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The name
Mendota is a French misinterpretation of the Dakota word Mdo-Te.
Mdo-Te (pronounced Bdoh Tay) means the mouth of a river or a meeting
of
waters. In this instance it is the Mdo-TE of the Wakpa (River)
Mni-sota
(less than clear or smoky water). The French explorer Joseph Nicollet
visited this region in the late 1830's. Nicollet was told by Dakota
Elders
at that time that the area around Mendota was considered by the
Mdewakanton
(Bday-wah kahn toon) Dakota People to be the middle of all things
and the
exact center of the earth. Our people have been here for centuries
but
appear in history in connection with the earliest French and English
Traders.
Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson
sent Lewis and
Clark up the Missouri River, and Lt. Zebulon Pike up the Mississippi
to see
what had been purchased. Lt. Pike negotiated a treaty in 1805
with our
people for two parcels of land for the establishment of military
posts. The
first parcel was a nine-mile square of land centered on the confluence
of the
St.Croix and Mississippi Rivers. The second parcel was an ambiguous
piece of
land from just above the falls of St.Anthony to just below the
mouth of the
St. Pierre (St. Peters) River (The Minnesota) and extending nine
miles on
either side of the Mississippi River.
Despite the huge acquisition of some 100 square miles of land,
the army did
not appear here again until 1819. A temporary post was established
on the
bottomland of the Minnesota River for the first winter. Because
of unhealthy
conditions on the bottomland, a permanent post was established
across the
river on the promontory where Fort Snelling now stands. The army
was camped
at a sacred spring of the Dakota people (Coldwater Spring) for
the time it
took to build the magnificent limestone fort of which today's
fort is a
replica. An Indian Agency was established outside the fort and
the traders
from the American Fur Company set up headquarters across the river
at
Mendota. This was the beginning of the white man's history of
the area.
Most of the traders, agency employees and military personnel took
Dakota
women as wives. This was the beginning of the kinship ties that
have bound
our people to this area till the present day. In this setting
we have been
much assimilated by white society, but continue to maintain cultural
and
religious ties to our Dakota ancestors.
Information is available by e-mail
on details of the early French and English
explorers in the area that became Minnesota.
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