From Europe to the Atlantic coast of America & on to the Pacific coast during the 17C-19C, settlers moved West encountering a variety of Indigenous Peoples who had lived on the land for centuries. 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. This 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 & the exact center of the earth. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson sent Lewis & Clark up the Missouri River, & Lt. Zebulon Pike up the Mississippi to see what had been purchased. Lt. Pike negotiated a treaty in 1805 with our people for 2 parcels of land for the establishment of military posts. The 1st parcel was a 9-mile square of land centered on the confluence of the St.Croix & Mississippi Rivers. The 2nd 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) & 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 there again until 1819. A temporary post was established on the bottomland of the Minnesota River for the 1st 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 & 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.
Born in 1808 in Brunswick, Maine, Seth Eastman (1808-1875) found expression for his artistic skills in a military career. After graduating from the US Military Academy at West Point, where officers-in-training were taught basic drawing & drafting techniques, Eastman was posted to forts in Wisconsin & Minnesota before returning to West Point as assistant teacher of drawing. --- While at Fort Snelling, Eastman married Wakaninajinwin (Stands Sacred), the 15-year-old daughter of Cloud Man, Dakota chief. Eastman left in 1832, for another military assignment soon after the birth of their baby girl, Winona, & he declared his marriage ended when he left. Winona was also known as Mary Nancy Eastman & was the mother of Charles Alexander Eastman, author of Indian Boyhood. --- From 1833 to 1840, Eastman taught drawing at West Point. In 1835, he married his 2nd wife & was reassigned to Fort Snelling as a military commander & remained there with Mary & their 5 children for the next 7 years. During this time Eastman began recording the everyday way of life of the Dakota & the Ojibwa people. Transferred to posts in Florida, & Texas in the 1840s, Eastman made sketches of the native peoples there. This experience prepared him for the next 5 yeas in Washington, DC, where he was assigned to the commissioner of Indian Affairs & illustrated Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's important 6-volume Historical Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, & Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. In 1867, Eastman returned to the Capitol to paint a series of scenes of Native American life for the House Committee on Indian Affairs. From the office of the United States Senate curator, we learn that in 1870, the House Committee on Military Affairs commissioned artist Seth Eastman 17 to paint images of important fortifications in the United States. He completed the works between 1870 & 1875. Of his 17 paintings of forts, 8 are located in the Senate, while the others are displayed on the House side of the Capitol. Eastman was working on the painting West Point, when he died in 1875.
