things on the shore of the lake:
When I push the ice from the waters, then I will appear to you. When I do [this], then the next moon, put the seed in the earth and I will put the seed into the water.
So when the ice was on the water, the chief watched it and he saw the Unktehi push it upon the lake and he watched for the Unketehi but he did not see him.
In the moon when the grass begins to grow, the Unktehi pushed the ice from the waters and the chief saw him.
Then the chief put the seed into the ground (the wamnu, pumpkin, wamnahaza, corn, omnica, beans) and they grew so that there was food in the camp.
Ever afterward, when the Unkehi was seen in the lake, the people planted and things grew well. But if the Unktehi was not seen, then the things planted did not grow.
So the people made sacrifices to the Unktehi to pleas him that he might appear in this lake. . .
The Unktehi planted the seed in the water, (psa, rush; psin wild rice) and he also planted some seed near the waters (psin ca, water turnip; psin cala ca or timpsila, turnip). And he taught that these were good to eat. . . .
According to the legend, it was for this reason that they called Mille Lacs “the Mysterious Lake.” Clearly, contrary to statements of Michael Evans, it is simplistic, if not completely erroneous to say that the Lakota thought of the Unktehi as “bad.”
3. Regardless of whether Walker records an account stating that Unktehi gave the medicine lodge to the Lakota it is important to state that there are many other written sources, which agree with the points made by present-day Dakota people, and which state that the Dakota who practiced the Wakan Wacipi or medicine ceremony attributed it’s teachings and practices to Unktehi. An article in the Dakota Friend, published by the missionaries Samuel and Gideon Pond, and reprinted in the March 3, 1852 Minnesota Democrat, contained a detailed discussion about Oanktayhee, as the Pond’s spelled the name of that powerful being. The author of the article, probably Gideon Pond, wrote that
The form of the Oantayhee, Onkteri, is like that of the ox, and he is covered with a similar coat of hair. His eyes are like the moon in size and his horns he can instantly extend at his pleasure, so that they will reach the sky. This is also true of his tail. Awful destructive powers–wakan powers, are in the horns and tail. There are many of them both male and female, and propagate their kind like animals. The earth is animated by the spirit of the female, while the dwelling place of the of the male is in the water. It is on this account that the Dakotas address their prayers to the earth as their Grandmother, and the water as their Grandfather.
As powerful and terrible might be the power of the Unktehi, as described here, they also had great creative power. The fact is that the Unktehi were key in one of the Dakota creation stories, involving a great flood, and how after that “he then proceeded to institute the much celebrated Medicine or Wakan Dance.” The role of the Unktehi in the Wahpeton Dakota medicine ceremony was also discussed at great length in the classic work of anthropologist Alanson Skinner, Medicine Ceremony of the Menomini, Iowa, Wahpeton Dakota, with Notes on the Ceremony among the Ponca, Bungi Ojibwa, and Potawatomi (available online in pdf form from Google Books). If Park Service experts want to debate Dakota culture with Dakota people, should they not be obligated to acknowledge the evidence of such obvious sources as the invaluable record left by the Ponds and Skinner? If Park Service experts put a premium on written records and respect the written records more than the testimony of Dakota people should they not have looked at such important written sources before drawing their conclusions? To overlook this information provides further evidence of the faulty and self-serving evaluation process carried on in the Park Service bureaucrats about Coldwater Spring.
4. Evans points out that Unktehi was a “being” rather than a “spirit.” It is unclear how this sheds light on whether Coldwater Spring was a TCP or not, but it raises interesting semantic issues. The first Europeans to visit the Dakota were sometimes called wasicun, a word sometimes translated inexactly as “esprits,” in French or “spirits” in English, not to indicate that they were ethereal beings but as a commentary on their amazing technology, which the Dakota viewed as beyond human capabilities. Perhaps “powerful beings with superhuman power” would be a better term. In this very sense the Unketehi were beings with amazing power, manifested through weather events such as floods, or land forms, such as places like Pilot Knob/ Oheyawahi, a hill said to have been produced with an Unketehi plowed into the bank at Bdote, the mouth of the Minnesota River.
