Fort Snelling, this stone fortress at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, was built by the U.S. Army from 1820 to 1825 to assert American sovereignty over the fur trade territory acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase. The location was not accidental: the Dakota people called this point Bdote, the meeting of the waters, and considered it among the most sacred places in their world — the place of creation. Colonel Josiah Snelling commanded the construction, and the post that bore his name became the military and administrative center of the Northwest Territory.
But Fort Snelling's most haunting history came later. After the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862 — triggered by broken treaty promises and starvation on the reservation — over 1,600 Dakota people, mostly women, children, and elderly, were imprisoned in a concentration camp on the river flats below this fort through the winter of 1862 and 1863. Hundreds died of disease and exposure.
The survivors were expelled from Minnesota by an act that offered a twenty-five dollar bounty for Dakota scalps. This confluence below you is where Minnesota's history feels most fully present.