Dec 3, 2006 11:16 pm US/Central
Finding Minnesota: Pike Island
by Ben Tracy
Minneapolis (WCCO) ―
To the Dakota, Pike Island in Fort Snelling State Park was and is a sacred place. It is where the waters of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers meet and the Dakota believe it is the very center of the earth and arguably the place where Minnesota began.
In 1805, 26-year-old U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike was sent to explore the Mississippi.
"Basically, to see what was there, to establish sites for military posts and to tell the Indians that there's a new manager in town," explained Steve Osman, the Fort Snelling site manager.
Pike never did get to Itasca, but he came up on a piece of land that the Dakota call "the big island".
"In the latter part of September 1805, they camped right down here on what became known as Pike's Island," said Osman.
The confluence of the two rivers with bluffs above made it the perfect spot for a fort, so Pike negotiated with the Indians and secured 155,000 acres of land.
"It encompassed most of what would become the Twin Cities," said Osman.
Fort Snelling, just above the island, became the area's centerpiece.
"The rivers were the highways and this was the junction of the all the rivers and all traffic had to come by this point," Osman said.
The history of Pike Island is not without shame. The U.S government only paid the Indians $2,000 of the $200,000 the land was worth. It was the first act in what would become a pattern of broken promises.
"Later on, when the army was here and trees started to get cut down and game was disappearing then there were some problems," said Osman. "The Indians said this isn't really what we had in mind."
Fort Snelling remained and soon settlers arrived in droves.
Today, there is a three mile trail visitors to Pike Island in Fort Snelling State Park can walk.
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