5. Despite all the errors in this paragraph, Evans ends on a good note pointing out that the beliefs of the Dakota about Unktehi should be considered in relation to “any proposed management regimes for the area.” This excellent point was ignored by Anfinson or other officials in the Park Service who, having rejected Dakota beliefs about Coldwater Spring ignored its relevance for ownership or management of the site.
6. What happens when “experts” go beyond the areas of their “expertise”? No expert should ever put himself in a position of arguing with Native people about the meaning of their own beliefs. The fact that it happens in the National Park Service demonstrates a distorted and bureaucratically-based system for dealing with Native cultural resources that is in great need of change. When will the National Park Service acknowledge this problem and act to remedy it?
7. Oh, and by the way, apparently James R. Walker’s work does say that the medicine ceremony came from Unktehi. A fragment entitled “Addresses by Shamans at a Wacipi Wakan,” in Walker’s work Lakota Belief and Ritual (p. 118), stated, simply, “Unktehi gave the Wacipi Wakan.” Oh well, never mind.
*****************
Here is the full text of Michael J. Evans attempt to tell Dakota people what their own culture means. Many will have disagreements with almost every statement made below, especially the interpretation of the meaning of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act for Indian people. Those interested in evaluating the Ethographic Study on which these comments are based can find the study online in pdf form, though readers should keep in mind that the document is the final version so the page numbers cited will not be the same as those mentioned below by Michael Evans. The text below is based on a scanned version of a hard copy of the document and is subject to later correction of typos, if necessary:
[Michael J. Evans], Comments on draft ethnography manuscript.
The writing style is clear and readable. Maps and charts are clear.
The report lacks any description of research methods or a recognizable ethnography research methodology. This is not an example of systematic social science, as called for by the SOW and emphasized at the post-award meeting. “Informal” interviews (p. 5) are not an example of systematic social science. The authors state that the interview questions listed on p. 8-9 “were not asked in a systematic and standardized way. Rather, the questions were on hand to refer to as appropriate.” The questions were supposed to be part of the interviews, so when was it not appropriate to ask them during what was supposed to be an interview as part of the study? This is a major problem with the draft.
While the authors claim that the interview questions were used to gather ethnographic data, there is little text in the report that reflects or points to this data. After review of the interview transcripts and notes, many of the interview situations do not appear to have had any of the interview questions asked. This is a major problem with the draft.
The lack of a recognizable methodology or the use of a set of research methods commonly found in ethnography research projects, makes it difficult to see how the conclusions outlined in the document were developed.
Citing Mike Agar and Penn Handwerker are not sufficient for describing a research methodology or individual research methods. As explained in the post-award meeting, these two books are representative of two ends of a continuum of ethnographic research methods. A standard text is Bernard’s “Research Methods in Anthropology,” but the authors of the report do not appear to have used any of the information or principals discussed by Bernard.
The identification of Coldwater Spring as culturally important to Ojibwe people (in an ethnic group sense) is not sufficiently supported by the interview or ethnohistorical data, not withstanding the fundamental problems with the lack of any systematic ethnographic research. I recommend dropping the Ojibwe as an ethnic group from the report and title, and focusing the text on what is actually known about the cultural importance of the site to the Dakota interviewees.
The text of the report appears to try and generalize a cultural importance of the spring to all Dakota (and Ojibwe) people. The lack of systematic research does not allow the generalization of a few comments about the spring (many from non-tribal members or even non-Indian individuals) to either a specific tribe or a tribal ethnic group (for example, “all Dakota”). Ethnographic research is commonly structured so that any information and data gathered can be both specifically and generally applied to specific tribal groups or tribal ethnic groups. This study appears not to have done that, hence the validity of the generalizations are questionable.
