A Fort in Paradise: Part II

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

Part I of this three-part series delved into the early history of Bdote, the land where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet. The most important land to many Dakota was left untouched for thousands of years and was considered by many to be the exact spot where the Dakota people came to be, their Garden of Eden, paradise. However, as it is uniformly seen throughout early American history, the westward expansion of the United States meant the continent’s Native populations were forced from their own land. The Dakota were no exception.

During Lieutenant Zebulon Pike’s exploration of the northern Mississippi River in the early 1800s, he negotiated treaties with the Dakota to acquire land for the U.S. Government even though he never had the authority to do so. Once things settled down after the War of 1812 against the British, the U.S. Military began their plans to build a fort at Bdote.

Bdote - Fort Snelling by John Casper Wild - 1844

Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth lead troops to Bdote in 1819 and settled just up the Mississippi River at Mni Sni, or as they named it, Camp Coldwater, a freshwater spring. Construction of the stone military fort started a year later when Colonel Josiah Snelling arrived, and under his supervision, Fort St. Anthony was completed in 1825. That same year, the U.S. Military renamed the fort to Fort Snelling after the fort’s commander and architect. The first task for the fort and its troops was not to protect incoming pioneers and settlers, but to stop them from going into Dakota and Ojibwe land in order to make sure the fur trade continued unimpeded. A major reason for U.S. westward expansion was to acquire resources and make money, and fur trading was a major moneymaker.

Fort Snelling did its job of protecting the fur trade, and when more forts were being constructed further west and St. Paul, St. Anthony, and Minneapolis were being established, the need for a military fort in the area diminished. In 1858, the same year Minnesota became a state, the fort was closed. A former Fort Snelling sutler, or civilian merchant, and entrepreneur Franklin Steele purchased the fort from the government and intended to establish there the City of Fort Snelling. This vision never came to fruition, but Steele did turn the parade grounds into a pasture for his sheep.

Bdote - Fort Snelling - 1865

Fort Snelling would be reopened in April of 1861 when Governor Alexander Ramsey was the first to offer President Abraham Lincoln troops for the Union’s cause in the Civil War. The fort now served as a training center for Minnesota’s troops in the Civil War, and two years later in 1863, the fort expanded beyond its stone walls. By the time the Civil War ended, almost 25,000 troops passed through Fort Snelling. Two of those 25,000 troops were Rainvilles. My great great great grandfather Edward and his brother Louis were trained at the fort and became a trumpeter and sergeant respectively.

In 1862, Minnesota’s Civil War effort was lessened as the U.S.-Dakota War began. Fort Snelling provided U.S. troops to handle the violence in western Minnesota between settlers and the Dakota. Once that war ended, 392 Dakota men were tried and 303 were sentenced to death. President Lincoln ended up commuting the death sentences of 265 of the men, and in December of 1862 thirty-eight Dakota men became the victims of the largest mass execution in U.S. history in Mankato. The U.S. victory in the U.S.-Dakota War also saw over 1,600 non-combative Dakota interned at a two-acre concentration camp just beneath the bluff from Fort Snelling.

Bdote - Dakota Concentration Camp

Bdote - Mother with children inside the Dakota concentration campThroughout that winter, between 130 and 300 Dakota died from the cold conditions and disease. Of the 1,600+ Dakota at the camp, twenty-nine of them were Renvilles; direct descendants of Joseph Renville, my first cousin nine times removed, who was a translator for the Dakota and Zebulon Pike treaty discussions on that very land only fifty-seven years before. Never did Joseph Renville imagine his family would be interned at Bdote, and never did Edward and Louis Rainville imagine that twenty-nine of their second cousins would be interned at a fort where they were trained and stationed.

Fort Snelling, a fort that protected the fur trade between Native Americans and the United States, a fort that occupies one of the most sacred places to many Dakota, became a focal point for the darkest period in Dakota history. Once the Civil War ended, Fort Snelling became the headquarters of the U.S. military’s Department of the Dakota and provided supplies for the campaigns against Native Americans in the west. It is important to remember this grim chapter in Fort Snelling and Twin Cities history, as ignoring it would do us more harm than good. Knowing the atrocious behavior Minnesota and United States officials displayed towards the Dakota and many more nations, and understanding everyone’s story, will hopefully help the many peoples of the Twin Cities work together, learn from each other, and continue to build up this welcoming community that we all call home.

Fort Snelling’s history did not stop in the late 1800s. Stay tuned for Part III where I look into the fort’s involvement in both World Wars, and the Minnesota Historical Society’s continuous role in educating everyone from school groups to tourists at Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote.

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About Michael Rainville, Jr.

A 6th generation Minneapolitan, Michael Rainville Jr. received his B.A. in History from the University of St. Thomas, and is currently enrolled in their M.A. in Art History and Certificate in Museum Studies programs.Michael is also a historic interpreter and guide at Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote and a lead guide at Mobile Entertainment LLC, giving Segway tours of the Minneapolis riverfront for 7+ years. Contact: mrainvillejr@comcast.net. Click here for an interactive map of Michael's past articles.