Origin Story, Part the Third: Native Lands
For eight thousand years the Dakota navigated the waterways of our state in their dugout canoes. This network of streams and rivers was created by great glacial floods that also informed a topography that determined their seasonal way of life. Two main heritage centers were 90 miles distant: Mde Wakan (Lake Mystery/Mille Lacs Lake) and Bdote-the confluence of two major rivers: Haha Waka (river of the falls/Mississippi) and Mni Sóta Wakpa (sky tinted water/Minnesota).
Bdote was the spiritual home for the Dakota. Nearby was Mne Owe Sni (Coldwater Spring), a center for gatherings, and across from Bdote rose O-He-Ya-Wa-He (Pilot Knob burial grounds).
In their history “Mni Sota Makoce The Land of the Dakota,” Gwen Westerman and Bruce White said, “The Dakota knew Mni Sota Makoce as a network of connected places, each defined in specific ways. They followed a seasonal way of life, hunting game in the woods in winter, pursuing buffalo on the plains in summer, gathering edible plants in the woods and wetlands, fishing the rivers and lakes, ricing and growing gardens on the lakeshores and riverbanks.”
The Dakota were organized as the Oceti Ŝakowiŋ (Seven Council Fires) of eastern and western peoples with three dialects and seven major bands. The eastern Dakota, Bdewakantunwan or Mdewakanton controlled the area of the West End including Bdote. However, between Bdote and the Lower Landing at Phelan Creek there were no villages along the Mississippi. The bluffs precluded access to the upper terrace and its land was bog and swamp and densely forested.
The first village from Bdote was Kap’oża, Little Crow’s village, below Mounds Park, near Wakan Tipi (Carver’s Cave), another heritage site of the Dakota. The village was known for manufacturing dugout canoes until the advent of European fur traders and the Ojibwe who arrived via the Great Lakes from Canada. As they headed south, the Ojibwe colonized northern Minnesota pushing the Dakota south, disrupting their way of life.
Imagine an ink-black sky with uncountable stars. For millennia this inspired Native spirituality. Prayers and spirituality were not separate from everyday life but were an integral part of each day. The word for God in the Dakota language is Wakan Tanka-great mystery. The spirits of the people came down from Canku Wanagi (the spirit road) made up of the stars of the Milky Way.
The phrase mitakuye oyasin (we are all related) concludes prayers: the greatest responsibility was to be a good relative. Their society depended on social order and cooperation for survival, and rules governed behavior. Being a relative meant taking care of all of your relatives.
Noted Dakota folklorist Anpetu Wastéwin (Beautiful Day Woman/Ella C. Deloria 1889–1971) said “Dakota religious life was purely individual. There was nothing that all must do with reference to God, but only what each man felt as an inner compulsion that could not be denied.” This individuality is reflected in the vision quest, in which no one really knows beforehand what to expect.
In the 1600s Dakota life changed with the arrival of the French and Ojibwe. European fur traders and voyageurs took Native wives to survive the wilderness, adopting their customs and language for trade out of Québec. After a brief period of British control (1763-1783), Americans dominated extractive industries, impoverished Native tribes and appropriated land through a series of treaties.
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Henry Harrison, “We shall push our trading houses and be glad to see the good and influential among them (Natives) run into debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.”
You can find a copy of “The Origin Story of Fort Road/West Seventh Street, the Township/City of Saint Paul, the Territory/State of Minnesota: Glacial Age Forward” at your local library. Learn more about the book and find Joe’s upcoming conversations about the history of West 7th at josfland.com.
