After reading Elmer Andersen, I had an intense desire to go to a used book store and buy some books on Minnesota history. This is the result of that urge, an early history of Fort Snelling written in the 1960s and recently republished by the MN Historical Society. To me, this book was both good and bad. I loved the short stories about the dead white men which all the streets in Minneapolis are named after. Additionally, I got a much great understanding of why we are here (why Minneapolis exists, not why we as a species are here, but I am more than happy to discuss my views on that topic with anyone), which adds value to every life situation. However, to extrapolate these great learnings, I had to trudge through pages and pages of rather redundant stories; yes, history repeats itself, at least in the early days of Fort Snelling. About once a year some fur trader would trade some whiskey to an indian for all of his belongings. The indian would then get so drunk that he would either die or would go crazy, kill some settlers, and then get killed in retaliation. Then the government would use this as an excuse to kill more indians, take their lands, and trade whiskey to them. Repeat.
Completed February 20, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment