Bdote

There was a war in 1862, and it wasn't, by any means, all that far away. As wars go, this one was quite short, over and done with in a matter of a couple of months. But it was bloody, very bloody. In fact, in no other war in U. S. history were as many civilians killed in such a short time.

And it was scary, very scary, because the region's newest citizens knew very, very little about American history or, really, what was happening all around them. Most had come from Ireland or Germany or other places in Europe. They'd come to land they thought of as free, theirs for the asking or taking. When they needed to, they judged themselves more worthy of that bountiful land--lakes and trees and prairies--than the original inhabitants, who didn't know how to use a plow and, furthermore, showed no desire to learn, the newcomers said.

What's more, those others were dark-skinned. Their dances were demonic, and they drank far too much. They were lazy and shiftless and an encumbrance to the swelling ranks of Euro-Americans. What they needed to go somewhere west and find a place where they wouldn't get in the way.

Some of us thought they should be stamped out. Some figured if we'd kill all the buffalo, they would simply pass away. 

Those natives had names, of course, and they had named all kinds of features of the landscape. Once upon a time, there was a city, 15,000 people strong, where Sioux Falls is today, a city bigger than Chicago.  All of its residents were First Nations. 

They weren't "Indians," per se. That was a name Columbus gave them, thinking the indigenous he encountered were living in India. His geography was as big a mess as his naming. 

But they were here, and they were a people--as church people like to say, they were "a fellowship," a community. But white folks, like my own immigrant great-grandparents, wanted their land and simply assumed they could take it.

It's an old story, but it's also a story that bears repeating and remembering.

So the Minnesota Historical Society determined the state's crown jewel visitor site, Ft. Snelling, right there at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, should carry the name its own first nations gave it--"Bdote." Before white folks came, Bdote was what Minnesota's original citizens called the area.

This week, some state reps determined to cut the Minnesota Historical Society's budget drastically, by millions, because, they said, the Society was practicing "revisionist history."

Which is true. After all, before the site was named Ft. Snelling, its name, to all who knew the place, was Bdote. White folks have been doing revisionist history to the entire nation for a long time. By Native standards, most all of us are undocumented immigrants. 

Two can play that game.

Hundreds of white immigrant pioneers were murdered and mutilated in the Dakota War of 1862. Nothing--absolutely nothing--about that war can be romanticized. What the Dakota did to white folks is an abomination, as great an abomination as what those white folks did to the Dakota. 

When Ft. Snelling was full of captive Dakota families, preachers and missionaries who went to the fort to minister to them were beaten by white men who believed bringing the Christian faith to those savages profaned the gospel of Jesus. Look it up in the Pioneer. 

That's the history the Budget Committee doesn't want remembered. That's why they cut the Historical Society's budget. It's all there in one word--Bdote, the Dakota word for the place where two rivers come together, a word that hundreds, even thousands of Minnesotans used, long before "Ft. Snelling" (see pic).

The Dakota War of 1862 happened more than 150 years ago, but open scars still exist. 

On both sides. 
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You can read the Minnesota state budget story here.