War and Conflict | Page 57

Dakota Women at Fort Snelling concentration camp

Two Dakota women at the Fort Snelling concentration camp, c.1862–1863. Photograph by Joel Emmons Whitney.

Dakota concentration camp below Fort Snelling

View of the Dakota concentration camp on the river flats below Fort Snelling, c.1862–1863. Photograph by Benjamin Franklin Upton.

Sketch of Barracks at Fort Snelling

Sketch of soldiers’ barracks at Fort Snelling, c.1862, by Albert Colgrave.

Dr. Thomas R. Potts

Dr. Thomas R. Potts, c.1855. Potts was the assistant surgeon and medical purveyor at Fort Snelling during the Civil War.

Fort Snelling in the Civil and US–Dakota Wars, 1861–1866

During the Civil War era, Fort Snelling served as an induction and training center for nearly twenty-five thousand soldiers. Many of them fought in the Civil War. Around fourteen hundred of the troops raised at the fort served in the US–Dakota War of 1862. After that war, a concentration camp for Dakota non-combatants was established near the fort. Following the Civil War, the fort supported US military expeditions against Indigenous people and the garrisoning of western posts.