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COLDWATER: Sacred Site or Dog Park
by Susu Jeffrey
The big question about the 27-acre Coldwater "restoration" for the National Park Service will be—restore to what? The choices are 1804 or 1884.
1804 is one year after the Louisiana Purchase and one year before Army Lt. Zebulon Pike journeyed up the Mississippi to purchase the right to build a fort and use nine miles on either side of the Mississippi from the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers up to the falls now called St. Anthony.
An 1884 park would include the limestone Spring House and reservoir built after the Civil War to pump water to Fort Snelling. The spring furnish water to the fort from 1820-1920 and still flows at 80,000-90,000 gallons-per-day.
In 1804, the spring formed a creek from two outflows on opposite sides of the hill to the west. The hill, from the Mississippi bluff up to the Twin Cities airport where sky (platform) burials were performed, fed groundwater to the spring. The two outflows made a "Y" shape when the streams coalesced and fell about 120-feet down to the Mississippi.
The hill was called Taku Wakan Tipi (something sacred dwells there) and is labeled "sacred" on historical maps. Because the hill is sacred, the spring out of which it flows is equally sacred.
The Dakota name for Coldwater Spring is Mni Owe Sni (minnie-o-way-snee), water-spring-cold. Coldwater has been flowing at least 10,000 years Kelton Barr, a geohydrologic consultant for the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, estimated—"or maybe much longer. I'd have to compare it other nearby ravines."
The oldest native artifact found in the area is a 9,000-year-old bison spear point uncovered in 1996 at the Sibley House dig in Mendota.
Restoration at Coldwater includes removal of the roads, fences and 11 buildings constructed during the 1960s for the US Bureau of Mines; taconite was developed at this Cold War research facility. Much from the buildings can be recycled bringing the restoration cost of 27-acres to just $3-million.
In 1959 a proposal was briefly considered for a nuclear power plant at Coldwater. Until the airline collapse after 9/11 Coldwater was scheduled to become an off-site parking and warehouse complex for the Twin Cities airport. "It was the only good thing to come out of 9/11," said the Cultural Chair of the Mendota Dakota Community, Jim Anderson.
Finally the powers that be have recognized this blufftop, riverfront property as valuable in itself rather than useful as an industrial site. The site will be replanted with indigenous burr oak trees and prairie grasses after a "destruction-construction" season scheduled to be completed by September of 2010.
There remains a major discrepancy between local and National Park Service (NPS) visions of Coldwater. NPS is a land agency. Local people value the history of the land, we revere the land as a sacred site, and especially we treasure the water.
Dog Parks
There are six off leash dog parks in Minneapolis, a city with more dogs than children. In the 2000 census about 20-percent, one in five, 76,000, of the 363,000 residents was under 18-years-old.
According to Tom Doty of Minneapolis Animal Control, the 2005 estimated dog population of the city was 108,000. Only about one-in-10 dogs is licensed. Off leash dog park permits cost $35 for residents for their first dog, $25 for the next dog(s). Nonresidents can also use city dog parks, fees are $60 and $35.
Most of the Minneapolis off leash dog parks are near surface water. In fact the Minnehaha dog park is on Mississippi River bottomland including an island owned by the National Park Service immediately below Coldwater Spring. "Do NOT let dogs defecate in the Mississippi River," is one of the "tips" for off leash dog owners.
Of course it might be difficult to follow an off leash dog in order to pick up its fecal deposit. Eighteen-million Americans drink out of the Mississippi. But dogs are family members and share people's kitchens, beds and bathtubs. Criticism of people's dogs is greeted with the same hostility as remarks about their children's' behavior. For people who merely kick leaves or snow over their dogs' feces, it's "natural." For those who assiduously carry plastic bags it is a non-issue.
If Coldwater were returned to a spring fed creek, minus the reservoir, the site would be a choice dog park—a shallow creek, a water park with no requirements for dog licenses or permits. Even the leash law is unenforceable. The word would go out, the ground would be torn up with dog play, and who could trust eating the watercress?
We don't need another dog park. We don't need another McPark—the jog-thru, bike-thru, roller blade-thru, walk-thru next-to-a-road thruway most Minneapolis parks have become.
From the 1880s to 1946 Coldwater was a park. In old photographs there are no leisure time activities, no picnic tables, simply the gentle hill and the reflecting pond. Coldwater has become a recognized contemplative space in the dozen years since it reopened. Sr. Jane Marie McDonald, CSJ, compares Coldwater to the Basilica of Saint Mary. There is only one traditional sacred spring and one basilica in Minneapolis.
In 2005 US Fish and Wildlife authorities locked people out of the Coldwater campus except for one hour on Friday afternoons. People stood in line for water.
