An Atlas of the Falls Called Owámni or St. Anthony (2020)

Research Advisor: Craig Douglas, Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture Department, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Harvard University, Graduate School of Design’s Summer Research Grant for providing the support necessary to realize this project.

Special thanks to Craig Douglas for his patience and support during what was a very challenging summer.

Many thanks to Sarah Dickinson, Research Librarian at the Frances Loab Library, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University for her help in strategizing how to do research entirely online; and to Chelsea Kilburn (MLA I AP 2020), Kira Clingen (MLA I 2021), and Alison Maurer (MLA I 2022) for their help in solving many software problems.

I would also like to thank the many people across many organizations who took the time to speak with me and helped me develop my ideas.

I would especially like to thank Maggie Lorenz and Mishaila Bowman of The Lower Phalen Creek Project and Wakán Tipi Center for their inspiring leadership in the role Indigenous cultures can take in redesigning post-industrial landscapes.

Leonard Wabasha, Director of Cultural Resources, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, for the time he spent helping me translate English words into Dakota.

Philip Honzay of Wozupi Tribal Gardens for his extensive plant knowledge and willingness to share it with others.

Thank you to Peter Rachleff of the East Side Freedom Library for helping me find resources that are not part of the Euro-American design canon.

Maura Rockcastle of Ten x Ten Studio for her generosity and openness in talking about Ten x Ten’s work on Dakota land.

Jean Garbarini of Damon Farber Landscape Architects; Kjersti Monson, Director of the Falls Initiative, Friends of the Falls; and Alexandra Buffalohead, Arts and Cultural Engagement Manager for the Native American Community Development Institute for their thoughtful insights into possible futures for the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam.

Finally, thank you to the Minnesota Historical Society for its extensive collection of digitized maps and photographs which made socially-distanced research possible.

Most importantly, I would like to thank Aaron for his unending support, thoughtful advice, and willingness to listen.

This statement recognizes the traditional owners of the land on which this research occurred. Mni Sóta Makoce (Minnesota) is the homeland of the Dakota. The Anishinaabe made Minnesota their home after following the guidance of the Gete-anishinaabeg and Aadizookaanag to the manoomin (wild rice). Many other Indigenous people from other Tribal nations have made Minnesota their home and contributed to its history. Harvard University, which provided funding for this research, occupies land within the traditional homeland of the Massachusetts. This atlas aims to remember and honor the history and people of these lands.

After 52 years of service, Minneapolis’ Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam was permanently closed to riverine traffic in 2015. St. Anthony Falls, the only major waterfall on the Mississippi, has long been central to the history, culture, economy, and ecology of the river, the city, and the region. This research project, using St. Anthony Falls as a focal point, investigated questions of ownership and agency along the falls, the Mississippi, and across the traditional Dakota homeland in the state that is now called Minnesota.

Almost immediately after the closure of the USAF lock and dam in 2015, questions of ownership arose. Currently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking to fully dispose of its ownership of the site, but state and local governments are working to keep the federal government on as partial owners. The complexity of the infrastructure at the lock along with the necessity of maintaining the lock have created a contentious debate over who should be responsible for the site and able to determine its future. Total removal of the lock would disrupt Minneapolis’ water supply as well as the ability of Xcel energy to continue producing hydroelectric power for 9,000 city residents.¹ But there is little desire among the city and state to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of the lock and dam.

The debate over who should own the USAF lock site has been centered on current recognized property owners along the river and at St. Anthony Falls, but the question of ownership runs much deeper than post-industrial developers, governmental partnerships, and private enterprise. The City of Minneapolis and St. Anthony Falls are in the heart of the traditional homeland of the Dakota people. For the Dakota, St. Anthony Falls is known as Owámni and the Mississippi is Haháwakpa. The Dakota view the river as a living relative with agency to determine its future. This research hopes to center the debate about ownership within the river itself. What future does the river desire for the falls and for the people living along it?

1.

Conversation with Kjersti Monson, Director of the Falls Initiative, Friends of the Falls, August 2020.

Today Owámni/St. Anthony Falls sits 8.5 miles upstream from the confluence of the Minnesota and the Mississippi Rivers. To the Dakota, this confluence is the center of the world. Known as Bdóte, it is where the world and the Dakota people begin.² This dynamic landscape, which the Dakota call Mni Sóta Makoce, has shifted and changed continuously for millennia. The glaciers, rivers, sandstone bedrock, and the falls have all moved and changed their forms as they encountered each other. The first form of Owámni/St. Anthony Falls occurred when Glacial Lake Agassiz and Glacial Lake Anoka broke through their ice dams and carved the channels of the ancestral Mississippi River and River Warren. 12,000 years ago, these two rivers tore through the soft bedrock and created the River Warren Falls near the sacred Wakán Tipi cave. Over the millennia the falls moved rapidly upstream at a rate of 4 feet per year to create the Owámni/St. Anthony Falls European colonists encountered in the 17th-century.³

2.

