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Today (26 Dec,
2012), marks the 150th Anniversary of the hanging of 38 of 303 Sioux
men who took part in the 1862 Sioux Uprising in southern Minnesota. The anniversary of this, the largest mass
execution in U.S. history, is especially poignant in that it occurred the day
after Christmas in stark contrast to the cultural message of the holidays, and
that the cultural aspects of both the uprising and its repression have yet to
be openly dealt with by the dominant culture – although marking the 150-year anniversary
has generally re-opened discussion in a positive direction, though it remains a
discussion engaged in mostly by Native American culturalists and Minnesota
historians rather than a generalized public conversation.
The following is
an account of my 23 Sept historical tour of Ramsay County relating to the
Uprising and Native American culture in Ramsay County, Minnesota:
Sunday (23 Sept,
2012), I was fortunate to take part in a Ramsey County Public Library outing in
honor of the sesquetennial (150th Anniversary) of the Minnesota
(USA) – Sioux War of 1862.
“1862 – that was before the Mennonites came
to American in 1874… what does this have to do with Mennonite culture and
history?” one might reasonably ask.
“Quite a lot, in fact,” I
would just as reasonably reply.
The Indian Wars of
the American West play an important role in the history and ethic of the
Mennonite immigration of the 1870s to North America – especially in the United
States. In particular, the Minnesota –
Sioux (or Dakota) War of 1862 specifically opened up much of the area in
Southwest Minnesota for later settlement and agricultural development – just in
time for speculators to get the townsites and farms of Mountain Lake, Bingham
Lake, Windom, Butterfield and others set up and ready to market to the newly
arrived immigrant refugees from Alexander II’s increasingly repressive Russia.
To be fair, groups
such as the Aron Wall congregation, did not arrive in Mountain Lake until 1878
and were in no way directly related to or directly culpable for these
events. In fact, much of the farmland
purchased by those early Brüderthaler were tracts being abandoned by previous
settlers fleeing the infamous grasshopper hordes of the previous decade.
On the other hand,
these lands had only recently been opened up and made secure by American
aggression in the Dakota wars and the newly arrived Mennonites would have been
only too aware of this fact in as much as numerous family narratives record
intense propaganda on the part of the Tsar’s agents extolling the dangers and
terrors the Native America tribes and such uprisings posed to those who chose
to leave the safety and security of the Ukrainian veldts and southern Russia
for the wild frontier prairies of Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota Territory and
Minnesota.
Not only were
lands being opened up and secured by the activities of the United States army
and cavalry units, but news of the necessity of such actions in order to
encourage and guarantee settlement of those lands was an important
consideration for Mennonites pondering a move to the New World in a weigh-off
between religious freedom and unknown dangers.
Finally, this war
marked the beginning of a massive ethnic relocation that would greatly influence
the Mennonites of the Great Plains culturally by bringing the Dakota peoples to
new homes near future Mennonite settlements near Brandon, Manitoba, Pine Ridge,
South Dakota, Wolf Point and Fort Peck, Montana and many other, smaller
reserves.
In fact, the
establishment of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Reservation in Montana
would eventually lead to President Wilson’s decision to open up those lands to
settlement between 1911 and 1915 – an invitation many Mennonites would
enthusiastically accept as they founded farms, businesses, schools and churches
in present-day Lustre, Volt, Grand Prairie, Larslan, Oswego, Frazer and Wolf
Point. Similarly, other Mennonites would
settle on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.
Ghost Trails and Places provided the
urban inhabitants of developed landscape the same opportunities afforded those
of us who grew up on those rural reservations.
It was easy for us to imagine the Indian villages, hunting camps and horse
pastures of the First Nations as we toiled under their shadows summerfallowing
or swathing hay. Remnants of this
history are still readily and easily apparent to even the most casual
hiker.
The cities of St
Paul, Roseville, White Bear Lake, Little Canada and Centerville have largely
expanded over the earlier native landscape of Ramsey County, mostly erasing such
physical reminders of their own extensive period of Dakota habitation – but not
completely.
Not-so-amateur
historian David Riehle has developed a remarkable annual tour of the accessible
former village sites and farm grounds of the Dakota or Kaposia culture in and
around St Paul. In fact, the original
village center of St Paul was a Dakota settlement Imnizaskadan, meaning “White
Cliffs,” along the banks of the Mississippi adjacent to the current municipal
airport. While all traces of the village
have long disappeared, the site itself remains visible to visitors from a well
maintained vantage point in front of the terminal – a vastly under-visited yet
highly-recommended, tourist destination.