Tiffany Eggenberg, a mother and member of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, said her boys learned to pray at Coldwater where they come to collect spring water for ceremonial use. "They can't pray when people are standing there waiting in line"—or in the midst of cavorting dogs.
Forever Sacred, Forever Neutral
Coldwater Spring is half way between Minnehaha Falls and the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. It is 2.5-miles from the falls to the confluence. In March 1999, Anishinabe spiritual elder Eddie Benton Benais from Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin offered the following in court-ordered testimony.
“We know that the falls which came to be known as Minnehaha Falls, was a sacred place, was a neutral place, a place for many nations to come. And that (to) further geographically define (it), the confluence of the three rivers, which is actually the two rivers. That point was a neutral place. And that somewhere between that point and the falls there were sacred grounds that were mutually held to be a sacred place.
“The people that are concerned, the people that are identified are the Dakota, the Sauk, the Fox, the Pottawattamie, the Wahpeton Dakotas, the Mdewakanton Dakotas, the Mesquakie people as all having used and recognizing and mutually agreeing that that is forever a neutral place and forever a sacred place. That is confirmed by our oral history.
“It is difficult to even estimate when the last sacred ceremony was held inter-tribally there. But my grandfather who lived to be 108, died in 1942 [born 1834]. I will tell you this. Many times he retold how we traveled, how he and his family, he as a small boy traveled by foot, by horse, by canoe to this great place to where there would be these great religious, spiritual events. And that they always camped between the falls and the sacred water place. Those are his words….
“And I, having been born into an Ojibway/Anishinabe family, having been raised in this tradition, and having been now entrusted with teaching this tradition and articles of faith, I can say that to you...[i]t is our belief that the prophesies contain a promise. The new people, the new awareness is here among us, among all people.
There’s a growing awareness that we need to care for the earth, we need to become concerned with the water, the air and all of creation. We need to do this together....We have to begin to reach out and say, ‘Brother, we are of the earth.’ That all prayer originates at the same place and arrives at the same place."
Springs are "all over the Bible" too which is also based on oral history. Native and white people have worked for years for the protection and preservation of Coldwater Spring. Included in the traditional sacred landscape on the Mississippi blufftop is a 23-acre, two-block shoestring of Veteran's Administration land between Minnehaha Regional Park and the Coldwater property.
The VA land is isolated from the rest of the VA campus by a multi-lane highway and used as a dump for construction dirt and downed trees, and formerly for nuclear (probably medical) waste. In the 1990s the City of Minneapolis spent about $300-million restoring the downtown riverfront.
Using the river as an industrial toilet is a 19th and 20th century practice. Just as we take children away from abusive guardians, we should protect fragile land from abusive owners.
This is the water Dred Scott drank in the free (then) Wisconsin Territory between 1838-40. The simple lesson of Coldwater Spring is that its water flows to all nations—the plant people, the animal people, all peoples. It is our time to speak for this water.
Dragonfly
Susbeca (Dakota, sue-s bay-cha) is the mosquito hawk or dragonfly. Dragonflies consume mosquitoes at all stages of development from larvae to adult. For some Native peoples the dragonfly symbolizes pure water, for others dragonflies are a symbol of renewal after a time of great hardship.
Dakota people were said to consider dragonflies supernatural, spirit beings that could appear suddenly in great numbers. Dragonfly had the power of speech and warned man of danger saying "Tei, tei, tei," "Look out!" For Mendota Dakota people the dragonfly is associated with their late chairman, Bob Brown.
At Coldwater reservoir dragonflies literally plow the pond as if it were a field, back and forth, back and forth, eating mosquitoes. If the reservoir were removed Coldwater would lose the ducks in winter, the mosquito hawk in summer, and the reflecting pond which gives the site its reflective, contemplative ambiance.
If the resevoir disappears we would also lose comparable court-ordered monitoring data of the flow before and after Highway 55 reroute construction. The data were gathered at the reservoir outflow pipe. Those numbers allowed the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District to take the Minnesota Department of Transportation to court and force a redesign of the 55/62 interchange where 30-percent of the flow came though.
For a 27-month period before construction Coldwater averaged 129,456 gallons-per-day (gpd). Post-construction court-ordered monitoring for 20-months averaged 101,908 gpd, a loss of about 20 gallons per minute.
Miineapolis, "water city," has only one natural spring left. During the dry summer of 1976 Coldwater became an emergency drinking water supply for south Minneapolis residents whose water was putrid with algae. The City of Minneapolis has a 24-hour emergency water supply. Every life form on Earth requires water.
Once Coldwater is restored and the destruction-construction scars heal, people will never know it was anything but a spring flowing out of a great, gentle hill through a burr oak savanna and down to the Mississippi River. |
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