Text of the chapter, from Sacred Lands of Indian America, pp. 110-115
Text by Charles E. Little, Jake Page, and Ruth Rudner
Photo's by David Muench (not included here)

Harry N. Abrams, Inc, Publishers
100 5th Ave
New York, New York
Copyright 2001 Liveoak Editions

THE GOD OF WATERS
Mendota

The sacred spring pours out of a gash in dark limestone bedrock. A hidden, private place, it is a delicate rent inthe earth, offering seventy gallons a minute, a hundred thousand gallons a day, of pure and healing water. Its sound carries across the pond into which it falls. By climbing the few feet down into it, you can stand on slippery dark rock and let the water run cold over yourhands. Drink from it and it tastes cold and pure on your tongue.

Through intense summer heat and deepMinnesota winters, where minus thirty- five degrees Fahrenheit is not uncommon, the spring water remains forty-seven degrees.

The spring is the dwelling place of Unktehi, God of theWaters. It is Unktehi's passageway into the world, partof the Dakota (Sioux) creation story, a sacred place forthousands of years. A quarter of a mile away, thespring's water enters the Mississippi not far above theconfluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.

The confluence is the place where the Seven Fires (divisions) of the Dakota arrived on earth, descending from the belt of Orion. For the Mendota Mdewakantan, aDakota people who have always lived in this place, this is where life began. Here, ma Maka, the mother earth,gave birth to the ancestral grandmother and grandfather.

This land, where western prairie meets eastern woodland, is sacred. The Reverend Gary Cavender, an Episcopal priest and a traditional spiritual leader from the Shakopee Dakota Community, says, "We came here as human beings, so that is our Eden."

Immediately to the north of the spring, on the last stretch of bur oak savanna along the Mississippi anywhere from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico,four sacred oak trees once grew. Oaks and spring, Minnehaha Falls and much else of naturalbeauty form Minnehaha Park, the largest green spacein the Twin Cities. The Mendota, other Dakotas, andmany other Native Americans and whites foughtsixteen months to save the trees, scheduled to fallprey to a plan to reroute Highway 55, with the oldroute turned over to the development of light railtransit. The new route would shave three minutes off the drive time from downtown Minneapolis to the Mall of America, in the process cutting afour-lane swath across an edge of Minnehaha Park enroute to the Twin Cities International Airport, about a mile away.

Spiritual leaders testified to the sacred nature of the oaks. In an October 1998 testimony, Gary Cavender said, "Among other reasons, the four oaks are sacred because of their age. Indians treat our elders with the greatest of respect because of their wisdom. Similarly, the oak trees are our wise elders.They are our kin."

Harry Charger, a Lakota Sun Dance leader from South Dakota, performed a sacred pipe ceremony at the four oaks. "It is a place where many, many cycles have been completed and are still to becompleted," he wrote to the U.S. District Court in1998. "Although this is not to be taken as a threat, "he continued, "when sites of this nature are disturbed or disrespected, there are always the consequences. All things, good or bad, have a way of coming back around."

In August 1998 protestors set up Camp Two Pines near the oak trees, establishing a communal village called the Minnehaha Free State. They vowed to stay until the road development was stopped and the property returned to the Dakota Nation, whose land it always was.

At 4:30 AM on a bitter December morning in 1998, an army of more than six hundred policemen wielding guns and pepper spray brutally destroyed Camp Two Pines and bulldozed houses along the edge of the park that had been condemned to makeway for the road. They tore down tipis and burned the lodge where the sacred fire burned, as well as aceremonial tipi and other objects. (The state of Minnesota later reimbursed the owner of the ceremonial tipi.) More than thirty protesters were arrested. Some were injured. Protesters-- both
Indian and white-- were back at the site the next day,announcing they would fight on. A year later, when the protesters were evicted from a second camp they had set up nearer the trees, the police changed their tactics. This time they waited quietly for an Indian ceremony to finish before moving in to arrest more than thirty people
while state workers choppeddown the four oaks. Where the four oaks once stood, the Department of Transportation has erected a sign. Tree Protection Area, it says.

While the trees were still standing, Harry Chargertold the Mendota the trees would be lost, but the Mendota would not be defeated because they wouldbe educating people and the sacred spring would bepreserved. Now the Mendota, and many others, turned their energy and prayers to saving thespring, Unktehi's passageway, from the grasp of theMetropolitan Airport Commission (MAC).

The spring is on land owned by the U.S.Department of the Interior-- in all, twenty-eight fenced acres that, until 1997, held a research facility for Interior's Bureau of Mines. When the facility was closed, the land was handed over to the Bureauof Land Management. At that point, the Minnesota congressional delegation decided they could get agood deal for the state if the land was sold-- for $6million-- to the MAC, with the money staying in Minnesota. The MAC would get the flyover zone itdesired, plus space for a seven-acre parking lot for employees and equipment.

