Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 7 Edward K. Thomas Questions: |
Fort Snelling
During the early 1820s, the U.S. government built Fort Snelling where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers come together. Government officials wanted to extend American authority over areas still under British influence. They acquired the land on which the fort is built from the Dakota Indians earlier in the century. (According to Dakota oral tradition, the meeting place of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers is the sacred site of their origin, where Mother Earth gave birth to the ancestors of their people.) Begun in 1820 under the direction of Josiah Snelling and completed in 1824, the fort was constructed of limestone from nearby bluffs and logs cut at a sawmill located at St. Anthony Falls.
The occupation of Fort Snelling by soldiers and their
families marked the beginning of permanent settlement by
European Americans in the Minnesota territory. The settlers
began to plant crops that eventually made Minnesota a leader
in the flour milling industry. Villages such as Mendota grew
up around the fort. During the ten years following the
fort's construction, more than 100,000 new settlers moved to
Minnesota.
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