Minnesota Humanities Center and Allies: media/art. “Pike Island.” Bdote Memory Map. http://bdotememorymap.org/

3.

Jane Lamm Carroll. “Engineering the Falls: The Corps of Engineers’ Role at St. Anthony Falls.” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District Website. (27 October 2015). https://www.mvp.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Stories/Article/626089/engineering-the-falls-the-corps-of-engineers-role-at-st-anthony-falls/.

The underlying geology of the Upper Mississippi landscape has been the determining factor in the rapid upstream retreat of the falls. The bedrock, which has been carved out by the Mississippi River, is made up of layers of sedimentary rock deposited during the Cambrian and Ordovician periods (570-438 million years B.P.) St. Peter Sandstone is topped with a thin layer of shale and a thicker layer of Platteville Limestone. The limestone is more resistant to erosion than the shale and sandstone and controls the rate of erosion. When water finds fissures in the limestone though, it quickly erodes the underlying sandstone. Eventually huge chunks of limestone break away and the edge of the falls advances upstream.

4.

National Center for Earth-Surface Dynamics. “The Retreat of the Falls.” A History of the Falls. https://www.esci.umn.edu/courses/1001/1001_kirkby/SAFL/WEBSITEPAGES/1.html

How to represent the dynamism of this landscape became the first challenge of the research. Traditional Euro-American mapping techniques of grids, property boundaries, and lines delineating land from water abstract the movement of glaciers, the erosion of soil, or the shifting course of a river. Drawings with ink, a water-based medium, were used to represent the movement of water in the landscape. By layering the ink drawings with open source GIS data and historical maps of the falls and Minnesota, new representations that capture the ever-changing landscape and the impacts of Euro-American colonization on Mni Sóta Makoce were created.

The scale of the maps was chosen to show the approximate extent of the traditional Dakota homeland. The Dakota lived as far east as present day western Wisconsin, as far west as the eastern Dakotas, south down the Blue Earth River, and north into the lakes of northern Minnesota. But even this is too fixed a description - the boundaries of the territory occupied by the Dakota shifted continuously with changes in the seasons, shifts in vegetation and wildlife, and conflicts or alliances with other tribes.

The current form of Owámni/St. Anthony Falls is the result of geophysical, climatic, anthropogenic, and hydrological processes. The story of how Owámni/St. Anthony Falls came to exist in its current form begins at the end of the last Ice Age. The drawing on the left represents Mni Sóta Makoce during the middle of the most recent Wisconsin Glaciation. The Superior Lobe of the glaciers was at its greatest extent approximately 15,000 years B.P. This phase of glaciation created the massive St. Croix Moraine which stretches northwestward from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Little Falls, MN. As the glacier retreated the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers were carved into the landscape by glacial meltwater.

5.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. pp. 1-4.

6.

John O. Afinson, Thomas Madigan, Drew M. Forsberg, Patrick Nunnally. “River of History: A Historic Resources Study of the Mississippi River and Recreation Area.” Developed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, 2003. https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/historic_resources.htm. pp. 9-11.

Advances and retreats of the glaciers continued for another 6,000 years after the full advance of the Superior Lobe. The Grantsburg Sublobe moved north and westward into Minnesota from the Des Moines Lobe, reaching its full extent around 13,500 years B.P. Outwash from the Grantsburg sublobe helped form Glacial Lake Anoka and altered the morphology of the Mississippi River valley by filling it with sand and gravel. Around 12,000 B.P. Lake Agassiz formed in the northern Minnesota and southern Canada. Meltwater from Lake Agassiz created the River Warren, which carved out the wide valley of the present Minnesota River. Numerous downcutting events occurred within the Mississippi Valley until roughly 10,800 years B.P. These events formed the present course of the Mississippi River and the current landscape of the Upper Mississippi corridor.⁷

7.

John O. Afinson, Thomas Madigan, Drew M. Forsberg, Patrick Nunnally. “River of History: A Historic Resources Study of the Mississippi River and Recreation Area.” Developed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, 2003. https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/historic_resources.htm. pp. 11-13.

As the rivers and lakes of Mni Sóta Makoce developed, vegetation grew in the rich glacial and alluvial deposits in the uplands and along the valleys. For the Dakota, the landscape offered abundant resources. It was the meeting ground of multiple biomes: the prairies stretching west, the hardwood forests running east, and the coniferous forests of the north. The Dakota were nomadic and moved with the seasons as each biome offered different plants and wildlife to be harvested or hunted. From buffalo and prairie turnips in the west, to wild rice, fish and waterfowl in the north, to maple sap, berries, and deer in the east; the Dakota viewed the landscape as a living relative that provided for them as long as they followed its rhythms and honored its traditions.⁸

The Dakota did not conceive of the landscape as an object to be bounded and defined. For them, tribal identity was defined through kinship networks with the land, water, and resources interwoven into the networks as kin.⁹ Therefore, these maps do not attempt to draw clear boundaries between biomes or ecosystems traditionally inhabited by the Dakota.

