Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint Anthony, but it was renamed Fort Snelling once its construction was completed in 1825.
Before the American Civil War, the U.S. Army supported slavery at the fort by allowing its soldiers to bring their personal enslaved people. These included African Americans Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott, who lived at the fort in the 1830s. In the 1840s, the Scotts sued for their freedom, arguing that having lived in "free territory" made them free, leading to the landmark United States Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford.[3] Slavery ended at the fort just before Minnesota statehood in 1858.
The fort served as the primary center for U.S. government forces during the Dakota War of 1862. It also was the site of the concentration camp[4] where eastern Dakota and Ho-chunk non-combatants awaited riverboat transport in their forced removal from Minnesota when hostilities ceased. The fort served as a recruiting station during the Civil War, Spanish–American War, and both World Wars before being decommissioned a second time in 1946. It then fell into a state of disrepair until the lower post was restored to its original appearance in 1965. At that time, all that remained of the original lower post were the round and hexagonal towers. Many of the important buildings of the upper post remain today with some still in disrepair.
The historic fort is in the unorganized territory of Fort Snelling within Hennepin County, bordering Ramsey and Dakota counties.
There are now multiple government agencies that own portions of the former fort with the Minnesota Historical Society administering the Historic Fort Snelling site. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources administers Fort Snelling State Park at the bottom of the bluff. Fort Snelling once encompassed the park's land. It has been cited as a "National Treasure" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[5] The historic fort is in the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a National Park Service unit.
Bdóte ('meeting of waters' or 'where two rivers meet')[6] is considered a place of spiritual importance to the Dakota.[7] A Dakota-English Dictionary (1852) edited by missionary Stephen Return Riggs originally recorded the word as mdóte, noting that it was also "a name commonly applied to the country about Fort Snelling, or mouth of the Saint Peters,"[8] now known as the Minnesota River. According to Riggs, "The Mdewakantonwan think that the mouth of the Minnesota River is precisely over the center of the Earth and that they occupy the gate that opens into the western world.".[9]
The confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers also became a place where Native Americans would sign treaties with the United States: the 1805 Treaty of St. Peters signed by the Mdewakanton Dakota, the 1837 White Pine Treaty signed by several Ojibwe bands, and the 1851 Treaty of Mendota signed by representatives of the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute Dakota.
In 1805, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike signed a treaty he was unauthorized to create, known as Pike's Purchase (1805 Treaty of St. Peters). There were seven Dakota members present, with only two signing the treaty: Cetan Wakuwa Mani (Petit Corbeau) and Way Aga Enogee (Waynyaga Inaźin). It ceded 155,320 acres of land in the area (400 km2).[10] The document offered an unspecified amount of money, later valued at $2,000, for the land. The treaty states:
Article One — That the Sioux nation grants unto the United States for the purpose of establishment of military posts, nine miles square at the mouth of river St. Croix, also from below the confluence of the Mississippi and St. Peters, up the Mississippi to Include the falls of St. Anthony, extending nine miles on each side of the river.[11]
Legal scholars, historians, and the Dakota have long raised questions about the validity of the 1805 treaty.[12][13] Although Pike was an army officer, he was not authorized to sign a treaty on behalf of the United States, nor were there any formal witnesses.[12] Pike represented the treaty as having been agreed with the entire Sioux nation, but in reality it was only signed by representatives of two Mdewakanton villages.[10]
From a legal point of view, there was insufficient description of the land the signers intended to convey.[12] Furthermore, there was no consideration, or payment terms, stated in the treaty.[12] Pike wrote in his journal he thought the land was worth US$200,000, but within the treaty itself he left the payment amount blank,[14] deferring to Congress to determine the final amount to be paid.[15] On April 16, 1808, when the U.S. Senate finally ratified the treaty, it approved payment to the Dakota in the amount of only $2,000.[14] Payment for the ceded lands only arrived in 1819, when the United States Department of War sent Major Thomas Forsyth to distribute approximately $2,000 worth of goods.[16] In 1838, Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro paid a further $4,000 to try to settle the matter with the other Dakota band. The issue was raised in subsequent treaty negotiations in the 1850s.[12] In 1863, the US Congress passed an act which "abrogated and annulled" all treaties with the Dakota people.[17] The moral legitimacy of the land title is still disputed.[18]
Pike Island, at the mouth of the Minnesota River, was later named after Zebulon Pike.[19]
Following the War of 1812, the United States Department of War built a chain of forts and installed Indian agents from Lake Michigan to the Missouri River in South Dakota. These forts were intended to extend the United States presence into the northwest territories following the Treaty of Ghent and the demarcation of the 49th parallel. The treaty restricted British-Canadian traders from operating in the US. The forts were intended to enforce that, as well as to keep Indian lands free of white settlement until permitted by treaty. The forts were seen as the embodiment of federal authority, representing law and order, and provided protection to pioneers and traders.[20] The Fort Snelling garrison also attempted to keep the peace among the Dakota and other tribes .[21] Also built on army land was the St. Peter's Indian Agency at Mendota.[22] The Anglo-Europeans called the Minnesota River the St. Peter's and the Indian Agency would be a part of Fort Snelling from 1820 to 1853.
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth commanded the expedition of 5th Infantry that built the initial outpost in 1819. That cantonment was called "New Hope" and was on the river flats along the Minnesota River. Col. Leavenworth lost 40 men to scurvy that winter and moved his encampment to Camp Coldwater because he felt the riverside location contributed to the outbreak.[23] The new camp was near a spring closer to the fortification he was constructing. That spring would be the source of drinking water to the fort throughout the 19th century. The spring held a spiritual significance to the Sioux. The post surgeon began recording meteorological observations at the fort in January 1820. The U.S. Army Surgeon General had made the recording of four weather readings every day a duty of the surgeon at every Army post.[24] Fort Snelling has one of the longest near-continuous weather records in the country.[25] In 1820 Colonel Josiah Snelling took command of the outpost and the fort's construction. Upon completion in 1824, he christened his work "Fort St. Anthony" for the waterfalls just upriver. That did not last long, as it was changed by General Winfield Scott to Fort Snelling in recognition of the fort's architect commander.
