Great Plains Pilgrimage Summer 2025- Minnesota

Have you ever wondered? Wondered about things unseen and misunderstood. How do you get at a truth that has been pretty effectively erased and not necessarily buried, but allowed to sink into the ground and slowly be forgotten?

As an educator, I did my best to work into lessons some forgotten history. Some unbelievably unkind and unfair human practices that don't make the textbooks that we have little to no control over (at least in public education, but I didn't always work the public side).

Let's take war for example. No small topic, no quick and easy explain. Yet humans have been warring for our entire existence. 

Let's also look at power. Throw in conquest, and we are getting at what makes us an ugly species. 

Bring it home to our country; specify the United States, for contrary to what some may think, we are only a small part of North America. Then we can narrow it down.

Have I mentioned genocide? Oh no, not that dirty word. It truly is the dirtiest word in the English dictionary, IMHO.

Once upon a time I did an entire unit on "genocide." One of the essential questions was the poser: Was what happened to the Indigenous Peoples of the United States considered genocide? Boy was that ever a unit! Some folks knew so little of these people, their history, or their current situation. We all sucked up the knowledge like thirsty people who have not had enough water for a long time.

We started with a timeline, went to numbers- compared them to current stats (THEY ARE STILL HERE I kept insisting), then some specific acts, and finished with local history and a field trip around to try to reimagine our landscape. It was powerful stuff.

But we are a small little New England town with a quaint and (untrue) little narrative of the Pilgrims and the Indians that we are fed a history of every Thanksgiving that many want to keep eating from.

Well I don't partake, nor do I eat. I quest. This time it was to the Great Plains region of our country; visiting Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa on my journey.

I start with Minnesota because that is where the plane let me off. 

FORT SNELLING

Right near the airport and right at the confluence of 2 rivers in the twin cities area, this unbelievably quiet place was hard to take in. 

Quiet today b/c the fort wasn't open, but my mind tried to peel back thousands of years and imagine people gathering at this confluence. 

The area was once (and may still be) called Bdote- where 2 waters come together. The Dakota have a long history here; to them this land is sacred- surrounded by spiritual sites and graves of relatives.

It was hard to arrive at the place knowing its history. It's "other history." The Fort is a tourist attraction (rebuilt in the 1960s) when opened + some claim it is the birthplace of Minnesota, heralding the patriotic and pioneering spirit of colonizers, while ignoring the "other history."

In a city/cities that combined has almost 1 million humans, this quiet and nature filled spot seemed almost buccolic...

And it could be if you ignored this sign and the horrid history it contains. This is where the question of genocide first came up for me. And I remind you and myself it is BUT ONE of many places where poor human behavior took place. 

It was a very confusing area with limited signage (b/c the Fort is the draw, not necessarily the trail system or the actual lands of the Dakota or the massacre).

There were other folks hiking, despite the creeping thermometer (upwards of 95 that day). I didn't bother them; instead continued my silent, solemn journey. I bet they made it to the now unmarked concentration camp below Fort Snelling.

This part of the walk was paved so I knew it likely was associated with Fort Snelling and not Dakota.

Hi sentient being! Enjoy your journey!

A useless sign I found. The order of listing told me what I already imagined. As I learned further along in my journey, even the word "Minnehaha" denoting a powerful sacred site to the Dakota was culturally misappropriated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellows, "The Song of Hiawatha," a made up tale made by a white male (not from the area) that made HWL famous with white people. I even saw "Hiawatha" streets! That this "epic" poem has stood for 170 years as a made up piece of literature touted by many makes me sick. I crave real truth, not made up stories. It is right up there with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by a white woman in fake white woman made up black vernacular that promulgated inaccurate stereotypes. Those 1850's did a lot of damage to the history of our country, IMHO. 

Let me sidetrack for a minute while I am on black folks. One interesting historical thing I found was that enslaved Black folks were also kept at the fort. Two in particular were there, made famous in their historic fight for FREEDOM. Dred and Harriet Scott met and married here. I wont go any further b/c we all know it is a sad story with a sad ending and we can't have too many of them in one blog now can we (It's the dam 1850's era again).  

As I didn't follow the hikers, nor did I have a trail guide, I quickly became lost as the temperature steadily rose. I came upon this structure in a clearing, and knew civilization (and my rental car) was near. I made it back to my car and began again.

I just had to pause and snap- this is how close the metropolitan areas of the twin cities was. Hidden history all over this place.

Another sidetrack- by the time I found Pike's Island/Wita Tanka along a very cool drive across small unpaved roads on an actual island in the convergence of the rivers), and the visitor's center, I saw these, and was ready to give in and give it a whirl. But when the woman told me the marker I was looking for was literally right outside the door, I declined the ride. Just want to note how cool it is that this state park (now I was in St. Paul) had these resources available to folks free for use.

The state of the monuments reminded me when I traveled long and far distances in search of black folks history to find weathered and old signage, as if the obligatory effort was built to fade fast so memories would fade + disappear too.

The inscription states:

This memorial honors the sixteen hundred Dakota people, many of them women and children, who were imprisoned here at Fort Snelling in the aftermath of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota Conflict. Frightened, uprooted, and uncertain of the fate of their missing relatives, the interned Dakota suffered severe hardship. At least 130 died during the cold winter months of captivity.

In May, 1863, the survivors from the camp were crowded aboard steamboats and taken to Crow Creek in southeastern South Dakota. Those who survived Crow Creek were moved again three years later to the Santee Reservation in Nebraska.

The pipestone in the center of the memorial was placed here by Amos Owen of the Prairie Island Indian Community during a ceremony in 1987. Please be respectful of this sacred place.

This memorial honors the 1600 Dakota people, many woman, children, and elders that were held in the concentration camp erected below Fort Snelling (which I probably would have perished trying to find without walking sticks nor hydration) after the Dakota War of 1862. This is the pipestone piece placed at the center on the memorial in 1987 by Amos Owen of the Prairie Island Indian Community.

As the inscription stated, a genocide took place here. Persecution continued with court cases, hangings, and even continues to this day, as the contemporary Prairie Island Indian Community has lost land to controversial construction projects and currently only has holdings to approximately 5 square miles, none of which is in the spot of the memorial.

I said my mea culpa's, bowed my head in shame, wiped my very sweaty head, and went on my way. Day one, hour one, and I already felt so heavy with the burdens of the past as I traversed the scarred lands of the Great Plains.