8.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. pp. 3-4

9.

Ibid, p. 13.

These maps do still utilize some of the conventions of Euro-American mapping traditions. For example, all the maps are oriented with north at the top of the page. This is not a universal convention: for the Dakota, south is the traditional cardinal direction for orientation and for the Anishinaabe it is east.¹⁰ Additionally, lines were drawn to represent the rivers and the shorelines of lakes in the landscape, which creates the illusion of hard borders between diffuse qualities. The reason for this choice is to better visualize the network of rivers in Mni Sóta Makoce and their importance for transportation.

For the Dakota, and other indigenous peoples, the dense network of rivers and streams provided easy routes through the landscape. For centuries, canoeing by river was the most efficient means of transporting goods and people – even after European contact, French fur traders rapidly adopted canoes as their preferred method of travel.¹¹

This map represents the major rivers and lakes the Dakota used to travel through Mni Sóta Makoce. The bodies of water are labeled with their Dakota and Anishinaabe names. The Anishinaabe first entered the landscape in the 16th-century and eventually came to settle around the Great Lakes, making contact with the Dakota in the 18th-century.

10.

Jennings Mergenthal. An Anti-Colonial History of This Place: An Atlas of the Land Presently Called “Minnesota”. (Copyright ©2019 by Jennings Mergenthal.)

11.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Description for Plate 15.

“My father’s grandfather said that before the earth was made there was water everywhere; no land was to be seen. The Great Power (Wakątąka) made the earth and then made man and woman. From them the Dakota were born. There was then no white man on the earth. After the Great Power had made the Dakota they had nothing to eat. They were told to procure various kinds of fish from the waters of the lakes, rivers and creeks…. The Great Power then made all those animals that have fur and swim in the water. These we were to eat…. He then made the wild animals that live on the land, causing them to be fit for food. This was the beginning of everything.”¹²

The water and land provided for the Dakota and it was through the balance of these two relations that the Dakota lived and sustained themselves. This map shows some of the common food sources of the Dakota with their Dakota names.¹³ While plants like Prairie Turnips or animals like the buffalo were more common on the western plains and wild rice was more common on the northern lakes; it was possible to access many of these food sources across the entire landscape. The Dakota knew the flora and fauna of Mni Sóta Makoce and where they could be found intimately.¹⁴

12.

Wilson D. Wallis. “Beliefs and Tales of the Canadian Dakota.” The Journal of American Folklore. Jan. – Mar. 1923, Vol. 36. No. 139, pp. 36-37.

13.

Translation of English plant and animal names to Dakota generously provided by Leonard Wabasha, Director of Cultural Resources, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. Email Correspondence, July 2020

14.

Samuel W. Pond, Gary C. Anderson. Dakota Life in the Upper Midwest. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002, pp. 26-31.

The people in Mni Sóta Makoce moved and adapted to the continuously changing landscape. European colonists did not encounter a static place and a static Dakota culture when they arrived in Mni Sóta Makoce. Nor did the Europeans remain unchanged from their experiences with the people, land, and rivers of Mni Sóta Makoce.

Before the French, it was the Anishinaabe who arrived in Mni Sóta Makoce, fleeing the Iroquois and the English in the 17th-century. From the Great Lakes they moved into Dakota territory which created conflict between the two powerful nations.¹⁵ In the 18th-century, the Dakota chose to cede some of their northern territory to the Anishinaabe and moved farther west. But to say that there were defined territories, borders, and agreements between the Dakota and the Anishinaabe is too simplistic. The Anishinaabe intermingled with the Dakota along a rough border zone. Even after the cession of some of their lands to the Anishinaabe, some Dakota chose to stay, particularly at Mde Wakan/Misi-zaaga’igan/Mille Lacs Lake, and intermarry with the Anishinaabe.¹⁶

The map on this page represents the general borders of Dakota and Anishinaabe territory as well as major settlements of both cultures at the start the American Revolution. Instead of drawing a clear delineation between the territory of the Dakota and of the Anishinaabe, representations of both bleed into each other and intermingle.

15.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, p. 8.

16.

Ibid, 55-57.

