Fight or Flight at Fort Fair Haven: A U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 Settlers' Fort and the Historical Imagination

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Military Sites" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Given relatively little attention in the broad study of United States history, the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 nonetheless sparked a momentous chain of events that still resonates in the state of Minnesota and beyond. One important aspect of this conflict included fortifications built by Euro-American settlers in defense of desperate Dakota attacks. One such settlers’ fort was constructed in the small town of Fair Haven, Minnesota. After brief testing in 2015, an archaeological excavation was conducted in the summer of 2016 via an undergraduate field school in order to confirm the location of the 1862 Fort Fair Haven, as well as determine its layout and practical functionality. Contrasting with present-day images and reconstructions held in the American historical imagination, this "fortress" may have been more appropriately considered a makeshift barricade, though it does share some similarities with other frontier outposts and palisades of the period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Military Sites

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 428