Military History
Deja Vu All Over Again: The Fort Snelling Concentration Camp, 1862
Back in August, My Own True Love and I spent a History Nerd Holiday in the Twin Cities. I came back with a lot of stories, but I left an important one for later: the concentration camp the United States government built at Fort Snelling at the end of the U.S. -Dakota War of…
Read More
Learning Japanese at Fort Snelling during World War II
One of the first things we saw when we got to Fort Snelling was a row of storyboards posted along the sidewalk leading to the visitors’ center. One of them showed a photo of three young Asian-American women in uniform, with a quotation above them: “I was born in the states, in Nebraska, and I’m…
Read More
Buffalo Soldiers on Bicycles
This is one of my favorite stories from our visit to Fort Snelling: After the American Civil War, Congress created six regiments of Black soldiers, led for the most part by white officers, known informally as Buffalo Soldiers.[1] One of those regiments , the 25th Black Infantry, was posted at Fort Snelling in 1880. Eight…
Read More