French fur traders started arriving in Mni Sóta Makoce in the middle of the 17th-century. The Dakota, who already knew about the white newcomers and the guns and goods they could provide, were eager to establish a trading relationship with the French.¹⁷ The French were not seeking to settle the Upper Mississippi but instead hoped to develop a profitable trading economy. Both the Dakota and the French adapted to each other to establish a mutually beneficial relationship. French fur traders married into Dakota kinship networks, and the children of these marriages, the Métis, played a central role in supporting a hybrid culture that survived for close to two-hundred years after the French first arrived.¹⁸

In contrast, after the Louisiana Purchase, the United States government considered Mni Sóta Makoce to be U.S. land and wanted to open it to settlement. In 1805 Zebulon Pike arrived at Bdóte on an expedition to establish U.S. Army outposts. Pike negotiated a treaty which granted the United States the right to establish forts and trading posts along the Mississippi between Bdóte and Owámni/St. Anthony Falls for $2,000. Crucially the treaty stipulated that the Dakota retained the right to use, hunt, and travel through the ceded land as they had always done.¹⁹

17.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, p. 5.

18.

Ibid, 14 & 25.

19.

Minnesota Historical Society. “Looking at the Territory: The Treaty Story.” Minnesota Territory 1849-1858. https://www.mnhs.org/talesoftheterritory/territory/treaty/index.php

In 1810 Pike published an account of his travels through the Mississippi watershed and the book included a map of Owámni/St. Anthony Falls. This is one of the oldest maps I was able to find of the falls. It shows the form of the falls before industrialization. At the time of colonization, there were five islands that existed near the edge of the falls and were well-known to the Dakota. Wita Wasté, which later became known as Nicollet Island, was often used as a place to give birth.²⁰ Spirit Island, considered sacred by the Dakota, was dotted with eagle’s nests who found the island perfect as a site for catching fish.²¹

European accounts of the falls through the 17th to the 19th-centuries describe a sublime site. Father Louis Hennepin, who gave the falls its name of St. Anthony, estimated it plunged 40-60 feet in 1680. Other visitors likened the falls to Niagra and claimed its roar could be heard 15 miles away. The great limestone blocks that fell off the edge of the falls as it retreated littered the riverbed and multiplied the rapids.²² Crucially, in his map, Pike has drawn the portage around the falls that Native and Euro-American people alike utilized to reach the Mississippi above the falls. This portage often functioned as a rest stop and gathering place for the Dakota and other visitors to the site.²³

20.

Minnesota Humanities Center and Allies: media/art. “St. Anthony Falls,” Bdote Memory Map. http://bdotememorymap.org/

21.

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 255.

22.

Ibid, 254-255.

23.

Ibid, 254.

It took another 15 years for the U.S. Army to establish Fort Snelling on the west bank of the Mississippi across from Bdóte. In the intervening years between Zebulon Pike’s expedition and the arrival of U.S. soldiers on the 1805 treaty land, American settlers had moved with amazing rapidity across the North American continent. By the 1830s, settlers were crowding at the edges of Dakota and Anishinaabe territory, eager to gain access to their land. In 1837 the Dakota and Anishinaabe were forced to give up their lands east of the Mississippi and south of the 46th parallel. The treaty included language which gave the Dakota and the Anishinaabe the right to hunt, harvest, and travel through the ceded land as they always had, but the U.S. government quickly persecuted any Native trespasses on the ceded land.²⁴

Additionally, the Prairie du Chien Treaty of 1830 established a “Half-Breed Tract” for the mixed-race relatives of the Dakota. The 25-mile by 32-mile tract stretched from Red Wing’s village to Wabasha’s village on Lake Pepin. The land was legally reserved for the mixed-race relatives of the Dakota in hopes that they would take up European farming methods. In reality, traders and speculators quickly took advantage of the newly defined land to stake claims for themselves or to sell.²⁵

24.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp.132-134.

25.

Ibid, pp. 99-100.

Just ten years after the 1837 treaty, the Anishinaabe ceded more of their land for a reservation to be established for the Ho-Chunk and Menominee tribes of Wisconsin.²⁶ The Ho-Chunk and Menominee, who traditionally lived in settled villages and practiced agriculture, did not want to be removed to a reservation far from their homelands. The Menominee successfully resisted removal, but the Ho-Chunk agreed to relocate under the promise that the land would allow them to live as they always had. What they found instead were dense forests and sandy soils that were inhospitable to their traditional way of life.²⁷

26.

Minnesota Historical Society. “Looking at the Territory: The Treaty Story.” Minnesota Territory 1849-1858. https://www.mnhs.org/talesoftheterritory/territory/treaty/index.php

27.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp. 219-220.

Four years later, in 1851, the Dakota were forced to cede their lands west of the Mississippi except for a tract of land along the Minnesota River. Minnesota had received official territory designation in 1849 and settlers were urging the U.S. government to open the lands to speculation. The Dakota had little choice in the matter; their lands were depleted of the game they hunted and white settlers were steadily taking over the landscape, with the tacit support of the U.S. government. The Dakota hoped the promised cash would allow the tribes to live and support themselves on the lands that remained.²⁸

In 1854 the “Half-Breed” Tract was opened up to speculation. Ostensibly, the plan by the U.S. government was to parcel off the land to eligible mixed-race claimants and provide them with scrip with which to redeem their claim. In reality, squatters illegally occupying the land forced the U.S. government to recognize their right to remain and land speculators illegally bought up large amounts of any scrip still owned by mixed-race claimants.²⁹ The lands of the “Half-Breed” Tract suffered the same result as all other lands occupied by Native peoples; the U.S. government enforced the theft of Dakota land by squatters and speculators instead of enforcing the legally binding treaties the federal government had negotiated.

