OLD FORT SNELLING
1819–1858
MARCUS L. HANSEN
I
A CENTURY AND A HALF OF FOREIGN RULE
On an autumn day in 1766 Captain Jonathan Carver stood upon the bluff which rises at the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers and viewed the wonderful landscape of prairie and wooded valleys that lay before him. As a captain in the colonial troops of Connecticut he had served his king faithfully in the late war with France; and now in the days of peace which followed the glorious victory he sought to continue his usefulness by exploring the vast regions which had been added to the domains of Great Britain and Spain. Three years of travel in the wilderness taught him that those wild lands would not always be the haunt of savage animals and wandering tribes.
“To what power or authority this new world will become dependent, after it has arisen from its present uncultivated state, time alone can discover”, he later wrote. “But as the seat of Empire, from time immemorial has been gradually progressive towards the West, there is no doubt but that at some future period, mighty kingdoms will emerge from these wildernesses, and stately palaces and solemn temples, with gilded spires reaching the skies, supplant the Indian huts, whose only decorations are the barbarous trophies of their vanquished enemies.”[1]
Not until the twenty-fourth day of August, 1819, when less than a hundred soldiers of the Fifth United States Infantry disembarked opposite the towering height where a few years later rose the white walls of Fort Snelling, did the nation which was to rule assert its power. The event was, indeed, epochal. It not only marked a change in the sovereignty over the vast region, but it also made possible the development of those factors which were to bring about the great transformation.
It was for the “upper country” that this fort was built—a country stretching from the Great Lakes across the wooded headwaters of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers to the plains of the Missouri. The history of this region is marked by several distinct periods: the coming of the French traders, the supremacy of the English companies, the establishment of military posts of the United States, and the building of American communities.
Although at the opening of the second decade of the nineteenth century the American troops quartered on the west banks of the Mississippi River were on soil that, in name, had been American for sixteen years, and although they looked over the river to land that had since 1783 belonged to their country, yet they had in fact taken possession of a foreign land. English, French, and Spanish flags had at various times waved over certain parts of it. Foreign influence, during a century and a half, had become widespread and deeply rooted.