Acts of Colonial Imagination:
Colonial Expansion and Indigenous Erasure
Fort St. Anthony (later renamed Fort Snelling, U.S. military establishment on the Upper Mississippi River.
Painting by John Casper Wild, c.1844.
In his exploration narrative, Pike’s acts of colonial imagination construct and propagate a U.S. narrative that overwrote the colonial presence atop an Indigenous social and environmental landscape in the Upper Mississippi River valley. As he records his observations in his journals and later uses these notes to report to his military superiors, Pike presents the valley in terms of its future colonial uses while obscuring the Indigenous historic and continued relationship with the land. Importantly, doing so also meant that Pike refused the possibility of an Indigenous future on the land, instead only envisaging the possibility for future colonial, capitalistic, and industrial expansion in the valley and beyond.
Projected U.S. Military Establishments in
Zebulon Pike's Exploration Narrative
As he observes the land, Pike imagines the utility of the valley for future colonial uses. In his journal entries, Pike describes areas that he envisions as suitable for the construction of military establishments, and he later reports his findings to his military superior General Wilkinson, writing, “I have chosen three places for military establishments” (223). The first fort location he designates is “on a hill about 40 miles above the river de Moyen rapids” (223). In his report, Pike makes particular note of the suitability of the land to U.S. colonial applications:
(Pike 227-28)
Pike’s observations in this description underscore the utility of the land to the U.S. military mission. His note regarding the proximity of the channel to the fort location hints at the desire to expand U.S. trade and naval forces to the area. The hill being “nearly level” on top intimates that military forces could successfully build a fort in this area. Beyond simply describing the environmental advantages of the area, Pike asserts his judgements on potential uses for this locale. He notes that the “small prairie” would be “fit for gardening.” He also underscores what he believes to be the most important feature of the landscape—the one that “crown[s] all”—that “immediately under the hill is a limestone spring.” The significance of this water source lies in the possibility for a military unit to subsist off of and consume the resources present: the spring is, according to Pike, “sufficient for the consumption of a regiment.” More essential to Pike than the landscape and geographical position, then, is the presence of resources sufficient to sustain a military presence.
Instead of prioritizing understanding Indigenous peoples in terms of their historic or contemporary use of the valley, Pike’s mission reflects the U.S. colonial view of the land as available for future “improvements” that necessitates undermining Indigenous rights to and inhabitation of the area. As Pike projects colonial futures onto the landscape, he crucially conceals Indigenous pasts, presents, and futures within the Upper Mississippi River valley.
Imagining Out Indigenous Presence
In his journal entries and letters to military superiors, Pike imagines the alteration of the land for colonial uses and imagines out local Indigenous peoples. Pike linguistically builds a colonial presence over the land by making mentally visible the possibility for future uses of and “improvements” to the land. In his report, Pike notes “a small prairie fit for gardening,” “a limestone spring, sufficient for the consumption of a regiment,” and “at the point of the hill a road could be made for a wagon in half a day” (223-4). In these instances, Pike reimagines and reinvents landscapes along the Mississippi River in order to mentally construct their usefulness to U.S. colonial endeavors. In doing so, Pike limits the conceptions that readers—specifically General Wilkinson—will have of these regions. By remaining silent regarding past and present inhabitants, Pike obscures the history of these locations. And by failing to address any Indigenous perspectives regarding the proposed posts, Pike mutes any potential dissent of the U.S. colonial presence in the area. Pike’s description, then, only allows for the conceptualization of the land as a U.S. colonial establishment. His words make all other depictions almost unimaginable by encouraging his readers to mentally construct a colonial outpost complete with such mundane details as a garden, water source, and road. In this way, Pike’s letter maps the colonial objectives of his mission onto the valley landscape, and such acts of colonial imagination served as the foundation for the removal of local Dakota and the later construction of mills and hydropower plants along the river.
As Pike imagines the Upper Mississippi River valley in terms of its future utility to U.S. military establishments, trade development, and industrial expansion, he obscures the historical and contemporary Indigenous connections to the land. Historian Jean O’Brien analyzes the U.S. “national narrative of the ‘vanishing Indian,’” arguing that the narrative construction of New England history has maintained several trends with respect to Indigenous history: “Non-Indians held exclusive sway over modernity, denied modernity to Indians, and in the process created a narrative of Indian extinction that has stubbornly remained in the consciousness and unconsciousness of Americans” (xiii). Pike’s written projections of colonial imagination adhere to and propagate an overarching fiction of Indian extinction. He understands that one of the “great objects in view by this expedition, as I conceived in addition to my instruction is to attach the Indians to our government” (ii). Whether he understood this attachment as contractual or emotional, Pike underscores the importance of altering Indigenous lifeways to suit U.S. endeavors. This often meant creating treaties to remove Indigenous tribes from areas that the U.S. sought to develop, which required forming productive—though not mutually-beneficial—relationships with local tribes.