28.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp. 185-196.

29.

Frederick L. Johnson, “’Half-Breed’ Tract.” MNOpedia, Minnesota Historical Society. (First published: 24 July 2013, Last Modified: 28 May 2019) http://www.mnopedia.org/place/half-breed-tract.

The speed and efficiency with which the U.S. government was able to acquire Native American land, survey it, and sell it to private individuals was due to the Public Land Survey System established by the Land Ordinance of 1785. The Public Land Survey System required surveyors to survey the landscape into 36-mile-square townships using east-west running baselines and north-south running principal meridians. Those townships were further surveyed into 36 one-mile-square sections. From there any section could be broken down into half sections, quarter sections, half quarter sections, and quarter quarter sections. The square grid of the Public Land Survey System could be quickly measured out by a survey crew, mapped, advertised for sale, and sold to private individuals.³⁰ The lands that the U.S. government labeled “public” and available for survey and sale where always lands traditionally occupied by Indigenous people that had been taken from them by force or by manipulation.

In 1853 the land around Owámni/St. Anthony Falls was surveyed after the 1851 cession of their lands west of the Mississippi by the Dakota. The original survey plat on the right provides a sense of the form of the falls just before Euro-American settlement. The plat shows the five islands at the falls, numerous paths running to and from the falls, and the course of Bassett Creek, which today is buried underground and part of the Minneapolis sewer system. The plat is also interesting for what it does not show: the first attempts by Euro-American colonizers to control the river and the falls. The U.S. Army sawmill and gristmill, which had been built on the west bank in 1821, and the sawmill and dam built by Franklin Steele on the east bank of the falls in 1848 are represented in their approximate locations based on historical descriptions of the mills.³¹

30.

Hildegard Binder Johnson, Order Upon the Land: The U.S. Rectangular Land Survey and the Upper Mississippi Country. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, pp. 53-82.

31.

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 255-256.

By the 1850s, speculators and investors were eyeing the dense northern forests of Minnesota and its rich resources for the lumber industry. In a series of treaties in 1854 and 1855, the Anishinaabe ceded the majority of their northern lands in exchange for guaranteed reservations. The tribes hoped that by moving to a reservation they would no longer be harassed and exploited by white settlers. Again, the treaties included provisions that allowed the Anishinaabe to hunt and use the ceded lands as they had always done. For 140 years those rights were disregarded until the Anishinaabe won a series of court cases in the 1990s.³²

In 1855, the Ho-Chunk gave up their reservation in northern Minnesota for a new reservation on lands around the Blue Earth River (outside of this map’s boundaries). The land around Blue Earth were considered some of the best farmland in the Minnesota territory. White settlers were incensed at the decision and had to be forcibly removed from the lands of the new reservation. The Ho-Chunk attempted to live peaceably with their white neighbors but resentment festered. In 1863, at the urging of white residents in Blue Earth, the Ho-Chunk were included in the federal government orders removing the Dakota from Minnesota. More than 550 Ho-Chunk died in the forced removal to South Dakota.³³

32.

Andrew B. Stone “Treaty of Washington, 1855.” MNOpedia, Minnesota Historical Society. (First published: 6 April 2015, Last Modified: 15 March 2019). https://www.mnopedia.org/event/treaty-washington-1855.

33.

Matt Reicher. “Ho-Chunk and Blue Earth, 1855-1863.” MNOpedia, Minnesota Historical Society. (First published: 2 June 2014, Last Modified: 1 March 2019). https://www.mnopedia.org/event/ho-chunk-and-blue-earth-1855-1863.

In 1858, only one month after Minnesota became a state, the Dakota traveled to Washington to discuss the establishment of a reservation of their own. Instead they were forced to give up their land north of the Minnesota River.³⁴

The narrow strip of land along the Minnesota River left to the Dakota was not large enough to feed or sustain themselves. In August of 1862, feeling they had no other choice, some members of the Dakota tribes organized for war. For a few days in August the Dakota attacked farmsteads and settlements, but the U.S. Army quickly overran the warriors and took them captive. The men were imprisoned in Mankato while the rest of the Dakota were rounded up and placed in a concentration camp below Fort Snelling near Bdóte. 303 men were sentenced to death. President Lincoln approved the executions of 38 of those sentenced. In December of 1862 the largest mass hanging in U.S. history occurred in Mankato, Minnesota when 38 Dakota men were hung on a single, massive scaffold.³⁵

In 1863, the U.S. government nullified all treaties previously made with the Dakota and forced the Dakota to give up all their land in Minnesota. The Dakota were marched to the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota. Over 500 Dakota died in the concentration camp at Fort Snelling and on the march.³⁶

34.

