St. Anthony Falls Area
A few Indians belonging to Good Road's band had their tepees up, and were temporarily living in them, in the oak-openings on the hill a little west of the landing of the old ferry. There was an eagle's nest in a tall cedar on Spirit Island . . . We started up a number of large timber wolves . . . The banks of the river above the falls were skirted with a few pines, some white birch, many hard maples, and several elms, with many native grape vines climbing over them, which formed fine bowers up to the first creek [Bassett's] above the Falls. The table land back from the Falls was covered with oak. There were some thickets of hazel and prickly ash. On the second bench, a little below the Falls [Bohemian Flats], from a quarter mile to a half mile back, there was a dense growth of poplar that had escaped the annual prairie fires . . . Here and there were fine rolling prairies of a few acres in extent, in the immediate neighborhood of the Falls, but toward Minnehaha the prairies were two or three miles long, and extended to Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet. Near the Falls was a deep slough of two or three acres. It was seemingly bottomless. This and a few deep ravines and grassy ponds were the only things to mar the beauty of the scene around the Falls.
Written by John H. Stevens, considered the first non-Native “settler” of Minneapolis, in 1891
The St. Anthony Falls area was sacred to the Dakota and had many names, including the animated names on this page. These falls are the only water falls the length of the Mississippi River. Industrialization, land theft and more have changed the area forever. A very important place for the Dakota, called “Spirit Island” by non-Natives no longer exists.
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PILOT VERSION -2007
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