From construction in 1820 to closure in 1858, four army units would garrison the fort, the 1st,[26] 5th,[27] 6th,[28] 10th Regiments.[29] plus a company from the 1st Dragoons. In 1827 the 5th Infantry would be replaced by the 1st Infantry for ten years with the 5th returning in 1837.[23] The 5th would garrison the fort until the 1st relieved them again in 1840. In 1848 the 6th Infantry became the garrison.[23] The garrison would change again in November 1855. The 10th commanded by Col. C.F. Smith assumed duty. Smith would go on to become a major general.
Colonel Snelling was recalled to Washington, leaving Fort Snelling in September 1827. He died the next summer from complications of dysentery and a "brain fever".
In 1827 the first post office in Minnesota started at Fort Snelling with most mail forwarded from Prairie du Chien.[30]
Colonel Zachary Taylor assumed command in 1828. He observed that the "buffalo are entirely gone and bear and deer are scarcely seen." He also wrote that the "Indians subsist principally on fish, water fowl and wild rice".[31] While Taylor was posted to Fort Snelling, eight adult enslaved people with him died, as did several minors.[31]
Along with the construction of the fort, an Indian Agency was constructed on the military Reservation opposite the fort at Mendota. It was administered by Major Lawrence Taliaferro. In 1834 Taliaferro and the fort commandant, Major Bliss, assisted missionaries Gideon and Samuel W. Pond in developing the Dakota alphabet and compiling a Dakota dictionary.[32] Taliaferro also served as the Territorial Justice of Peace until 1838 when the Governor of Iowa named Henry Sibley his replacement.[33]
The Agency was used to hold court, and those incarcerated were sent to Fort Snelling's round tower. The town of St. Paul also sent its criminals to the tower until it built its first jail in 1851.[34] Both Fort Snelling and Fort Ripley provided this civil service for internment of criminals until the territory developed the civil infrastructure needed.[34] There were 21 enslaved people with Taliaferro, one of whom was Harriet Robinson.[35] She married Dred Scott with Taliaferro officiating at Mendota.
John Marsh, arrived at the fort during the early 1820s. He started the first school in the Territory for the officers' children. Marsh developed a relationship with the Dakota, and compiled a dictionary of the dialect used by the Mendota tribe. He had studied medicine at Harvard without earning a degree. He continued his studies under the tutelage of the fort's physician, Dr. Purcell. However, Purcell died before he completed the coursework and March moved west.[36] Major Plympton became post commander in August 1837. He made determining the actual boundaries of the fort's land a priority, doing two surveys.
After the second he sent troops to evict "Pig's Eye" Parrant from Fountain Cave downriver. Parrant's tavern there was the first commercial venture in what became St. Paul. Parrant was a notorious bootlegger doing business with both the Dakota and the soldiers, causing issues for the fort commander.[37] The eviction coincided with the arrival of the Catholic missionary Lucian Galtier. That year also brought the arrival of Pierre Bottineau, the Kit Carson of the Northwest.[38] He would serve the fort as a guide and interpreter. He could speak French and English, Dakota, Ojibwe, Cree, Mandan and Hochunk.[38]
Lieutenant Colonel Seth Eastman was commander of the fort twice in the 1840s.[39][40] Eastman was an artist. He has been recognized for his extensive work recording the Dakota.[41] His skill was such that he was commissioned by Congress to illustrate the six-volume study of Indian Tribes of the United States by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The set was published 1851–1857 with hundreds of his works.[42]
From 1833 to 1836 Dr. Nathan Sturges Jarvis (surgeon) was stationed at Fort Snelling.[43] During that time he acquired a notable collection of northern plains Native American artifacts now housed at the Brooklyn Museum.[43]
As the towns of Minneapolis and St. Paul grew and with Minnesota statehood before Congress, the need for a forward frontier military post had ceased. In 1857, with the fort's deactivation looming, the garrison was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to join the other units being sent to Utah for what became known as the Utah War.[29] With the departure of the 10th Infantry, Fort Snelling was designated surplus government property. In 1858, when Minnesota became a state, the army sold it to Franklin Steele for $90,000. Steele operated the two ferries serving the fort across both rivers at the same time he was the sutler to the fort. He also was a friend of the sitting President, James Buchanan.[48][44] At that time the fort sat on 8,000 acres (32 km2). A small portion of that land was later annexed into south Minneapolis.[49] The balance of that original land is now broken into: Historic Fort Snelling Interpretive Center (300 acres), Fort Snelling State Park (2,931 acres), Fort Snelling National Cemetery (436 acres), Fort Snelling VA Hospital (160 acres),[50] Minnesota Veterans Home (53 acres), the Coldwater Spring unit of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (29 acres),[51] the Upper Post Veterans Home, Minneapolis St Paul International Airport and the Minneapolis-St Paul Joint Air Reserve Station (2,930 acres).
When Fort Snelling was built in 1820, fur traders and officers at the post, including Colonel Snelling, employed slave labor for cooking, cleaning, and other domestic chores. Although slavery was a violation of both the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, an estimated 15–30 Africans were enslaved at the fort.[53] US Army officers submitted pay vouchers to cover the expenses of retaining enslaved persons. From 1855 to 1857, nine individuals were enslaved at Fort Snelling. The last slave-holding unit was the 10th Infantry. Slavery was made unconst