Minnesota Historical Society. “Looking at the Territory: The Treaty Story.” Minnesota Territory 1849-1858. https://www.mnhs.org/talesoftheterritory/territory/treaty/index.php

35.

Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country: The Making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp.301-327.

36.

Ibid, 332-338.

The forced removal of the Dakota from Minnesota was not disconnected from the industrial development of St. Anthony Falls. Indigenous peoples needed to be removed from the land to make the land “public.” This public land could then be surveyed and parceled out to individual buyers. Private property allowed the wealth from resources like timber or grain to be easily commodified. Private property also allowed individuals to claim the right to harness and channel the power of the Mississippi at St. Anthony Falls.

The map on the right shows St. Anthony Falls only 6 years after the Dakota were removed from Minnesota. The dams of the Minneapolis Mill Company and the St. Anthony Falls Water Power Company are visible as well as the properties of the multiple saw and flour mills crowding the river bank. The map also shows the proposed line of the St. Anthony Falls Tunnel.

The tunnel was designed to create a tailrace for a new mill on Nicollet Island. During construction, water started leaking into the tunnel and eroded the soft sandstone bedrock. The tunnel quickly collapsed and formed a giant whirlpool which threatened to destroy the entirety of St. Anthony Falls.³⁷ The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in one of their first projects, were brought in to help. It took 5 years for the Corps to stabilize the falls by building a massive concrete curtain wall around the hole. This stopped all further erosion and disintegration. The Corps also filled the tunnel and eroded cavities with 22,329 cubic yards of gravel to stabilize the bedrock.³⁸ These efforts succeeded at preserving the falls and allowed the industrialization of the river to continue.

37.

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, p. 259.

38.

Ibid, 259-260.

Overlaying the 1869 map of St. Anthony Falls with a modern topographic map makes clear that by 1869 St. Anthony Falls was already resembling its contemporary form. In fact, the curtain wall built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1874 is still in place protecting the edge of the falls. Any removal of this infrastructure today would result in the complete collapse of the falls.³⁹

39.

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, p. 260.

This map of Minneapolis and St. Anthony Falls from 1872 shows how quickly the culture of the Dakota was erased from the landscape of Owámni to create St. Anthony Falls. The map represents the islands at the falls, the river, and Bassett Creek with solid lines marking out a clear boundary between water and land. The land is left blank and is treated as an abstract surface on which to the City of Minneapolis is being constructed. The grid of the city extends infinitely far across the landscape irrespective of any natural features or topography. At the same time the river is being channelized to power the mills and bridged to connect the city to capitalist commodity networks. The map also shows the multiple railroad companies coming into Minneapolis, evidence of the new transcontinental transportation network being constructed across the United States in the late 19th-century.

The Public Land Survey was the basis of the railroad companies’ ability to build their vast networks. To spur the development of railroads, the U.S. government made extensive land grants to the railroad companies after the end of the Civil War. Essentially, the federal government gave the railroad companies the title to large tracts of what was once Indigenous land for the railroads to sell or lease. By selling this gifted land, the railroads were able to raise the funds necessary to construct their transcontinental networks.⁴⁰

By 1872 St. Anthony Falls largely resembled its contemporary form and the railroads were beginning to make their marks in the landscape. To create a well-graded bed for the tracks running through the city, the railroads dug out and leveled large portions of the land St. Paul and Minneapolis were being built upon. The Wakán Tipi cave, near to the first site of the falls 12,000 years ago and sacred to the Dakota, was partially destroyed when the cliffs that surrounded it were dynamited to create a wide enough bed for tracks to run alongside the Mississippi.⁴¹

40.

Hildegaard Binder Johnson. Order Upon the Land: The U.S. Rectangular Land Survey and the Upper Mississippi Country. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, pp. 66-72.

41.

Conversation with Maggie Lorenz (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Spirit Lake Dakota Nation), Executive Director of Lower Phalen Creek Project and Wakan Tipi Center Director, July 2020.

The map on the right shows the network of railroads crossing Minnesota at the end of the 19th-century. Thanks to the land grants made to the railroads by the federal government, the western plains were quickly incorporated into an industrial food system that had its center in Minneapolis and St. Anthony Falls. As white settlers moved into the lands stolen from the Indigenous peoples in the western United States, wheat became one of the biggest cash crops of the region. St. Anthony Falls provided the power for numerous flour mills and the railroads transported the grain to the mills. Companies like Northern Pacific and Great Northern grew into national monopolies by transporting grain, commodities, and people across the continent. By 1880, Minneapolis was leading the nation in flour production.⁴² Railroads came into Minneapolis from the west and deposited their wheat at the falls, then, loaded with flour, headed east to deliver their goods to the growing eastern cities. St. Anthony Falls became the center of industrial production for the region, connected to the coasts of the United States through the railroads and to the south through the Mississippi.

