“As They Have Formerly Done”: Unraveling the Entanglements at Historic Fort Snelling

Abstract

The United States built Fort Snelling at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in the 1820s. Initially conceived as a means to protect American interests in the region, the fort was used in military operations across multiple wars until it was decommissioned in 1946. This essay examines the fort's role in American expansion, particularly through the lens of the US-Dakota War of 1862. In the wake of the war, Dakota survivors were forced to spend the winter in a concentration camp erected outside the fort. A century later, efforts to restore and reconstruct the fort led to the opening of Historic Fort Snelling in 1970. The fort's lengthy history-and its role in so many historical eras and events-has led to continued contestations over interpretation at the site, and even the name itself.As my nine-year-old son, Leo, and I pulled into the parking lot at Historic Fort Snelling in the summer of 2022, I noticed that the words "at Bdote"-added by the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) in 2017-had been covered up on the sign at the entrance. Fort Snelling has sat at the confluence of Minnesota and the Mississippi Rivers, a place that Dakota people call Bdote, for more than 200 years. Bdote is the Dakota place of origin, the center of who they are as Dakota people. 1 The construction of an American military fort at one of the most sacred Dakota sites underscores the enduring legacies of these intertwined histories, most notably through the ways the general public engages with the interpretation at the site.In 2019, in response to the addition of "at Bdote," Republican senators in the Minnesota legislature passed a bill to slash MNHS funding by $4 million a year. If enacted, the bill would have put up to 80 MNHS employees out of work, drastically reduce hours at historic sites, and diminish its educational programming. Criticizing the change as "revisionist history," State Senator Mary Kiffmeyer argued that "Fort Snelling is about military history, and we should be very careful to make sure that we keep that. It's the only real military history in a very unifying way