Unktehi – The discussion of this religious being in Dakota cosmology should probably also include the information presented by Walker for the Lakota. In brief, Walker’s texts indicate that Unktehi was a malevolent being (but not a spirit being) that was perceived as being dangerous and to be avoided. There is no reference in Walker’s work that Unktehi gave the medicine lodge to the Lakota. While it is to be expected that some cultural differences will be identifiable between present-day Dakota and Lakota peoples due to different experiences each have gone through since the Lakota bands moved from Minnesota to the northern Plains, this difference in cosmology (the Dakota interviewees describing Unktehi as “good;” Walker’s interviewees describing Unktehi as “bad”) deserves some analysis to see whether the difference in beliefs affects the cultural significance of the spring and any proposed management regimes for the area.
Inipi – The discussion of the Inipi or Sweat Lodge does not appear to be relevant, since there is no information presented regarding the Coldwater spring area as being associated with sweat lodge activity or ceremonies. Presumably the authors are trying to draw the implication that sweat lodges may have sometimes used spring water (if available), and since Coldwater Spring is a spring, that people may have used the water for sweat lodges, if they used sweat lodges in the area. There is nothing in this discussion, or the presumed implications, that distinguishes Coldwater Spring from any other spring, or distinguishes presumed activities at Coldwater Spring from similar activities that have occurred in other places.
P. 7 – “official and unofficial representatives” – There is no such category as an “unofficial representative.” Official tribal representatives speak on behalf of their tribe, which is why the tribal governments are asked to identify tribal members to serve as tribal representatives. Tribal members who are not official tribal representatives are often interviewed when they are identified by their tribal government or other tribal members as knowledgeable on the subject being discussed. In research methods terms, these individuals would be “key cultural experts.” An article in American Anthropologist by Romney discussed one way of identifying key cultural experts (and how many people would be needed in order to have confidence that a subject would be adequately covered) through consensus modeling.
p.35 — I question whether a state of overgeneralization, or a stretching of statements beyond what the data will support is occurring. For example: on page 35, the statement is made “Pike’s 1805 treaty was cited frequently during interviews with both Dakota and Ojibwe tribal members.. .”.Because of the lack of any systematic interviewing, it would be meaningless to quantify what “frequently” refers to. However, given that only about 11 interviews were conducted, what does “frequently” mean? Of the interviews provided for subsequent perusal, only a couple were with Ojibwe interviewee’s, so how many times did Pike’s treaty actually arise during the course of an interview? Treaty rights were not deemed important enough to include as a topic in the original set of interview questions, so was the topic mentioned often enough in casual conversation to warrant making it an interview topic, and if so, was everyone asked about it? Is this why Ojibwe interviewees were cited as having “frequently” discussed a Sioux (i.e. Dakota) treaty?
p. 36 – Another example of what appears to be overgeneralization occurs on page 36. The sentence reads “… American Indian responses to this undertaking were received from Dakota and Ojibwe representatives, …”. My perusal of the interview data, and statements elsewhere in the report, indicate that only one Ojibwe tribe, and two Ojibwe individuals were included in the study. Who did the individuals represent, the Ojibwe people (a Native American ethnic group), an American Indian tribe, or just themselves? Again, the lack of systematic research, and a tendency to generalize beyond a supportable point with the data that is available, weakens the argument being presented, that Coldwater Spring, specifically, is a culturally important place.
p. 53-54 – The discussion of ethnographic resource identification should include some pertinent information: the concept and definitions of ethnographic resources are specific to the National Park Service, found in NPS Management Policies and cultural resource management guidelines used for park management. This discussion should cite the source, the full definition, and indicate that the definition as presented in the management policies of the NPS only applies to NPS-owned land.
On page 54, the definition of traditionally associated groups is incomplete. The full definition from Management Policies 2001 is:
“traditionally associated peoples—may include park neighbors, traditional residents, and former residents who remain attached to a park area despite having relocated. For purposes of these Management Policies, social/cultural entities such as tribes, communities, and kinship units are “traditionally associated” with a particular park when (1) the entity regards park resources as essential to its development and continued identity as a culturally distinct people; (2) the association has endured for at least two generations (40 years); and (3) the association began prior to establishment of the park.
p. 61 -1 believe the statement that American Indian religions were outlawed prior to 1978, and that American Indians were prohibited from practicing their traditional religions prior to the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, is incorrect. The text of AIRFA is (http://www.cr.nps.gov/local-law/FHPL_IndianRelFreAct.pdf) [actually the correct current link to this document is http://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/FHPL_IndianRelFreAct.pdf]:
Section 1
On and after August 11,1978, it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional) religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.