42

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, p. 261-264.

An atlas produced by the Minneapolis Real Estate Board in 1914 shows the heyday of flour production in Minneapolis. The railroads traveled directly to St. Anthony Falls after entering the city. Depots and rail yards lined the river’s edge and dominated the landscape. This map also represents the early stages of hydroelectric power in Minneapolis, which was made possible by the Lower Dam constructed downstream in 1897. The Lower Dam powered the Twin Cities Street Car Power Station and ran the trolleys that provided public transit throughout Minneapolis until the middle of the 20th-century. The Lower Dam also permanently inundated the rapids that had provided habitat for many species of fish at the base of the Falls.⁴³ Eagles no longer flew at Owámni.

Finally, the industrialization of St. Anthony Falls funded a development boom in Minneapolis. Limestone was quarried from Spirit Island to build the flour mills and homes of the grain barons. The grid of the city extended further and further into the landscape. The falls itself become more rigidly defined. Concrete embankments and walls allowed its power to be controlled and directed by commercial industry.⁴⁴

By 1914 much of the infrastructure still in existence today at St. Anthony Falls had been built. The only differences between the 1914 form of the falls and that of today are the lack of the upper and lower locks at the falls and the span of I-35W over the river. These changes would come as Minneapolis’ economy shifted away from flour milling and railroads to a service-based economy and transportation primarily through automobiles.⁴⁵

43.

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, p. 266.

44.

Ibid, 264.

45.

John O. Afinson, Forsberg, Drew M. Forsberg, Thomas Madigan, Patrick, Nunnally. “Chapter 8.” River of History: A Historic Resources Study of the Mississippi River and Recreation Area. Developed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, 2003. https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/historic_resources.htm.

After 1916, flour milling in Minneapolis began to decline as a result of tariff acts passed by the U.S. Congress. These acts allowed millers to import Canadian grain duty free if they then exported the flour. This shifted the economic center of flour milling to the Great Lakes where wheat from Canada could be shipped on large barges.⁴⁶

As the power of the railroads waned along with flour milling at St. Anthony Falls, business and civic leaders pushed to make Minneapolis the head of navigation on the Mississippi. St. Paul, MN had always been the natural head of navigation on the Mississippi because upstream from St. Paul the river was too narrow and filled with rapids to allow for barge transit. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th-centuries the Army Corps of Engineers had been building locks and dams along the Mississippi, as well as dredging ever expanding shipping channels to aid transportation on the river. In 1930, the Corps began digging a 9-foot navigation channel along the majority of the Mississippi to improve the efficiency and cost of riverine transportation to the Midwest. Not wanting to miss out on this shipping boom, in 1937, Minneapolis successfully lobbied for federal funding to enact the Upper Minneapolis Harbor Development project. To achieve a channel deep and wide enough for barge traffic to reach Minneapolis, a series of locks and dams had to be built between Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 1956 the Lower St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam was completed and in 1963 the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock was completed.⁴⁷

The WPA atlas from 1940 shows Minneapolis and St. Anthony Falls at a time when flour milling and the railroads have lost their economic power and a new form of city is emerging. The railroads were still using the bridges they had constructed in the 19th-century to travel though the city, but the depots and rail yards had disappeared: trains no longer stopped in downtown Minneapolis. Numerous city streets now bridged the river, connecting outer neighborhoods and the suburbs to the city center by automobile. What were once large property holdings by the mills and railroad companies were being parceled off and developed for private residence or light industry. In 1940 there were more bridges crossing the Mississippi in Minneapolis than currently do today.

46.

John O. Afinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls.” Minnesota History Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003, p. 264.

47.

John O. Afinson, Forsberg, Drew M. Forsberg, Thomas Madigan, Patrick, Nunnally. “Chapter 5.” River of History: A Historic Resources Study of the Mississippi River and Recreation Area. Developed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, 2003. https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/historic_resources.htm.

The ascendance of the automobile has created the contemporary form of Mni Sóta Makoce. In the 21st-century, roads crisscross the landscape, sometimes following the course of the old rail lines, sometimes following the township and section lines laid out by the Public Land Survey. The land has been parceled out, developed, and fragmented; water is now a resource and a utility, no longer a relative.

