Fort Snelling

Born in 1783 in Connecticut, Henry Leavenworth was educated in Vermont and New York. He became a lawyer and entered the military. He made his way up the ranks, eventually declared colonel of the 25th U. S. infantry. He then served in the New York State Assembly, and in 1816, went to Prairie du Chien as Indian agent. In 1818, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Fifth U. S. infantry.
In 1805 the U.S. Army ordered Lt. Zebulon Pike to explore the Mississippi River and select potential sites for future military posts. When he arrived at the junction of the Mississippi and St. Peters (the present-day Minnesota) rivers, Pike made a treaty with several local Dakota representatives and acquired land on which he promised a U.S. trading post would be built. The trading post was never constructed, but following the War of 1812 the U.S. government sought to firmly establish its presence and stamp out any existing British influence in the Northwest Territory by building a fort at the river junction. The first troops arrived in 1819 under the command of Leavenworth. In 1820 he initiated the construction of Fort St. Anthony, which was later called Fort Snelling.
A few years later, he led U.S. troops in the first military expedition against a Great Plains Indian nation, the Arikara. While in the West he built military posts, one of which was Fort Leavenworth, established in Kansas in 1827. In 1833 he received the full rank of brigadier-general.

By 1834, he was commanding an expedition of the U.S Regiment of Dragoons in Indian Territory where hoped to create relationships between the United States and the Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita nations. He died on this expedition in 1834.

Married three times, Lake Harriet, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is named for his last wife, Harriet Lovejoy.

View full article: Henry Leavenworth

Josiah R. Snelling was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1782. In 1820, Snelling arrived in the area that would become Minnesota Territory in order to take over the project to build "Fort St. Anthony," the army installation at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. Fifteen years earlier, the U.S. Army had ordered Lt. Zebulon Pike to explore the Mississippi River and select potential sites for future military posts. When he arrived at the junction of the two great rivers, Pike made a treaty with several local Dakota representatives and acquired land that would, he promised, be the site of a U.S. trading post. That post was never constructed, but following the War of 1812 the U.S. government sought to firmly establish its presence and stamp out any existing British influence in the Northwest Territory by building a fort at the site. The first troops arrived in 1819 under the command of Lt. Col. Henry Leavenworth and began construction on the stone fort the following year.
By 1825, under Col. Snelling's leadership, the fort was completed, and was renamed Fort Snelling by the U.S. War Department in honor of his efforts.

View full article: Josiah Snelling

A view of Fort Snelling and the surrounding area as it looked in 1848 by Seth Eastman.

This map drawn by Thomas Moncure in 1857 shows the city that Franklin Steele planned to build on the Fort Snelling Military Reserve. Steele purchased the reservation from the United States government earlier in the same year

Lawrence Taliaferro's drawing of the area around Fort Snelling in 1835 detailing different villages, lakes, trading stores, and the agency. To zoom in on the map, click here.

A painting done by Seth Eastman in 1866-48. It shows the site of Dakota creation, B'dote, where Fort St. Anthony (ne: Snelling) was later built.

A view of construction at Fort St. Anthony, now known at Fort Snelling, in 1823. Originally, Zebulon Pike treatied for this location at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in 1805. It wasn't until 1819 that the U.S. military established a site, when Colonol Henry Leavenworth moved his Fifth Infantry Regiment from Detroit to the site. Many soldiers reported extremely poor conditions at the fort, but things improved a bit with contruction of soldiers' quarters 1823. For a breakdown of the map, see here