Section 2
The President shall direct the various Federal departments, agencies, and other instrumentalities responsible for administering relevant laws to evaluate their policies and procedures in consultation with native traditional religious leaders in order to determine appropriate changes necessary to protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices. Twelve months after August 11,1978, the President shall report back to Congress the results of his evaluation, including any changes* which were made in administrative policies and procedures, and any recommendations he may have for legislative action.
In summary, I think that the authors of the draft report have overstretched their available data, in part due to the lack of a coherent and consistent research methodology and research design. The present report does not reflect a study that is an example of systematic social science. I will be interested to see if the authors have other information that allows them to address the concerns outlined above. Unfortunately, I do not know of any easy way of fixing the problems regarding the lack of systematic research methods or a coherent research methodology, short of redoing the work.
The recent statement by John Anfinson, historian with the National Park Service’s Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), that Coldwater Spring was “latched onto” by various groups including American Indians as a sacred place is merely one more example of the Anfinson’s closed mind and biased point of view. He and the agency for which he works, made up their minds a long time ago. Here’s more evidence of that. In 2008 a vehement, non-Indian Coldwater Spring supporter sent me an email saying:
I am getting quite concerned about the lies being spread about Camp Coldwater in the papers by [name deleted]. Sacred waters, now healing waters. Sacred trees. Its that old saying, when a lie is said often enough, people start to believe it. I know for a fact that [name deleted] asked [name deleted] to lie about 4 sacred trees to stop MNDOT in MHHA park. [Name deleted] keeps making things up as he and his merry little band want the land for a Casino down the road.
I responded noting that the oak trees were a moot point, since they had been cut down eight years before, and that there were no Dakota people who wanted a casino at Coldwater Spring. I said:
What is important is that the spring be preserved and respected . . . . . I am not in a position to tell anyone about the particular power of the water in the spring, but I believe there is plenty of evidence about the importance of the water there for Dakota people, in relation to Mdote, Taku Wakan Tipi, and the wakan wacipi [medicine ceremony]. I am ready to argue that point with anyone who denies it, based on historical and cultural evidence.
The Coldwater Spring supporter forwarded these emails to John Anfinson at MNRRA, who wrote of Park Service plans for the protection of the spring. He added:
I am not going to get into any extended discussion of the sacred character of the spring. I have said what I believe about that already. The bottom line is that it is tremendously important to many people. It will require the best effort to define its restoration, protection and access protocol.
Anfinson was unwilling to discuss the issue of “the sacred character of the spring.” He had made up his mind. And that mind, as indicated in the statement made in September 2010, to the Pioneer Press reporter, was inclined to agree with the non-Indian who objected to Dakota beliefs about the importance of the spring, suggesting that they were manufactured. Yet MNRRA has pretended to have a open mind about the issue. In recent “White Paper” written in January 2010 by the staff of MNRRA, the agency stated:
For the Draft EIS, MNRRA’s Cultural Resources Specialist, Dr. John Anfinson, evaluated Coldwater Spring’s eligibility for the National Register as a TCP under 36 CFR part 63 and under National Register Bulletin 38, Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional! Cultural Properties. He found that Coldwater Spring did not meet the National Register criteria or the guidelines of Bulletin 38. MNRRA presented this initial finding in the Draft EIS. The TCP review process under Section 800.4, however, was just beginning. MNRRA’s position stated in the Draft EIS was simply an initial finding and open for discussion.
The final determination on the TCP status was open until MNRRA sent out the final MOA for signature on January 20, 2010. And, MNRRA is still willing to consider the designation.
Despite these last claims, neither the MNRRA nor John Anfinson were willing to consider or discuss the designation of Coldwater as a TCP or as a sacred place after August 2006. Anfinson had made up his mind. Mind, and case, closed.