The Dakota and Anishinaabe are still in Mni Sóta Makoce and fighting to regain their tribal sovereignty. The Anishinaabe have succeeded at expanding their lands and four Dakota communities have established themselves in southern and western Minnesota. Through the advocacy of the Tribes and other Indigenous organizations, places like Bde Maka Ska and Wakán Tipi are regaining their Dakota names and Indigenous relationships to the land and water are being recognized.⁴⁸

What will happen to the land and the water of Mni Sóta Makoce as climate change alters the environment is becoming increasingly pressing. Changing rainfall patterns and warmer temperatures will force ecosystems and wildlife to migrate northwards. Industrial farming will become more susceptible to floods, drought, and unpredictable frosts.⁴⁹ A fragmented landscape of private property and capitalist industry may no longer be tenable. This research hopes to use the knowledge and relational understanding of the land by the Dakota to re-imagine a Minnesota that is more adaptative, holistic, and grounded in kinship. The unfamiliar climate and natural world that is coming can then be met in a way that does not further disconnect the human and the nonhuman.

48.

The various Dakota and Anishinaabe tribes of Minnesota as well as numerous groups are working to rebuild Native communities in their traditional homelands. The American Indian Movement (AIM) began in Minneapolis in the 1960s and continues to advocate for Indigenous rights today. The Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) has driven the development of the American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis which supports Native-owned businesses and cultural institutions. Dreams of Wild Health is working to restore Native food systems through its farm north the Twin Cities. The Lower Phalen Creek Project is now lead by Indigenous voices and is designing an innovative education center at the sacred Wakán Tipi cave. (Thank you to Maggie Lorenz, Mishaila Bowman, Alexandra Buffalohead, Kjersti Monson, and others who have spoken to me about the work and advocacy of Native Americans in Minneapolis and Minnesota.)

49.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. “Effects of Climate Change in Minnesota.” Climate Change in Minnesota. https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air/effects-climate-change-minnesota.

In Minneapolis, a new kind of city has been building itself around St. Anthony Falls, one that is focused on mixed-use development, recreational access to the river, and the fostering of cultural and tourist attractions. In the 1980s, planning boards and advocacy groups began working together to imagine a future for St. Anthony Falls in which the city and its residents were reconnected with the Mississippi. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency worked to assess and clean up many polluted sites. The City Council and the St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board led the changing priorities in riverfront development. Finally, the Minneapolis Parks Board turned sites like Boom Island into public parks with access to the river front and added miles of pedestrian trails along the river. The turning point for all these efforts was the opening of the Stone Arch Bridge (formerly used by the Great Northern Railroad) as a pedestrian bridge which crosses the river right below St. Anthony Falls.⁵⁰ Now, with the closing of the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, the question of who will determine the future of the falls, river, and city is once again open for dispute.

The contemporary section maps of Minneapolis and St. Anthony Falls are interesting for their detailed representation of property boundaries and ownership. The development of St. Anthony Falls since European colonization has been a process of parceling and fragmentation. Capital and private property have allowed the development of an industrial and post-industrial Minneapolis with its attendant wealth and population size. But it has also separated the river from the land and broken up the land along the river. The question of ownership is continually reoccurring at the falls and the fragmentation of the landscape makes it difficult to envision new forms of ownership at any point along the river or in the landscape. In response, this research began to investigate the possibility of envisioning new forms of property at Owámni/St. Anthony Falls that reconnected the river to itself and to the land.

50.

Linda Mack. “Riverfront Revival: 2 Ways.” Planning. Vol. 72, No. 10. (2006), pp. 22-27.

Starting with the Dakota understanding of the river as a living relative, this research proposed an alternative form of property boundary based in the inherent agency of the river to determine its future. At the scale of Mni Sóta Makoce, the watershed of the Mississippi provides the inspiration. Instead of a property mapping system which draws indiscriminate grids across the landscape, the proposed system seeks to follow the rhizomatic course of the river and maintain the wholeness of the watershed. This will be the river’s property. Around the river’s property will be the land available for human determination and use. This speculative mapping seeks to radically disrupt the dominant systems of ownership and zoning which continually prohibit the return to a relational understanding of land and water which was once Mni Sóta Makoce.

The intention of the research, through breaking up the current forms of property ownership, is to establish a more flexible and adaptive system which will allow the plants, people, and animals of Mni Sóta Makoce to adjust to and mitigate the environmental changes caused by Global Warming.

At the scale of Owámni, this research does not attempt to answer the question of what future form the falls should take. It returns that question to the river. Using a hydrologic analysis of the surrounding landscape, a new zone of property along the river’s edge has been drawn. This is the river’s property, returned to the river. The flow of water and shifting sediment will determine the future of the falls. The city’s edge is now broken and fragmented, though bridges remain to span the river. The disruption caused by this speculative mapping creates new opportunities to envision an urban center that recognizes the river as a relative with agency and choice. From this, a new form of city can emerge that lives in relation with Owámni but not in control of it.

Minneapolis will have to become more flexible as climate change increases the risk of flooding by the Mississippi. By imagining the city as living in dynamic kinship with the river, the question of ownership is no longer the dominant one. The question to be answered now is how the city will relate and adapt to its equal: the shifting, changing river.