The problem with selling the land to the MAC according to Bob Brown, chairman of theMendota Mdewakanron Dakota Community, is that it then becomes subject to potential development. "It doesn't have to go to the MAC," he says. Under consideration is a fifty-year conservation easement on the land, administered by the NationalPark Service. While this would safeguard the spring for the time being, what happens at the end of fiftyyears?

A high, chain link fence surrounds the abandoned Bureau of Mines buildings. Access to the site is granted only during week day day light hours from7 AM to 3 PM. In spite of the hardship this places on working people who wish to come to thespring, a gathering is held here every Monday.Parking a quarter mile away, people walk across land ripped apart by the road construction to reach green grass near the spring to pray. An interpretive signnear the spring calls it the birthplace of Minnesota.The sign does not mention the Dakota.

At the beginning of one Monday gathering not longago, Jim Anderson, cultural chairman of the Mendota Mdewakanron Dakota Community; said, "Today we're here again, and it's one more day the spring is running." A blanket was placed on the ground and sage burned. Those gathered were smudged with sweet grass. Jim began his prayer."Thanks to the Creator for the water and the day and you guys." He passed the pipe around. A uniformed security guard arrived before three and stood at the edge of the prayer circle (without joining in) to
make sure the ceremony did not overstay its time.

During a February 1999 press conference held by Minnesota state representative Karen Clark, Gary Cavender said, "To block the sacred passagewaywould be courting drought and things that have to do with water, because after all, this is the God of theWaters. When you hear a thunderstorm and it starts to rain, that is the underwater God having battle withthe Sky God so that the rain may come down replenish the earth, and the Sky God is throwing down thunderbolts to fertilize the land."

The Mendota, who are currently engaged in a struggle to win federal recognition, have had a hardtime for a century and a half. In 1851 they and otherDakota tribes ceded twenty million acres to the federal government. Money and supplies promised in return never materialized. In 1862 a white traderwhom they approached for food told a group ofstarving Dakota to eat grass. The next morning the trader was found with his throat cut, his mouth fullof grass and his warehouses empty. The people who had killed the trader asked Little Crow, a greatDakota leader, to fight with them. Little Crow hadvisited Washington, D.C., and knew how thegovernment worked.

Further, he saw his role as thatof peacemaker between Indians and whites. When he told the Indians he would fight with them but that they could not win, someone called him a coward. "I'm not a coward," Little Crow said. "I'll die withyou, but we're going to lose everything we have here."

The ensuing conflict resulted in the deaths of about six hundred soldiers and settlers, precipitatedthe removal of those Dakota who did not flee toa concentration camp at Fort Snelling, and causedthree hundred Indian men to be condemned to hang.President Lincoln stayed execution for most ofthem, but thirty-eight were hung at Mankato, thebiggest mass execution in the history of the UnitedStates. Fort Snelling sat on a bluff above the confluence of the rivers. The camp was placed on the flats below, where many died of disease and starvation and the cold.

During the uprising, Mendota and other Dakota farmers who were friendly with white settlers saved more than three hundred women and children. Inreturn, Henry Sibley, regional manager of the American Fur Company, wrote to the government onbehalf of the Mendota, prompting the 1863 Congress to grant the people eighty acres and $50 apiece to start over. The money was not sent.Nor did the people get the land. Instead, they weretold to go to the reservations.Outraged, Sibley, a large landowner in the area, tookthe Mendota to a small lake in the region. Until hisdeath in 1891, he continued trying to get for them theland and money appropriated by Congress. After his death, his family simply kicked them off the land.

Meanwhile, the Dakota who had either fled or beenshipped out of the region began returning home. Thegovernment now appropriated land for them inShakopee, Prairie Island, Granite Falls, and Morton, Minnesota. There were plans for land in Mendota,too, but because whites in the area did not want Indians that close to Minneapolis and St. Paul, no land was ever provided there. "They ended up more or less just assimilating us," Jim Anderson says.In assimilation, the Mendota in essence lost everything. It was as Little Crow predicted.

Landless, their fight for what is sacred is doublyhard. Lacking federal recognition as a tribe, theycannot fight for the trees or the spring on the basisof Indian religious rights but must instead base theircase on violations of their civil rights, a lesspowerful vehicle. Without federal recognition, thereis no chance the government will give the Mendota the federal land on which the old Bureau of Minesbuildings sit. Jim Anderson hopes the area will be
made into a park that will allow the Mendota (and everyone else) access to the sacred spring. He would like to see at least one of the buildings turned over tothe tribe to be used as a cultural center, a place whereyoung people can learn their own history.

For the Mendota, the struggle to save the oak trees and the sacred spring is a struggle to exist as apeople. to regain their history, their future.About half a mile from the sacred spring, on thewest side of Minnehaha Creek in
high grass above Minnehaha Falls, there is a statue, a giant bronzemask held up on two poles. It is Little Crow. Through the open sockets of his eyes, you can seethe sky. It is the mask of a man in great pain for his people,
his world. There is no marker there to identify the mask. This work by an Indian artist was put there by Indian people, for Indian people, so they will remember. ~
RR