According to
Reihle, Imnizaskadan was abandoned in the 1837 Treaty and the Dakota or Kaposia
moved downriver near South St Paul and finally to the reserves along the
Minnesota River where the 1862 war began.
Reihle’s tour is
filled with narrative and facts – both I and my travel companion, who grew up
in Roseville, learned a lot. The
greatest strength of this tour lies not in the narrative but in the actuality
of being almost physically transported back to the geography of the Dakota and
seeing the remnants of this geography underneath the modern urban construction.
Our other major
destination for the day would be Lac au Sauvages or Savage Lake and Gervais
(Jarvis) Lake.
Savage Lake,
located in Little Canada, was known to the Dakota as Day Camp because it was a
day’s journey from Imnizaskadan – a day’s journey with all the implements and
supplies necessary to move from the farms and winter camp along the river, up
the bluff (via Swede Hollow) to the summer grounds and autumn ricing lakes
around Savage Lake and points west and north.
To illustrate this
point, we investigated several former trails now located under railroads and
highways such as the Trout Brook Ravine (I 35-E), the Goose Lake Trail
(present-day Centerville Road), Rice Lake Road Trail, Shakopee Trail and the
trail from the Kaposia villages.
One finds it
difficult to adequately describe the usefulness of this tour. While one could easily trace the route of
Trout Creek on a map, the reality of the former world and our changes or impact
on this landscape and cultural geography become apparent only by physically
following the remains of these trails, in seeing the rise and fall of the
ridges that had to be traversed (involving a 300-foot climb from the
riverbottom), and the physical sense of security that one would feel in
inhabiting Savage Lake.
Only from there
and from seeing the eccentric bends and junctions in these old trail routes,
can one realize Riehle’s hypothesis that Savage Lake may have been a major
junction of trade, hunting, agricultural, commercial and migration routes not
far from the boundary between the Dakota and Ojibwe nations (near present-day
White Bear Lake) – a busy intersection along the essential highway system of a
former culture.
While Reihle
encourages us to consider the disjoint between this populous and wealthy urban
center (St Paul), and the present reality of the Dakota descendants on Crow
Creek Reservation in South Dakota (the statistically poorest county in the
United States), descendants of the Mennonite refugee settlers can take away the
historical, geographic and moral lessons of our own immigration narrative and
its impact on the geography, culture and ethnicity of the Great Plains.
Clearly, I do not
find any ethical questions in the Mennonite settlement of these areas – the
early settlers had little knowledge of cultural and geographic realities prior
to their arrival, or of the minds and politics of the governments, railroads
and speculators from which they purchased their farms and communities. But one would find it compelling to better
understand the role the Mennonites more-or-less naively played in the
resettlement and relocation of the First Nations tribes of the greater Agassiz
and Assiniboia regions and to perhaps become more understanding of and
sympathetic towards Native American claims for restorative justice – to the
point of establish a spirit of supportive cooperation rather than fear or
competition over lost opportunities, scarce resources and limited futures.
In fact,
Russländer Mennonite descendants are somewhat uniquely positioned to understand
and empathize with the impact of that stage in history on the Dakota culture in
its similarity to the forced migrations, loss of lands and villages,
homelessness, often near starvation, deprivation and generally negative refugee
status experienced by the Russian Mennonites who remained behind to experience
the Russian Revolution, Collectivization, two world wars, forced removal,
expulsion and the near-tragic ending of our own historical Great Trek as the lands in Chortitza, Borosenko, Molotschna, Samara
and the Kaban were forcibly sold-off and culturally abandoned to new
inhabitants and politicos who felt little or no sympathy with the previous
inhabitants of that historic geography.
Ghost Trails and Places would be a great
tour to take as a means of initiating more competent and beneficial dialogue
regarding this past in North America and possibly how the Mennonites of Latin
America, especially those engaged in the current Chaco dialogues, might more
successfully and ethically help resolve past injustices and feelings of
injustice. As they always say, it
doesn’t hurt to “walk a mile in another’s
shoes” when attempting to better understand their perspectives and motivations
– even if walking really means taking a comfortable drive in a restored
1957-era city bus.
‘tag.
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